Fic: for the wind that washes the mountaintop view; drowns sorrows (1/1)
Title: for the wind that washes the mountaintop view; drowns sorrows
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Jacob, Esau; can be read as Jacob/Esau
Word Count: 1,122
Summary: Still waters run deep. For toestastegood, who requested “The Future” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. General Spoilers through Season Six.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For toestastegood: In writing your Post-S6/Sideways!verse Jacob/Esau fic, I must have stopped and restarted the darn thing twelve times before I got the plot I really wanted to pursue for it. But that also meant about eleven untamed bunnies that have been hopping around and causing mayhem in the interim. So I know how much you love a bit of fluff, and how much you love Jacob/Esau. So I reined one of those angsty bunnies in and tried to fluff him up a bit -- though it turns out I schmooped him up instead -- in hopes that it would be satisfactory as my humble offering for your Queen Day :D
for the wind that washes the mountaintop view; drowns sorrows
The breeze blows with the tang of growing things; that strange scent and swell of life as it changes, peaks, gives way; and when he breathes, he lets the rough scrape of the things he loves and hates -- of the indifference that filled the gaps of both, in time -- burn inside of him: the first real feelings he knows in this life, after the fall.
He looks down from the ledge, to the beach below; it’s funny, he thinks, how things work out.
He sees a shadow, a silhouette: more dear, more despised than anything or anyone that Jacob has ever imagined into the folds of his heart; the box in his hands is charred at the edges, blood speckled against the wood, but Jacob knows, knows that the pieces are still safe inside of it: fragments, yet complete.
He approaches as if there will never be enough time -- as if there’s more time than he knows how to bear; his steps lose purchase against the fickle push of the sand, and there’s smoke on the air, wafting -- the spare shafts of sun through storm clouds glinting off of two small stones at his brother’s side.
He doesn’t know anymore, as his mouth goes dry, whether he is light or dark.
Their eyes meet across what distance remains, too far to see but close enough to feel, and suddenly -- achingly, woefully, wonderfully -- he understands.
Dying had never been about an ending, but about returning to where everything began, instead.
I’d hoped you’d come, his brother smiles at him, young and grown all at once; his brother smiles at him, and when his eyes begin to fill at the brims he takes careful pause -- breath like barbed wire, caught sharp in his throat; the blood it bares is bitter against his tongue.
Esau walks with steady footfalls, his prints fleeting in the sand, but present, so present, and Jacob can feel his lungs burn with the surf and the salt of the sea that surrounds them; his brother approaches with upturned palms like an offering, a sacrifice, and when Jacob’s calves buckle, and he falls to his knees, that sacred, tainted offering is surrendered unto him: hands firm, warm against his shoulder, he softens the blow where Jacob never did, never could -- and when they fall, they fall in tandem. And perhaps it’s too late -- never too late -- but Jacob thinks that it was always thus: where one goes, the other follows, and maybe all that he really was had left him as a boy; had died in the light, decayed in the dark.
The water surges, laps against the shore, and for the first time, Jacob sees the truth of it: they are enveloped, not encaged.
And when his brother grasps at his wrists, gathers their hands between them and holds on with purpose and resolve, Jacob exhales the weight of the world; he bows his head, and hopes, but doesn’t expect it when Esau bends with him, into him, balancing their foreheads together and breathing each other in: all the sorrow and the anger and the feeling between them, like honey and strychnine against their lips, and the world ebbs and flows outside the realm of their attention, beyond recognition, until Jacob can feel the ground beneath him again -- until lost things start to seem found once more.
He feels the words, like tangible things in his throat, against his teeth; there are so many things he never said, never did, so many loose ends and dashed hopes and wrongs -- such wrongs -- and his eyes are wide as he watches them shift, their color rippling, reflected in his brother’s gaze, and all he can say in that moment where everything changes, where everything stays the same, is: We should leave.
This place was never home. Home had never been a place.
No, Esau whispers, and it’s only then that Jacob realizes his tears are leaking, dripping slow like time and heartache down his cheeks, catching in his stubble and smearing at his jaw, and when his brother traces them -- follows them and strokes against their paths; does not wipe them away as if they’re nothing, as if they mean nothing; when his brother cups his chin and steals his gaze until the sights he sees are no longer his alone, he feels the world as he knew it come crashing down around them both, the silence of the fall like daggers, playing at the cracks in his soul.
No, we’ll stay.
Jacob’s eyes slide shut, and he’s breathless, weightless; he bites his lip and remembers, starkly, the touch of his mother’s hand, the give of his brother’s embrace; remembers the feeling of blood and the agony of hate and the regret like a holocaust, consuming his failure and his triumphs from within: laying waste to all that he’d become.
He trembles, and his brother’s grip upon his hands tightens just a bit, just enough; when his cracked lips meet Jacob’s callused fingertips, all things come to their close.
I’m sorry, he gasps, his voice foreign and broken, and he can hear the blood in his veins rushing like the waves, apart from him in ways that make no sense, that seem cruel -- his pulse beats beyond him, somehow, and he deserves it, that betrayal. He deserves it.
But Esau steels his features -- the stronger of them, always -- and laces their hands together, Jacob’s heart line creased against the line of his knuckles, and where the pad of Jacob’s finger measures the rhythm of life at his brother’s wrist, Esau’s palm presses soft, full against his chest, stretches wide enough to capture the flutter of everything Jacob had forgotten; everything he’d been too foolish to even notice slipping away.
And when he can no longer choke back his sobs, Jacob knows that the last of the rains have fallen: with a hand on his heart and a steady, certain beat -- and he knows, knows, breathes it in like passion and fear as he buries his face against his brother’s neck.
This is what it means to beg forgiveness; this is what it is to be absolved.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Jacob, Esau; can be read as Jacob/Esau
Word Count: 1,122
Summary: Still waters run deep. For toestastegood, who requested “The Future” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. General Spoilers through Season Six.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For toestastegood: In writing your Post-S6/Sideways!verse Jacob/Esau fic, I must have stopped and restarted the darn thing twelve times before I got the plot I really wanted to pursue for it. But that also meant about eleven untamed bunnies that have been hopping around and causing mayhem in the interim. So I know how much you love a bit of fluff, and how much you love Jacob/Esau. So I reined one of those angsty bunnies in and tried to fluff him up a bit -- though it turns out I schmooped him up instead -- in hopes that it would be satisfactory as my humble offering for your Queen Day :D
for the wind that washes the mountaintop view; drowns sorrows
The breeze blows with the tang of growing things; that strange scent and swell of life as it changes, peaks, gives way; and when he breathes, he lets the rough scrape of the things he loves and hates -- of the indifference that filled the gaps of both, in time -- burn inside of him: the first real feelings he knows in this life, after the fall.
He looks down from the ledge, to the beach below; it’s funny, he thinks, how things work out.
He sees a shadow, a silhouette: more dear, more despised than anything or anyone that Jacob has ever imagined into the folds of his heart; the box in his hands is charred at the edges, blood speckled against the wood, but Jacob knows, knows that the pieces are still safe inside of it: fragments, yet complete.
He approaches as if there will never be enough time -- as if there’s more time than he knows how to bear; his steps lose purchase against the fickle push of the sand, and there’s smoke on the air, wafting -- the spare shafts of sun through storm clouds glinting off of two small stones at his brother’s side.
He doesn’t know anymore, as his mouth goes dry, whether he is light or dark.
Their eyes meet across what distance remains, too far to see but close enough to feel, and suddenly -- achingly, woefully, wonderfully -- he understands.
Dying had never been about an ending, but about returning to where everything began, instead.
I’d hoped you’d come, his brother smiles at him, young and grown all at once; his brother smiles at him, and when his eyes begin to fill at the brims he takes careful pause -- breath like barbed wire, caught sharp in his throat; the blood it bares is bitter against his tongue.
Esau walks with steady footfalls, his prints fleeting in the sand, but present, so present, and Jacob can feel his lungs burn with the surf and the salt of the sea that surrounds them; his brother approaches with upturned palms like an offering, a sacrifice, and when Jacob’s calves buckle, and he falls to his knees, that sacred, tainted offering is surrendered unto him: hands firm, warm against his shoulder, he softens the blow where Jacob never did, never could -- and when they fall, they fall in tandem. And perhaps it’s too late -- never too late -- but Jacob thinks that it was always thus: where one goes, the other follows, and maybe all that he really was had left him as a boy; had died in the light, decayed in the dark.
The water surges, laps against the shore, and for the first time, Jacob sees the truth of it: they are enveloped, not encaged.
And when his brother grasps at his wrists, gathers their hands between them and holds on with purpose and resolve, Jacob exhales the weight of the world; he bows his head, and hopes, but doesn’t expect it when Esau bends with him, into him, balancing their foreheads together and breathing each other in: all the sorrow and the anger and the feeling between them, like honey and strychnine against their lips, and the world ebbs and flows outside the realm of their attention, beyond recognition, until Jacob can feel the ground beneath him again -- until lost things start to seem found once more.
He feels the words, like tangible things in his throat, against his teeth; there are so many things he never said, never did, so many loose ends and dashed hopes and wrongs -- such wrongs -- and his eyes are wide as he watches them shift, their color rippling, reflected in his brother’s gaze, and all he can say in that moment where everything changes, where everything stays the same, is: We should leave.
This place was never home. Home had never been a place.
No, Esau whispers, and it’s only then that Jacob realizes his tears are leaking, dripping slow like time and heartache down his cheeks, catching in his stubble and smearing at his jaw, and when his brother traces them -- follows them and strokes against their paths; does not wipe them away as if they’re nothing, as if they mean nothing; when his brother cups his chin and steals his gaze until the sights he sees are no longer his alone, he feels the world as he knew it come crashing down around them both, the silence of the fall like daggers, playing at the cracks in his soul.
No, we’ll stay.
Jacob’s eyes slide shut, and he’s breathless, weightless; he bites his lip and remembers, starkly, the touch of his mother’s hand, the give of his brother’s embrace; remembers the feeling of blood and the agony of hate and the regret like a holocaust, consuming his failure and his triumphs from within: laying waste to all that he’d become.
He trembles, and his brother’s grip upon his hands tightens just a bit, just enough; when his cracked lips meet Jacob’s callused fingertips, all things come to their close.
I’m sorry, he gasps, his voice foreign and broken, and he can hear the blood in his veins rushing like the waves, apart from him in ways that make no sense, that seem cruel -- his pulse beats beyond him, somehow, and he deserves it, that betrayal. He deserves it.
But Esau steels his features -- the stronger of them, always -- and laces their hands together, Jacob’s heart line creased against the line of his knuckles, and where the pad of Jacob’s finger measures the rhythm of life at his brother’s wrist, Esau’s palm presses soft, full against his chest, stretches wide enough to capture the flutter of everything Jacob had forgotten; everything he’d been too foolish to even notice slipping away.
And when he can no longer choke back his sobs, Jacob knows that the last of the rains have fallen: with a hand on his heart and a steady, certain beat -- and he knows, knows, breathes it in like passion and fear as he buries his face against his brother’s neck.
This is what it means to beg forgiveness; this is what it is to be absolved.