You and John traveled everywhere together. What happened to change that? Why did he leave you?
"Who the hell do you think you are to ask that? Why don’t you take your bloody curiosity and shove it?"
...
John had gone on this type of self righteous speech before hundreds, if not thousands of times. Harry stared ahead, expecting the words to wash over her as did the other spats and barbs they shared every day. By now their squabbles had the pacing of a well practised script.
(What about this then? Isn't this just a beaut of a specimen? What genus do you think, Harry? (Does the genus even matter?) Come now Harry think of it as a- (Philosophical experiment, yeah but who gives a shit?) You just don't want to admit you've forgotten your Liliums, Harry. (And you wanted an excuse to show off, John.))
But there was something nasty in the air that day, a hunger of too few berries and mushrooms and tubers, a scrawny rat with enough meat to whet their appetites without satisfying it. The air was humid and cloying, clawing at Harry's throat, a twin attack pairing with every word cut from John's teeth. He kept talking, and talking, his words prickling her ears like a growing fire;
"-I've never expected you to love anyone, Harry. I knew that it wasn't something you are partial to. And I guess this is enough for you, like mum taking care of uncle, refusing to go to the dance with Mr Tyrell even though everyone knew he was mad about her. But… Harry, I loved Maria, and I don't expect you to understand that, but I miss that kind of love! I miss people, I miss new arguments, arguments we haven't hashed out a hundred times…” John raised his hands up into the air and then brought them down, palms slapping loudly against this thighs. “Can’t you do this, for me?”
Harry let John's bled out words pool for a moment, let them sink into the leaf litter and fertilise the trees around them. "Right," she said, tight, the word sneaking out of the corner of her mouth with a long repressed anger. "You want a new argument?"
"I want to meet and know and love new people.” He was talking with the drama of a fucking poet, all wide arm movements and puppy dog eyes. “I loved Maria, but it's been a lifetime since we left her, and I'm ready to find love like that again. I know you aren't a fan of Matthew's mob on the beach, but there are good people there, like Sisco and-"
Harry barked out a sharp, bitter excuse of a laugh. "For you… You say I don't know what love is-"
"Harriet, you're deliberately misinterpreting my words now. I didn’t say that-" He always called her by her full name when he thought he was in the right.
"No, that's what you said. I don't understand love." Harry turned her ice cold eyes to John then, gesturing about them with savage disdain. "What's this then? What's anything I've ever done?" It had always been for him.
John's face collapsed into a frustrated annoyance, pinched eyebrows, eyes dark and beady. "Harry that's not-"
"That's not what you meant, right. It's not enough that I worked the farm so you could go to uni-"
"Harry we both know that was hardly a sacrifice on your-"
"It's not enough that I read every textbook, that I practised your exams with you, read every essay, edited your damn research proposals, typed out all our notes-"
"Harry-"
"No! You let me speak, John. I don't know love!" Harry's voice broke on that word, jagged and raw. "You don't know love! You didn't even know Maria-"
John scoffed, and she couldn’t stand to look at him. "She was my fiancé Harry-"
"You knew her for three months before you got arrested and sent to the conchie camp! You hadn't even picked a ring before you went to that stupid demonstration-"
"Maria never wanted a ring-"
Harry didn't let John's interruptions phase her, she was an earthquake, the earth's place juttering out of place with catastrophic anger. "I didn't even like her, she was your fiance, but I was the one who stayed with her, I was the one who had to forge a life with her and find a way to survive when word got out where you were and no one would speak to us. We had no one but each other and..." For a moment Harry's deluge stopped, but she locked eyes with John, and his confused, hurt look drove her to twist the knife in deeper. "You weren't there. I was."
"What are you saying, Harry?"
"I... loved her." The word was uncomfortable in Harry's mouth, it didn't fit right, it wasn't the right word for what they had. A slow companionship, that changed into something more. Maria climbing into Harry's bed late at night, them both finding comfort in each other, ending with Maria leaving before morning. Was that love? Feeling so small and worthless in the face of her heart pattering whenever Maria laughed because of her, but liking it? Love would have to do, it was a best word Harry had to describe their relationship, and it was a word that brought John the most pain to hear. "As you should have done, if you weren't in prison-"
"Harry, what do you mean?"
"You know what I mean," Harry sneered, too far gone now, the cat out of the bag. A weightlessness to her, giddiness. Years she held onto this, bit back the bitter venom at the back of her throat. A secret, given wings and claws to and a sharp beak. “As a man should know his future wife.” The words hissed out of her mouth, serpentine savagery.
John sat himself down on a felled tree-trunk, the noise of the jungle around them suddenly unbearable. A screaming choir of crickets, grunting frogs, screeching parrots. Harry panted, the air rushing from her lungs as she saw John collapse on himself, his face gaunt and hollow.
His eyes swivelled to Harry, and all the bitterness leeched out of Harry. How could she hate him? John, who filled her first memory, leading him crying back home after he skinned his knee on the gravel. John, who was always by Harry's side, even when she was sour and misanthropic, her cruel words occasionally lashing out at him. John, who looked at her now as if she were a stranger.
"Were you ever going to tell me?" he asked her, and Harry wanted to stop his pain, pain she had caused moments ago. The instant regret after childishly starting a fight with her brother, only to immediately beg forgiveness. Where’s the cut John? That’s not too bad, come on, a cut like that deserves no tears, Johnny.
Harry bit her tongue, jaw jutted forward but eyebrows hinged in sadness. John knew her too well. They didn’t need words for him to understand her guilty confirmation. A secret she would have kept to the grave, except in this damned place that wasn’t guaranteed. They’d been stuck, frozen, and the secret had been buried inside Harry, turning her organs to rot. There was no way back now, not to the blissful ignorance of before this had come to light.
“You… You let me believe... all these years? A lifetime, without saying anything?” John, coming back home suddenly over the university break, crawling into Harry’s bed and sobbing about his first heartbreak, finding comfort in Harry’s steely resolve. Now he was repulsed by the hard glint to her eyes, the sharpness with which she held herself.
“And still I loved you more,” Harry continued, tears welling in her eyes, blurring John in her sight. “Maria asked me to break you out, and I did. I did it.” She had done it knowing that whatever she had with Maria would end, that she would have to watch she and John reunite, that she would swallow down whatever discomfort that brought her, because it was for John. “I did it for the both of you.” Don’t you dare lecture me about what I understand about love, John. What I should do for your sake.
“That… that isn’t love, Harry.” John stood up, looking pale, peaky. He shifted his pack on his shoulders, that dense, calculating look come to his eyes. He’d made a decision, one Harry wouldn’t like.
“John,” Harry said, as he turned his back on her, wordlessly marching through the jungle. “John!” she repeated, his gaze steadfastly fixed ahead. Look at me, she silently begged, grasping for his hands, which he snatched away from her.
“No, Harry!” John raged, whipping back to her. “Christ, I can’t even look at you… I need some time, Harry. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?” He laughed sardonically, arms out wide to the jungle around them. “To be left alone?”
“John-” Not like this, she silently pleaded.
“I’m going to the beach. I need a fresh start,” John spat, the implication clear in his clean use of singular ‘I’. Away from Harry, the troublesome older sister.
(Years and years on, nothing sticks out to Harry more than this sentence, a moment dissected and interrogated endlessly. An outright lie? A truth, prevented outside of John’s control? In all of her returns to the northern beach, there hadn’t been a single sighting of him.)
“John… I’m-”
“You’re not sorry, Harry,” John shook his head, backing into the jungle. “You’ve never looked so bloody satisfied in your life.”
And those were the last words they shared.
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What/Where/When: DND/Critical Role inspired but not required knowledge. Orym is a halfling fighter with the build of a dancer, a moral compass, a widower with a new unrequited love. He's loyal, smarter than he thinks, and willing to do what it takes to survive. He's just a little guy, so what happens when he's over powered and loosing hope in being saved?
additional what: non/dub con a-okay
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Orym pulled at the restraints but they were pretty damn firm. He wasn't the strongest halfling on the block, he knew that. He was quick, but not quick enough to out maneuver this particular band of thugs. He'd been more reckless than he should have been... running off alone was never the best idea. But he needed time to think. All this God Eater stuff was just too much. He needed to be alone with his thoughts... Clearly that had been a mistake.
He had a sack over his head, feet and hands bound. He was on a cart, he knew that much. He didn't hear anything other than the rolling of the cart and pretty soon that stopped. He felt himself being haul off of it. If it were his friends, they would have said something by now. He knew his weapons, his shield had been taken. His boots, too, which were magical.
Now he felt hands on his person, untying his hands but holding his small wrists tight enough to make him grimace in pain. Untying his feet... more than one person? He felt his armor and clothing being pulled from his body, leaving him bare. He fought his captors, struggling not to be bound again, but it was no use. His hands were tied in front of him this time, he felt a hand against the back of his neck, holding him firm. Larger than he was. But most people were.
"Let me go, you flithy bastards!"
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