#versimon

Is there any interest if I do a GA for this #expedition33 jacket?

I ended up with 2 because I wasn’t too sure about the sizing. The one I’d be giving away is size XL (like 60cm chest width - laid flat).

you, forever

The dirt was rock-hard, cold, and fuck, it made Verso’s fingers ache as he dug. He alternated between a knife that did little, a rock that did more, and numb bleeding fingers that did even less. He should wait until spring, when the ground softened and ice turned to mud and the ground yielded easier.

But easier wasn’t what he wanted; this felt more like penance or judgment or whatever word he could fucking give that did so little to describe the guilt clawed into his heart like a desperate animal fighting to avoid being shoved away into that void of feeling where he put everything else.

“I’m still fucking angry,” he hissed, the words gritted between his teeth like venom. “You left. You left me. You left us. Without a word, without a ——“ His finger caught on a buried stone, and he gasped, swearing as he jerked it back, shaking it even as blood oozed from the gouge.

Cold stung his cheeks, and dimly he was aware tears were slipping down his cheeks, freezing on skin. “You asshole. You died and left me here ——“ Words stuck in his throat, and the wind whipped through the valley, buffeting the furred collar ‘round his neck. His chest felt like it was caving inward, inward, coiling and crashing and how much more could he take?

The hole was big enough now; it didn’t have to be deep, because he had nothing to put in it. Nothing aside from a matchbox with a curved ’S’, beautiful, something he had gifted years and years ago, and a golden ribbon with a neat and sharp zero embroidered on black — that he wrapped around the matchbox, tight and neat, with the bitter knowing that the ribbon didn’t even fucking belong to the one he was burying because that disappeared too.

It was his own armband, because that's all he had.

“Fuck you for making me do this,” he hissed again, the anger clotting in his throat and feeling like it was choking him, even as he pushed it all into the shallow grave, fingers buckling. “I loved you and you left.”

Silence. The wind whistled through the trees, and a few errant flakes of snow drifted from the trees onto his shoulders, and in that moment all his anger curdled into nothing: nothing but grief and heartbreak and an agonizing pain he didn’t know how to deal with, and so his fingers just curled into frozen earth and he wept like a broken child.

“—— he’ll be fine.” The voice at Simon’s shoulder was calm, even: even now the chroma whispered between them, warm and dancing and almost playful. Simon felt —— strange, now, changed. It was small, distant, and his thoughts were muddy and hard to parse; it had been happenstance that he had seen this — or perhaps Clea had wanted him to? — but her fingers on the back of his neck were warm and reassuring even as some old memories surged and guilt clutched at his throat like a vise.

“Maybe I should——“

“No, you shouldn’t,” and her words were sharp but not unkind. “Come, now, Simon. We have much to do.”