cascade | kotlc

31. The Goodbye Never Said

alright, these chapters will be very much about grief... you were warned.

- J. R.

June laughed as she strided down the stairs of Everglen, to her kitchen, having just woken up from her sleep. A cozy rest solved all her problems, and Vespera's dilemma no longer seemed a demanding issue. Even her quote unquote 'death' had practically slipped from her mind.

How long has it been? She does not know. One day, most likely, perhaps a little more. If it were longer, Fitz would've woken her, smiled and maybe offered to do her hair.

There was a party of people under, sitting on couches with their elbows on their knees, their brows furrowing. All their individual conversations stopped, and their eyes flickered to her as she made her way down.

She rubbed her eyes, blearily adjusting to the flooding light that seeped through the crystal walls and the honking of argentavises outside.

Sophie waved slightly. "Hi, sis."

"Hey. What'd I miss?" she asked, taking her seat by Faye and reaching for her long, gold-blue hair, which was always a joy to twirl. The strands were oily under her palm, and she frowned at the sulking girl. "What is it?"

Faye tilted her head and opened her eyes, masked with a veil of exhaustion. Her usually stormy eyes, flickering with their energetic flashes, had run out of steam, deccelerating into a dense cloud of dark mist. Especially with her blind eye and those milky white cataracts, she looked as if she had just woken up a second ago and received a flash of lightning to her face, overwhelming her with a surge of brilliant light.

And then, June frowns, noticing the absence of a certain person. "Where's Fitz?" she asked. When Faye does not respond, saliva coalesces in the back of her throat. "He's away, right...? I don't know, buying something for me? Preparing something? A date, perhaps...?"

Still Faye does not dare to talk, and she recalls Vespera's words. You, Rewinder, you will fall. Her worst suspicions bubble in her stomach.

"He's here," she says, half to herself, desperately squashing down the panic emerging from her windpipe. "He's still here, right...?"

Faye breaks, and the words rush from her mouth.

-

"I'm so sorry, I tried to stop him, but he- but he made his choice, and there was- I don't know what I could've done- I'm so sorry, June, I'm really, so, so, sorry, sister, please, he wanted to do it-"

"Stop," she croaks, feeling the wind freeze, chilling over with negative degrees celsius, and she cannot breathe. There is something hitching to the back of her throat, a lump of emotions dredged up from her deepest insides. Her mind is panicking and thumping against her skull.

Faye still continues with her meaningless words. "I'm really sorry, but- he said he had to, you can't blame him, he needed to, it was- it was-"

A gust of wind belts in her, and suddenly she has a strong urge to destroy everything, to unleash her worst gales into skyscraping tornados, blow everything into smithereens until the sky itself fell, shattered into pieces and landed in fields of dust by her feet.

"He had to, please, sister, he had to do it, you have to understand, sister-"

Her throat unhinges, for a moment, and all the words rush out of her, like wind from a gust bellow, a vacuum cleaner with the pressure inside disturbed and bursted, and all the wind was flooding out.

"CALL ME SISTER ONE MORE TIME!" she screams, and all the wind has reached her head, and she cannot think straight, except gather the few precious memories she still has; and she can remember some things, but not others, she can remember Fitz's voice and his words and his loving smile, but she cannot remember his sweet comforts or his last wishes, and most of all, she does not remember his face, his eyebrows, his teal eyes, his dark hair; and there is so much rage in her, pent-up and seconds away from erupting in a storm of air, and the crush cuffs adorning her wrist flap and flap under the heavy winds, and now she wants to cry.