strangetrip | [EP] The eye of the storm

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[EP] The eye of the storm

Anybody coming to find out what all the noise in the lobby had been about would find a girl sitting on the floor with a cat in her lap, bloodied hands stroking over its black fur.

When Yasmeen had gone away, when Sansa had gone away, Snow had managed to get herself out and away from the inn where she could let her noise out without fearing any person, or more importantly, the horses. And both those times, Kash had found her and helped her scrape herself back together. She had come so much to rely on him being there, that at first she hadn't believed it. She'd gone searching, like a child trying to grasp the meaning of dead. She'd wandered all over the grounds, gone to his room, gone to the stables, gone to the clinic, walked miles of paths. It was only then that she'd given up and asked Darryl.

Then she lost her shit.

She howled, threw anything small and breakable that she could lay her hands on, and punched the walls until her knuckles were raw and bleeding.

What was she going to do without him? Kash had always been there for her when she didn't think she could talk to anybody else. He had saved Juno. Who would help her now when any of the animals were injured or sick? Who would hear what she was saying, even when she couldn't say it? He was her friend. Perhaps the best friend she'd ever had.

This was what happened when you trusted people. They just left. They just fucking left.

And she probably would have screamed herself hoarse if it weren't for the feeling of a furry little body slinking around one of her ankles. Of course she wouldn't have been the only one left behind (which was a cruel and unfair thing to think, she was not the only person who loved Kash. She just didn't care right now). She crumpled to her knees and Socks climbed into her lap. After a long moment she began to pet him, no longer the little kitten she'd held out to Kash last Christmas. There was no peace in the silence, but she could not continue to rage with Socks holding her down. The moment he left that place, it would all rise up again. So for now, she sat there in the mess she'd made, staring at nothing, her blood running into his fur.

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The cat might need a bath, but for right now, he was purring contentedly away in Snow's lap and didn't seem to have any intention of moving out of it. Snow was grateful for it. That this little thing was still left to her was something, even if it wasn't enough, or what she wanted.

She made an attempt to lift a hand, fingers twitching, wrist curving upward. But she could not get her hand to actually leave Socks's back. Her face was pained, perhaps a little ashamed of herself, but she lowered her hand again and continued to pet. She only nodded again, just as slow and jerky as before.

"No hurry," Jag told her, "we've got time."

All the time in the world, actually, and little else but time, but Jag wasn't going to let his thoughts devolve into darker spirals when Snow was in crisis. He could brood about all of it later.

Which was good, because Snow did not speak for a long time. She did not know how. She could not imagine how to be anything other than completely still, or in raging motion. Her body would not do it. It was like trying to breath water or swim in air--utterly impossible.

Though slowly, slowly she accepted that her hands were already moving. She was petting Socks. It was doable.

Still, it took an age of silence before she finally croaked one word. "Kash."

Usually, Jag would have been playing with fire to pass the time. But she was on edge, and he didn't want to scare the cat. So he just watched the rhythmic motion of her hand on him, and let her have the time she needed.

Until she spoke, and he looked up into her face. "What about Kash? What's happened?"

Snow shook her head and jerked her chin toward Daryl behind the desk, expressionlessly cleaning up what mess had gone back there. There wasn't a scratch on him, though. Even in her rage, she had not. The staff, whatever they were, were not to be harassed or harmed. Not ever. They couldn't fight back.

But in this case, they could speak for her and say what was impossible for her to say.

Jag frowned, then pushed to his feet, leaving the medical stuff on the floor as he walked over to Daryl. The conversation was quick, but made his stomach plummet. Yeah, that would do it.

It might help if they had any clue what 'checked out' even meant. But it also wouldn't, right now; gone was gone, wherever it was Kash and his family had gone.

He came back to Snow, and sat back down across from her, a new shadow in his eyes. What could he say to this? The usual rote things, none of them helpful. He only gave her a sympathetic smile, ignoring the tight lump in his throat. He would offer a hug - that could help - but she had a cat in her lap.

Fuck, what would they do next time a horse fell ill? He wasn't sure either doctor knew very much about vet things.

Snow closed her eyes against it because she couldn't make herself lift her hands to cover her ears. And yet it still didn't hurt as much as trying to say the words herself.

She didn't mind about Zahra. The woman had quickly become a non-entity in Snow's mind and she didn't care in the slightest about Zahra, except in as much as she made Kash happy. She was a necessity, not a person.

But...

Her heart felt huge and heavy in her chest. She did not cry, she rarely did, but her whole body slowly sagged back against the wall

In a way, it was easier to focus on the clench of his heart in sympathy with Snow's loss than it was to focus on his own feelings. Jag didn't want to think about people disappearing; he didn't want to think about what that made him dread, and worse yet, consider in a not entirely negative light.

He shifted until he was sitting beside her, his own back to the wall. She could lean against him if she wanted, and still keep petting the purring cat.

Somehow, after a time, Snow found herself with her cheek pressed against Jag's shoulder. She did not consciously seek that comfort--she didn't usually consciously seek comfort from anybody but a select few people because she had been trained so carefully to expect that it would never come--but once she had done it it didn't feel uncomfortable or unnatural.

This time when she found speech, she managed an entire thought, her voice soft and dry as the rustle of paper. "What are we gonna do?"

Jag wasn't sure he'd ever touched Snow until now - or she'd ever touched him, really. When she leaned against him, he let it happen, keeping his breathing quiet, and even. He raised his eyes upward at her question, as if for inspiration, then said, "Keep on going. It's all we can do, here."

And if there was a hint of bitterness in his voice, he couldn't completely shut it off.

If there was a note of bitterness in his voice, Snow was about the last person who was going to blame him for it. "The horses..." It was much easier for her to worry about them than look at everything else she was feeling.

"We'll sort it out," Jag answered, although he was frowning. "We know them, and the doctors can make educated guesses, if we need them to." Or maybe they had only needed Kash because Kash was around. Maybe they would all be healthy, all the time, now that he was gone. It would be just like this place.

Snow's misery gave way to sneering, if only for a moment. Butters she couldn't imagine had ever touched a horse before. Jackson... she didn't know what even to expect from that jackass. All the same, "Guess we may need to."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, yeah?" Jag offered, and leaned his own cheek against her hair.

Snow wanted to worry about it now, though. It was tangible. Easy. So much smaller than the pit yawning inside her.

Because what she actually wanted to ask was, What am I going to do?

For the moment, she only made a soft, miserable sound in the back of her throat.

"Yeah," Jag echoed, quietly. He knew that sort of sound, and the way it echoed a lot of shit trapped in his chest.

"I don't know what to do with..." She lifted her hand from the cat's back and thumped her fist against her chest. Not quite her heart, but just the whole general heaviness in the area of her heart and her stomach. There wasn't a word for what she was trying to describe, or at least not one she could find right now.

Jag didn't feel the same grief she did; he liked Kash, but they'd become close enough for anything close to that. But he had his own mess of feelings piling up in his lungs, day in, day out. He swallowed, then answered, "Neither do I." A beat, and then, "Sorry."

"I want to put holes in everything," Snow whispered fiercely. "So many holes we can tear our way out."

"If I thought anyone could manage, it'd be you," Jag answered, glad that they were whispering, for the tightness in his throat. He paused, then admitted, "Sometimes I wonder how long it would take to build itself back up, if I burned it all to the ground."

Or if they actually turned the whole thing to ash and rubble if it would just stay that way, and then what would all of them do? But that thought did nothing to take away how much she wanted to rip it all down.

Snow lifted and offered the hand that she could not before when he'd wanted to bandage her. "Would you...?"

"Yeah. Yeah," Jag confirmed after a second, straightening up to reach out for the disinfectant, and a gauze pad. "Probably gonna hurt a bit," he warned her, and set to cleaning and disinfecting the wound. "You probably ought to ice it, too."

There used to be a bag of long expired peas in the freezer at the squat, for just that sort of situation.

Snow only made a gesture that was part shrug, part nod. The pain didn't matter. If anything, she welcomed the distraction of it. If it hurt enough, perhaps she might forget how much her heart hurt beating behind her ribs.

She hissed once, and then bore the rest stubbornly in silence.

Jag worked efficiently, then wrapped the scraped knuckles. He released her hand when he was done, and looked up to meet her gaze. "Ice?"

Snow nodded and, following a rare impulse she didn't understand, she kissed his cheek.

Snow was not well-practiced in giving kisses. Even with Regina, they were rare. Even though it was not a complicated thing, lips on skin, it did take practice and experience to do it nicely. The gesture was clumsy, made by a girl who was entirely unused to displays of affection, having had so little practice spending it or wanting to do so on anyone. She didn't know anything about being soft and pliant and warm. All the same, she had to do it, because the feeling inside her was too big for words.

In other words, it was very much a little girl's kiss.

Knowing she had not done that right even as she pulled away, she lowered her eyes.

[EP] The eye of the storm

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