The vines were pulled away in one piece like a solid door, causing Sharimara's heart to skip a beat when the moment she'd been waiting for suddenly felt too abrupt. Neither the common area behind her nor the apartment behind Centrius seemed to exist as their eyes met. After nearly three weeks of regret and self loathing, after a hundred and sixty years of waiting, after a lifetime of not finding each other, the two of them were together again.
He looked as hellish as Outland. His silver eyes flickered as if he hadn't been sleeping properly, and his hairless jaw was pulled into a tight frown. Even though the natural scent from his father's genes was as intoxicating as ever, the food stains on his shirt were distracting and spoke of a man who'd stopped caring for himself. His belt wasn't even buckled all the way, and his slumping posture made him truly look like a half troll. Messy, uncombed hair had been tossed about and only added to the disheveled look that immediately beat her over the head with guilt for what she'd done to him.
She could feel the beginnings of a pout tug across her lips as she examined him. There was no expression of surprise at her presence despite the unannounced nature of her visit; no gasp, no head tilt as he tried to comprehend the fact that the woman who'd hurt him so much had showed up on his doorstep. Instead, he just gave her a blank stare as she felt the sense of blame exponentially increase inside of her.
And then he promptly closed the door.
"Hey! WAIT!" she shouted behind him.
Stupid! For the entire time, she'd just stood there and said nothing while staring at him. She just have looked so pompous, as if she expected him to initiate the conversation which simply wasn't the case. Panic washed over her as she tried to ineffectively bang on the door of vines, finding that it created no sound.
She banged on the wall instead. "Please, please, please, just hear me out!" she urged him, speaking with her mouth pressed right up against the vines. "I'm begging you, please give me a chance!"
As if he hadn't walked away to begin with, the door flung open again almost immediately, and he was standing in the same position. This time, his blank stare had been exchanged for a skeptical one and he waited for her to talk again.
A few times, she opened and then shut her mouth while trying to think of what to say. No sound emerged from her throat, and she almost worried that a sort of temporary neurological issue prevented her from speaking. There was so much she wanted to say, so much she needed to tell him, and yet her lips wouldn't move and her tongue laid motionless.
All she managed to croak out was "I sorry" like a true fool, and her mind went empty once again. It was as if her psyche were punishing her, taunting her by showing how far she'd come and how badly she'd screw up even her second chance.
For the first time since she'd known him, he gave her a look that could almost have been described as stern. "Thanks," he mumbled before shutting the door again.
"No, wait! Wait!" She banged on the wall in vain, bouncing on her toes as nervous energy coursed through her veins. "Cent, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry! Please, I'm begging you, just talk to me!"
"...until the governments in these regions can conclude the round table discussion on access to the water table in Desolace."
"What? What the..."
It took her a few seconds, but eventually she realized that he owned a radio and had turned it on in order to tune her out. His footsteps moved away until they reached what sounded like his kitchen judging by the echo. For another minute she tried, banging on his wall and reciting the prepared speech she'd worked on in vain. When he refused to respond, she found herself filled with despair but a surprisingly low amount of nervousness and anxiety as compared to just a few moments before.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. Weighing her options, she found little other choice then to take a rather sizeable risk. Smoothing out her blouse and the pants underneath, she took a deep breath and cast her blink spell at a target location she couldn't actually see.
"Ack!" she yelped as she teleported directly in his kitchen sink.
Thankfully he only used wooden dishes rather than glass ones, but she ended up with murky water and citrus pulp soaked into her blouse. Her legs were sprawled out across his counter at first, and in her state of panic she knocked over a pile of fruit and wooden cups.
"Loa, what the hell is this!" he exclaimed from across the kitchen. He was sitting on a chair at first, and fumbled crackers he'd just opened from a box in his rush to shut off the radio. "Did you just blink into my apartment?"
"I can explain!" she said defensively while falling completely off the counter. The warden who always landed on her feet lost much of her coordination due to the disorientation of teleporting to an unseen location, and she stumbled forward as she tried to regain her balance. "Please hear me out, Cent, you've got to just give me a chance-"
Even if he'd almost retired from his work, the trapper still possessed the speed of someone who caught monsters and wild animals for a living. "This is breaking and entering, you can't do this!" he huffed while shifting from a sitting position across the kitchen to a grabbing position right on top of her in half a second.
He still hadn't reached the point of becoming aggressive toward her; she knew for a fact that the glint in his eyes was one of remorse as he yanked her up off the ground. Her feet in the air, she wiggled around tried to fight as he carried her out of his kitchen and into the hallway.
When she couldn't break free, she remembered a detail about him that she so rarely encountered in other people: Centrius was strong. He was significantly stronger than her, and she was not used to that at all. Though he took care not to hurt her or drag her over his furniture, he retained a strong grip on her arms as he carried her into his living room and then toward his balcony overlooking half a dozen particularly tall pine trees behind the building.
"Cent, Cent, listen! Please don't do this-"
He glared at her with far more hurt than anger. "You did," he answered abruptly before tossing her off the fourth floor balcony of his apartment.
A sheer forty foot drop opened up below her, promising a difficult though not necessarily damaging fall if she didn't catch herself. Soaring straight across, she felt the horizontal trajectory of his throw, measuring the thick branches he'd hurled her above as she reached out to catch onto them. Her pulse raced for a few seconds even though she knew he'd intentionally thrown her at branches she could safely land on, and she tried to wrap her head around the wild ten seconds that had followed her blinking into his kitchen sink.
For a good few seconds, he leaned over the railing of his balcony to watch her, an almost masochistic look in his eyes as she tried his hardest to shut her out. She pursed her lips tightly, feeling the pain as well at having been tossed out like trash before she could even talk.
He backed away toward his apartment again. "Leave me alone or I'll call the sentinels on you," he said in a calm voice that sounded forced just before he retreated into his apartment again.
Clearly, he'd underestimated just how crazy she was. Or, he was banking on it. None of that mattered to he anymore and she blinked again, this time appearing right in front of him as he tried to walk into his hallway again.
He seized her by one of her arms before she had a chance to react. "You have no right to be-"
His sentence was cut off as she reached into her picked and ripped her wallet open, sending spare change and business cards flying all over the floor. The wallet itself landed somewhere behind his couch, leaving only a single square of glossy laminated paper in her hand. She held it up for him, right in front of his face in her trembling, quaking free hand until he grabbed her by her wrist to pull it closer. Hard, ragged breaths escaped from her quivering lip as she fought to keep her composure.
At first he squinted, not due to a problem in his eyesight but to disbelief. Far too much time was spent staring at that photo in her hand in spite of the fact that he only should have needed a second to recognize what it was. Stone cold reclusion formed a sort of shield around him, and the man who she'd always known to be so open about how he felt began to recoil in confusion.
And she panicked. Even if she didn't show it by more than her hand tremors and creaking chin, she panicked. For so long she'd kept those emotional walls around herself; long before they'd even met each other. Her entire plan had been built on the assumption that he'd remain the same even after she'd hurt him so much, while she would be the one to change. When she realized that he'd started to build up walls of his own - because of her - she feared that she'd missed her chance.
"Wait!" she gasped while wiggling in his grasp, more from nervous energy that begged to be released rather than a desire to escape.
Her voice echoed inside of her own head, passing over the wasteland of her mind uninhibited. The walls which she had built up over centuries had crumbled over three weeks before, crushing and battering her through the actions of no one other than her own. After two hundred and fifty years spent fighting the most awful fiends of the universe spread across two planets, it wasn't a titan or an old god or an elemental lord who'd finally brought her down; it was herself. And throughout those three weeks, she'd tried to dig herself out, scraping away enough space to breathe. Only when faced with the possible loss of all she'd worked for - a person who could understand her - did she find the willpower to pull herself out.
It was terrifying. Absolutely terror filled every cell of her body, every atom of every cell, providing...freedom. Freedom. When she had nowhere to run to in the wasteland, no more walls to hide behind, no more excuses to give, she realized that she'd become free. The terror that not merely filled her but defined her, became her, replaced her, forced her to face down what she'd done and who she'd become. Standing before his frighteningly guarded, closed off visage, she realized that force was all that could drive her. Not a stone giant in all of the land or a dragon aspect in all of the sky was as stubborn as her. That terror, that force, that compulsion...that all provided her the freedom to crawl out of the prison she'd built around herself.
Tears rolled down her cheeks for the first time in so very, very long, bleeding out even unrelated pains that had been repressed and pent up. She didn't try to look away in embarrassment or cover her face in humiliation. That was her, the real her, the hidden her that he'd tried to find only to be stung. For the first time since her parents had been alive, she let the real her talk; not the vicious warden who was always ready for a fight, but the person beneath the armor, uncovered and exposed. She stepped out of the rubble of her figurative walls, forgetting about them until they disappeared entirely. Unprotected on all sides for as far as the eye could see, she spoke to another person freely.
"Wait...Elune be the witness between me and you...please wait," she sniffled while holding on to the photo between her shaky thumb and index finger for dear life lest she drop it and spoil another moment. "I will leave you alone forever if you just wait...I don't deserve it, which is why I'm asking for mercy. I just...please, let me explain things to you. May She be the guarantor of my oath to leave you be thereafter."
Her words distracted him for a few seconds. For sure, he'd noticed that Sharimara's signature was quite different from Dilly's handwritten letters. He also knew her well enough to know that she wasn't an eloquent or articulate person. When she spoke relatively well, shocking even herself when she tossed out her prepared speech entirely, he was caught off guard.
Strong grip remaining in her arm, his face softened without brightening. A defensive stoicism shone as he gazed upon her, about as unreadable as a normally open person could be. "May She be the witness of whether you deserve this mercy," he replied, his voice hoarse as if he'd been crying for days.
Even if she'd wanted to resort to the prepared speech, she no longer would have been able to do so; her mind had gone blank. Embracing that blank slate and the freedom that laid behind it, she let her mouth run.
"I...am so sorry, Cent; truly I am. I've spent three weeks hating myself, almost wishing that misfortune would befall me as a sort of fateful penance. Words can't describe how wrong my behavior was, and it hurts me to even remember that night; please believe me when I tell you that I never want the person I let myself turn into that night to ever come back again. From the bottom of my heart and soul, I apologize.
"There is absolutely no justification for how I acted, but I know why now. Cent...I built up a wall when my parents passed. I closed myself off because my inexperienced self knew of no other way to remain safe from being hurt again. So many times I considered seeking therapy the way you did a few decades ago, but my lifestyle always pushed me to wait. And wait. And wait...and I fell into the laziness trap, like so many long lived beings. I built these high walls around my heart and sealed it away, just pretending that it didn't exist."
Pausing briefly to ineffectively wipe her cheeks, she tried to gauge his reaction but let her mouth hang open to signal that she was about to continue speaking. He didn't react, not even when she inhaled and inadvertently let out a shuddering breath. Normally she might have given up due to the lack of response, but terror drove her to confess as if they'd never see each other again.
"And then I met you," she said while running her thumb over the photograph, temporarily drawing his attention to it. "You showed me...so much, Cent. You didn't just have a similar background...we'd been through so many of the same trials, and yet you'd progressed so much better than me. In such a short amount of time, you taught me so much about coping with loss. You understood me...I understood you. That never happens to me, and I think you felt it too. You can see it here."
Though he retained the firm grip on her arm, the hand wrapped around her wrist loosened. In her hands was the photograph they'd taken at a booth in Booty Bay so long ago; a chemically preserved relic of the two of them sharing a carefree, irreverent moment along together in a time where they both found themselves alone and lost.
More than anything, what had always struck her the most was that she looked so happy. That wasn't the woman she'd become before then; he'd recognized that even if she hadn't heard as such from him directly. A wide, genuine grin spread across her lips as she sat across his lap, revealing her teeth and fangs as the two of them hung on each other in the awkwardly small booth. She saw it in him too; even if he hadn't been in such dire straits as she back then, she saw that bliss in his eyes.
Without actually drawing nearer to her or displaying any outward signs of emotion, he slid his hand further down her wrist toward her hand. Though he didn't take the photo from her, he pulled her hand so he could examine it even more closely. "This...but photos biodegrade. This is a hundred and sixty years old."
Admission of her isolation caused her to weep even more despite the sad smile on her face. "This was the only thing that kept me going sometimes, Cent. During blizzards in Dragonblight, during heat waves in the Blasted Lands, during hurricanes in the western ocean...I lost many personal belongings, but not this photo. I gave up jobs if it meant keeping this. Because...on those nights...when I'd sit alone, thinking of how many hundreds of years I'd spent hiding from the world and how many hundreds more I'd spend doing the same thing...I'd look up at the stars and find no inspiration. I'd feel for the balance of nature and find nothing at all. I'd even listen for the spirits and find that the loa had forsaken me."
"But...this...this gave me a reason to live," she said, her entire body trembling in his arms. "I didn't take your advice to heart, Cent. I knew that the things you'd told me about acceptance were true, but when we were forced apart...when I was forced apart from the only person I believed I'd ever have a chance at a normal life with...I faltered. I couldn't do it alone...I couldn't cope without help. And when you and everyone else was stranded on Outland, I gave up hope of ever seeing you again.
"But in my moments of despair, I could see this photo again; I could see how happy we made each other. Even if I had no hope..." Her voice weakened and broke off at the end, and she shut her eyes for a few seconds while trying to regain her ability to speak without breaking down. He made no attempt to calm her, and she found her voice continuing to waver as she pressed herself to finish without any support. "Even if I had no hope...of ever being happy again...I had the memories. So I had something to be thankful for. I wouldn't...fantasize about the future. It felt too pathetic. But I'd remember the time we shared...I'd remember the way you made me feel...I'd remember the way you were so moved when we had to say goodbye. Memories were my only source of joy in the entire world.
"That world was bleak and cold. I built those emotional walls high and strong around myself, refusing to even make friends as I continued to take even more morally questionable jobs. For so long I ran, just as I had been before we met, living a life of conflict. Everybody I interacted with was either trying to earn money from me, or trying to kill me. The world was my enemy, and all I knew was hostility. And...that was my mistake."
She dropped the photograph, no longer able to steady her hands enough to hold it. A few whimpers and cries escaped from her throat, and she no longer worried about whether her confession moved him at all or not. Unable to hold it all in any longer, she let the flood gates fly open.
"I'm sorry...but that's how it happened. When you found me, I didn't believe I could be so lucky. I didn't believe I deserved to have someone I want to badly. I tried to think of reasons why it couldn't work out, I tried to imagine how we would just continue living our separate lives. And when I found out that things weren't what they seemed to me, I convinced myself that the situation was much worse than you just fabricating an excuse to visit me. When I found out that you spoke to my family because you all miss me, I tried to find a reason to be angry.
"I tried because I was afraid. Afraid to get hurt, afraid to open up, afraid to be used, and I've just been fighting and fighting the world for so long that hostility is all I know. I said those stupid, horrible things because I was afraid, Cent. I didn't meant, none of it, not one word...please believe me!"
Leaning forward onto his shoulder, she ignored the notion that he might not want to give her a second chance. Her knees were weak, her back turned to jelly and her short sobs choked her. Crying into his shirt, she found her soul unburdened, her closet cleaned of skeletons and her energy spent.
"Please forgive me...even if you want me to leave, please, just tell me that you believe I didn't mean any of that...please tell me that you're still the one who understands me...please..."
That broad, wide chest that could cover both of her shoulders formed the only wall she felt she needed. Even with the food stains and the mix of her fresh tears over what were probably his old ones, his scent drew her in...not in the usually lustful way, but in a desperate sort of way as she sought the only thing in the world that still seemed familiar to her.
Broken and spent, she found nothing else to do except cry out the rest of her guilt into his shoulder and chest. Whether she'd return to her miserable little hole and continue on her way to an anonymous death, or perhaps have a chance at trying to be happy again, she was done. Her muscles shook as if she'd run a marathon, and her head swayed from a dizziness similar to what she'd felt once when a water spout off the coast of the Hinterlands carried her a few hundred feet in the air for a good fifteen minutes. Her knees touched the ground somehow even when she didn't separate from him, and the feeling of a hairless chin pressed into the top of her head made her feel surrounded by a very different kind of wall.
Coughing on air, she found her head pulled away as a thick, strong finger pressed her chin upward, forcing her to see him.
Strength and vulnerability mixed on his face in an almost volatile fashion. For the very first time, she could sense that he was angry at her; never had he displayed even an inkling of such sentiment before. That anger crashed up against the very real depression that almost anybody would have been able to sense radiating from him, all of it added to a dash of strange empathy in the way he frowned at her.
"You're right...there is...no excuse for what you did," he whispered, his voice laden with more emotion than she'd ever heard from him before. "You hurt me, Shari...I bore the risks and you made me pay."
He tucked loose locks of her indigo hair behind her ears almost protectively despite the obvious caution in his tone. "But...I understand why you are the way you are," he sighed. "I understand it now like I did then...and I find those wounds so familiar on a personal level now, like I did then. Familiar because it's what I've been dealing with ever since we left each other at those docks...every single day when I woke up to more felfire and brimstone on Outland. Everything you described it me, but you, because like it or not...we've led the same life. I just have a twenty year head start on you in therapy."
She tried to say something but had no idea what she'd wanted to say anyway. Her fingers dug into his shirt, desperately trying to pull herself closer as she recognized that conflict, that cocktail of emotions on his face. "I...Cent..."
"You don't have to say anything...I understand," he assured her, wrapping his arms around her even as some of the anger lingered. "When I look at you...I see another version of myself, but...in need of help. In need of someone else. And no matter how far ahead I am...I'm still in need of help, too.
"You broke my heart, Shari; there's no lighter way to describe it accurately. You violated my trust in the worst way possible. But I understand why...and I believe you when you apologize. I'm hurt, and I will be; I'm upset and that will be the case for a while. But...I also know that there is nobody else out there I could tolerate being with. We're the only two people in the world screwed up enough for each other," he said without a hint of irony or humor.
When he pulled her in again, she went limp in his arms. Whimpers continued to freak out of her throat for a good amount of time, even as she basked in the heat of his body. The world spun and swirled around her, and all she could do was cling to him and hope she wasn't dreaming it all. His hug was tight, almost like he thought she'd dissipate into nothing if he let go, and it anchored her.
"Don't ever hurt me like that again," he whispered as the two of them clung to each other, slumped on the floor in his hallway and leaning against the wall.
She shook her head with her face buried in his shoulder, exhaustion sweeping over her as she realized that, by a stroke of fate that she didn't deserve, they'd just barely stretched a bandaid over the gaping wound.
"Never," she whispered.