Remain Nameless (Lover to Lover)

[selenias]

Between blurring the lines of past and present, working out all the twisted schemes in his head and massaging his temple when it all became too much... he never did notice when somebody else had found the solution he'd been so desperately searching for.

She could have worn it on her face like a mask, only on her, it was a natural, self-satisfied look; lips curled and cheeks flushed with an influential ruby shade that spoke of victory and bitter wines and late nights and glamourous juxtapositions of the 'thick-headed' variety. It was funny, because beneath all that open hostility, he often wondered if she wasn't if not more at a loss than himself in this stage, this walk down memory lane that always started and ended with a pair of knotted shoelaces and broken legs.

Because while he was ashamed of his name, she honestly didn't seem to give a damn. And it really was honestly disconcerting, because while she never admitted to it, they both knew she cared about everything and anything that sent him into his downward spirals. That sent him tumbling when there was never a reason to have fallen in the first place and rabbit holes were nonexistent in this Wonderland.

They were hardly simple trips, and he sometimes wished he had never gotten her involved in the first place. Or at least, that she wasn't so damn smart as to be able to figure everything out on her own.

Though, in hindsight, if she hadn't been as smart as she was (in comparison to the utter fool she made him out to be) he supposed attraction would have just been a fable with her—and a not an adamant supporting fact like it was now.

These strung together moments and observations she always pieced together like some messed up quilt... they were always accurate.

Rita simply didn't do falsehoods in her line of expertise.

“Schwann is a part of you. I don't see why you can't acknowledge that for what it is. Maybe he was a puppet for Alexei... and, well, maybe he was a bastard at one point, too, but... the point is... he's not anymore.” She turned another page in her spell book, and he watched her pen move fluidly over the pages, scribbling here, marking something there... “...And it's all in the past anyway. It's stupid to worry about things like that now, you know?”

It was a nice thought, thinking that he had changed. That she thought he had changed for the better. He wanted to believe it. He wanted it to be true. But she made it difficult, being how she was, all smart and beautiful and attractive and reading his every thought like he was one of her thick and heavy buckled tomes; he still felt the sin on his hands like it was yesterday. The blood. The hate he held towards his other halves. And today—the relationship between him and Rita that had erased any relations to the silly word 'platonic'—still lingered. In his joints, in the bags under his eyes (in the discreet but very, very small hickey on the underside of her jaw that she denied every day of every week). Every time he so much as looked at his reflection after an evening spent loving everything that was her, teal eyes staring back in the mirror and calloused hands tying thick brown strands up in an attempt to hide away in the dawn's beckoning early light – Schwann and Damuron and Casey and Barbos and Yeager and Alexei and the Don all stared back silently – soundless curses on their lips, and dead eyes holding a contempt he never could bring himself to fathom. You can't run—you can't forget aaaaaany of us–

And sometimes, even Rita stared back in the mirror, eyes accusing and face sad. And when she turned her head away, hair a graceful breeze and feet falling softly on nothing but air—that was when everything felt heaviest.

It was impossible to fully conceal himself at any one time, in any place, in any state of mind, because he couldn't ever change the fact that he and Damuron and Schwann at one point in time had all shared the same body, the same mind, the same lungs, the same heart.

The same loves.

No... He couldn't change that. Not even death could change those sullen facts. They ran as deep and painful and ragged as every other forsaken sin out there—and weren't lenient in the least in regards to his fragile mental state. Every evening, when his death day rolled around in the early autumn months, the memories ate at him. Poked and prodded at him with jousts and loud ringing voices, Hey Raven, still playing games with Death?

It was impossible to ever feel fully rested in the mornings when he was haunted even in his dreams. When Schwann claimed Rita was as justly his as she was Raven's or Damuron's (despite the latter having been dead for the last thirteen years, dammit)—all the distinctions had long ago vanished and his identity felt as flimsy as a piece of cardboard flapping in the breeze.

And his heart. That certainly wasn't his own anymore.

Against all reason, he stepped out on a limb. The night was cold, and the air crisp. He watched his breath form a small patch of fog; watched her cross her arms against the chill and toss another piece of wood onto the fire, turning it into a bright blaze of orange and crimson carousel colors with quiet murmurings and small, minute bewitching hand gestures.

Balancing himself carefully, he took in the sensation of gravity's consistent tug, testing it wearily with a graceful downward dip of his torso towards the earth below. He liked being high up where he could look down and see everything that she was up to—to see what the world was up to. It was intriguing how a view point really could change one's perspective so much. From here, she looked irritated, a little worn around the edges, and a bit preoccupied—back against his tree several yards below, stockings covered in dirt, book in her lap, and goggles casually strewn out in the grass beside her as if they really weren't something she honestly cared about.

But that was Rita, and upon a closer inspection when she tilted her head back to to glance up at him, hair falling away from her face and eyes narrowed, waiting for him to leap and fall to his death, he knew that it was simple exhaustion in it's most common form warping her lovely features in his eyes. It wasn't his fault that his sense of perception had been screwed over all week. And she certainly wasn't to blame for the the fact that the air in his lungs felt like shards of Zopheir's embankments either.

“...Ya really believe that, hon?” he murmured back down to her, but he thought his voice to be lost in the night, carried away by the crackle of the fire and the beasts singing in the forest and lost in her own steady, studious gaze that was latched on to him like a roper. He wouldn't have minded too much if she hadn't been listening; if he was lucky – and had a bit more faith – saying the words twice and thrice over would only have made them ring truer.

For that he would have given almost anything.

But only almost, because he was a selfish man and she was the one constant he was not so willing to part with.

“Of course I do, moron.” She was obviously tired, rubbing at her eyes with a balled up fist and gloved hand, pen in palm, and all traces of genius still lingering despite her rumpled appearance. Momentarily, he felt guilty abandoning her to the cold even with the fire and himself close by. It wasn't as if his actions didn't affect her now as well as himself, and perhaps he really was stupid for having assumed so. “What I mean is... If you're going to be stupid and erase him, you might as well kill yourself off as well. You're the same person, whether you like it or not,” she called up, voice calm yet strangled peculiar.

“So what yer basically sayin' is... I can't be me without him?” Raven took several tentative steps across the wide branch, arms spread wide and loose hair strands blowing in his eyes occasionally from the evening breezes. He blinked them away, and watched his footing carefully as the branch slowly began to bend as he placed his right foot in front of the other, until soon a large majority of the weaker branches of the tree were encompassing him, and the leaves rustled soothing melodies into the crook of his ear like a lullaby, all soft sounds and soft tunes and soft buds plucking at his hair like the strings on a harp.

If he glanced straight up, and if he had been born with the eyes of an entelexeia, Mt. Temza would have been looming up before him, as rugged and barren and desecrate as it had been when he'd woken that first time, face shoved in the dirt and chest bare, the sky raining death like the blow he'd been struck with that had nearly snapped him in two–

“Well, kind of... but you're misinterpreting what I'm really trying to get across here.” Even with his back to her, the skepticism still shined through. A redeeming quality he recognized as easily as the seven hairs of stubble on his chin.

“Really?” His voice felt weak, minute, and he tried the words out again, clearing his throat awkwardly. It was but a whisper of the normal verbosity he possessed though, all wise cracks and perpetual humor—and momentarily, it felt like Schwann was staring him in the mirror all over again. That miserable, selfish, bastardly look.

You're the biggest fool if I ever met one. Why does it even matter that you have another name? Just... stick with the one you're comfortable with and stop whining so damn much about something so stupendously simple–

On reflex, his arm jerked, and he caught himself before he could fall, dangling from a thicker, sturdier branch above his head with two hands and legs walking on air. Needles and pine cones rained down in response, and there was an indignant shout below him, followed by an extremely terrifying string of curses. A pine cone went hurtling by his ear at impressive speeds, and Raven glanced down slowly, expressionlessly, at the enraged genius glaring up at him below, two feet rooted to the forest ground, brown hair glowing orange in the firelight and silhouette creeping up the tree towards him.

“Hey! Tarzan! Stop screwing around! If you fall, there's no way I'm picking up the pieces!” But of course it'd be her who would keep him intact when everything had been shot to hell. Maybe not in the gentle manner he would have hoped for, but there was a limit to how much one could ask from another. And he didn't want to tread upon hers.

Wearily and with a sigh, Raven detached himself from the overhead branches carefully; latching onto a branch to his right near the base of the tree, he calmly swung to another below him, gripped the one there for a moment, and then allowed himself to fall the remaining ten feet, landing on the dewy grass below with only a grunt and an accompanying swoosh of air. He let himself collapse into a crumpled heap near her feet almost immediately afterwords, close to the fire's pleasant warmth and her soft complexion, and stared up at the sky in what he was sure looked like absolute boredom, breathing deeply as his lungs tried to catch up with the swift movements that came with listening to a drill sergeant.

Surprisingly, Rita didn't say a word about the fact that he was keeping his hands to himself for once—nor anything about the fact that the bags under his eyes actually reflected his age for once, lying there in veiled misery. She just simply observed him for a moment, frowning casually as her pen went tap tap tap along the side of her leg, but he wasn't so lost in his own thoughts as to not recognize what that look really meant when her lips visibly tugged down a few seconds later, and she tossed the pen aside.

It seemed several years of dealing with his actions had prepared her for everything. He wished he could have said the same, as her words still knocked him head over heels whenever she came up with a new revelation, and it was like falling for her all over again. Falling for her words and quirky charm and cute looks and that volatile hostility that really shouldn't have been as attractive as it was...

“I'm saying that you are Schwann, and—well... he's you too, if that makes sense.” Rita resumed the conversation as if the interruption had never occurred, fiddling with her hands and popping joints quietly. She did a few stretches, pulling an arm over head and glancing up at the sky. “He's just you with a different name, is what I really mean,” she finished quietly.

He didn't know what would suffice as a relative response, so simply said nothing at all.

“...It's a fact,” She muttered after a moment, and he could only grin slightly then at the idiocy she sometimes unknowingly wrought on him that made him feel as brash as the ignorant child he'd been when he was younger, and the punishments that came with mistaking too much.

The grass tickled the vulnerable spot at the back of his neck, and he shivered subtly when her knee bumped his unintentionally when she shifted. “You're being awfully quiet... Still not understanding?” she asked suspiciously, and Raven's lips twitched a little more at her persistence, her voice, her underlying concern...

“Nah, I understand... I just...”

“...Just what?” For such a bold person, she worked caution as well as she did everything else.

Raven exhaled slowly, feeling himself sinking into the earth while he strived to gather his thoughts, like a weight slipping towards the ocean floor... “I just... don't like the feelin' I'm getting from hearin' ya say that, is all...” He said each word slowly, because they were heavy words, and the air felt thin beneath the surface, when all that he was doing was drifting down, down, down and the sky was getting blacker and the fire dimmer dimmer dimmer...

“...You don't like confessing, is what you mean.”

Her voice brought him back, and he swallowed when he caught hold of her eyes, adam's apple bobbing pretentiously... and averted his gaze away. “...Yep. That about summarizes it,” he mumbled, and her disbelieving snort was short lived, a short but powerful ha that made his head shake softly when she shifted up beside him again, fabric brushing past his shoulder as she stretched out almost perpendicular to himself, long legs splayed over the roots of the giant tree and arms strewn above her head casually, near his own, as if to say, I give up, you were a hopeless basket case to start with.

Instead, her smile was wan, and her eyes tired. “What you're being is stupid. Nobody said anything about you having to make a confession. I'm just trying to make a point here, and you're twisting my words around in your head.” She said the first bit almost thoughtfully, but it was lost on him beyond all that was sweetness and smart talking and the fact that air was filling his lungs with cool crystals and diamonds of blastia variety.

“Darlin', yer the only one,” he murmured half-heartedly in response, and wondered if she had taken the opportunity to slug him in the face if that wouldn't have made everything better, because he felt like an ass, and the fire was a bit too hot for him at this point, and his lungs hurt, and his head hurt, and everything was just so–

She was quiet for a moment, fiddling with her hands like she always did because she was good with them—and then, hesitantly, as if he wasn't the only one struggling to breathe through the memories, she spoke: “You know... if you're really struggling that much... then just... remain nameless if you're that opposed to dealing with this stupid situation.”

If Raven had been in a laughing mood, his would have been a bitter and loud bark at the sky. Schwann and Damuron's mocking expressions felt like pinpricks beating against his skull, and that only made everything worse because it had been dark on that cold mountain top when he'd came to, and technically, who ever has a name when brought back from the dead?

“Would you hate me any less if I did that?” He asked instead, and found these things would have been easier to say if she really had broken his lip with a fist. Words were easier to say when he himself couldn't understand what he was speaking. Words were easier to say when he couldn't hear what he was saying either.

She shifted on to her side shortly, curved in his general direction. If he turned his head just so to his right, he could see her face, and the suspicious expression that graced it, eyebrows narrowed. “...Are you trying to tell me something, old man...?”

And suddenly, there was a lot he wanted to tell and a lot he wanted to ask.

The fire crackled ominously, and his voice felt painfully hoarse even to his own ears.

“Are you still angry with me for kidnapping Estelle several years ago?”

He didn't know who was more appalled: him, with his brash tongue and stupidity and scraggly stubble for bringing up such an event, or herself, as he hadn't seen her give him that truly startled doe-eyed look since the day they'd both confessed things that had altered a lot of went down as 'moral standards and social regulations' into something that only they themselves were ever able to justify.

Sometimes, he still struggled to justify it himself, but she never seemed to care. And for the record, Schwann and Damuron didn't give it a hell of a lot of thought, either.

Affection came and went—just as words and plucked vocal strands hummed.

“W-what? Where the hell did that come from–” He closed his eyes at her aggravated expression, because he knew it was exactly what she would have given him under the circumstances, and he was a fool for thinking for even a fragment of a second that she would have responded with anything but bewilderment and rage.

“Could you please... just answer the question?” He asked it with deliberate slowness, enunciating each word as if they were hard to say. And frankly, they were, because asking her to do something was like asking the clear sky to rain, and that was a myth in and of itself.

Rita looked torn; somewhere between ready to strangle him, and ready to slap him. Between the two choices he knew so well, the first one always seemed to lead to outcomes that while wholesomely better, he never could quite predict what determined them to be.

“Rita...” he said again, for the sake of letting her name fall from his lips, because he wanted to hear it. She was staring at his chest, avoiding his eyes.

“...Yeah. I am bothered by that. But I hardly hate you for it now... I mean, that's... in the past...”

“Rita...” When he opened his eyes to stare at her, she turned quiet again. And it was a heady silence, the ones that made choking easy to do, like when water was inhaled or shoes were tied too tight or air was too thin. He knew the feeling, because there wasn't a day that he didn't stumble across it at least once in his hurry for an escape. It was usually in her gaze when it wasn't in his head, because it was acute and piercing, and in a way that he could only refer to with the utmost affection, a familiar and wondrous sentiment at the most that seemed to make him feel vulnerable when he least wished to be.

Thoughtfully, Raven moistened his lips and watched the sky, arms tucked behind his head because pillows were nonexistent in Egothor Forest. He started carefully, cautiously, softly and gently, because words seemed more powerful when they were uttered under a blanket of stars and the fragility that came with it. “...You know the saying, 'Once a puppet, forever a puppet'?”

Return like the puppet you are, Schwann. Since you survived, I will use you again...

Rita's voice was like harsh velvet. “Well yeah, I do—of course I do, but... what about it is even worth mentioning at this point? You've already made up your mind about how you feel about this... I don't see how me saying anything now will change that.”

He had to remind himself that matters of the heart weren't always her forte. And then the fact that sometimes things were worth telling.

His sigh was heavy, like a that of a person with iron boots. “It hasn't been easy, darlin'... lemme tell you... I hate this time of the year. It's a goddamn awful time.” Rita was quiet again, and after a few minutes, he wondered if he hadn't put her to sleep instead.

“You know... It's only been hard because you're making it difficult. Really, it's a simple thing and you're just being an idiot again about the whole situation. You're looking at it wrong.”

Her words were hardly convincing, so Raven scowled up at the branches in the trees, slightly irritated. “Really? Please, enlighten' me–”

“The reality of the situation is this: the rest of us? We've gotten over it and accepted the facts. But you? You're still living in the past, old man.” She shifted, rolling over onto her side, and he waited for her to stab him in the chest with a forefinger, to tell him just how wrong he was, and that these past thirteen years he had indeed been going about his death completely and utterly wrong by her standards.

If it hadn't been her honesty speaking, he supposed he never would have believed her words.

“...Then what do you suggest I do to change, darlin'?”

“Well, first of all... get rid of that ridiculous expression you have on your face. You look like a clown. And second...” Rita wiggled over a little closer, shifting down until his face was even with hers. She looked uncomfortable, cheeks red and expression slightly pinched, but her voice didn't even waver as she let out a shaky breath, glaring as she poked him in the chest this time around—harder than necessary. “...And second...” she scowled rudely, “stop pushing me away all the time, okay? I'm not going anywhere. Don't think I don't know you're thinking about Casey when you look at me like you do. About the Don and Alexei and—and everything else, too... Estelle. You shouldn't even be worrying about this stuff anymore, you died thirteen years ago, and things are different now–”

“Rita–”

“I can help if you let me, but I don't really want to when you act like such a baby–”

He reached out silently and ran a calloused thumb over her bottom lip gently. She looked surprised and slightly annoyed, but the rate at which she was firing words at him slowed noticeably when his hand moved to cup her cheek then, and he idly tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Darlin'... you made your point. I get it,” he spoke softly, and she looked so stunned he had to choke out a laugh. “I get it now,” he whispered again, and it was odd, because he truly meant what he said, and there was no traces of contempt to be seen. No Schwann or dead Damuron or sad Rita to greet him; in his head, only Raven was there, and it was refreshing feeling the burden disperse. Out with the old and in with the new...

Rita blinked at him irritably, green-blue eyes luminescent in his shadow. “What are you even babbling about? I'm not finished talking ye–”

“Yes you are,” he murmured sweetly, and the first kiss was rougher than he had intended.

He had only meant for it to appease her. She floundered for a moment instead, hands stretched out as if not sure whether to push him away or pull him closer, and then turned as still as stone (only much softer and without all the sharp edges that often came with rocks), and Raven was forced to snatch her up into his arms himself. Rolling over the last half foot of wet grass until he was towering over her, and it was all Rita Rita Rita everywhere–

“You talk too much sometimes,” he muttered, kissing her nose sweetly, and Rita promptly exhaled into his face, bringing her arms up around his neck. “But ya know what, I really couldn't give a dam–”

“You don't talk to me enough,” she growled accusingly, running her hands through his hair, and in a very soft sultry voice he hadn't heard her use since the night the Adephagos had met it's end and they'd both done enough confessing to last several lifetimes, she whispered his name, and it was the sweetest sound he'd heard in a long long while.

“I could say the same of you,” he murmured back, but it seemed his wish had finally been granted, and it was hard to focus when her hands were tugging the thong from his hair inconspicuously, because it really wasn't all that inconspicuous when she did it every evening, of every night, of every week, and the feeling was so pleasant.

“Yeah? But I'm not hiding things, now am I?”

“But you don't have anything you're trying to forget, now do you?” He stole another kiss, shifting his elbows in the grass until he was pressed against her comfortably and she grunted, removing the thong from his hair with ease (because she was far too skilled at it).

“You can't be sure of that,” she finally spoke, running her fingers through the few curls he had, and Raven had to stop and ponder her honesty for a moment, her hesitance.

“...So you do, then?” he asked carefully, and Rita's lips curved slightly, in an expression he identified as a I-would-feel-a-lot-better-kicking-your-ass-but-I'm-not-because-there's-a-simpler-way-to-handle-your-stupidity smile, and he considered bringing out his own collection of masks to wear, because apparently she saw fit to bring out hers.

“...Maybe,” she replied, and in a slight building of frustration, he snuck a palm up the front side of her shirt, and pinched her side lightly, because his hands were cold, and she hated it when he did that. The crackling of the fire would have sufficed to cover up her swear lightly, but it didn't, he could lip-read her pretty damn well.

“Rita, you're not appeasin' my worries, darlin'. Vague answers are hardly what I'm lookin' for here.”

“It was supposed to be. You're being snoopy,” she accused, and on queue, wiggled slightly in protest, trying to dislodge his cool grip on her. “And by the way, move your hand unless you want to lose it because it is freaking freezing–” He moved it up higher purposely at her complaining, and she gasped, tugging on his scalp accidentally (or not, because it was always hard to tell).

He spoke as if he hadn't interrupted her train of thought. “Of course I'm curious! What did ya expect? Since when are you vague 'bout anythin'–” She let his hair fall, and Raven was forced to blink and shove the masses of hair out of his face mid-speech, using an elbow to prop himself up. He scowled at the interruption, because he had been on a roll, and she just built a blockade much bigger in size than himself. “Rita–” he tried to begin, but two clammy palms clapped against his stubbley cheeks from both sides, and she took the opportunity to squish his face together like one would a rubber ball, much to his bemusement.

“You can stop talking now,” she said, and he was compliant, because this was Rita, and some people were alive and worth listening to—and the more he thought about it, Raven's mask was the only one he felt comfortable in anyway.

Because really, who was he kidding, his death day could roll around for another sixty-two years and Rita would still only ever look at him him this, talk to him like this, kiss him like this—and Schwann and Damuron? What did they matter anymore? What did Mt. Temza? Alexei? The Don?

They were all in the past.

And this? This was all he needed in his life. And he was a fool for not having realized it sooner.

“Hey, Rita...”

“...What?” Her chest thrummed against his, and Raven closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of her hands on his face.

“Thanks,” he said, because she was worthy of that—and so much more.