Cyan Falling

Reprieve Part 1

The room that they were waiting in was organised in such a way that it felt both spacious and cramped at the same time. There were soft cotton chairs with metal frames lining the wall to the right of the room, not unlike the ones you might find in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. There was a table in the middle, round with three mismatched chairs around it in no kind of thoughtful position.

There was a section of counter space at the back with a sink and cabinets along the top, ending in a matching shelf that housed a small microwave. Next to the sink, there was an electric kettle and a mini-fridge with a glass front (there were a few cans inside, but nothing else) and on the floor beside the last counter was a wastepaper bin.

The vending machine was against the wall, next to the door to the left, facing into the room. It was the only thing offering much illumination apart from the flickering fluorescent light that ran in a bar along the ceiling above the table. It wasn’t very bright, but it did the trick.

The carpet was the thin, oddly textured sort that was neither soft nor hard, sort of rough maybe, like the stuff that came in tiles and got used in office spaces because it was cheap and stopped chairs and desks from scraping and squeaking against the floor.

It smelled faintly of sea water and coffee throughout the room, just strongly enough that it came out over the smell of linen from the washers, the same smell that hung from their clothes, the fabric soft and pleasing after so long spent in their slightly itchy “you’re-definitely-not a-prisoner” garments or leather. It was oddly comforting in a way.

Cyan and Jaesong sat beside each other on the chairs on the right of the room, resting in relative silence, allowing their conversation to lapse naturally. It was a comfortable silence, one that allowed them both to re-centre themselves, to breathe after far too long feeling breathless in the thick of things.

The air in the room was cool against the exposed skin of their faces, necks, hands and ankles. It was odd to be in something so much less restricting, it wasn’t all heavy-duty or skin-tight and heavy. There was a weight off, perhaps both figuratively and in the more literal sense.

The stress they had both been under was slowly ebbing away as they simply stopped and co-existed for a while, co-existed to the quiet hums and whirrs and soft scents and mild air. All that cacophony of overwhelming sensations was gone.

It was pleasant as it was, and yet, there was something that was missing, something that remained incomplete. There was an urge of a kind, a prodding that came from the inside to reach out, to silently ask for more than the shared space between them. It was almost perfect and not quite enough.

To reach out.

It was something so simple and yet it was still so complex. Was it appropriate, in the moment, or would it prove to be a fragile thing? Would it break the little comfort that they had garnered in their momentary isolation from the outside noise? Or, would it be mutually beneficial to them, allowing them a little more refuge in each other than they had before?

There was really only one way to find out and it was up to one of them to take that step, that easy, simple, and frustratingly, gnawingly impossible step. Cyan wasn’t used to being so unsure of himself, but he had been discovering how glaring his own vulnerabilities were in so many moments crammed together throughout this journey that they had embarked upon.

Maybe he really should be accustomed to it at this point. He was too tired to pay much heed to his own feelings then. He felt floaty, tired, was aware of things that should, maybe be tumultuous inside his head, but felt detached from them, like he was an outsider to his own inner thoughts.

And, just like that, without any conscious decision to do so, Cyan leant sideways and allowed his head to rest against Jaesong’s shoulder. He let out a sigh of both tiredness and relief as he did so, blinking slowly as he tried to bring himself back to his body. However, there in that moment, it was too hefty of a task for him to undertake.

Jaesong simply allowed it, didn’t shift or tense up, just simply stayed as he was, maintaining the odd peacefulness that had managed to envelop them.

Something about them being each other’s only company in the room removed any social pressure. Cyan’s floaty feeling remained consistent as he sat there, leaning against his friend, allowing his guard to fall completely away for the time being.

Seconds and minutes ticked by and Cyan distantly thought that maybe this was what dissociation was like, maybe that’s what his brain was doing. After everything, it might not be much of a surprise, or a leap to presume it.

“You good?” Jaesong asked gently. “You seem a bit far away.”

“Mm, ‘m good.” He managed to respond, talking proving a little more difficult than usual.

“Okay.” Jaesong accepted the answer and they returned to their shared silence.

They remained in their bubble together as the seconds and the minutes ticked by and then the hours as they waited for the laundrette to close up for the night. Neither of them was sure of how much time had passed, Cyan’s visor had stopped displaying the correct time before he had removed it while changing and he didn’t plan to use it again yet, so there wasn’t much point in checking it.

Perhaps he should have gotten Jaesong to take a look at it to see if he could fix it by now, but his brain was still fuzzy and his priorities were muddled in the static of it all. He couldn’t focus on much at all, everything sort of happening in a muffled, out of focus sort of way, like he was experiencing it all in third person instead of from within his own body.

All of a sudden, he felt Jaesong’s fingers brush against his cheeks, under his eyes. It was as though he could barely feel it at first and then it was all he could feel. It was like his consciousness just rubber-banded back into his body as the contact and all his limbs were heavy and aching. He realised, quite belatedly, that he had started to cry and wasn’t sure how long he had not been noticing for.

“You’re okay.” Jaesong said, voice barely above a whisper. “It’s been a lot. You can cry if you need to. You don’t need to hold it back in front of me.”

And just like that, it was as though a dam had broken. The tears came thicker and heavier, like a dark cloud finally bursting into a rainstorm. Like it had been brewing since the dawn of time and the rain tipped over him, swept over his heart in a drenching downpour. He wasn’t necessarily distraught or sad, more like, he was overwhelmed.

He was overwhelmed with everything that he had been through, all the battering and bruising, everything that he knew he still had to face, all of the information that had been brought to light, all the mysteries that remained, all the people lost and the people gained, all the uncertainty and open-endedness, the purpose and the simultaneous lack of direction.

All of it fell on his shoulders and weighed on him as he dragged it around, hauled it from place to place as the weight and the pressure grew and grew and grew until his muscles failed him and he collapsed onto the ground where he stood. It was too much, all of it was too much and he knew that it was partially a problem of his own making.

He was being confronted with the reality of his life, that he had been stuck in this rut without even realising it, clinging to the past while desperately trying to shove it to the back of his mind and bury the painful feelings that those memories evoked. He had been bottling up way too much and now it felt as though the walls that he had carefully built around himself were paper thin.

Things were cracking and tearing and spilling out through the gaps, overflowing at the seams that were slowly pulling their stitches from being overstuffed for so long. He had a thought in the back of his mind that maybe he was weak; it came like a dark creeping vine that came from the shadowy blackness of buried subconsciousness.

“Am I weak?” He said aloud without thought, feeling that his voice was treacherous to him.

“No.” Jaesong replied, simple and sure.

“I don’t feel very strong right now.” he admitted.

“But you are, nevertheless. You’ve faced a lot, more than most, more than anyone should ever have to, been under unimaginable pressure, lived through a multitude of horrors and yet you carry on and power through it all. When you fall, you get back up. When the wind leaves your sails, you row. Allowing yourself to express your negative emotions as well as the good ones, whether it’s anger, grief, fear, sadness… whether you cry or not, it’s honest and honesty is never weakness. Honesty is power, especially when you are honest to yourself.” Said Jaesong.

“Thank you… for saying all that… for being here… for letting me lean on you even though you must be feeling a lot yourself. I’m tempted to say I don’t know why I’m like this now, but the truth is that there’s just too many reasons to list.” Cyan said, sounding a little less quiet, a little less far away.

“You’re welcome, Cyan, always.”

They sit in the quiet for a while longer, a new sense of understanding and empathy between them, a vulnerability that also felt like a strength, like something tightly woven and sturdy, something that would catch all of the pieces of them if they crumbled.

The bonelessly relaxed feeling that settled over them continued even when Syd reappeared to let them know that the laundromat had finally closed up for the night. She seemed to have a softness that came over her expression when she looked at them where they were seated, as though she somehow understood what they were feeling.

“Come on. I will show you where you can rest.” She said, her voice a little less hard, a little quieter as though speaking to a child teetering on the edge of sleep.

“Lead the way.” Cyan replied, standing groggily as Jaesong did the same.

She offered them a small, almost knowing smile and beckoned for them to follow her before she turned to go back through the doorway, away from the break room. As they followed, she led them to a door over to the right of the room. It opened with a metal bar that had to be pushed down, like the ones commonly found on emergency exits to larger buildings on Earth.

The door led to a small hallway that was more like a small rectangle of concrete flooring enclosed with old bricks and metal panels. Then, on the left was a metal staircase that doubled back on itself as it went up to the next level of the building. It was dimly lit with neon strip lights that followed the lightly rusted bannisters and the damp, metallic smell of it was disrupted only by the smell of salt water that covered the whole city.

Their footfall clanked against the metal steps as they ascended, not speaking but simply following where they were taken. The promise of a dry place to sleep was becoming more and more appealing with each and every step they took.

Syd stopped them outside a metal door, this one with no handles but a panel on the front about thirty centimetres long and ten centimetres wide. She placed her fingertips upon the panel and as she did so, the patches where her fingertips met cold metal lit up in a dull white glow before the door made a noise like a stiff lock being turned and popped ajar.

“Come on inside. I can make some hot tea and we can all get some rest.” said Syd as she held the door open for them and closed it firmly once they were inside, re-locking it.

She moved her way into the small kitchen-diner at the far end of the entrance hall and put the kettle on to boil as Cyan and Jaesong took in their new surroundings.

The apartment was small but homey. The hall had three doors at the side (two on the right, one on the left) and the kitchen was through an archway with a window directly centred on the threshold. In front of the window was a round wooden table with three chairs around it, each with a mis-matched cushion tied to it with string. There was an empty vase in the middle of the table, next to a bowl of strange fruit and a spiral-bound notebook.

The kitchen itself was cramped against the wall to the right side of the room, consisting of a small counter space, a miniature stove top with two burners above a small oven built into the counter, and near the far wall was a sink and a compact drying rack for dishes, cutlery and mugs. There were cupboards lining the wall above the counter and a fridge-freezer hugging the inside wall, away from the oven.

The counters and cupboards were a deep teal and the countertops were a mottled off-white that wasn’t quite in the pattern of marble. The fridge was a plain white one and upon looking down, the floor was a simple patterned linoleum.

The whole place smelled like lemons and there was no way to tell whether it was from cheap cleaning products or from some herbal tea, or maybe a combination of both.

Syd leaned against the sink as the kettle boiled on the stove, while Cyan and Jaesong took seats at the table and waited.

Cyan couldn’t help but think of his own apartment back on Neron-12. He never thought that he would miss the place while out on a mission, but for some reason he felt himself longing for the familiarity of his own bed. He wished, in the back of his mind, for the loud traffic and heavy rainfall of the city. He missed his corkboard of memories and his little kitchenette and the stupid single window at the front of the place that made it look like a motel. He never really thought of it as a home, but at that moment he was missing it, as though that was what it really was. He missed Helena too, his favourite blacksmith and, before Jaesong, his only true friend in this world.

He resolved to himself that he would stop taking his life for granted once this mission was over and done with. He would go back and sleep in his own bed and listen to a playlist of old songs from Earth while he cooked himself some stupid instant mac and cheese. He would visit Helena and thank her and apologise for being an ungrateful brat of a friend for so long.

He knew that she knew that he appreciated her and her friendship and reliability, but he also knew that he didn’t really show it nearly enough. He would go and see Bonnie too, regale him with tales of his journey and continue to tease him with his nickname just to rile him up a bit.

He also found that, when he thought of his home, the place where he would return when all of this was done, he could no longer picture it without Jaesong in it. He could no longer picture his life without Jaesong’s company and when he tried, he did not like it at all. He didn’t want to give up any small part of what they had built.

He wondered if Jaesong felt the same, if he would go back with Cyan and stay with him even when Callus was dead and everything was finished. Would he choose to stay with Cyan even then? What would it mean if he did stay?

Once again, he was conflicted with his own thoughts and feelings. Perhaps, upon his return, the first thing on his mind should be finding a reputable therapist. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have the money for it.

He knew that he was scared of what was to come, of the many possible futures that awaited them. He feared his own emotions and what they meant for him. He feared what he could lose, and that was it, wasn’t it? He had something to lose now, something precious and irreplaceable.

If Jaesong were to be torn from him in any way, like Savannah had been torn from him, suddenly, brutally, unfairly… he knew with certainty that he would not recover. He could not bear it, he could not fathom continuing on after such a loss. Perhaps, he considered, that was how Savannah had felt when she did what she did; that she could not fathom continuing on when someone so dear to her, who had become a part of herself in many ways, was torn from her suddenly, brutally, unfairly.

He had to shake the thoughts from his head before they could take root and send him down another spiral. He didn’t usually allow himself to drift into thoughts of Savannah, but maybe his time in the break room with Jaesong had opened something up within him, broken a dam and fixed it all at once.

He had gained a weakness, a weakness that could easily be exploited if the wrong person knew that it was there… but he had also gained a great strength, one that could not be rivalled. This fear was the price of such a bond.

He broke from his thoughts when he felt the light pressure of Jaesong’s hand around his wrist. He looked over and the other was already looking at him. He offered Cyan a sad smile, a gentle reassurance for the turmoil that he had no knowledge of playing a part in. It was something so open and genuine, something he had been short of until their meeting: kindness.

There it was, his weakness and his strength in the kind eyes of his friend, of the man that had uprooted himself to accompany a stranger on a perilous journey across worlds. He wished he had the courage to turn his arm and grasp that reassuring hand in his own, but it would be too vulnerable. He dismissed the intrusive urge with the knowledge that he did not understand himself well enough to indulge it, though he was on his way.

The kettle whistled on the stove and Syd picked it up to pour the hot water into three glass mugs that she had pulled from the overhead cabinet. The tea’s aroma was earthy and a little bit floral, soothing before it had even been tasted.

She placed two of the mugs in front of them and kept the third for herself. She stayed leaning against the counter and quietly observed them over the brim of her cup, as though she was trying to figure something out about them, or was pondering whether or not she had read them correctly.

They relaxed for a while in the kitchen, getting to know Syd a little better. They found she had inherited the business from her family before they moved away to one of the other domes on the planet with her little sister for a better education. She stayed to make a living and it suited her just fine. She didn’t want to venture out of the dome and she was comfortable and content where she was.

As the evening drew on, they found their energy flagging. Syd showed them to the room where they could sleep.

“This will be your room. There is a bunk and a desk. It used to be my sister’s room. The bathroom is through the next door and mine is across the hall. Knock if you need something.” She said and then she left them to their own devices, disappearing behind her bedroom door.

“Right, well, do you want the top or the bottom bunk?” Cyan asked once they had entered the room.

It was a little bit cramped and carried the same scent of sea salt and lemon that the rest of the building did, along with that scent of fresh linen that drifted through the laundromat below. The sheets must have been recently laundered.

It seemed, however, that the room hadn’t been touched much apart from to keep it clean and the surfaces relatively free of dust. The bunks were pushed against the wall to the right and the desk was at the far end, in front of a small porthole window that looked out into the alleyway between the buildings.

“I’ll take the bottom, easier to get to the desk and I think I might try and fix up your visor a bit while we have some time.” Jaesong replied.

“You can wait until tomorrow for that, you know?” Cyan said.

“I know, but I want to get started on it as soon as possible, while the motivation is fresh. I’ve always been more inclined to work at night time anyway.” He answered, taking a seat on the bottom bunk.

“You’re a night owl then?”

“A night owl? What is an owl?” Jaesong asked, the uncommon phrase piquing his interest.

“It’s a common term from Earth. Owls are a nocturnal bird species local to my planet that hunt their prey at night, so when a person gets most of their work done in the evening or enjoys staying up late, we call them a night owl.” Cyan explained as he began to climb up the short ladder to the top bunk.

The frame was metal and so it clanked as he made his way up, only removing his boots when he was at the top and throwing them haphazardly onto the floor.

“I’d like to hear more about Earth, if you are willing to tell me. I’d like to know more about your home.” Jaesong said, trying not to let his nervousness show in his voice, knowing that the question, the curiosity may prod at a sore spot.

“It’s not my home anymore. It never will be again.” Cyan replied, not harshly, but more just as a statement of a fact, one that he was resigning himself to, a reality he was accepting.

“You don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry that I asked.”

“No, don’t apologise. I can tell you about Earth, just… maybe another time.”

“That’s okay, I understand.”

“I’d like to show you my new home though, once all of this is over, introduce you to Helena. I think you’d like her, she’s a blacksmith, and made most of my gear and weapons.” Cyan offered, hoping it would be enough to reassure Jaesong that he wasn’t being shut out, that he hadn’t crossed a line.

“I’d like that.” Jaesong said, quietly, a small smile on his face, and though Cyan couldn’t see it from where he was lying on the bunk, he could hear it in his tone.