Hey there, sorry for the wait! One thing led to the other and the chapter had to be postponed more than once. Now that I'm back, let me tell you guys that this chapter is the conclusion of the mini arc called Pain, and next chapter is the finale of the third arc, the 'bigger arc' so to speak. Hope you're having a great day!
ant423: I already said this to you privately but thank you so much! That review of yours really made my day.
RaeCamille: I agree with you, it's a shame that he had to lose everything to appreciate what he had; it goes without saying that a man his age should be wiser than our cowboy but hey… who am I to judge, right?
I'm really sorry I made you feel bipolar, dear, it wasn't my intention. I knew those two chapters were going to get very intense, especially in regards to Zar's death. What you pointed out about Yvo being secretly in love with her was not planned – I gotta admit I'm a rather methodical writer so I already had the structure for this entire fic way before I had even posted the first chapter but that aspect of the story was brand new. I just thought it would further illustrate the irony of her whole life: she spent most of her years trying so hard to win Black's heart that by the time someone had actually developed feelings for her it was already too late.
I considered using that fragment of the Neruda poem but I felt like those lines were such a bombastic spoiler so I decided to go for the opening verses instead. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing, dear!
Looksforthelight: I think it's comforting for me as a writer to know that Zar's character will be missed. People weren't that fond of her when I first introduced her character so knowing that her death has made you people feel something feels truly extraordinary to me. I won't lie to you, I'm going to miss writing her; she was one of my favorite OCs.
I know a lot of my readers always had the feeling that Zar was the villain, that she was evil – that's why your review meant so much to me: you got it, you got it right. She wasn't evil, she wasn't a bad person: her only mistake was falling for the wrong guy. Thanks for the review!
Hell-on-Training-Wheels: Every single quote I use comes from books that I have read at some point of my life. That's why you might have noticed I tend to use the same authors and books over and over again (A. Carter comes to mind, for example): those are my favorites, those books are like the effing Bible to me.
There will be more Kotal next chapter, rest assure, and since we're gonna take a huge leap now (like a 8-year-long leap) you bet tension will still be there…
That made a lot of sense, and it's also part of this new-found credo for Black: you know they say the only way out is through, well I think for him the only way forward is backwards. Thank you so much for your insightful comments, hope you like what I have in store!
Sabrina: Well, lucky for you she's dead-dead; she's not coming back.
Guest: Thank you!
Westcoast Witchdoctor: Call me a hopeless, idealistic romantic, but I think there's always going to be hope for him. Not salvation; perhaps even not redemption, but hope. And rest assured, the streets of Z'unkahrah will run red…. Thank you so much for reading/reviewing!
ErronFan: Right. Thank you for reading and reviewing.
PinkRedRose2: I agree with you, dear. She totally deserved better but she has always been such a tragic character her death just had to encompass the very essence of her being: she was always an open wound and her disappearance is a huge, giant open wound as well – and not only for Black. Thank you for reading and reviewing!
Da Hybrid Queen: Has he? Really? Yes, he had his box of memories returned to him, he realized he cares but… has he really found himself again? Guess we'll have to wait and see. Thank you so much!
He walked in to find the saloon deserted, abandoned perhaps.
The place was a mess, with old wooden tables and chairs scattered all over the floor.
He looked down at his own calloused hands while approaching the bar – they seemed smaller somehow, lighter. He reached for his pistol but it was nowhere to be found and then he noticed it: he had suddenly turned into an earlier version of himself, he was young again and most of the dark thoughts and bitter memories that should have been weighing heavily on his head weren't there to haunt him anymore.
A ray of sunlight interrupted his train of thought as it swirled around and found its way through a crack in a distant wall. The piano started to play and there she was on stage once again, ready to perform. Her blue dress suddenly reminded him just how immaculate, how pristine she looked while on the spotlight – she was a bright, courageous woman and a very talented one also. He grabbed one of the ruined chairs and dragged it closer to the stage; eager to listen. She was a vision, his vision.
The teenage cowboy grinned softly as he observed the way she was walking towards him; with her head held high, ready to sing. Then she stopped walking and stood in the center of the stage. With the required dramatism of the artist, the woman placed both her hands at the sides of her waist – the vision was complete now, he recognized it instinctively: the pose, he knew it by heart after watching his mother perform for so many years.
"Aren't ya gonna help me with the drinks, boy? What made ya think you'll be getting the night off?" As Good Old Jacob patted his shoulder lightly, the young Erron Black noticed a saloon blooming with the sudden lights of many lives that had been extinguished already, long ago. The intrepid, swirling sunlight had succumbed to the artificial nature of an illuminated night. The girls were already entertaining the patrons, the distinctive chatter of those with way too much alcohol running freely through the avenue of their veins and the heat, the incomparable heat of a good old summer night inside The Wise Bird.
"Sorry, Jacob," the boy mumbled apologetically as he stood up and began to walk the familiar path separating him from the bar. He grinned softly at the old man, that vivid candor clearly reflected in his new-found ingenuity. The place was alive again and so was he, way before war and death, way before the punishment of a perpetual, vicious youthfulness that would detach him, in time, from everything and everyone.
Arc III
Chapter XXX
Back
(To Where You've Never Been)
"I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew."
Hermann Hesse ― Siddhartha
As his coffee-colored eyes darted around trying to adjust their focus on all those faces he presumed lost to time, a bitter thought crossed his mind: he felt the urgent need to scream, from the top of his lungs, to beg them – not to get too attached to the symbols of an era that was only going to succumb to progress and oblivion.
As those faces, incandescent memories of a foreign time now reappearing before his eyes, seemed to pay no mind to the young boy trying to commit all of their features to memory; he could feel every emotion, every feeling stirring inside.
Erron's ignited heart was compelling him to do something more than just looking.
He felt the immense need to gently tap Jacob's broad shoulders and embrace his old man; his mouth would desperately beg for his forgiveness then, for being such a bad little brat – for leaving him alone, completely alone when he should have remained by his side when the man needed him the most.
He felt the unparalleled need to jump across the bar and give one last hug to his mother; the heartfelt embrace he had been saving just for her inside the most recondite places of his untamable heart – he wished he had the strength to actually talk to the woman; to tell her that the bond uniting a son with his mother is meant to be sacred and never-ending, that it's not meant to be ruled by capricious frontiers or unbearable mood swings. He wished, for a bitter moment, he could explain to her that while he understood her pain and her resentment, he still needed her.
Caught up in his nostalgia, the teenage cowboy barely noticed Jessica as she approached him. The woman offered him a broad smile as she signaled him to make room for her – then he noticed it; the timid curvature of her growing belly, her rosy cheeks and the loving eyes of a mother who just couldn't wait to meet her baby.
The boy grinned tenderly in return as he allowed one hand to rest on her stomach. Then fear engulfed him, surreptitiously. He panicked, but only briefly.
"It's Adrian's, you stupid boy," the woman said as she giggled, "you and I haven't… you know… in a very long time. It's not possible, Erron."
The suspicious boy eyed her speculatively: "You sure?"
Jessica's lips curled up as she fought hard the urgent need compelling her to laugh out loud at his naïveté.
"Erron – you and I haven't had sex in more than two years now; the moment you met Amanda you knew she was the one, not me," she explained, warmly.
He breathed out then; at least he had done the right thing this time. His skin, decorated by silent tremor, remembered the old hesitations and doubts that had scorched his stay with Dexitis' family; that boy growing inside L'ampaghna's belly might have been his, the mercenary was still certain that the capricious lady known as good fortune had remained by his side back then. To his surprise, and even if he was fully aware that this sudden reality was only a fictitious one, it still felt good to have such a determining certainty.
Back then, he had remained skeptical during L'ampaghna's pregnancy, only allowing his troubled mind to speculate every now and then – the unfathomable ghost of his guilt torturing him during his nights, tormenting him for having played his only friend, for ruining his marriage, for polluting L'am with such an inexorable sin.
Yet, in the end, the son's face had finally gotten adorned by the distinctive features molding the righteous father's face and the gunslinger breathed, precious relief filling his lungs with a brand new sense of hope. He was off the hook, or so it seemed – and even if the sin was still there, branding his skin and categorizing him amongst those who contaminate others with their mere existence, at least he felt like the damage he had coaxed upon the gentle couple could still be fixed.
He was wrong.
The capricious lady known as good fortune had never been one of his closest friends.
Temptation had knocked on his door again and, just like every other time, he had let it in rather easily.
If there was one thing that his longevity had taught him, it was that life always finds a way to repeat itself. L'am and Dex would become, in time, the burning Phoenix rising from the flames of his misplaced desires; the bonfire originated by the consummation of a previous sin, Jessica and Adrian becoming the original seed of his peccant nature, only to spread their ashes on a corrupted land far more dangerous and vicious than hell itself.
"You'll be a great mother," the boy said, the feeling genuine and earnest.
He allowed his hand to stay there, visiting Jessica's belly for a few more moments in order to capture that inspiring, warm sensation. He couldn't bring his eyes to stare into Jessica's sweet gaze now that the uncomfortable lump in his throat was beginning to threaten his sanity: he wanted to beg for her forgiveness, he wanted to embrace that woman sitting right next to him and cry on her shoulder like an infant.
He was only a child back then, yet the sole remembrance of that day was still powerful enough to freeze the blood running through his veins. He wanted to say: "I'm sorry – for many things. I'm sorry because I was weak and I should have stopped before things got out of hand, I'm sorry for leaving you alone with that man, I'm sorry that I chose to stay on the wrong side of the door – I should have been there, I should have protected you; I should have saved you. Sorry for all those times that I just pretended to be a man when I should have acted like one."
The nearly bicentennial man, trapped inside the dreams and the body of a teenager, understood that this new reality knew no harm – things were evidently better than they had been before; it was like no sorrow, no drama, no mistakes had been made at all. This new rendition of his own life, freed from all heavy burdens and moral paradoxes, was like going back to a home that had never existed.
He stared at his own perplexed reflection as his face got recreated on the surface of a dirty silver tray. Drops of liquor were carelessly illustrating the corners of his eyes and old scratches were providing his skin with a brand new texture – only when he ran his own fingers across the skin covering his cheekbones he noticed the artificial nature of that image staring right back at him – his skin, sun-kissed and blessed by the unmistakable vitality of youth, was subtly telling him that his impervious skin was still untouched; still unpolluted.
The only corrupted version of himself was trapped inside that silver tray.
Paying attention to the contour of his facial structure and the frame of his bones, Erron quickly deduced that he wasn't as young as he thought he was. His eyes weren't those of a child no more; his expression already carried the experience that only years can bring.
He looked over his shoulder to find the old calendar that Jacob had always had pinned to the end wall of the bar: June 1863.
The first certainty came to mind: he was twenty years old. War was already a raw, cruel reality for the country yet, apparently, he was still free from its bindings. The second certainty solidified itself before his eyes in the shape of Josephine: even if the mother was still performing her enchanting, voiceless songs, she had made it. She had survived her own demons. She should have died back in 1859 but she was still there, somehow, looking as stunning as ever.
He smiled, as he observed Josephine shining in the place where she belonged – it was soothing for him to be able to admire her from afar once more and to know, that even if it was only in his dreams, the woman was fine and far from the obscure fate that had kissed her goodbye so many lives ago.
The third certainty presented itself in a rather obvious way: if it was indeed 1863, Jessica should have been long gone by then as well.
So maybe it was true, after all – this dream was actually becoming the closest chance for redemption he was ever going to have. All those happy endings that back then had turned their backs on him, branding his skin with the marks of tragedy and disillusion were now seemingly blended together into such a spectacular event: the reclaiming of his soul, of the man he should have been if only given the proper chance.
This seemed to be a pretty proper chance – only he knew it wasn't real, and that bittersweet notion was hard to shake.
The patrons were already asking for one more song when the group entered the Wise Bird. Their matching uniforms and the many visible scars wore like stigmata were revealing their participation in the conflict still dividing the nation. Those colors, he knew them all too well, were the colors he himself had worn many years ago. Erron furrowed his brow as they approached the bar but Jessica stood up and offered them a toothy grin.
"Good night, gentlemen," she greeted the group as she patted Jacob on the back to indicate the old bartender that those thirsty throats needed his care. "Ladies," she smiled again then winked to express her sympathy towards the timid females accompanying the bunch of soldiers.
As the bartender quickly busied himself pouring drinks for the newcomers, Erron noticed the group consisted of seven men and three young women – soldiers and nurses, traveling together, enjoying whatever mundane pleasures the night could offer right before being forced to embrace the fiery arms of battle once again.
Erron moved away from the bar, trying to give them some privacy, knowing by heart that the little moments of joy in between battles were sacred for both soldiers and nurses yet one of the men placed his hands on the young gunslinger's shoulder, forcing him to turn around.
"Are you from around here, son?" the soldier asked and Erron nodded in silence. "We could surely use young soldiers like you out there…"
The thought of joining the group seemed alien now; nearly as alien as it had felt back then. Even if he had been a great supporter of their cause he hadn't chosen to fight because he was chasing an ideal, a moral compass that needed to be restored – he had dived into the turbulent waters of war because life had given him no choice. He had absolutely nothing left to lose back then, so he had decided to offer his skills for the simple taste, the simple rush of the constant specter of death lurking around every corner.
With a bit of luck, a stray bullet would find him, putting a premature end to a life signed by misery and sorrow.
But luck had never been on his side.
Ironically enough, the man who chose war over peace because he had nothing left to lose ended up losing more than he could handle: Annie, and the baby that would have made him a father.
"Stop it, boys," Jessica chimed in as soon as she realized how uncomfortable Erron was now that all eyes were on him, "he made a promise." The boy could tell, just by the look in her eyes, that she was already regretting her words. The group laughed, a hysterical cascade of sounds meant to ridicule the boy who wasn't ready to go to war because he had made a promise to only God knows who.
If they only knew, Erron pondered as his tightened lips repressed the anger that was fighting to be released. Yet the feeling dissipated from his chest rather abruptly the moment he saw those eyes staring back at him from across the room.
Diaphanous as ever; created by a higher being and placed into this land for him to experience that emotion humans tend to call love.
"Don't even try to convince this young man to join you, gentlemen," Amanda began, placing a soft hand in the center of his palpitating chest. The touch, the sole notion of knowing her skin had been created to summon his skin and his skin alone – it just felt so real.
Even if he still didn't know the slightest thing about this promise that was miraculously keeping him away from war, a part of him still managed to embrace peace as the sudden epiphany invaded his entire being: the reasoning, straightforward and precise, curling his lips in silent contempt.
If he's not out there, fighting to defend an already lost cause, he is never going to meet Annie – the nurse is not going to fall for him; she won't feel compelled to follow him. He won't succumb to her beauty and her nourishing affection: that child won't ever know the painful flames of undeserved agony.
Moving nearer, Amanda unbuttoned his shirt to expose his upper torso and shoulders – all those scars; he hadn't seen them before yet they seemed so real the sole sight of them scattered all over his skin made his stomach twist in disgust. "He's not going out there again," the girl sentenced, her eyes fixed on the group, contemplating how their expressions mutated – all those mocking smiles disappeared abruptly as sheer pity and guilt quieted their voices. "It took me months to find him; many doctors and nurses told me he wasn't gonna make it. There is no way this man is leaving me ever again."
Those nasty wounds and scars seemed a small price to pay now that he had her. He could live with an illustrated body; each mark imprinted on his skin would always be there to remind him just how miserable his existence could be if it wasn't for her. Silently, Erron buttoned up his shirt again and held her hand. Even if he was a stranger lurking in the subdomains of his own consciousness with no real clue about the strings connecting each face with each place, he followed her all the same until their bodies disappeared from the bar only to emerge in the dimly lit corridor; up the stairs and into his old room.
As if self-addressing his very own oneiric state, the man in the dream embraces the fact that he knows he's dreaming and, just like a mystified conjurer, dares to explore those blurry edges that cannot quite conceal the shape venturing ecstasy right next to his own enraptured body.
Back in the consuming fire, the burning chimera of his desire exhibits a pure yet rather démodé amber hue.
As his lips lead the way, leaving a trail of kisses along her slender, soft neck, his hands tuck her hair behind her ears.
Her legs, pressed hard against his waist, are the perfect trap secluding his skin within their grasp – he wishes, even though he knows it's not possible, he wishes he could stop time and just stay quiet; subjugated by her ways and baptized deep within her carnal type of mercy. He, the man that knows that time can be stopped, the one holding his own hourglass in the stronghold of his ancient fingers, wants to remain there with her, eternally. The notion of a 'now' that he cannot even touch feels intoxicating yet somehow empowering for him. Those deep blue eyes, deconstructing his essence to his very core, are craving him; exhibiting the very same lustful passion he had once shown for her, no matter how late it had been – her wedding dress becoming a white mess on the floor, her tears and his tears baptizing the hungrier side of their affection with the irrevocable feeling of being already defeated by the circumstances.
He still remembers – her hands getting lost under the creases of her cape, her glimmering eyes in the rain, those fingers scorching her cheeks, the calamitous burning hatred in those prying eyes as they watched him make love to another woman – the brawl inside and the love outside; her mouth on his mouth. Each portion of hers, traced by his eyes, could never be compared to the actual feeling of really having her.
Possession, once again, becomes a mere matter of perspective.
He has her, even though he knows he's dreaming. He has her, but even though he doesn't want to let go he knows, deep within the cobwebs of his own twisted subconscious – he's already let her go. Time itself has already let her go; her body now less than ashes - what is even left of her now? What is left of the immaculate vision that she once was?
Iridescent fireflies soar to kiss a smoky obsidian blanket; he could swear that, for a brief second, he could even see the doctor staring back at him, inside those big blue eyes – those faces juxtaposed, no matter how fleeting, the bridge connecting his past with another era he couldn't even call his present seems vivid and bright.
Her breathing is deep and even, almost peaceful. She has found a way to slide one of her hands under his shirt, her palm now resting against the weathered skin of his chest, slowly making its way down to his navel. Weakened, and enraptured by these new, unleashed feelings, he lets his head fall into the soft hollow between her neck and shoulder. The faces change again; is that Amanda, or is it maybe Alexandra? Are they the same obscure being fighting its way through the little light that still burns inside of him?
The woman longs for his lips and so, she ventures a kiss – perhaps, the first one of many or maybe, the very last in a concatenation of loving gestures that shall never be professed.
His mouth, though dead at first, is finally showing some signs of life as the tenderness of the emotion wraps him up in a sense of warmth he hasn't felt in a very long time.
Who is he even making love to now?
As the faces change once again, eclipsed and sheltered by the shadows of the old attic, the man realizes that, for example, he has never even asked the doctor if she had had a great-great-great-great-grandmother named Amanda. His perplexity back then, now finding sweet indulgence in the clamor of those changing hands – he knows, oh god he's certain: it's just that their resemblance is so uncanny…
As the perfidy of his lost loves continues to grow in the shape of that woman teasing him with nothing but nearly desperate, raw affection, his hands begin to move more frantically now, taking off her clothes and placing her on top of him with just one smooth movement of his arms – she's nearly weightless, he soon realizes; she's like a pale feather carried by his windy impulses. He closes his eyes to breathe her in; she – just whoever she wants to be now, Amanda or Alexandra, does it really matter anymore?
She takes off the only piece of clothing covering his torso as his erratic yet determined hands find a way under her skirt, digits eager to satiate a hunger so ancient it still blinds him. His fingers, though clumsily, finally remove her underwear. But their resemblance is just so uncanny… yet their differences seem now as real as their similarities. Even so, he could not actually be sure there were such things as differences between them – at all. He had met Alex when the woman was in her late twenties, early thirties perhaps. Amanda had disappeared from his life way before she was even twenty. He had never known the adult version of the only woman he had ever loved. Maybe this woman, the doctor, was the sublime re-apparition of that other woman from his past; perhaps her pertinence was so that it made it possible for him to imagine her face as a grown up, that child he had adored back then now out of its nurturing caterpillar and into the warm embrace of a pretended adulthood.
Maybe they were meant to complement each other: Alex would allow him to explore Amanda as a grown-up while Amanda would help him take hold of a naked body he had never actually seen. Alex became then, the other side of an obscured, eclipsed moon only to allow Amanda to expose what little light remained for his eyes to wonder. Alex became then, the other side to his beloved Amanda. A brand new side he had never known until he met her.
The mercenary stares into those glimmering blue eyes as she moves closer. The woman, longing for him, leans in and whispers in his delighted ears.
"I missed you," she invokes him yet the mercenary can't place the voice.
Is it Alex's?
Is it Amanda's?
Yet she pays no mind, she is not aware of the fact that he can't put his finger on whose voice is that. Laughing mercilessly, the woman tattoos his neck with her lips. He tries to focus once again, tries to swim in his own muddy waters, tries to go on with fistfuls of two ghosts that he can't even fully love in his dreams. Blinded by his own misfortune, and prisoner of a thirst he knows he cannot quench, he makes his way inside her, his pace is frantic from the very beginning as his busy hands start working their way up into the clumsy strands of her auburn hair.
The sounds of pleasure, elevating her shape, rise from the bottom of her throat only to die in an agonizing bonfire of nameless voices that still today, manage to take his breath away. She whimpers and calls out his name, with her eyes closed, breathing hard through parted lips as her fingers get busy leaving burning trails all over his skin.
She cups his face with her warm hands. Her back, arched and enraptured, explodes as the mercenary places his lips on her neck and finally whispers: "I missed you too."
It's Amanda. The one venturing ecstasy in his private illusion is none other than the greatest love of his life; his eyes can see her clearly now. His words seem to shatter her into a million ungoverned pieces, the meaning behind that sentence seems to reach her dormant depths, bringing her contained shadows into the diaphanous light. Her lungs, longing for air once more, engage in a laborious endeavor as he speeds up even faster, visibly frenzied by her new-found euphoria; the rhythmical race perpetuated by their bodies, fully entangled in this maddening motion, is making them both feel completely overwhelmed.
His tongue comes out and lands on her upper lip, tracing the delicate outline of that adored mouth of hers as she tries to devour him once again. Her messy auburn hair, carelessly brushing over his forehead, is a soft caress mitigating the ghostly sensations carried by her image. As she stares down at him with her rich blue eyes, he suddenly becomes tense underneath her touch, his whole body now twitching beneath its grip.
Amanda covers his mouth with her own lips. The troubled mercenary bits them hard, the timid sight of blood is suddenly startles him, even if only momentarily, yet the image of her face engulfed by an indomitable, ancient pleasure is causing his coffee-colored eyes to drift away as they both finally collapse on his old bed, neither one of them exactly sure where their own body ends and the other's begins.
Eyelids fluttering shut, finally, as his head helplessly falls back against the pillow. Amanda knows – she notices his sullen discord. As he sinks deeper into his own saddening nostalgia, she pulls him into her worried arms. Reciprocating her desperate need, the gunslinger rushes to grip onto that overwhelming affection willing to help him face his own darkness. His strong arms cannot contain her yet he tries. He's afraid she might disappear again, afraid she might turn into dust the minute his arms close up around her.
"What's wrong?" she lets out softly as she slides her slender fingers across his warm forehead.
The one holding him close, naked and covered in sweat is not Amanda anymore. The one caressing him so delicately, trying to comfort him now is not the love of his life: it's Alexandra. Their pristine pieces and his shadowed entirety, eclipsed under the same light, are no longer the same thing.
He hides his face in the soft spot between her face and her shoulder – yet as his eyes adjust themselves to the receding lights engulfing the room he realizes: he is no longer in his old room, he's back in her bed - the same bed where their inconclusive story had begun.
"Why are you here, Black?" Alex asks, the colors of her voice exhibiting a brand new sense of concern.
He stares into her big, blue eyes, petrified.
"Why did you come back here?" she questions him as her hands come to rest on his exalted chest. "You had the real Amanda, you didn't need me to remember her; you had her – you had the real thing," the doctor whispers as her arms begin to cradle him; those hands of hers, soft as feathers, already brushing away the tears cascading down his face.