When Jack had come to the valley to pick up where his father had left off on the farm, he was greeted with open arms and mile-wide, half genuine smiles from the townsfolk. He had made the assumption then from said open arms and smiles that this place was going to be the easy going, sleepy town that Takakura had promised it would be. An assumption that would prove to only be half-true.
By the time Jack had realized the cold truth, it was much too late to just drop his sickle and leave. He now had a working farm to tend to, and leaving all the work to his mentor and going back to his old home with the sole excuse of "Sorry, these people creep me out" wouldn't have sufficed at all. So he chose to ignore the secretive, almost threatening aura that surrounded his neighbors and continued to work. The people of the town seemed to appreciate him not attempting to getting involved, a bit oblivious to the fact that Jack wanted nothing to do with almost any of them or their double lives.
In the spring of the second year, he married Nami, a wandering redhead that had stumbled upon the valley in her travels and had stayed longer than expected. Nami gave him what no other woman in his past could, and he loved her for that. The two had a son, who watched from the other side of the fence as his father fed, milked, and sheared his way to a generous amount of gold. He asked his mother one afternoon if, when he was old enough, if he could help with the farm work. Nami just kissed her sons forehead and told him that he was free to do as he pleased.
But Jack Harvest was, within three years of living in the valley, a dead man.
After Jack's medical-related death, Nami became friendly with the mysterious, quiet Marlin and married him that Winter. Townsfolk would accuse her of cheating prior to Jack's death, but Nami ignored them, much like her husband did, and kept on with her life. Marlin was a decent step-father to Jack's son, the red-headed, shy Dalton, but when he reached his 16th birthday, something had changed. The boy was cold and just downright rude to Marlin, and Nami knew that something had to have been wrong. Dalton would creep up to her in the kitchen at night as she was preparing dinner and, without words, give her an unexplained, yet welcome hug and then eat. Nami guessed that he was just lonely.
Nami was never good at taking guesses.
xXx
Forget-Me-Not Valley had some of the darkest, as well as the coldest nights Nami had ever slept through. This night in particular, though, had to be one of the worst. A wild storm, complete with loud thunder and star piercing lightning, was literally shaking the wooden house left to her by her late first husband.
Sleeping being very much a verb of the past, now that the current situation about her had begun and entered it's pinnacle. She lie wide awake, with her eyes staring lazily at the ceiling. She usually had no problem sleeping through a storm, and tonight was no different.
There was only one thing keeping her from some well-needed night's rest. Well, two things, and they weren't any of nature's acts that were going on outside. They were actually behind the door to her son's room, doing acts that would make the great Goddess herself curse in utter disgust.
Every cry, every call, every shout of the other's name was just another annoyance to her ears. She rolled her eyes when she heard that all to familiar voice of her husband's tell her son to "shut up, or you'll wake your mother", and she smirked in amusement at the very defiant "Fuck off!" that followed.
"You bastard, just fuck me already!"
And judging by the moans and screams that followed quickly afterwords, she assumed that Marlin had done just that.
Not the rain, that poured hard and long, nor the inky blackness of the cold night could hide them. She was fully aware of what they were doing, and had been for some time, and she was almost ashamed of herself for not caring. At first she was sickened. At first she wanted to break down that door and drag Marlin by his toes out of the house and back to the farm from whence he came. She never loved that man anyway.
But with that realization- that she didn't love him, that is- she decided that if this was what it took to make Dalton happy, then what the hell. Let the bastard screw the boy's brains out, see if she cared. She would lie awake at night, not at her own will of course, and have those screams of pain and what she assumed was pleasure force themselves into her ears. What started out as something that made her sick at her stomach, was now a situation that she could not control nor bring herself to care about.
It was storming like hell right outside, but despite the lightning and the pounding rain, she rose from the bed in her pajamas, and headed out the door to the bedroom that she and Marlin had shared (shared until, of course, Marlin believed her to be sleeping) and into the living room, and out the door, taking gentle steps so she would not disturb the affair in her son's room.
The rain and insanely loud thunder didn't faze her as she walked through the thick mud and passed the old barn, the food shipping building, and Takakura's house. She took a silent fraction of a moment to pay some respect to the now deceased mentor of Jack's. He had died soon after Jack did, the amount of farm work he now had to take care of now that Jack was gone catching up to his aged, weak heart.
Forgive me, Takakura. Jack. And she was back on her trail again.
She went down through the rain with squared shoulders and a stoic face, not flinching the slightest at the lightning or thunder. She passed the Inn that she had stayed in for an entire year, where Ruby now lived alone. She thought about dropping in for a small time, but remembered how late it was.
From what she had heard, Rock was now living with Lumina after they had got married, and Tim had gone to travel somewhere and hadn't returned yet. Yet.
Nami wasn't certain of either thing. She didn't associate herself with townsfolk much anymore. Except for the one that she was on her way to visit now.
More mud, more rain, more thunder and lightning- she just kept walking until she came up to an all to familiar, colorful yurt. She felt her first feelings of uncertainty creep up on her as she came into five feet of the home of her old, closest friend. She held her breath and knocked on the front door.
And as he always did, regardless of the time, weather or occasion, Gustafa answered.
"Nami?" his voice was raspy and weak, tired eyes that rarely saw the light of day without shades squinting to look at his visitor. "C'mon in, sister."
Even in his exhausted state, looking into the face of the person who had woken him up in the middle of the night, Gustafa was a kind, welcoming person. It was a quality in him that Nami had never seen in any other human being. Not even in Jack, who was the man she came to love more than anything before his death.
Her soaking wet pajamas and dripping hair gave her a frightening, almost depressing silhouette, and Gustafa's heart went out to his old friend. "You traveled through one devil of a storm to come visit, didn't you?" he lit some incense in an attempt to keep the mood mellow, even if it were coming a flood outside.
Nami shrugged nonchalantly. "It's just rain." she replied before running a hand through her soaked hair. "Water is a natural element of the world. No harm done."
Gustafa chuckled. "As is fire, sister. And if that were what was dripping off of your head, we would have a problem."
Nami was too tired to reply. Gustafa reached over to the foot of his instrument rack and grabbed a recently disrobed t-shirt and tossed it lackadaisically to the red-head. She unbuttoned her sleeping shirt, modesty and trying to not overexpose not even crossing her exhausted mind. Gustafa rose to his feet and turned his back anyway, going to set up a place for Nami to sleep.
Her nude torso was nothing to relish at, anyway- she had average sized breasts and a thin, healthy figure, but to say that she had a lot of sexual appeal was an overstatement.
She slipped out of her sleeping pants, to, revealing not only thin, pale legs but also various small scars from farm work. A light scratch on her finger that was once a deep red, stitched wound, had paled and healed over months of time caught a glance from Nami, reminding her of the exact moment she had earned the scar - her first attempt at cutting grass for fodder with the sickle. It wasn't pretty.
"Tell me," Gustafa said suddenly, breaking Nami's train of thoughts. "what brings you here so late?"
Nami was thinking, or rather hoping, that Gustafa wouldn't ask. But though she knew that simply saying that she would rather not talk about it would be enough to change the subject, she felt that her best friend deserved to know why she was here in the ridiculous hours of a stormy night. She had taken a seat on the newly formed, small yet comfortable sleeping space constructed simply from blankets and a pillow or two before explaining, in almost-full-but-not-enough-to-creep-him-out detail.
Gustafa was much to courteous in nature to make his disgusted opinion evident on his face. Instead he just nodded, with a disapproving frown, before returning to his own bed.
"It's been hell for you, hasn't it?" it was more of a genuine question rather then a sympathetic one, hinting that Gustafa had doubts that any of this even effected Nami as much as it would anyone else. Nami just sighed and shrugged, and Gustafa felt guilty for his opinions. Hard or not, Nami was still very much human. A fact that the town seemed to often forget. A fact that even he had a habit of forgetting.
"Goodnight, sister." And the lamp was out, and the light was gone.
The storm, too, had seemingly passed.
The literal one, of course. Not the metaphorical one that, despite past events carrying on for far to much time, Nami felt was only just now beginning.
(OoO)
I hoped ya'll enjoyed that… I'm excited for my first multi-chapter. Tell me what you think. It will get more intense and stay true to it's M rating in future chapters, but I decided to go ahead and establish the rating now because of the language and themes. Stay real, ya'll.