Title: passing time
Pairing: Eld / a lover who waits
Summary: All forgetting comes with movement.
A/N: Was supposed to write an Eruhan today but this idea got too unbearable. Based on the anime. This alternates between two timelines: before Eld Jinn's death and after.
cover photo texture: northerndawn from DA
WARNING: Doesn't make sense. Unedited
passing time
「 eld jinn x a lover who waits」
—|—
« by arsenous elation »
"...he finds her arms, pulls her in, and the world is reduced into a tight embrace."
—|—
Passing Time
by Maya Angelou
Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk
One paints the beginning
of a certain end.
The other, the end of a
sure beginning.
—|—
There is a strange emptiness in coming home to a quiet house.
She slips the key into the lock but does not open the door. For a long moment she stays there, staring down her shoes, her hand poised on the wood, ready to push. Her funeral clothes don't fit right and standing right there doesn't feel right. She can hear footsteps, the tolling of the church,far-off conversations drifting in and out of space. It is a peculiar thing, to know that the world still moves even if it feels like she's stopped (for now, for good).
After what feels like a decade, she finds strength. This is the moment it becomes real, she supposes, the beginning of her life without him.
She pushes the door open.
—|—
When their neighbor's daughter leaves for another expedition, she is there to hold the mother's hand.
"It will be alright," she whispers, "My Eld has just enlisted for the Survey Corps and they would come back."
The mother gives her a watery smile and a look that she doesn't understand. Not yet.
—
When Eld comes home alive and their neighbor's daughter doesn't, she feels a heavy guilt and doesn't go out of their house. That night, she hears the breaking of plates and furniture, screams.
No one can assuage this anguish, not with words. This is how she first learns what it means: one day she will be the same, the same misery breaking things inside and out.
"Death is bearable for the sake of humanity," Eld tells her that night, holds her hand, but she wonders for whom.
—|—
"Aren't you angry?"
Somehow, this is the only question everyone knows how to ask these days. They would look at her sympathetically, waiting for her to assign blame, to act the wronged widow, their eyes searching her face for a sign of something. As if grief could be manifested in something violent, like anger.
"Why would I be?" she simply asks, "Eld chose to fight for us all."
Saying it makes it seem truer than how it tastes in her mouth.
—|—
"Come here."
They have run out of candles. She moves to their room using the familiarity of the walls, the sharp curves of drawers and tables. In the dark, everything seems bigger, things spaced too far apart. Her toe catches on the bedpost the same time her fingertips touch the covers of the bed.
"Ow."
Eld's disembodied laughter ripples in the blackness. She gets on the bed uncertainly, sweeps her hands across the covers. Even the bed seems like a continent.
"Eld?"
"Here."
He sounds far away. In the dark, everything seems bigger, closeness too vast a word. "Here," Eld says once more and it is his voice that guides her to him, his voice like a secret, a prayer her heart only knows.
Finally she touches his shoulder and he finds her arms, pulls her in, and the world is reduced into a tight embrace.
—|—
All forgetting comes with movement, Eld once told her.
"That's how we stay alive," he said, "By moving and moving and moving. You can't just stay in the past."
After the mock funeral (there had been no body to bury), she throws herself back into the comfort of housework. She cleans the entire house, replaces the drapes, stores away Eld's spare uniforms and gear. There is redemption, she finds, in keeping yourself busy, leaving yourself no time to think.
But not enough to save you from the truth.
—|—
"Stand closer now," the photographer says, ushers them together with a cheeky smile.
Eld coughs in embarrassment, sidles next to her. His face is red. She helps him bridge the gap by stepping closer, leans into his side shyly. The photographer's smile grows wider.
"Put your hand on her shoulder now."
His hand is light and warm. She catches his gaze and laughs at how he sputters but does not look away. There is this look in his eyes that says, With you, there is nothing I can't do. I am content; you are enough.
—|—
"You know, it's alright to take a rest," her mother-in-law tells her from across the table. She doesn't move. What do you say when the mother of the man you love consoles you?
"It's alright to mourn."
She looks up, finds the older woman studying her, old hands paused in their work. And it is strange, though not unexpected, how she can see her own grief on that lined, weary face.
It is almost like looking at the mirror.
—|—
During the expeditions outside the Walls, the days stretch on to infinity and the nights are too cruel for sleep. These are the days she dreads the most, for every moment is a sliver too close to death.
It is truly difficult to love someone who believes in something far greater than himself, her father said, But because you love him, you can't help but believe, too.
And she understands that, but sometimes, she hates what Eld has chosen, what he believes in. Because men like Eld allow little selfishness for themselves. Sometimes it feels that by loving her husband, she is loving the rest of mankind as well.
Loving someone like that is difficult but it is worth it. For every time that Eld comes home alive, it feels like a war won.
—|—
Now she understands.
Death sets you apart from the others. You walk, you speak, differently. It is as if your limbs are saying, Look, I am cloaked in the loss of a dead love.
And the only ones who notice are the ones who, like you, have lost someone.
—|—
Dawn. She sits up from the bed to study the sky turn orange and purple by the window. The memory of Eld stirs beside her and she looks at him now, and suddenly there is a terrible urge to cry.
"You can't just stay in the past, my love," he says, softly, placatingly. "What did I tell you? We must keep moving."
With her fingers she traces, retraces every detail of her husband, discovering, rediscovering planes and curves made by shadow and light. "Well," her voice catching in her throat, "I can't just leave you behind."
I can't, will not, forget you.
"Why do you love me?" Eld asks, his cold fingers tracing slow lines on her bare back.
"I can't say," she begins, watching the first rays of the sun reach Eld's free hand. She leans forward now, kisses the inside of his palm. "I love you simply because."