The Tale You Tell

[andhiswife]

It's been a difficult week.

That's actually an understatement. But she can't let the full weight of it settle on her, not when she's out in public like this. So for as long as she's out here, doing some shopping, it's just been a difficult week.

She's told Baz and Simon about her situation. They'd offered to give her time off, but that wasn't what she wanted. The Gardens are one of the few places where she doesn't feel like climbing the walls. There's too much else going on, too many other things that require her attention. It's everywhere else that's the problem. Her apartment is too quiet and too empty and too immaculate; she can't even justify housework anymore because everything that could possibly need doing has already been done thrice over.

And she knows she has friends who would help her, who would be happy to provide company or distractions or whatever she needed. But that would require telling them. Repeating the story wouldn't make it any more real than it is already, but the thought of burdening anyone else with it -- and how could something this heavy not be a burden? -- turns her stomach. So much so that she's been politely deflecting the invitations she's received, rather than try to face anyone.

She'll say this for texting: it makes it easier to lie.

The thought of food rather turns her stomach, too, but she's getting groceries, anyway. Even if the chief appeal of cooking is making a mess that she would then have to tidy up, it's still a necessary chore. Her clothing is starting to hang a bit looser than it ought to, and she doesn't want to make new garments for what she knows, distantly, to be an impermanent state of affairs. So, groceries. She can do this.

[Find Greta looking terrible either at or en route to a grocery store, or on her way back to Candlewood. Closed unless we've spoken; hmu if you still want in.]

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[andhiswife]

Greta drops her hands, but remains hunched forward over the table, her weight on her elbows. "No, not--not everything. Not my childhood or anything like that." It's a small detail, barely relevant, which makes it easier to focus on. She could tell Jessica the precise moment when her story began, from Jesse's perspective, but it doesn't matter.

"But he knew how it ends," she says, her voice thick and her throat aching. Her eyes fill, a far too familiar sensation, blurring Jessica's apartment into a meaningless smear. "I don't... make it." She buries her face in her hands again. "I asked," she says again, the words falling out of her in a miserable rush, "because I had--I had to know if everyone was all right, and they are, they are, but I'm..." she scoffs, or tries to, but there's really no disguising the fact that it's more of a sob.

It's so stupid, is the thing. God. She can't believe she just... fell. It's not as horribly undignified as what Jesse thought had happened to her, but it comes close enough.

[numberhuang]

It's good that not all of Greta's life is known. I guess people only know as much about her life as they know about most characters in stories. Not much about the childhood... but maybe a lot about her romance.

Hopefully her romantic life isn't too juicy. I don't know who would read or watch anything about my life with Louis and the boys. We're so boring and normal.

But then she tells me that she doesn't make it. That the people who know her life story know how it ends. And that's when I stop in the middle of my tea prep and walk over to her, reaching to give her a hug.

She's not the first person I know who has died in their home world, but this — this must be the worst way to find out.

"Breathe, breathe," I murmur softly. "It's okay to cry. That must have been such a shock."

Already, I'm judging the person who told her all of this. Why did Greta need to know that she dies? What kind of naive person revealed that to her?

[andhiswife]

She had been mortified to realize her dalliance with the Prince was... well, implied, certainly. That might even be worse, leaving it up to the audience's imagination, when what actually happened wasn't that explicit, when all was said and done. Though one could certainly argue that she broke faith with her husband, and that being the case, does it really matter to what precise degree?

Of course, it's hard to be upset about that when it was only a preamble to being told she was dead. Whether her husband ever found out or not, it's not as if she'll ever be able to ask his forgiveness.

Jessica isn't the first to offer sympathy, or the first to tell her she has every right to be upset. But she lays it out in such simple, sensible terms, and Greta leans against her and cries like a child. Like what she's suffered is the worst possible thing (she knows that it isn't), like the injustice of it all ought to split the world in half (she knows that it won't).

But she doesn't have a child's bottomless well of energy, and she can't keep it up for long. Within a matter of minutes, the tears slow, and her breathing steadies. She even manages to fish a handkerchief out of her pocket so she can mop herself off a little. "I just wanted to go home," she says, her voice a miserable croak. "I was just... waiting." She spits out that last word as if it tastes sour. She hates waiting, always has, and to have it all be for nothing is almost unbearable.

[numberhuang]

While Greta cries, I pet her hair. I think it's just mother's instinct anymore to comfort someone when they're crying. Not the kind of crocodile tears people cry when they want sympathy — no, Greta's crying because this is traumatizing. It really is. To have someone tell you that they know your life, that they know your future, and to realize that you don't have as much life ahead of you as you thought you would.

I don't know how I would handle it, if I knew that I wouldn't get to live for long going back. I don't think you can know that and go back to the way things were. It changes your perspective.

It changes the way you live.

"I won't tell you that it's okay, because obviously it's not," I say when she breathes more easily, giving her hair another soft rustle before I return to the kettle and ready the tea. The dried chrysanthemums start to spread as soon as the water hits them. Almost like they're blooming.

A little something optimistic to help lighten the situation.

"But at least you are here. Your life is changed for being here, you know. You're not the same person. You took a different path. And maybe that means what happens in this other... this other version of your life, maybe it doesn't have to happen for you," I say thoughtfully, bringing the cups back to our table. "Careful with that, by the way. It's hot."

[andhiswife]

Jessica's good at this, at offering comfort, which she supposes shouldn't surprise her. She's a mother, too. It's just that she'd put Greta more in mind of Jack's mother: not tender as much as fierce. The kind of mother who would be too busy destroying whatever had threatened or upset her children to spend too much time wiping their tears. She's both sorry and grateful to be wrong -- or wrong enough.

She's never seen tea behave quite this way before. It's a good excuse to stare into her cup, watching the dried chrysanthemum slowly bloom open in the hot water, like magic, but reassuringly benign. Jessica's words wash over her, and she nods along. It's more of an absent gesture at first -- yes, yes, things could be worse, Darrow could be a second chance. She recognizes the truth in these reassurances, but it's like recognizing that there's a fire in the hearth when you're still stuck out in a snowstorm. She knows it, but she doesn't feel it.

'Took a different path' sinks in more than the rest, though. It's a very home-like thing to say, and it surprises her a little, as if Jessica had suddenly slipped into an accent that perfectly matched her own.

"I'd be surprised if such a thing happened here," she says at length. She almost doesn't say it at all, as if Darrow would summon a Giant just to spite her. It's not impossible. "But it's still..." she pauses, frowning as she tries to get her thoughts in order. "There's nothing for me, back home. And it's only a matter of time before Darrow tires of me. So whenever I tell someone here, it's... I feel as if I've taken something from them. From you." It would have still been a lie, if any friends she left behind told themselves that she'd finally gone home to her family, but at least they could have believed it.

[numberhuang]

I think about what to say to Greta. I don't want to make her think that I definitely believe in the best possible outcome. Because I don't think that's the only possibility. I am not the kind of person who likes to hope — I prefer to do, to have control in my own hands, to make my own choices and see the result of it all. I don't like to wait for things to come my way.

So I can understand that maybe Greta feels a little bit hopeless. I have seen people get the worst of news from back home, and I can't imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes. I have not had any of my children die. I have not had my sibling or my husband, or even my parents die. (Louis' father passed away, which is the closest that I have felt, and even that felt more crushing than I could have imagined.)

I can't give her false hope because that's not what I am about. But I can tell her the truth.

"There's a chance that Darrow will no longer be a place for you, it's true. But I find it... more and more, I find it feels like there might be some place after this for us. It's too weird to think that nothing here matters, right? If we really go back to exactly where and when we came from, then what happens to all the time here? Why are we here? Yes, maybe we are some kind of experiment, but to me it seems naive to think we're all supposed to go back to exactly where we were. It's what I want the most, don't get me wrong," I say, waving my hand, frowning as I think of my boys. "But that doesn't mean that's what I think will happen."

[andhiswife]

"An after-afterlife?" Greta manages to sound amused, albeit in a weary sort of way. Well, that's what it might be for her, but she can't believe that everyone here is secretly dead. Denial would only get someone so far, and she's spoken to too many people who arrived from moments far less fraught than her own.

Besides, it wouldn't be the first time such a thing had happened. Sam's told her a little of the island he was on before he and Jordan arrived here. Maybe that's just how it works: one world finishes with you, and you're shunted on to a different one. Such an arbitrary notion wouldn't catch on amongst the religious sect, so she's not surprised that it's never come up before, but that doesn't make it wrong.

"I suppose there are worse ways for the universe to work," she allows after giving it a few moments' thought. "But there are better ways, too. People who have a home to go back to... they ought to be allowed that." Assuming 'home' isn't relentlessly awful, at least. She has friends from nasty enough places that she'd as soon they just stuck around Darrow forever, though Jessica isn't one of them. For her sake, she can't just throw herself behind the idea that there's some other random world waiting for them after this one.

[numberhuang]

"You are... how do they say it? You are preaching to the choir," I tell Greta. There is very little that I believe more strongly than making sure that every one of us has a way to go back home. Has a way to continue the lives that we lived before. I know some people here who died back home and they like having more time here, they want to stay here if they can. But everyone deserves a choice.

(Also, even though I would never say it to them directly, I think it's more important to give the living a chance to go back than to give the dead a place where they can continue. Maybe that's cruel of me. But it seems worse to take a life from a person who still had one to live.)

"I'm going to keep looking for that. Or at least making sure that the researchers who are doing the best job continue to get funding for their work. But... I guess the important thing is, try not to lose all hope yet," I tell Greta, reaching for her hand. "You have every reason to be angry, to be upset, to be sad. But this is not the end. You know?"