The was drabbled while listening to 'Just like sleep' by Passarella Death Squad. It's very serene and moving, and as such the lyrics have been woven into the fic to a degree. I highly recommend listening to it during or after reading.
Additionally this is a gift for spanishinfluenza on tumblr, who's been more than tolerable of my ramblings. Thank you dear, I hope this emotionally destroys you as much as it did me when writing it.
Trigger warning(s): Implied/Referenced Suicide, referenced Domestic Violence, referenced Infant Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death and self-harm through cliff diving
This fanfiction is cross-posted from my AO3, where it was originally published on April 5th 2021
As all things do, it starts with the scent of something brewing in the skies. It's icky, musky and warm and not at all pleasant. Yet, it is a relief when it comes crashing down like a tidal wave ready to wipe away any trace of life, at least to some. Lightning cracks the sky, splitting hues of black blues and sending heaven's light through the storms. The rain is relentless and trees sway to and fro, strong roots tethering them just barely to the Earth's grassy crust.
The storm reminds her of children. Of children growing, running and playing. Laughter light but imminent. It is playful like them but unaware of its own strength as it paints the world in glorious colours and gentle grays. It is in nights like these, where the rain comes sliding down the wooden and plaster walls, hammering like fists against fragile flesh, that she feels restless.
It is like the familiar hunger but more. The burn is not there as she feeds in advance, pitying the poor animal she might ravage in her quest to seek salvation. Yet, she feels unhinged, feral in a sense.
It is inside that she feels. It starts with an itch that accompanies every foreboding sign of an Earth shattering rainstorm that is bound to uproot life in various ways. She paces, unnerving those she calls her family in the process. Only he is familiar, her husband. He knows no better than her antsiness as she anticipates the weather, long before the forecast hits the news.
He dislikes the state of restlessness that only knows one solution, one singular outcome. He despises that she has to do this, wishes life would hand her other vices, but it is not so. Sometimes the easiest things are the hardest to do and the toughest to bear witness of. Insufferable to all.
It is a song and dance they've done many times, inspecting every corner of the ballroom as they do. They know the steps, the ways to move and they can not help it. The tune is false and misleading but it lures them in all the same, puppeteering their movements like dolls attached to fishing line strings.
Often, it is long and torturous days before the release finally seizes her. She will spend all her waking hours listening; feeling her muscles tense as the sun grows cold against her colder skin, hard as stone. Her footfalls are heavy and a prediction of a sprawling run to come.
She hears those bells, those damned church bells tolling away as if to mock her, draw her out before her patience is up. It is one of a few human memories that are strong to her, a sound that along with weak coughing she will remember forever. He had received no service but a quick prayer and the echoing of bells in a modest church she still visits every year, like clockwork.
She remembers nothing but the sound of that day and it chases her like a skilled hunter might a rabbit.
It had rained. So she is on edge as it comes washing over her again and again as she stands on the porch, feeling the need to run into his arms and be greeted by those bright eyes she'd seen so briefly, in them all the wisdom of the world. The rainbows call.
It is beautiful, dull but beautiful. The low colours and unsaturated beauty of nature barely registers. On bare feet dressed in nothing but a sundress far from suited for the weather in normal people's eyes, she lets herself be swept up and away. The wind beckons her left and right but most importantly, forward. It pushes her through treelines and the debris that comes up to meet her is nothing but a mild hindrance of which she registers no concern.
She hisses loudly, breathing in the freezing cold air, the lingering scent of salt water.
It only takes an instant.
The forces of nature sweep her upward, her feet meet bark and splinter the protective hides of tall pines. Had she been but a mere mortal, she would have been scraped up and bloody, her body giving way for the land to wound. She would not have made it five steps outside her front door, the first gush of unrelenting wind would have thrown her into a bludgeoned mess.
There would have been nothing left of her, and certainly not after this. She is privy to no such pleasures. Oh, life is cruel to her yet.
She leaps, carried as high as physical world restraints will allow her. She stumbles. She falls.
She stirs, a leaf on the wind. Her muscles give up, and her body spins her forward, placing her with her head down as she goes flying. She lets herself go. The ground comes closer at a speed equal to that of her running, but the impact never comes.
No, she flies further, over edges and beside rocky cliff sides. Like her, the leaves fall while the trees still stand and carried away over waves she leaves, she's dwelt in summer too long. It might take years but sometimes the seasons must change, her winter has come.
Through the waves, green and blue, murky brown and white foam; the rainbows call.
She is weightless, and waves like a fishes through water. The pushing and pulling of the ocean equals the strength she possesses on her own; she lets it rival hers on it's own accord, willing her body to remain slack. The aching tenseness seeping out through the pores of her skin, to fade away into nothingness.
Like an elastic band put under too much strain for far too long, she snaps. Pulled under a hundred feet the shimmers and shining lights of the moon reflecting on the surface of the water become smaller and it must be the night sky she is seeing. Twinkling lights dancing in the dark of the sky like in a nursery rhyme not sung out loud in several decades time.
It is a painting she can look at for hours, salt water stinging the inside of her lungs as she breathes it in. It matters not, awake she will remain as the ocean pulls her under, calling her home.
The waves above her look as pleasant as brush strokes against a darkened canvas, monstrous in size and wild, unpredictable. Prussian, midnight, oxford, indigo, teal and baby blue. Shadows and light. Once more, the rainbows call.
Violently almost, she is pushed into the sand, pressed and held there. All her thoughts come to her son. The cool of his skin as she had pressed him into her and refused to let him go. She had wept, the skies crying with her as she left her. Her nose had been buried in the crook of his neck and his scent had mingled with the salt of her tears. She remembers not this.
Hold me, hold me, see me through. Her golden eyes flutter, vision blurry, clarity fading. She embraces him, arms floating up naturally as the waves guide her back to the cliffside. Further she strays, every day is one step away from him. The tears never come no matter the water obstructing her.
Hold me, hold me, close to you.
She washes ashore hours later, sticky sand and weak coughs. The world is quiet, as if holding its breath. Cracks have healed and her vessel is at ease. Like the storm she has calmed, weathering the lands and leaving nothing but a fine trail of twigs and blown over pebbles to be remembered by.
Staring at nothing in particular she breathes, frozen water sputtering out through clenched teeth as she convulses in the wet sand. Caramel strands like a curtain protect her from the harsh light of the sun above, so very different from the way she had left it, the moon. Like fire it spreads, basking the world in a warm orange glow.
She does not register the shine of her skin, the exposure as she lies nestled on open sands but between the safety of two cliffs on either side. Her back is to the winding path leading up to the woods she had lept from hours before.
She listens, a hand drawn up to rest in the sand beside her face. She draws lines, his face as she remembers it though it is as viewed through television static. It is never clear to her, fuzzy and uncertain. She etches it into her memory, hand resting there against it.
For our friends, for you forever, because it is as close as she will ever get to resting. Resting as she feels she should, mother and son.
Her homecoming is that of two cold but familiar hands, one by her face and one gently pressing to the small of her back. It is never easy to meet her this way but he always does. If it is a journey she must make, a path she feels obligated to walk when the world chooses to set open the gate for her, he will meet her at the end and aid her home.
Leaning against him is all the same. Vulnerable but safe. He is the only one who she will let see her like this, let into the intrusive ruin that crawls beneath the surface of her skin, that will never leave her.
It is a tough fight, one that must be fought if she is to prevail. It swirls in pools beneath her hide, boiling as the weather turns the tides, cracking open the surface and setting her fleeing faster than her feet have the strength to carry her.
It is a harrowing path, one she fears often she might not come back from. It is a fear that is shared.
Though, at the very least, she is never alone through it all.
So, this was definitely not a happy drabble, it wasn't supposed to be. My thoughts going into this were merely 'if one can not sleep to process emotional fatigue and feelings, there must be other things that equal that' and we often leap into familiar patterns, things we know. Storms I've always headcanoned as this adgitating Esme to a degree, loud thunderclaps can sound like plenty of things, and from one thing came another.
I did write a little different that usual. For one, I didn't want to use names and neither did I want to explicitly set the scene. If it feels choppy or told as if in pieces/flashes, then that is a good thing, because that is how it is supposed to be.
If you want to support me, there's links in a pinned post on my tumblr! Thank you so much for reading! As always, any comments and thoughts would be welcome, they motivate greatly! Hope you enjoyed this! My tumblr is Meluisart, so feel free to hit me up there, drop me a request if it strikes you fancy!