Starglow Basin We don't wanna go home

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: tw for language, drugs, slight suicidality

Aw but mostly a quick update to level set where she is. Can absolutely be read only

The withdrawal hit her like a truck. As her injuries slowly healed, ugly and scabbed as they became, the sickness became her primary hell. She refused any green that they might have attempted to give her. If she took the drugs she’d remember.

Fuck that. She wanted to forget.

Maybe, if it got bad enough, she’d finally be done with all of it. Tierra could almost convince herself she wanted that, if only because when that day came, she wouldn’t have to deal with any of this anymore. None of it.

Fuck him. Fuck her for trusting him. Nothing she cared about ever lasted, so yeah, maybe she’d been stupid to think this would turn out different. And then, just like that, he was gone. Leaving her here, in hell, with nothing but regret over ever letting herself care about him in the first place.

She should leave. She was too good for this place and didn’t owe them shit. Tierra had family out there, wolves who cared about her. But despite everything, Soto hadn’t let her die. And as much as she might want to, Tierra couldn’t hate him for it.

So she’d stay. But Sangre was his and he was gone. If she was going to stick around, it would be on her terms.

Tierra shivered as a chill ran through her, her gut churning again for the dozenth time that morning. If she lived through this, she’d stick it out as long as she wanted to. But no more hopes. And no more heroics.

Next time she’d know when to run.

sangre. his stunning, sleeping sangre.

she refused la bruja’s tonics, and soto’s offer of the green. as infection turned to virulent bodily anger and at last the fiery vestiges of sickness ebbed away to prevailing recovery, soto imagined he saw something reborn in sangre.

his red bird, rebirthed in the placental ashes of murder and loss.

they’d fled together, hid together, fought together, killed together. bound now by tethers of blood and the immutable rights of survivorship.

not once had soto left her unguarded, and as the days turned to weeks his attitude towards her subtly changed.

that was niño’s ghost in him talking, he knows — but as he looks out over the deeply red sands that stretch for miles and miles, soto smiles to himself.

that bastard, soto thinks as the steady rhythm of sangre’s breathing rises and falls in step with his own. it was just like him to leave them, and yet, never leave at all.

She didn’t know when Soto appeared there.  Maybe he’d been there the entire time and she just hadn’t realized it.  He usually was, lurking around, though it wasn’t like she could speak with him well.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to learn more.  That desire had died too, despite her current (intermittent) use as his translator.

She didn’t push herself up.  If she tried to sit she’d be sick.

I should’ve let you die instead, she said, but there wasn’t much venom in it.  Just hollow loss.  That was it, right?  He was in charge.  It was his fault they’d been attacked.  It was his fault there’d been any trouble at all.  It was his fault that Niño… Octavio… was dead.

But he’d saved her life, so she couldn’t even be properly pissed at him.  Didn’t even have the heart to say it in his own language. This guy had been the boss.  But they’d both answered the call.  Maybe they were all stupid.

She stared at him, but didn’t say anything more.  The gang had grown while she’d been recovering.  He’d been busy, replacing them.  So now what?

for a moment he closes his eyes and the phantoms behind them give it a rest; it's just him and sangre in this empty, black space.

her voice intrudes. words he doesn't understand.

he opens his eyes slowly, gaze affixing on her scarred features. in the present, she was so very different than the image octavio held onto in soto's head. it was like two images blurring over one another; the lines congruent and yet somehow, out of shape.

the green; he didn't touch the stuff but now he wondered if it was in the water or somehow his food. what was happening to him? did she see it? did everyone else?

he wanted to press her to ask what she meant, but the way she stares at him now forbids it.

soto frowns, licks his lips, and looks towards the northeast, where their enemy lies skulking like a puma in wait.

there's nothing to say, and he's never been a man for monologues anyway.

besides, the two ghosts in his head do plenty of talking and presently, they're bickering over which hole of sangre's they'd like better.

soto sighs as he studies a shape moving in the distance. he can feel sangre's stare burn into him, and somehow it aggravates him more than his wounds do.

He ignored her.  Figures he would.  It was what she wanted, the entire reason she’d spoken so that he wouldn’t understand.  She didn’t give a single fuck what he thought.

And then, suddenly, she was furious.  She was probably furious the entire time, but being faced with the back of his head brought the venom to the surface.  It struck like a snake, bursting forth.

Muerto.  She spat, getting shakily to her paws to glare at him.  Her stomach curdled with warning but she ignored it.  There was nothing in it to bring up anyway.  Tú.  Él no.  At least she knew enough to piece together something close to what she meant.

She didn’t know what she wanted from him.  An apology for living?  For letting Niño die?  Those weren’t coming and even if they did, it wasn’t like that fixed anything.  She just wanted him to hurt.  She wanted him to fight her so that, then, they’d both be angry.  And maybe then she wouldn’t feel so fucking alone.

he stares at the enemy outside their gates without ever coming to the conclusion that they lurk within. it’s sangre’s unexpected vitriol that has him turn back, eyes briefly darkened in surprise. 

there’s no taking back those words. soto — the real soto — is unhurt by the venom. but the soto that has survived against all likelihood, been imprisoned and tortured, and now shared an unbreaking and deeply traumatized kinship with the only other known survivor who understands what he’s gone through — is stunned. 

he might have reeled were it not for the sharp drop abutting them. 

and it is the jaguar’s snarl that comes briefly to his ugly face; that instinct to strangle her and push her useless body right off the cliff — but she is not afraid of death anymore, is she? they share a mutual contempt for that endless echelon, because they both have experienced it and somehow escaped it. now, they’re worse than dead as they pick up the pieces of their former selves scarred like shrapnel around them. 

no, survivor is just another word for displaced. they may still draw breath, but what life is it when your past self is dead and the only good in you killed?

he sets back, the ghost of juarez fading. some other is speaking to him now.  in the back of his mind soto grapples for the control he is slowly losing. 

the edge is so close, his breaking point slung right over it. 

por qué? he wants to yell - but it is another expression far older than memory that comes to the surface too: et tu, sangre? 

rather than fight, he sinks to his hind end and stares — like so much of the living world, he’s simply run to exhaustion.

Her words don’t impact in the way she expects. She wanted anger. Instead he just stares. There’s no satisfaction for her afterwards. Instead she just feels sick.

She can’t handle it. She spins and stumbles to a spot a short distance away, dropping to press her forehead against the stone wall. I don’t care. I don’t care I don’t care I DON’T CARE. It becomes a scream inside that chokes her, coming out as a sob.

They are all already dead. She cannot care about any more dead. By the time she’s done she’ll make sure she’s hollowed out any spot where that care might live. This guilt she felt? It wasn’t real. He didn’t deserve it.

But she was fighting a losing fight against a breakdown, pressed up against the wall, and the entire time she shook she could feel his eyes. JUST GO AWAY!. She wanted to scream it, but she didn’t even know who she was screaming at.

a different lifetime ago he’d been here before. 

 not a ghost, this marciela that stood in place of sangre with a sob wrestled out from her tight chest.  

soto has not allowed himself to think of her once since coming to the teekon — and now she, and all of the buried hideousness that chapter of his life signals, demands freedom. 

but it’s sangre, not marciela, here in the now. 

 she presses her head to stone and a part of soto longed to console her somehow. niño, maybe. not him. 

he stares at that crumpled form of red tissue and thinks it will always be this way; a gap he can’t cross, a win he can’t notch. 

he can’t escape, but maybe sangre can. 

so he says something very unlike himself, if only because they are alone and he sees her death painted there on the red desert sands. no tienes que quedarte.

her freedom, offered only once. it is the only empathy soto will ever afford her, and its window expires the moment she refuses to take it.

She’d never faced death before this.  Her loved ones had only ever disappeared, never died.  And while she’d been fucked up before, this was different.  She could still feel the teeth in her neck every time she turned.

Panic, agony, hatred, fear.  It all pounded in her like a drum.  It took her a moment to even realize he’d spoken.  Another to sort out the meaning of the words.  Don’t stay.

Of course.  She was a pathetic excuse for a soldier and he’d replaced them a few times over now.  Right?  She could go.  She didn’t have to die here with them, or stick around to remember all the dreams she’d dreamt that now lay shattered.  Stupid, naive dreams that never had a chance in hell anyway.  Who the fuck did she think she was?!

She was still shaking, and her breathing was shallow as she fought for control.  Todos estamos muertos.  She finally managed to respond, and there was naked fear behind the words.

Lo siento  She added, quieter.  He was already just as dead as she and Niño.  She hadn’t needed to say it.  And despite her fear, despite everything, she knew she couldn’t leave.  At least here she maybe mattered.  Maybe she was crazy, but being dead was better than being nobody at all.  Especially when being nobody meant being alone.

soto is under no pretense; he knows he’s not a good man. to offer her freedom — a carrot dangled on a stick — after niño had dragged her, drugged her, and now brainwashed her. soto did not do these things individually, but he’d abided it. he’d seen niño drag her into camp, the new flame for all eyes to toy with. 

she does not leave. marciela’s sobs fade from hearing, replaced now by sangre’s audible tremors. 

we’re all dead, she says. a cracked grin breaks soto’s solemn face, illuminating his one good eye in a mad gleam. algún día, si. ahora no.

but now his patience for softer things wanes; niño and juárez have fallen eerily silent and marciela is mercifully back in her crypt. 

there is no room for apology in the cartel. soto turns his gaze back to the simmering keep in the distance, and does not speak again.

There’s no comfort from him. She didn’t expect it but still feels lonelier, afterwards, with only a grinning response. Not yet, but soon. She’s afraid to be here, afraid to be alone, afraid to leave and afraid to stay. On the green she hadn’t been afraid of anything. But now she’s too afraid of it too, it and the memories it might bring.

She can’t pull it together here and it’s suddenly too much, having him there with her. She needs something from him that she at least knows better than to ask for.

Tierra gets to her feet and abruptly leaves, limping out of the shared space and instead finding a corner of her own to curl up in while she gives over to the fear. Maybe eventually she’ll be able to smile in the face of it the way he does. Not right now and likely not any day soon.

he spares her the satisfaction of knowing how her abrupt departure really feels. 

marciela had done the same. 

something in the segundo’s eye hardens as he turns to the endless ruby landscape. 

sangre. 

the missing space where her body had been seconds before says more to soto than words ever could.