Break a bone

need more rustmarty fics with crash era or I will go cray

and in this act, we expose our lungs

Nezumi waited for the words to sink in, for Paukka to wrap his mind around the offer, the request, if he so wished to see it that way. Leaving wasn't always the right thing to do. There had been cases where people left, having been seduced and drawn towards the path by Eve or by some other circus member, and then half-way down the road they realised they didn't belong to the travelling life. They became homesick and deserted and nothing but going back to their roots would soothe them. Sometimes, it was food that people missed. Or it were traditions kept by their people. Or it was a neighbour. Or it was simply the version of them that they could be while living in comfort of the known.

Perhaps Paukka would be such a person, but it was difficult to say that in advance.

"You know that I'm not a real fortuneteller, don't you?" Nezumi raised his brows in amused reproach. "I can't predict the future. I only speak of what I see and I offer an option. You're wrong to think that you wouldn't fit it — and you're even worse if you want to doubt it. Your misery and loneliness aren't special here, and they will not be special anywhere else. You aren't uniquely tortured, Sheriff. Everyone you know has something going on, but it's up to you to take responsibility for your own well-being."

"What I'm offering you is a solution. I've met people like you, similar to you, who were unhappy and alone and couldn't sleep. People who were haunted by their own selves, their own thoughts and their own misery, and they couldn't, for the life of them, figure out why that was. And I've found that sometimes, a seed doesn't germinate close to home but must travel a great distance before it becomes a strong tree. Sometimes, the problem is that there is nobody to water that seed where it currently is, and that is a great pain, because nothing can grow from an unnurtured ground. I told you before. We've spoken about it."

Nezumi leaned in, verging on desperation to be heard, using as many words as he could find so that Paukka would hear him — to reach into the man's heart and pull him towards light, if he could.

Did it have a resemblance to fright? Or why had his heart begun to quicken in pace and why had the warmth begun to slip from the tips of his fingers? He guessed it was right what they said about being pushed into cold water. The man he was and had been all this time was not ready and the one that he sometimes caught himself to be, during late hours and fleeting glances, thrashed writhed begged to not miss this opportunity.

How does someone decide in such a moment?

He could remain with the comfort of what he knew. He had made it this far, he could live like it a couple years more. What he did not know he was missing out on could not hurt him. It would be the only right thing. To not give up on those that did depend on him. Even though their gratitude was more lacking than gratifying. He could do that. He could remain, wait, stretch himself even more thin, until a bullet would finally hit him for the last time. Wait and sit and drown out the glimpses of a freedom that he had seen with an extra bottle or two, until his mind was muddled enough that he no longer cared.

His hands clasped themselves over his thighs. Feigning a sadness he wasn’t sure exactly how to play. Only being able to make memories out of thin air in his mind to play behind his eyes as his gaze slipped off back to the wood grain below his feet. Forlornly, lost for a second, in a tiny voice more to himself than the sheriff. “She was so pretty too.” But he would be pulled back soon enough. Almost as if it didn’t hold as much weight as he hinted at.

He pursed his lips, eyebrows knitting together. This was less of a lie. The mention of food alone curdled his stomach out of reflex. He could feel the muscles cramping from last time he tried to eat what someone had tried to offer him. One who wasn't like him. Mustering a smile, well a weak one he answered. “Oh, I uh, no I’m sorry. Not much of an appetite.”

Not that the Swede did, Paukka did not want to draw hasty conclusions and knew that looks did often but not always matter (though with the Swede, only his tall grown frame was what did hint at it. All else at the moment reflected afflictions. Looking too pale, too weak. Sick even). For once, he too was too tired and done with the life he had lived, to just write the attack on the cattle off as that of a starved predator and leave it at that. To let the blonde go his merry way, so he could forget about the humiliation handed to him. But that was not how Paukka Laukkanen worked. That was not how he would find sleep in the middle of the night. Not that he slept particularly well, speaking matter-of-factly, anyway. The kind of men that Paukka belonged to were all punished with that little thing called conscience that had ruined things more often for him than it had helped.

Dark brown eyes look at the man. Watched the man give himself while reciting the story. Or part of it. Stuck in the role of the scorned lover. Not many men would take the humiliation of a laughing woman the way the Swede had. Perhaps he was of the sort of the soft spoken. People trying to make remembrance, to paint the wild frontier in cushions and colors not befitting it. There was beauty to be found, Paukka knew. Yet he would never dare tame the land by depictions and fancy words.

               „ Fine”, it is dryly declared. Accepting that his own stomach has to stay empty a little longer. He could sit and reach for the bottle hidden in some drawer of his desk, but he was not the kind to drink out in the open if it was not the saloon (and definitely not the type to drink in front of possible suspects while seated in the chair of law).

The Sheriff placed the chair waiting on the other side of the three part writing desk just so that he could comfortably sit. Then, with a low but breathy huff, let himself sink onto it. The backrest was immediately hit with all the weight his could offer.

borders meant nothing to her now. the ability to walk without fear of human constraints have left something of wanton desire. to reconnect to those stained roots.

it's there .. the joint between the mountain and the river and the trees she feels something at the edge of her predatory senses. a single glance to the moon, as bright as the sun, would suddenly feel intrusive.

lips purse curiously and on she goes not so much treading the shore of the river, still using the dark underneath the trees as her cape. slowly, reassuringly, caressing each branch with her unnatural presence. do they shiver against her? do they revolt against her? her mind reaches out to the faintest of noises; the breaking of water when the fish jumps for the bugs that linger still, the chirps of chicks underneath their mother bird. to the rush of waves cascading to the next mountain. the beasts that give her space with each step. unknowingly, a passive skill, reaches out for any potential beings like her. ones that defy human logic.

There is a difference to listening to it, as one would their gut feeling. He had two of them now. One more primal. One that he let guide him through these kinds of nights. One that was strangely, inexplicably eager. While his mind told him it could not be, there was no way. Something within him so sure of it, that he did not even put much care into hiding his presence, in the way he walked. Branches beneath his boot cracked and long grass brushed past his clothes rustled subtle, dry whispers into the night. Until he stops. Until he stands, searching the darkness of the forest with animal eyes reflecting moonglint.

An old and heady grief stole its way through Felix, and pressed over his heart like a waterlogged corpse. Good samaritans, like the sheriff, were bad for his health. They burdened him with kindness and their shows of good will, until he could half believe them to be true. But he knew, all too well, the kinds of things men actually wrought with their hands. Had felt them for himself as they dug through the lining of his skin and filled him with unimaginable pain. Well intentioned or not, every person had their weakness. A point of entry through which his Shadow crept in and left its traces. Like wine smeared over a perfectly clean mantle. Rinse, and it would spread. He turned away from them and buttoned up the trousers around his waist, ignoring the toll of his stomach as best he could. Not that any mortal food could satisfy him then.

But, what if he agreed to sup? What’d be the harm in breaking his fast with the man who rescued him? The soft, animal parts of his body ached with the still-beating recollection of their wants, urging him to accept. Survival was a hard thing to unlearn and strip from his nerves. It didn’t matter just how long he’d been deceased, only that his organs functioned under the false assumption that he was alive, and that he needed sustenance to keep from keeling over. He didn’t, however, and the reality of that alone was enough to wreak further havoc inside his mind. How did one argue with something as thoughtless and as base as a hunger pang?

“I'm tired.” He whispered with bleak despair. How long would a single meal last him? How long until he was attacked and slung right back to his feet, his stomach emptied of everything he´d ever brought to his mouth?

The revenant steadied himself with a hand, stiffly gripping the back of the chair before taking a seat. He stooped slightly, with his hands placed over his lap, and his legs posed listlessly before him. If not for the subtle heaving of his chest, he could have passed for a puppet let loose from its strings.

“You’re…you’re taking me to a cell, yes? I won’t resist. I won't fight. Just take me there.”

Perhaps the man more wet-cat than human was speaking from that same burden. From experience. Whatever the unruly reaction, Paukka could not find it in himself to feel wronged by it. Who did say that he did not have a good heart which had been used and taken advantage of? Perhaps, the display of how he had found the man bound and hung upside-down being one outcome of that. Again his dark brown eyes landed on the sickle gleaming from the other's throat, drawing attention to its clean line, that grin that stretched so widely and felt sentient with stopped time.

With the shift that came as quickly as the one before had, Paukka merely nodded then. Validated in his guessings, he too deemed it best for the other to find rest. Perhaps sleep would ease the strain on the mind and the nerves, tired and taut, and bring back a more healthy appetite. It would not help how miserable the man looked in his current state.

He tips his head toward his shoulder, a quiet consideration dog-earing the beat of quiet. "Some secrets are best left buried, huh?" He doesn't add too much to that, letting it hang in the air with that non-commital ambivalence of his, like cigarette smoke; Lingering, loitering, dissipating. He lifts off the support beam with the twist of his body and takes another drag before lifting his boot and killing it on the sole. He smiles a bouquet of crow's feet.

The post-bliss, half-clarity cluster of seconds after their conversations, which were mostly short and of little words but of heavy meaning, that the Sheriff still felt lingering. Always did, somehow, as much as neither of them acted on it, somehow he could not be blind himself to all that could be, if only they spoke. To Paukka, Cole was a man of sagacity, of considerable quiet strength. Faithfully resigning to the Sheriff's complicated nature and yet, in moments like these, Paukka could not help but wonder (and wish) they would overstep that line and breach the silence. To speak openly and from the heart. Because, with how all was and also despite of it, somehow Paukka felt that Cole was one of the few men who would understand.

But it does not go that far. Will likely not the next times either. Might never, it is a truth that he understands and with that, he decided to follow. Peeled himself from his spot, the brunette compelled that worn and aching body of his to move.