Topic: He Couldn't Shake the Feeling

Tag Sentry

Date: 2009-12-19 14:31 EST
Then one morning everything changed.

He couldn't have said if any one thing prompted it, just that the emotion had slowly overcome him, slowly rotted out the golden. Perhaps he had been wrong to keep it to himself and not discuss it with Rona. Perhaps he thought it was a phase that would pass. As his wedding day grew closer he found his anxiety over it immense. He thought, well, he thought he should have been blindingly happy. He thought that if anything was ever going to make him gabby that this would have been it.

Years ago. Maybe eight. Maybe nine. He recalled an early Autumn day where he thought he was going to be married but she never came.

The closer Sunday came the more he imagined her not showing up, not arriving and disappearing into that great chaos that was the world. Rona had done nothing to warrant his growing distrust, his growing hurt and he could not justify why it was now that it mounted so heavily on his heart. It had been mounting, over the days and weeks and he had forced himself to remain calm and confident. All day long he could make himself feel and be as he needed but when he laid down at night the cold truth remained: faith was gone and he didn't know how to mend it.

He didn't know if it was his fault or if certain wounds festered. He didn't know if he could ever have a love with anyone like he had with Rona. What he did know is that she was above his suspicion, his concern and distrust. That where they were today was changed by his lack of change, not her's. How much of her was different from when they had met and how much of him was altered in only subtle nuances" Was it only possible to love a creature who had changed only if you had gone through change yourself" He feared losing her forever. He feared resenting her for no reason he could explain.

When he sat up from bed he thought about how she was. A gypsy creature of ribbons and love, of beauty and survival. What was she doing here, with him' The old soldier that guards the door, counts the hours down with slow breaths and still feels a deep, ingrained sense of shame and pride" Perhaps it was that shame, that old teaching in his mind prevailing. That he should not marry.That he should never take a wife and have a child. Was it hard to shake those fundamental years" Was this all just him reacting to the brainwashed soldier-rearing of his youth and even if he knew it, couldn't help but act on it' Couldn't fight the sense that what he was doing was wrong because some old, sticky man thousands of miles away, dead in his grave, had told him so?

"Rona." He was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking over his shoulder at her in the morning. Eyebrows arched up and he wanted to open up his mouth and tell her everything, everything on his mind. That he wished Sunday had been that Autumn day eight years ago, when fear and anxiety hadn't ruled hie heart. When their relationship seemed so much simpler than what it was now. His exhale when he spoke.

"I think I should go."

Rona Deykar

Date: 2009-12-19 15:02 EST
There was no going through the motions. Peace had settled and the calm had come. Gone were the omens of the night. Comfort and joy had come with the promise of winter and marriage.

Heart's content. She had felt like everything. All of it would find her in peace and promise that things finally would come to be as they would. Wanderlust had died. Had faded away leaving her to be domesticated.

Perhaps it would never be what her people would have expected of her. Perhaps not the path her father and mother had planned for her. Still there was so much more to believe in.

Through it all she had Kusinage, and Shadowveil....and Hope.

Bey.

Rona had been dreaming before she heard him call her name. Swore she heard the raven screaming out warnings that could shatter glass.

The morning she woke to her name the light seemed different.

She sat up when he spoke.

"Where will you go' I thought everything was planned and prepared, yana" Is there something else to do?"

She had stayed . After so many years ago that it had been, she had returned to him. What reason would she have to believe that what he meant....was that he was going to go....and never come back.

Tag Sentry

Date: 2009-12-21 09:52 EST
"I don't know."

He could tell by the way she spoke to him that she hadn't caught the tone of what he said. He turned a bit and looked at her, his own gaze harmed by some confusion which clouded its usual strength. His shoulders dropped in exhaustion at the feeling and he cleared his throat.

"I feel that something is wrong," and he was wondering how to translate all those inner fears and workings into words, "I thought I would be happy to be getting married, but my heart is full of....I don't know. Something like fear."

It was hard to tell if Tag merely lacked the vocabulary to express himself or if his thought's clarity had somehow been compromised. He knew Rona would think only to reassure him everything was fine, nothing was wrong but there was something wrong. At least, something wrong with him.

"I'm sorry." That's how Tag knew his foundation with her had a crack and he didn't know how to fix it. That he could be apologizing for something ambiguous, something he didn't even know what to call. But his eyes were on her like still, somehow, she would have an answer.

Rona Deykar

Date: 2009-12-24 06:59 EST
He didn't know. Of everything in life the gypsy held on to Kusinage as being the anchor, the stable force that always had the resolution and resolve to all the difficult tasks at hand. Night emerald eyes stared at him with a sharp flare of uncertainty and question.

A hand lifted to push through charcoal locks of hair as her eyes searched his face for the solution, the answer. A sweet panic at the realization that she couldn't find it there.

"Fear?"

A whisper from the ember sweet tone of her voice. Untrusting her own voice. Fear there was now after all they had been through. He had seen her in the taint of a demon's hold, had known the wicked dark of her magic that breathed with a nature far past that of the gypsy stock.

Of all to be through and now he feared.

Her fingers curled at her wrist, smoothing along the scars made smooth and pink with age. Memories and reminders.

"Donne apologize."

A shake of head. All the foundation of the gypsy's world was crumbling and falling around her but still she smiled.

A realization then that the omen....the warnings in the night....had nothing to do with outside forces....but with her.

She was the warning in the night.

What was there to say to that' So many years had passed without him and now she was losing him again.

Her fingers tightened around her wrist, watching as her knuckles went bone white.

There were no words. She couldn't find a resolution or a way to fix that problem.

To erase his fear when she knew that she was nothing more then what he should fear.

Those quiet eyes lifted, the normal energy and life that seemed to radiate and thrive from the gypsy seemed to be snuffed out. Bowing to the weight of the world crushing down on her at the moment.

"Se....what de we de now?"

Tag Sentry

Date: 2009-12-28 11:42 EST
He wrapped his arm around her, kissed the top of her head and stared out the window. Where everything was quiet and he thought....strange. He remembered in war that it felt like that. On one side of the embankment would be the blood and pollution of war and on the other....scenic grass and untouched twigs and delicate birds eggs in a nest of golden hair. He was always told how connected everything in the world was but when he observed it, when he saw it for himself it was as though the brown leaves on the ground were indifferent to the struggle he faced with Rona.

A woman he wanted to give answers to an couldn't. A woman he could not be false with, fake with. A woman who he could never pretend to be anything but what he was. Confused and infected by his own nature.

"I think....I've been doing things the wrong way," and he kissed her atop the head again.

His arm around her ran up and down the well known curve of her back and he wet his lips before he began, "I have let thoughts, emotions and history poison me."

It wasn't just her. Rona could never be his sole source of pain or problems. She had never done him enough wrong to be that. Somewhere in him was the age old clashing of what life was for him now and what it had always been. That he felt an internal pressure not to vent how he felt and yet now, was suffering immeasurably for it. Rona had wanted to hear him speak, open up, and she had done more with him than any woman had ever dreamed. He had laughed with her often and smiled with her fully and opened up that side of him which engaged with her more fully than any other. Yet it was not enough, it was only a baby step.

Still he had not quilted together, not reconciled the issue of who he was and who he wanted to be. Could not go forward with a marriage that still felt illegal. It was more than it being illegal at home though. He could have married her, all those years ago.

It was that he never talked to he about how he felt. Never told her what it was like to run the orphanage almost by himself. She had come in a couple days to help him with documents, read them and get them handled properly but....had gone again. he had never told her that he wished she had stayed and that all those kids, before they were adopted out, could have been like their own little family. That they would have had not just him, but parents.

Or told her, without being so stupidly diplomatic, what not getting married the first time had done. Oh, there was too much internal pressure in him not to tell her. That he was betraying the way he should behave with this western influence. If the way he had been, the over internalizing, was right and made him happy....why was he so unhappy now"

Why was he....not telling her all these thoughts now"

"I cannot be happy, now. I must go and do what I should have years ago."

That is, take the man from Japan and the man of Rhydin and, also, the man that was with her now with the vulnerable, dark eyes and marry them. Integrate them into a seamless human who could be happy with the choices he made because they were the ones he wanted to and not....ones coerced by multiple factors that had so little to do with what he loved and wanted.

He took a deep breath in and smelled her hair, the skin and essence of her and pulled back so he could see her face, "I love you."

He kissed her the way people do in church when they get married. Beautiful, loving, kind. He wanted his mistake not to poison her, or even touch the outskirts of her soul. If he could have encased her carefully in glass, he would have.

"I have done wrong and....it is time to address it."

It was time. Finally, it was time.

Rona Deykar

Date: 2009-12-28 14:14 EST
Throughout it all. His confessions, his admitting of all that was weighing on his mind the gypsy had remained silent. Hardly ignorant of the conversation or indifferent yet still she kept kind and patient to hear him out.

"Kusinage....we are but influenced by our past, our history. It is what makes us who we are. If the history of ourselves poisons you...then what has it done te me?"

A whisper, those night emerald depths appeared fractured, broken by those words. The poison of history. She shuddered, trembling as he held on to her. His kisses in her hair raining down with the touch of the one thing she feared. The end.

The end of all that she had known and clung to. That which had kept her alive when the struggles with the darkness seemed that much more difficult to deal with, those moments she despaired through.

She should have known. As a gypsy prone to wanderlust her experiences with various cultures should have made her educated enough to realize of the nature of his ways and of his people....that a Romanian gypsy would never be seen as the proper wife for a Japanese Sentry.

Fingers steepled at her brow as the weight of it tightened at her and all those memories and thoughts burned within her like their own sickened poison to writhe and lashe through her. Making her ever so aware of her scars. The imperfections of her.

No longer did those imperfections seem merely physical but....emotional....and now of the mind as well.

When the first tears spilled over her eyes closed as if she could not stand to face the light again.

"I love you."

They were never words parroted but always spoken of her heart.

"This is your place....it always has been. I....de nae belong here."

The kiss marked her words as sacred, vowed and holy to her and something that she would cherish as the world shattered around her into so many blinding pieces and broken shards.

Choices made and damages done. Perhaps so long ago she should not have left, should have been stronger to face her fears and to wed him as she was meant to.

No matter the words she could not help but feel like she was the source, the final straw that had poisoned his world.

They all were gone now. Her eyes remained shut as the emotions were snuffed out.

The urge to scream, the urge to cry were all bitten back and stifled.

He was not happy.

He was not happy with her.

"This is your home....I was just a visitor....I should ge. Good luck....I hope you find your happiness."

Her arms around him she embraced him as if she never wished to let him go. But it was time.

She would not say good bye. The permanent weight of the words were those she could not speak.

Her items were gathered,the few that there were that were truly hers.

A call to her raven to rest on her shoulder and a click of tongue to ShadowVeil to draw the spirit beast to her.

Night emeralds rested longingly and lovingly on the cream colored palomino as she bowed her head. An affectionate kiss pressed to the beast's muzzle and soft whispered words.

She then walked with the reins of ShadowVeil gathered in her hands and began her walk without direction or decision of where she would go. All was lost and it no longer mattered where she ended up. By instinct alone would she go

It only seemed right as the pale toned palomino moved restless in the fenced arena. It all seemed to make sense in that bittersweet way.

Hope....was left behind.

Tag Sentry

Date: 2010-01-07 18:31 EST
"My history isn't making me who I want to be," he reported to her, looking away and then tilting his head to the side, "Something about it is ruining me. I can't seem to....make what was agree with what is."

She asked him what he thought the history of them had done....if it had poisoned him. Had she been poisoned? No. Atleast, not that he ever knew or realized. When he looked at her, shuddering as she did when she said it he sighed and said, rather softly, "I don't know, you were never lying to yourself. I suppose because you were wiser, more in tune with what was and what will be....you already tackled this difficulty, already moved on from it....weeks, or years, ago."

He didn't know how to tell her that the problem was him. All day long he could have said that marrying her was possible, but it wasn't really. The invisible laws remains and a guilt of some unimaginable trespass remained.

It was because of that that he knew she should go and when she did, he watched on and didn't stop her.

It wasn't long after that he gathered his things and, like her, had left Hope behind in the pasture. It was a gift they both intended for the other, but Tag was surprised upon coming back two days later to see the young pony still there. It was not like she had given him hope. Hope had been in her acceptance of his proposal and the horse had been the ring.

For him, she'd left the ring behind.

He could not imagine her a malicious person. The hurt behind her gesture was concrete.