~30 Kisses~

~29: The Sound of Waves~

If nobody knew where you were going, then nobody would be able to follow you.

If nobody even knew that you'd left in the first place, then the chances of being found were so very low.

Everybody had their life. The things that they did. The reasons for doing them. Everybody had a cord that tied them to where they lived, that life fermenting into the mundane business of everyday happenings. Nothing interesting. Nothing special. Nothing new. Just the continuing constant.

And what to do if that cord had been severed so very brutally...

For months, Marron would go missing. Or-... no, perhaps 'missing' wasn't the word. To be missing was to imply that he would be missed, yet people very barely seemed to notice his long excursions into the depth of the Continent's rebuilt culture. They just assumed that Marron would take his leave as he pleased, nobody questioned his actions or behaviour. Very well. Sometimes Marron almost wished that they would, but his actions and behaviour depended on reason, and reason was the one thing he didn't want to discuss.

Carrot had been his reason.

So very simply, for more than twenty years of his life. Carrot had been his sole and entire reason. His reason for becoming strong, for becoming powerful... he fought because of Carrot, he fought for Carrot's sake, he fought for Carrot's safety and protection... Carrot's comfort and happiness had been his sole and entire aim for those long years of his life. Carrot had found comfort and happiness in the end, but Marron had to question if any of it at all was by his own hand... and for that, what had it all been for? The personal sacrifice and daily battle had gone by unnoticed, Tira had claimed Carrot's heart in the end.

For those years in the past, the thought of spending too long away from Carrot would have sent that warm kind of fretful worry descending around him. Would Carrot be alright? What if he was hurt? What if something bad happened that Marron could have very easily prevented yet was not there to protect against...? Everything seemed so very fragile. Marron knew he had to keep his distance, yet he walked so very firmly against the boundary of behaviour expected of him...

Carrot had known that.

Carrot had known him.

If you really wanted to disappear, it was possible. If you wanted to hide yourself away from everybody, it was easy to take advantage of the situation and be able to melt away into the crowds, into the far reaches of the Continent, to trace footsteps that nobody would ever follow, to go places that nobody would ever go... there was a kind of safety in that anonymity. Walking through the central path of a town on the western side of the Continent, nobody knew who he was. Nobody knew anything about him. Nobody knew his unnatural lusts, his unnatural desires... nobody knew that he was the kind of person who would think so intimately of his own brother.

Nobody knew the situation and nobody knew him. Even in a thick crowd of people he could remain invisible. Marron found a kind of comfort in those thoughts.

He would have given eternal devotion. Eternal protection. Eternal love. Anything that Carrot wanted, he would have tried to provide it to the best of his ability for as long as was possible.

In the end, it seemed that the things that Carrot had wanted were the things that Marron couldn't give him.

Carrot even had children now.

How strange.

It was possible to be alone amongst the hustle and bustle of everyday town and village life on the Spooner Continent, and that was a kind of loneliness in itself; as comfortable as it could be to know that nobody knew who he was, there was a kind of solace Marron found in being absolutely alone, sometimes. In that case, it wasn't a matter of people not knowing him well enough to comment, people caring little for his kind of circumstance... if he was alone and away from civilization, there was no choice in the matter. Nobody ignored him simply because there wasn't anybody to ignore him. Nobody would speak to him or disturb him. Nobody would offer the chance of doing so either.

He liked to think that nobody knew his favourite place, if 'favourite' could ever have been used to describe it... Marron questioned this often while he was there. It was a rocky outcrop off the side of a beach not very far from Facade... the earthquakes and such from Hakaishin's attack had changed the beach itself quite dramatically, made it rather treacherous in places... yet Marron felt he had a keen sense of direction and the face of the earth being changed couldn't shift that geographical location. Quite regularly he'd find himself slowly scaling the sandy rocks, taking all day to do so if that was required... there was no need to hurry. No reason to really be there, no reason to not be there... nobody was waiting for him and he was in no rush to reach his destination. That seemed to have been the first thing learnt after everything that had happened... to no longer be waited on meant no more expectation, meant that he could walk through life at his own pace. This was perhaps, he'd think, why his excursions to the outer reaches of the Continent could take so long sometimes. Any journey could be slow if you took the scenic route.

To say that the beach had been practically destroyed, the caves and pebbled paths against it had kept themselves surprisingly intact. Perhaps it was easier to disrupt a flat piece of land than it was to move a huge rocky structure... Marron had explored the caves, once. He hadn't found anything.

Reaching those rocks now meant getting wet, but Marron didn't mind. The water was deeper than it used to be but not too much so... he remembered running there with Carrot, once. That one time. That one time he felt that they could run together, the sea breeze and youthful optimism amplified in Marron's mind for the knowledge of innocence lost. They'd been so naive back then. They hadn't known nor cared, only indulged. Carrot had stood in the water and beckoned to Marron, telling him he knew someplace they could go... Marron had looked at Carrot in the ankle-deep water and held up the long swathe of his robe and had voiced his uncertainty which was quickly vanquished by the light in Carrot's eyes. They'd ran across the shallows, laughing and free. It seemed strange to remember laughter, even back then it had felt liberating... sometimes you couldn't be so picky. Marron had got his robe wet but by the time they'd reached those certain rocks, it hadn't mattered anymore.

The water was waist-deep, now. You couldn't run through it, not in that carefree fashion. That didn't matter, Marron no longer wished to splash through the water, watching the rainbows of waterspray as Carrot ran ahead of him... that the journey would be harder now seemed appropriate. Occasionally he could feel the tug of the water against him, the gentle movement of the tide controlled by somewhere far out and unknown... if the weather were to worsen he could be caught in a dangerous situation, could be stranded or worse... and yet that thought only felt like some kind of possible irritation. If he were to fall, then he would fall unnoticed into the water and lie forgotten in the ocean. That thought didn't seem unattractive on some days.

The rocks seemed intimidating as you approached them, but Carrot seemed to have known them better, had been able to pass on his knowledge of handholds and footholds and narrow little paths that could be scaled to reach the top... the waves and the sea broke against them regularly and the rock was wet and difficult, but perseverance was the key. Marron found his robe marked with rocky green and murky brown by the time he reached the top but by now he'd grown used to that. It was unavoidable to reach the top without getting slightly dirty... it wasn't as if the clear flat top hadn't brought its own clinging poison on days past.

He found himself sat there for hours sometimes. On a clear day, the sky seemed to stretch for miles. An endless blue studded by fluffy white, Marron would lie on his back and watch the clouds pass by harmlessly. They'd always done that, hadn't they? They'd always done that and, for as far as anybody could see, always would. So silent and unremarkable, yet they passed over the sky and observed everything that happened below... one of the few things that could be said to. That such a thing would be an inanimate object brought some kind of peace to Marron's mind. The clouds changed on a daily basis. If there were any secret between he and the clouds, that particular cloud would have dissipated and changed in countless ways in the days and months and years since. To keep the secret safe, the cloud was gone. The sky and the secret remained, though. If it were between the two of them then it might perhaps have been bearable.

That Carrot knew also was the unavoidable uncertainty. Not that there was any danger there, Carrot in his new life might have forgotten the events of his youth previous, but that was his luxury. There was no reason for him to speak of any past activity, nor anything that should draw him to do so... the time that the brothers had spent together was now locked behind the rusted gates of a time that couldn't return, of a place that held recollection but nothing further. Birds flew overhead, but said nothing. What was the lifespan of a common gull? Perhaps it was their secret too. Those things were only noticed afterward, weren't they? The significance of the moment always seemed lost in the heat of the physical.

Lying on his back, Marron found the thought of Carrot both so close by as to be almost tangible and also so painful as to almost be blanked from his mind. It was easy to lose oneself in thought like that... if the place was to be secret then it was their secret place and if nobody ever went there then that was more the better to ensure his solitude... nobody seemed to have wanted to visit back then, either. The place was practically easy to reach back then, but nobody had thought to follow them, nobody would have thought them go so far...

Perhaps they'd gone too far.

That thought was also one that conflicted within Marron's thoughts. The things that they had done back then... those things were forbidden and forbidden for a reason. Sometimes, Marron had thought angrily that he couldn't understand why... and then he looked at himself and where he was and at Carrot and where he was and sometimes he'd think that perhaps he understood, just a little. With a relationship so completely ingrained as to be without destination, one couldn't be surprised when it didn't go anywhere. Because it was wrong. Why was it wrong? Because it didn't fit, it wasn't normal and it wasn't expected. So, by slipping into the habits and routines that were normal and were expected, so was the inevitable nature of something forbidden continued. Perhaps that label was in fact something to warn others than to condemn them... 'this relationship is forbidden', they'd say. 'This pain isn't something that you want'.

The pain could have been bearable if it'd been the two of them but if it had been the two of them then the pain would have been negated in the first instance. It wouldn't have been painful if they'd been able to support it together. It wouldn't have seemed so horrible if they'd continued.

As it was, it was a secret unspoken, a feeling that couldn't be mentioned. People often asked Marron where he went and why, often why for so long... and he would never give much of an answer, only smiling and saying that his reasons were his own. This wasn't a lie, but he wouldn't speak if pressed on those reasons. To stay in too close a proximity was to heighten risk of frenzied emotion, to make a move to continue that wouldn't be denied but couldn't be acknowledged... to stay in that place was to remain as the secret in full view, to wish to say the one thing that couldn't be said.

If he went back and stayed there, Marron knew he could have what he wanted in a fraction of how he desired it... but it would always be tainted in his mind by the larger share of unsatisfactory thoughts, of the knowledge that there could be that but that it could never be more...

Things that were forbidden were, he supposed, forbidden for a reason. Perhaps it was better to keep them that way than to try to fight against the tide...

And so it was easier to remain in that place and hold those thoughts silently, closing his eyes and letting himself drift as he would. Perhaps the atmosphere around him would lull him into a false sense of security, would bring back thoughts that were painful by day but welcomed when the self was separated against the world of dreams and slumber.

The sound of the waves was the memory of Carrot's touch, the scent of the sea the memory of his kiss.

The spray of the water was as cold as the knowledge that Carrot was not and could never be his.

Then, Marron would let himself dream.

~fin~