#tallow writes

;^)

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How the actual hell can you not love that name???

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It was raining. Again, Agnes almost found herself saying.

It felt like the dreary days just weren’t ending, one flowing into the next like a bad cold that clung to your chest. It wasn’t a kind thing, and Agnes found herself liking it less and less. Rain could be lovely, yes, but too much just felt down.

Her fingers tightened on each other. Would it continue like this much longer? She hoped not. Too much rain would be bad for them all. And people could get sick! She didn’t want there to be in influx of people calling in and out because they were ill.

Her fingers tightened together.

And what of the people who didn’t live in the city? She was certain too much rain would cause them a loss. Or even those in the city, what if the rain piled so high, too high, much too high? What of the animals outside? Those unfortunate to have no shelter to run to?

Her fingers squeezed again.

And what of her own? What of her friends? Was it this horrible thunderous weather everywhere? Were they okay? Was it worse there? Was she overreacting?

Was it-?

Agnes’ eyes found their way upward, looking at the cover provided to her.

“You’ll get sick, standing out here…” Oh. “Alternis?” “I, er….wouldn’t like to see you get ill from it.”

Her eyes softened and her fingers relaxed their grip on each other. It was just like Alternis, wasn’t it? To think of an umbrella and of another persons possible sickness. She gave him a smile, unable to help the amusement behind it. Alternis could have a surprisingly soft voice, especially when coupled with that horribly brilliant blush on his face.

He blushed much too easily. Agnes thought it was cute.

She didn’t dare say it. She knew Alternis found embarrassment and nerves in showing his face.

She relaxed. She felt trusted when he was so willing to show her. It wasn’t everyday someone could see him in the flesh.

“Thank you, Alternis.” “Of course…Agnes.”

Ah, he always skipped around speaking her name, as if worried, as if scared, as if unsure. She could see it, after everything they went through. After all of it he still held some anger about him, towards himself. Some horrible thoughts she wished she could sooth from him.

She didn’t think him deserving of that. He’d more than made up for anything he may have done before.

“It’s raining a lot,” she hummed, watching him from the corner of her eye. “Yes, hopefully it lightens up soon, it can’t be good for the people to have every day be like this.” He sounded sad. She could guess on which particular people he was thinking on.

Agnes didn’t want to know if it was because he could sympathize.

She looked back to the rain. The sky, and its blotchy sadness, held an odd sense of appeal, she found. Maybe if it hadn’t been raining day in and day out she’d find some beauty in it. She looked back to him, his eyes a world away.

And his shoulder wet.

It wasn’t a very big umbrella.

Agnes lifted her hand to take the handle from him, earning something that was, most certainly not, a squeak. No, never a squeak, not from Alternis. Never a cute squeak. Agnes fought that down.

She gripped the handle where his hand had involuntarily let go.

“Agnes?” “Come here.” “Excuse me?” he looked almost frightened. “I said, come here, Alternis, you’re going to get sick.” He seemed to fluster, unsure on what to exactly do. “It’s much too small.”

She could already see the blotches of a bright red blush working around his face and down his neck. She couldn’t help but smile. He did look cute, all flustered and red eared.

“That’s fine,” she nodded.

Sometimes, she’d found, you just needed to push firmly with Alternis. He was a bit hopeless sometimes. “But-!” Alternis didn’t squeak, she had to remind herself, so that must have been something else.

She could feel him shaking from the point of their shoulders pressed together. He was warm, warmer than she’d expected. But, he did tend to wear quite warm clothing. She was a bit jealous. Maybe she could borrow something of his. For days like this, cold, rainiy.

Choosing to save him some pride she made it a point not to look at him too directly. Though she already knew his face would be in a state of red fluster and complete confusion. He was never much good at hiding how he felt when out of armour.

“It’d be pretty,” she murmured, relaxed against him, “if it wasn’t…so much.” Very eloquent. Alternis was quiet and she worried she’d made him too uncomfortable. She was still learning the boundaries on how much she could push.

“It would be,” he agreed softly, taking the handle back from her. She looked at him, puzzled. “I mean… It is, er, if we just pretend it hasn’t been happening for days.”

It was cold.

She found herself leaning into him. Agnes was almost surprised to find him relaxed. “Are you cold?” she asked, already guessing the answer. “No. Are you?” “A bit,” she confessed.

“Ah,” he didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. “Alternis?” “Y-Yes?” “Can we just…stay here for a bit?”

He seemed surprised. Agnes thought it was cute. She thought Alternis was very cute. From his flusters to his nerves. He was very cute.

“Of course.” “You’ll stay?” Had they fallen closer than before? She felt very warm, very comfortable, and very safe. Things she’d easily begun to associate with being with Alternis. She had to calm the skip of her heart.

“Of course, Agnes, I don’t plan on leaving you alone.” “Me too,” she found herself saying without thought. “Hmm?” “I’ll stay with you too.”

She watched his hand tighten on the handle, finding herself slumping against him. Alternis, she decided, was very warm, very cute, and very much someone she wanted to stay around.

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Janne could understand that Yew was a huge nerd. Loved his books and whatnot, would keep his nose stuck in a book for hours, days really, if he was allowed. Which was fine, Yew could be a nerd all he wanted.

The first time he and Janne spent a night together after all that happened felt…awkward.

They both danced around the things that happened, unable to meet each other’s eyes. Skirting around touch and anything that could cause confrontation. It was all pull aways and hidden secrets, things that both didn’t want to say or hear for fear what it could mean in the end.

Sometimes he thought of things he knew would worry and would concern.

Tiz and his thoughts found themselves often in the quiet moonlight, the sounds of the world beyond blurred from exhaustion or a simple lack of awareness. It didn’t feel uncommon for them to be born as a seed of a doubt, of a hate, of a regret, only to bloom into a monster he could not tame. And once it becomes a beast it did not stop its whispers upon his mind.

The comforts of Norende were to be rarely found when walls of fear and failure grew higher each night he watched the village fall into the chasm. And it felt each night he could remember more and more of the little details. And it felt that each nightmare made him think on the horrifying expressions the people he once knew must have had when they fell, when the earth beneath them crumbled and cracked. And each nightmare that his hand slipped from made him wish a little more that it could have been him. And each thought that followed sprouted another to claw at him and speak wrongdoings into his head.

And each thought brought a new nightmare, a new scenario, a new thought to start it over.

Sometimes it felt unreal, to wake up and see the darkness and not the horror in his brother’s eyes as he slipped from his grasp, or from being let go as some taunted him. Sometimes Tiz’s thoughts scrambled to find a perch, something to grab onto to keep him from crying out in absolute fear and agony from watching his brother fall. His thoughts were loud and they kept him awake at night with the taunts and the selfish desires.

Would it be so wrong to be selfish?

Egil helps, it eases his mind, tames what devours him and lets him rest. Not fully, never completely, but enough that he can walk without the fear of needing another for support. Egil is helped, out of a selfish desire more so than a general moral good one. He wants to save what he couldn’t before. He holds Egil’s hand with a grip tighter than ever needed on flat, solid ground.

But Tiz knows hat the ground can change, that it can crack no matter its strength. And that it can take more from him than anything else.

He knows that he will not let go again. And he doesn’t. He grips tighter despite the heat and he feels as if he’ll burn but he keeps tight. Lingers on the selfish desire for a bit longer. And if his thoughts confuse Egil for Til he doesn’t notice. And if he pretends this will fix his letting go no one will know.

He holds Egils hand tight and dares not let go.

But when he does he knows he must. And when he does the monsters come back.

His thoughts are not all tame, some still tower and sneer and some still tell him he’s failed. And many make him fall back into the hole he couldn’t get out of. But some are soft, they tell him he helped. They remind him of his friends. Some thoughts are kinder now, and he can speak to himself in gentler terms than the thick mist of hate.

And Tiz can think on his friends and know they do actually care for him, that the made-up hatred he’d made himself believe in was just a thought grown too big.

And at night he does spend hours asleep. And some nights he wakes up. And some he doesn’t sleep at all.

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It wasn’t that Yew didn’t trust his friends, he trusted them completely, with his life and more. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk, it wasn’t like he wanted to hide it all away inside him. More so, it was that it was a change Yew hadn’t quite come to accept. At least, not with his heart.

Yew wasn’t someone to blubber about his issues, not all the time. Not the ones that sat deep in his heart guarded carefully. His journal was a place where he could put his thoughts down without a fear of being judged, even when he did feel like someone was silently judging him when he wrote sometimes. But nothing was quite the same as outwardly speaking his problems to someone in person.

Janne wasn’t someone Yew spilled every detail of his life to, there were always things one kept to themselves. But he was someone Yew felt comfortable enough telling his fears to. Be that through whispers in the dark, hiding teary eyes and shaking hands, or in the middle of the day when things were quiet, and he couldn’t meet his eyes quite right. Janne, in many ways, to him, had become a comfort. A person he was okay letting everything down around, a person he was okay to be vulnerable to.

Janne was his friend who he felt a bond unlike any other. And he’d been sure that Janne had felt the same.

It was not that Yew didn’t trust his new friends, his comrades, his heroes. It was simply that they had yet to reach the same level of comfort as Yew had felt with Janne. He’d put his life in their hands without a second thought, but he hadn’t quite reached the same state that those years with Janne had. They were not yet the friend Yew had been willing to spill everything for.

They’d certainly get to that point, he already held such a high trust for them. But, in many ways, he’d yet to fully let go and accept all that happened. A small part of him still held onto the belief that it had all been a mistake and that they’d all be back together. All three of them. Most of him knew that wasn’t going to happen, but part of him just wanted is life back, his bond with a person he let so deep in his heart.

Janne hated the Geneolgia family. Janne hated the name, the mere sound making his blood boil.

Once upon a time it had struck a fear into him, a memory of a name that had ended all he’d known. Once it had made his insides twist in a manner that made him cower. The fear that had haunted his nightmares had spiraled into a rage as he’d grown, a feeling that made his mind buzz and his heart ache in the want for what he felt they deserved.

Janne felt rage towards the Geneolgia name. A feeling in his gut that drove him forward. A feeling that drove him to be better, to be the best. A feeling that mixed with his natural competitiveness and desires, a feeling that had spurred him onto the path of bloodied revenge.

Janne felt sorrow when thinking on those lost to that family and their greed. He felt an anger when he thought of the family he had lost. How the Balestra name had fallen beneath the boot of a family only concerned with their own betterment. Janne felt a weakness thinking on his family, not unlike a child lost from their mother. A mourning feeling that crept up his throat that he forced down. He was a Balestra, he couldn’t fall to such a thing, not yet, not ever.

Yew bore the same name, that of Geneolgia. And yet no matter what Janne tried he couldn’t fully push the image onto Yew, couldn’t pull the pieces of that wretched family onto Yew Geneolgia. Yew was not the same. He wasn’t just a Geneolgia, he was…well, he was Yew.

A boy who got stuck high on the spire because of fear while trying to prove himself. Yew was a person who’d rather stick his nose into a book then get into the same muddied mischief as others. Yew found enjoyment in knowledge and found fear in a great many things. From ghosts to heights, from waking Janne to check the shadows in the night to having to be carried down. Yew Geneolgia was a person Janne found friendship in.

Janne Balestra hated the Geneolgia name. All that they were and all they had done, he had chosen this path alongside the Kaiser to fix what he felt had been wrong, and finally give himself what he felt deserved. Janne Balestra would snap and sneer that he hated all under that, be it Yew or otherwise.

Janne would not admit that Yew’s wounded look did hurt him inside. Janne felt hate towards all that was what he hated. Janne told himself he would hate Yew Geneolgia. Janne hated Yew Geneolgia.

Tiz dreamed mainly of certainties, of definites, of ‘did happen’. Tiz dreamed of the past. Sometimes whole other times mixed and matched with pieces from other nights and other times. Some were dreams of pieces pulled together of events, others were dreams of what was gone in detail as it had been.

Tiz had nightmares of the certainties.

Many times over had he been told it hadn’t been his fault, he knew their words were true in many ways but it was hard to accept. A brother was a protector, a person to rely on, particularly for a younger sibling still green in the ways of the world.

Tiz had nightmares of the certainties. He dreamed of the grip on his brother’s wrist, of the horror in his eyes and his own looking back. They all started out the same, all of them started with that moment where the ground began to quake beneath them.

Sometimes he dreamed of letting go. He knows he didn’t, that he’d held on like hell, but sometimes when he’d only just awoken, with the bile in his throat, he couldn’t really recall if he had let go. If he’d actually thought about letting his brother go. Sometimes it was right, sometimes he held on as tightly as he could, sometimes the dreams showed what had happened and the slip of his brother’s hand through his own made him wake up with the want to beat his own head in for not saving him. Other times he dreamed of watching the ground split away, of having the time to call, to grab Til, but he didn’t. In those dreams he did nothing. In those dreams he watched the ground break away and take his brother whilst he did nothing.

Those were the dreams when he’d wake up with an anger and despair in his heart so grand that he wanted to tear it out. Those were the nights he’d stumble outside and sob into the night, begging for his little brother back. Those were the nights he couldn’t hold in the tears and didn’t mind the cold splitting his skin in the air. Those were the nights he felt he deserved every wrong in the world.

It wasn’t sleep that escaped him. It was the desire to sleep that did.

Sleep became a fear, in a way. In a way it was childish of him to stay awake and hide from the nightmares that brewed away in his head. He knew it made him a liability, too tired to think clearly in the heat of importance. But fear it was and it was a fear that gripped him tightly and made him feel sick to his stomach, a fear that replayed the images he could remember from those fractured dreams. And maybe the stewing on these images and thoughts, of the horrible fall, of the horrible look, of everything, that made them worse. He did sleep, yes, when exhaustion finally pulled him down into a tumbled sleep.

Sometimes when he awoke he’d awaken Ringabel when they shared a room. Sometimes he’d latch onto that source of living, of being awake, of being away from the nightmares that waited for him. Sometimes he’d hold his breath and hope the man would fall back to sleep without a worry. Sometimes Ringabel did, sometimes he talked. Sometimes Tiz responded, most times he couldn’t.

Other nights when he didn’t wake anyone or he was alone a part of him wished he had, that someone would force help upon him because he couldn’t do that himself. Those nights he’d stumble out of his room, maybe their room depending, and tried to hold in his emotions until he could force them back in line with a rough wipe of heavy and sore eyes.

He tried his best, he knew that’s what people would say. He didn’t much care for that.

But he did try his best, for his friends, because they relied on him too. And maybe in a selfish way he was using them, using them just to make himself feel better, to give him someone else to worry over, someone who would rely on him. Maybe Tiz was very selfish.

Maybe, in thoughts he’d never share, Tiz was selfless in wishing it could have been him, that he’d fallen. In a way, was that not selfish on its own? Yes, he was wishing his brother alive, but he was also, in a way, pushing the feelings he felt now onto a Til that had survived. Tiz was selfish in a way, but did he not deserve a moment to be selfish?

Tiz tried not to be, he tried to be a person his friends could trust and smile with, a person to do good and make them happy. Tiz tried to make it through the days whilst the lack of sleep tugged at his mind. And at the end of the day Tiz was tumble down to sleep be it willingly or not, usually the latter.