[closed, for alex; slightly backdated]
Dec. 5th, 2014 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fairywrenIt's only about an hour and a half from Portland to Siren Cove, just a little longer even in the rain, but after Wren takes exit 28 off the highway, as Route 1 climbs north into one of the only major roads through the wilds of uneven coastline and forest at all, it's just dark and stars peeking between clouds and coastline.
It's enough time for him to think about the past several days he's spent at his mother's. It's been some of the least restful time he's spent with his mother, maybe ever. The first day or so was good, or it pretended to be. It was good to see her, at least, see what she's been doing; these days she tires more easily at instruction, but she directs the program and she does much of the choreographing for their productions. It's grown without him, into a full-fledged, respectable center with multiple teachers.
(It scares him a little, to think of her being 55. There's something old-feeling about that age, something that didn't scare him when he was teasing her about turning 50, or even when she was complaining that her only child was turning 30. She looks even less her age than she did when he was small, but it's unsettling nonetheless.)
And maybe that's what it was that drove him, more insistently than needing to know the truth about himself, to push the question. To sit down across from her and tell her, "I helped free 13 people from a cave with my voice. I watched someone turn into a shark. I've seen things in Siren Cove that I've never seen with any number of drugs. You promised me once that you would tell me the truth no matter how hard it was. How long have you been lying about that?"
She'd looked at him and taken a long breath. And then she'd told him a story. A story about her family, a story about his father. About how she found the most peace dancing, could draw people to her, went to school, couldn't keep herself still, traveled. About how one day in Quebec Oliver Bellamy had seen her dancing when she didn't realize, half transformed and letting go. She'd gone to run but it was too late, and she didn't want to run anyway because it was him she was wishing for. He'd believed the whole thing was a costume and she'd let him. She spoke about how whirlwind and intoxicating it'd been; that after a while she couldn't bring herself to use even the slightest bit of charisma or temptation for fear the whole thing was a lie. And how, not at first but slowly, eventually, she'd watched the love fade, how despite their own best efforts it had left them both empty.
"I was born a siren," she'd said, "like your grandmother, like your great aunt and your cousins, like the stories we tell. And you've inherited that, Rene. But for over thirty years I've tried my best to forget that, and I think you should too, and that's all I'll say about it."
"Mama --"
"I'm not going to teach you about something I think could ruin your life." She looks at him. "I won't do it. I don't want you to ask me again."
Somehow, Wren finds himself standing on the cliff face near his house. He doesn't remember parking; he doesn't remember walking out in the half-frozen rain. All he can think about is his mother's face closing to him, how much it reminded him at that moment of Rian's face stony, uncharacteristically dispassionate as they walked away from each other with Lexi a moment behind. How little he's sure of right now. The only things he can reach for are totally uncertain. The only people he wants to go to don't even know his history, not all of him, not the worst of him. He's not sure what to do with knowing more about his father, or how to feel.
Wren watches the waves crash hard on the rocks as he walks out over them. He doesn't have a coat on; must have left it in the car. When he was a child, he used to watch waves, the way they called, soothed, threatened, sang to the emptiness in his chest. Had that been something within him, deeper than among others?
I don't want you to ask me again. He's spent his whole life being told to be ashamed of who he is, and fighting to stand and laugh and question, and his mother has never once told him to stop. And now, here, a grown man -- something more than a man -- she tells him to fear himself.
He closes his eyes and tries to summon that feeling he had gotten holding hands with Alex, with Will and Corrine, Lara and April and all the others in the circle that day. That harmony. He can't do it alone; he can't even imagine it. He has no idea who he is right now or how to get there, and he's not content to just let himself be here while he figures it out. It's not that the people around him now aren't as good as Enfants. It's that they haven't lived through Wren. Alex has no idea the disaster he's chosen to trust. Wren's only hope is himself, like it's always been, and he doesn't know anything, he's been told to turn away from it.
The bolt of lonely, nauseous frustration that shoots through him threatens to pull him into pieces. It's in this moment that Wren throws himself forward, toward the cold water; hurls himself into the crest of a wave. When the cold hits it takes his breath without any mercy, and he lets himself hit like dead weight, pulled under, can feel the weight of the water pushing him downward.
He has a sort of dissociated, clear idea that he might drown doing this, and he's a little afraid, but not as much as he'd think he should be. And then suddenly the pain is gone, his lungs relaxing, and he's swimming, strong, wings -- wings? -- pushing him steadily up toward the surface.
Wren's not sure how exactly he makes it back to shore, but he stumbles out of the freezing water, soaking wet and crystals already forming in his hair with the cold, sitting down on his knees. He should maybe feel triumphant, but he just feels very stupid and incredibly, incredibly lost.
It's with this utter lack of control that he finds himself walking, leaving the car there, heading toward anything that feels like purchase. That turns out to be Alex's -- well, Will's, which is also Alex's right now -- and it's with a very quiet prayer to whoever might be listening that it's actually Alex who answers that Wren rings the doorbell.
It's enough time for him to think about the past several days he's spent at his mother's. It's been some of the least restful time he's spent with his mother, maybe ever. The first day or so was good, or it pretended to be. It was good to see her, at least, see what she's been doing; these days she tires more easily at instruction, but she directs the program and she does much of the choreographing for their productions. It's grown without him, into a full-fledged, respectable center with multiple teachers.
(It scares him a little, to think of her being 55. There's something old-feeling about that age, something that didn't scare him when he was teasing her about turning 50, or even when she was complaining that her only child was turning 30. She looks even less her age than she did when he was small, but it's unsettling nonetheless.)
And maybe that's what it was that drove him, more insistently than needing to know the truth about himself, to push the question. To sit down across from her and tell her, "I helped free 13 people from a cave with my voice. I watched someone turn into a shark. I've seen things in Siren Cove that I've never seen with any number of drugs. You promised me once that you would tell me the truth no matter how hard it was. How long have you been lying about that?"
She'd looked at him and taken a long breath. And then she'd told him a story. A story about her family, a story about his father. About how she found the most peace dancing, could draw people to her, went to school, couldn't keep herself still, traveled. About how one day in Quebec Oliver Bellamy had seen her dancing when she didn't realize, half transformed and letting go. She'd gone to run but it was too late, and she didn't want to run anyway because it was him she was wishing for. He'd believed the whole thing was a costume and she'd let him. She spoke about how whirlwind and intoxicating it'd been; that after a while she couldn't bring herself to use even the slightest bit of charisma or temptation for fear the whole thing was a lie. And how, not at first but slowly, eventually, she'd watched the love fade, how despite their own best efforts it had left them both empty.
"I was born a siren," she'd said, "like your grandmother, like your great aunt and your cousins, like the stories we tell. And you've inherited that, Rene. But for over thirty years I've tried my best to forget that, and I think you should too, and that's all I'll say about it."
"Mama --"
"I'm not going to teach you about something I think could ruin your life." She looks at him. "I won't do it. I don't want you to ask me again."
Somehow, Wren finds himself standing on the cliff face near his house. He doesn't remember parking; he doesn't remember walking out in the half-frozen rain. All he can think about is his mother's face closing to him, how much it reminded him at that moment of Rian's face stony, uncharacteristically dispassionate as they walked away from each other with Lexi a moment behind. How little he's sure of right now. The only things he can reach for are totally uncertain. The only people he wants to go to don't even know his history, not all of him, not the worst of him. He's not sure what to do with knowing more about his father, or how to feel.
Wren watches the waves crash hard on the rocks as he walks out over them. He doesn't have a coat on; must have left it in the car. When he was a child, he used to watch waves, the way they called, soothed, threatened, sang to the emptiness in his chest. Had that been something within him, deeper than among others?
I don't want you to ask me again. He's spent his whole life being told to be ashamed of who he is, and fighting to stand and laugh and question, and his mother has never once told him to stop. And now, here, a grown man -- something more than a man -- she tells him to fear himself.
He closes his eyes and tries to summon that feeling he had gotten holding hands with Alex, with Will and Corrine, Lara and April and all the others in the circle that day. That harmony. He can't do it alone; he can't even imagine it. He has no idea who he is right now or how to get there, and he's not content to just let himself be here while he figures it out. It's not that the people around him now aren't as good as Enfants. It's that they haven't lived through Wren. Alex has no idea the disaster he's chosen to trust. Wren's only hope is himself, like it's always been, and he doesn't know anything, he's been told to turn away from it.
The bolt of lonely, nauseous frustration that shoots through him threatens to pull him into pieces. It's in this moment that Wren throws himself forward, toward the cold water; hurls himself into the crest of a wave. When the cold hits it takes his breath without any mercy, and he lets himself hit like dead weight, pulled under, can feel the weight of the water pushing him downward.
He has a sort of dissociated, clear idea that he might drown doing this, and he's a little afraid, but not as much as he'd think he should be. And then suddenly the pain is gone, his lungs relaxing, and he's swimming, strong, wings -- wings? -- pushing him steadily up toward the surface.
Wren's not sure how exactly he makes it back to shore, but he stumbles out of the freezing water, soaking wet and crystals already forming in his hair with the cold, sitting down on his knees. He should maybe feel triumphant, but he just feels very stupid and incredibly, incredibly lost.
It's with this utter lack of control that he finds himself walking, leaving the car there, heading toward anything that feels like purchase. That turns out to be Alex's -- well, Will's, which is also Alex's right now -- and it's with a very quiet prayer to whoever might be listening that it's actually Alex who answers that Wren rings the doorbell.
