Twelve
Romelle paced past the door to Sven's suite in Polluxian Castle. Her stomach was churning, she had a bad taste in the back of her throat. Every few steps or so she would stop for a moment and wring her hands, eyes on the knob to his door.
Footsteps closing in on her made Romelle look up, but she barely processed the fact her brother was walking toward her. She kept on with her pacing, her mind running a mile a minute yet not seeming to think any coherent thought.
"You haven't gone in yet? I told them we'd be in Castle Control soon for Sven talking with the Voltron Force." Bandor looked confused as he spoke, his gaze on his sister. "Romelle?"
"I've hurt him... He snuck out that letter because I wouldn't let him speak to them... I didn't know... I don't know how to face him knowing that I've let him down."
Bandor shook his head. "Come on, Sis, no way Sven feels you let him down. The two of you... he brought me back you," Bandor looked down to the floor, tears welling in his eyes.
He's always been so emotional Romelle thought, stopping her hand wringing to put a hand on her brother's shoulder. "Bandor...it's okay."
Bandor wiped his face of tears, locked his gaze with hers and nodded. "Exactly... it will be okay, go in and tell him."
"How..." she laughed not quite believing her little brother had just turned her own advice against her. She took a deep breathe, then breathed it out slowly. "Wait out here, please?"
"Of course," Bandor said with a nod.
Her heart beat like thunder in her ears, she hadn't felt fear like this - ever, she realized. This was the fear of harming the man who owned her soul. It threatened to take away her voice but she loved him, she loved him and she would make her amends.
Sven turned from the window he was always standing out...Romelle wondered if he saw the river valley view at all when he stood there...she couldn't believe he daydreamed. That was such an innocent past time and it felt too simple for Sven.
He smiled at the sight of her. Sometimes the only time he would smile all day... though he'd been smiling more and more day by day. She hoped what she was about to bring up didn't regress him. She had sudden selfish thought - what if talking with them regressed him. But no. That was what she'd done wrong, keeping him from his family. She must make her amends.
"Romelle?" he asked and she realized she stopped walking halfway into the room and was wringing her hands once again. "Has something happened?" his voice rose and shade of panic.
"No, no... no reason to worry. Not you anyway... I... Lance got his letter." She couldn't read his expression. He averted his storm colored eyes from her to the floor. She held her breathe.
"It took that... For them to try to talk to me?" Sven said a moment later his voice lower than she has ever heard it. Her heart cracked, that thinking was her fault. All her fault.
"No...they've. All of them try to contact you many times a week... I have not allowed anyone to answer their attempts. Until Lance said he had had a letter from you..."
"You weren't allowing..." Sven said his voice distant.
Romelle nodded.
Sven turned his back to her, back toward the window. The silence was a knife to her heart. She wanted him to yell, scream, to call her names. She was guilty... her heartbeats were fast but the silence was long. Her pounding heart all she heard.
"The doctors said again and again, I am not ready to speak to them - were they lying to me?"
"Not at first..." she said her voice sounding like a whisper to her.
He turned back gray eyes glaring. "What?"
"Not at first," she repeated louder if not more clearly. "But then..." she took in a sharp breath. "They were supposed to be your family Sven but you got worse there, you were catatonic for so long I feared I was would never hear your voice again, see that gleam in your eyes."
He faced the window again. His shoulders slumped, a hand on the wall beside the window... as if he had to hold himself in. Romelle watched, she waited, with held breath.
"You kept them from me," he said his tone stabbing harder with each word.
Tears fell down her cheeks. "I was wrong."
He turned expression dark. "You were."
Romelle wished a hole to open up on the ground and swallow her whole. Never in her life had she felt more wrong, or more unworthy of forgiveness.
"You may speak to them all today, we arranged a meeting last night when I found out about the letter... I... I never should have made you feel you had to do that... to sneak around to speak with them. I..." she had to stop to breath, to fight off sobbing. "I am sorrier than I can express."
Another long silence. "When?"
"Now, or we can do it when you wish."
"Now is fine." He walked past her and opened the door. Pausing a brief moment and glancing over his shoulder at her. His expression stormy. "You are coming...to make sure they don't hurt me again, I am sure..."
She shook her head. "If you wish me not to come..."
"That would be good... Castle Control?"
She nodded unable to speak. As Sven left she felt something rip from inside her being. What if he doesn't come back to her? Romelle went to the window and attempted to breathe through her tears.
~.~
Sven
I create this illusion of being in control, of being okay - maybe getting better - as I work with the doctors on... I feel I fight them more than not. Or lie to them... Only the lies weren't working on Pollux as they did on Arus.
Because on Arus my illusion shattered and I nearly killed... I nearly killed... do not want to write it in black and white norwegian...but I must. I must face the guilt and pain...
I looked into Lance's eyes today. He is alive. I must remember this as I think of what almost happened with the blood all on my hands. Keith tried to take blame. As did Lance. But no...
I was to blame for pretending I was better than I was. That I was not only physically out of shape but emotionally trashed in ways I did not want to face.
I fight facing it all to this day...and the doctors on Pollux will not let me hide from them. There is yelling, shouting and screaming - almost hit a few of the more confrontational doctors... Romelle being the only reason, the only one who can pull me back from that abyss of anger and... yes self-pity.
She herself is facing emotional trauma, baggage much bigger and worse than my own... and she does it with it such grace. Strongest person I know... my faith, my heart.
Which is why this hurts so badly. She was keeping them from me. I thought it was the doctors, I thought she was listening to them when she spoke to me about why I wasn't allowed to try to contact my friends...
But I also didn't know they were trying to contact me... this is where my angry boils over. It wasn't not being to speak to them that drove me mad enough to lie, hide and get a nurse to sneak out that letter. It thought they weren't trying to contact me.
That I had lost them due to having that strong illusion of being the Sven they'd always known and... I dare hope, loved. I thought they were angry and possibly out of my life for ever... but I had to speak to Lance and since every attempt was shot down with psychological rationales I did what I had to do.
And found out Romelle had been keeping them from me. They had tried to speak with me practically every day since I left. Contacting Pollux for updates on my progress...
They did not know there was any progress. I had come to Pollux broken again and unable to see or hear... to think. It'd been so safe in that shell... only Romelle...
Only Romelle could reach me while I was inside it. While I was hiding from what I had done - become. And there is to be no more hiding. No hiding!
Romelle. I am angry with her. Far angrier than I can recall being aroused within me about someone... She lied to me. She was who was keeping me from apologizing to Lance. She blamed them as I blamed myself, and they blamed themselves. Everyone assigning guilt and who of us is right. All of us, none of us... I don't know except I was kept from what I needed...
She's crying now, she's been crying. She had cried before walking into my suite...and revealing the truth of her deception and her reasons. I saw the pain in her eyes... beautiful blue eyes the color of an Oslo sky...my Romelle.
I am angry and more sure of my love for her at this moment... at this complicated human moment I am not sure I am well enough to unentangle on my own. Yet I cannot talk of these things with my doctors.
Maybe they are helping me... I don't know... this book is the idea of one of them. Writing down the harder emotions will help you to process them he told me...
I had laughed at him in my head. I had laughed because ALL my emotions are complicated and hard to explain now. All things are tainted with pain and fear. And bleak endless days with no one to rely on, or speak too...
I had forgotten I had a voice until Romelle fell in front of me.
I want to forgive her. I will forgive her - I am seeing that. But right now every time I think of her, anytime I see her - be it physically or in my mind's eye... a rush of horrible anger of a size I cannot explain...
I threw everything I could in my suite that was not laying down. I have locked the door so they can't come in a sedate me. Eventually they will get back into this room... but they'll find me still writing here or sitting still eyes out the window...
That window where I see nothing but own thoughts.
I am afraid of what I might do or say to her... she kept me from Lance. She kept me from apologizing, something that has been gnawing at me for weeks, days... if I can't tell him how sorry I am about what I nearly caused...
I couldn't breath at times from the pain of it... of almost ending his life. This man, this friend of mine through good times and hell...
More and more hell. I caused him hell.
Me.
That is not allowed.
No. I can't see her yet... I will rage and scream and it will do no one any good.
Yet... I do feel better now that I have seen Lance and Keith's faces. Spoken with them and made my apologies. It... something fell back into place within me, the memory of when I made that fatal error during that battle that caused Red crash... it feels further away from me now. I am working through it and perhaps.. perhaps knowing Lance is in fine sarcastic-annoying Keith form...
I can not express in any language how good it was to see those two glowering at one another, shoving elbows and just being who they are... Keith pensive and quiet, trying to take all the blame on himself...
I needed to take it off of his shoulders... because I was as wrong as him to think I could go on as if my injuries, my traumas have never occurred.
I will always wish they were so easy to throw behind me, however... and I keep trying to blunder through this process faster than may be possible...
But I have gotten healing I know I needed seeing Lance alive and hearing his voice telling me not to stupid.
Once I have calmed... I even think, I hope, Romelle and I will find our way past the angry and resentments... that we too will be stronger. As both of us become better.
Enough of writing in this thing.