18 – 4

It's no easier a thing to tell than it was to live through, every awful moment bringing some small fragment of memory to the surface. When describing the crush at the gate, I breathe in the wet-iron stench of blood and mud. When recounting the days she spent comatose, I hear the echoes of scorn and derision. When I speak of her death, I see eyes: hers, dull and sightless; Pike's, cold and pitiless; and Merigold's, cruel and gleeful. I can say no more after this, strangled by heart's-wound pain, and so it falls to Clarke to finish the tale.

How Pike drove us from the city, spared our lives, and we don't know why.

How lost we were, how cold and hungry.

How fear nearly drove us mad.

How sickness threatened to kill us.

How Sockeye Bend almost did.

Her voice, her whole demeanor of calm, breaks when she comes to us splitting up. She hides her face in her hands and chokes out stumbling, stammered words of guilt. She gives a tear-stained confession of how she sat on that hilltop and waited, sick with shame for every moment, until she could wait no longer. Anguish twists her words as she tells of finding me at the base of that tree, soaked in filth and halfway to dead.

The telling ends there, in ruins, tellers and listener destroyed. Clarke buckles under a gentle touch, falling into my arms and loosing sobs that tear free from deep within her chest. I press my lips to her brow, my nose into her hair, and squeeze shut my stinging eyes.

Jeremiah scrubs his pale, sunken face with shaking hands and sighs into his beard, “Shit.”

A wet laugh escapes the sealed line of my jaw. Clarke gasps, her shoulders shake. It might've been in humor. Once the threat of tears subsides I open my eyes, see what was once a prosperous tavern and what used to be a beautiful day outside it. It's quiet, a kind of shattered silence that settles in the aftermath of destruction.

Merigold did this. She ended one life; and in doing so forever lessened three. The craven bitch didn't even have the spine to do it herself, did she? She used Pike to fire the bolt and me to carry the news north. What did she do? What did Her Royal Majesty, the exalted Madam Mayor of Port Viara do?

Nothing. She did nothing, as if it were all beneath her, as if her hands were cleaner than ours instead of the filthiest of all.

I had thought myself familiar with anger. I had thought I knew how deep it could run within me. I was wrong. What I had felt before was nothing more than a child's petulance, her frustration with obnoxious siblings, unfair parents, or life's small indignities. What I feel now is as far removed from those childish things as a candle from the summer sun.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I hate her.

In time, Clarke's sobbing calms to quiet shaking and wet sniffles. Jeremiah finds his feet and leans against the wall, his outraged grief now a lost emptiness. My eyes stop their stinging, the threatened tears subsided to wherever they go to wait. The shattered quiet seems to mend, if only a little, leaving room for distant sounds of life to filter in through the open door.

“Sorry,” Jeremiah clears his throat, sunken eyes on his shoes, “Sorry, again, 'bout the...” he unfolds an arm to gesture at the dent in his wall, “you know.”

I lift my chin enough to nod, then return it to the top of Clarke's head. I don't forgive him, I don't think, not yet; but I do understand. Even as the memory of Flint filled my mind, I understood. How could I not? I feel it, too.

Clarke takes a deep breath, marshaling herself, and lets go of me. She leaves the circle of my arms with bloodshot eyes, a snotty nose, and a tear-stained face. Before I can ask if she's alright, she nods to show that she is; and I believe her. The frailty that led her to breaking may not be wholly gone, but it is gone enough.

“So,” she swipes under her eyes, snorts the snot back up her nose, and turns, “What will you – I mean, what do you want to do now, Mr. Morrow?”

He looks back, lost-eyed and confused, “What d'you mean?”

Before she can answer, there comes a tapping, a gentle rapping, a knocking at the tavern door.

- - -

Milo Thorngage is different from when we saw him last; skin weathered by wind and sunlight, shoulders broadened by new muscle, and dirt under his nails. Sweat stains the linen of his loose shirt, streaks of mud dry on his boots. He takes in the scene that lay before him, looks over the three of us with dark eyes and worry in the lines of his brow. “You alright, Jer?” his voice is a weary rasp, slightly nasal with the lingering remnants of some congestive illness, “Something happen?”

“Thought you had work,” Jeremiah doesn't answer.

“I did,” Milo steps into the tavern. “but I heard something'd happened over here, so I thought I'd check in on you.” He gives a small, brief smile to us, “Hey there, girls. S'good to see you again. When'd you get in?”

I can't find a smile to give back, “A few hours ago.” Do I have to tell him, as well? How many times will I have to pick at a wound that's not begun to heal? Clarke slides our palms together, slides her fingers between mine, and squeezes. If I do, at least I won't be alone. “It's good to see you, Milo. I...a lot's happened since we left.”

He steps further in, cautious and careful, eyes flicking between the pair of us in ruins and the slumped, shattered Jeremiah, “We'll have to catch up. Come 'round for dinner, Addy'd love to – ”

Watching Jeremiah collapse had been like seeing a mountain fall. Hearing his hollow delcaration, “She's gone,” is like hearing its echo, “Juliana, she's – it's finally...she's gone.”

It strikes Milo hard, cuts him deep, but doesn't surprise him. He'd known, or had at least suspected, from the moment he heard something had happened. It made sense; he hadn't missed a thing last time, either. “Oh, no. Jer, I'm – oh, hell,” he crosses the distance between him and his friend, shoving chairs from his path, and wraps him in a hard embrace. “I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry.”

Jeremiah stands, arms limp at his sides, and stares into nothing. He tries to talk, fails, and clears his throat. “I –” it comes out choked, strangled by bewildered grief, “What do I do, Milo? I...I don't know what to do.”

Milo pulls back, looks up at friend, “It's alright,” he says, “it's alright, because I do. All of you, you're going to come with me and we're going to get some food in you, find you something to drink. Me and Addy, you're going to stay with us, and in the morning, we – we're going to do something for her, have a little...farewell. How's that sound?”

Jeremiah shrugs, listless. He's done.

“Alright, then. You leave it to me, Jer,” Milo then looks over his shoulder, “Clarke, Zira?”

I have it in me to nod. So does Clarke, though her grip on my hand tightens. It might be that she dislikes the idea of a farewell as much as I do. It feels like a betrayal to even think about. Juliana fought and died for us, and we repay her by letting go?

No. No, I don't think so. Later, once I've rested, I'll talk to Milo, make him understand the insult he is unknowingly offering. He's good, he'll understand, and we can work out the rest from there. For now, it's enough to follow him out of Morrow's, to wait while he closes the door behind us, and to follow him through town to his home.