Jenna can curse Mercury Lighthouse, as Saturos and Menardi are doing with every breath, but it's more than that. Unless it has the power to turn hearts cold as well as bodies, which she's beginning to believe it might.
Felix is cold to her now, and she can't understand why. He says he's not, but she's not stupid. She half-thinks he's afraid to touch her, now; he shies from contact, and he won't meet her eyes. Reluctantly, he still lets her sleep in his tent, but she sleeps next to him rather than with him. It doesn't keep out the cold.
Is it because of Isaac and Garet? She can't imagine that was it, yet she can't imagine any other reason for the change. Is he angry at her for not immediately obeying Menardi's orders? No, that can't be it; she read the wariness in his eyes at Mercury Lighthouse, and the way his thoughts wavered from one course of action to another was clear in his face. It's a blessing Menardi was too distracted to read it for herself.
It must be because of Isaac and Garet. It must be that he's angry at them for opposing Saturos and Menardi, and angry at her for still caring about them. It can't be anything else - there's no other reason for him to go from the most loving brother alive to looking like the sight of her appalls him.
It's stupid. If she was feeling more herself, brother or not, she'd take it out on his hide. She'd demand to know how he thinks he can get away with treating her like this, going from warm to cold as ice, over some grudge between others and the madness of Alchemy. She'd bring him to his senses, she'd -
She wouldn't have this emptiness in her chest, she wouldn't feel so hurt and desperate that she'd do anything to bring him back to her. And isn't that stupid - thinking of 'bringing her brother back to her' when he's only a foot away? But it might as well be an ocean, for how he's acting.
What's wrong with her? She's never felt anything like this before. Objectively thinking, the pain is less than when she lost him and her parents in that monstrous night, but objective thinking makes no dent on her emotions. It's as though, when Felix turned his back on her, the whole world fell apart.
Why? It makes no sense. He's here and safe and well, no matter how he's acting. Isaac and Garet are alive and unhurt - perhaps better than ever. Even Kraden isn't about to come to any harm, the way Saturos and Menardi are seeking to speak to him at all hours, desperate to know more about something called 'Djinni' and all the myriad nuances of Alchemy. She should be happy. She should be happy and relieved and grateful, and her only concern should be whether the lighting of Mercury Lighthouse tips the world further towards salvation or destruction.
So why won't these tears stop?
He knows he's hurting her.
He's doing this for her sake. She can never understand - he will never let her understand. This is his fault and his sickness, and he'll shoulder the responsibility for it alone. It's not her fault that she has a broken brother - a brother who can't just look at her as a brother should, a brother who sees a lovely woman in the flower of her youth where he should only see the child she was. Karst is always whining that Menardi only sees her as a little girl rather than the warrior she's become - at least, whenever she thinks Menardi's nowhere nearby to hear her whining in a manner more befitting of a little girl than a warrior.
Why can't he be like that? Why can't he look at his little sister and be outright appalled at the thought of any boy touching her, of his baby sister growing up? Why is it, that when he tries thinking in that way, his stomach does an uneasy flip-flop at the thought of a boy touching her, and from there his mind wanders to...
Oh, why...
Jenna doesn't know any of that. She's an innocent girl who was appalled by the things that befell her through no fault of her own, but grateful to get her brother back, and now she can't understand why she can't even have that. He can never tell her. It kills him to do this, but...
Their parents...
It could all go back to normal if he could stop feeling this way about her. If Jenna could be the center of his world because she's his sister and he owes her so much, for all the hardship she's gone through, and not for any other reason... then they could be together again. No, no, not together again, not together... Then they could be a family. Nice. Normal. Natural.
It's not hard. Even Menardi can be a good elder sibling, and if not for Karst, he'd think she didn't have any sweetness in her at all. Even Menardi can do it, why can't he?
He's doing it for her sake, and it's selfish and monstrous of him to want the comfort of holding her again. Of breathing in the scent of her hair, of feeling her nestle her face into the crook of his neck, of...
What's wrong with him?
He's beginning to think the worst mistake that Saturos and Menardi have made, the vilest deed they've committed, was fishing him out of that river at all.
Jenna cringes at the sound of flesh hitting wood, and then wood hitting the water.
"It's. A. Tree," Saturos says, fist still raised in the air. "I know you're squeamish, Felix, but truly... Trees?"
"I really don't think these are ordinary trees," Felix persists, his eyes darting to the feeble trunk lying in the water and back again. "Look at them, Saturos - you must agree there's something unnatural. Trees don't grow like that. And they don't feel right to my Venus Psyenergy-"
"Well, they obviously do grow like that in this part of the world," Menardi says, hand on her hip. "Honestly, Felix. Not everywhere is Vale."
To her shock, a petty part of her agrees with Menardi for once. Not least because her brother cares for a tree more than her.
"Something isn't as it seems," Felix insists. "We should -"
"'We'?" Saturos repeats. "We will do nothing. We are heading to the next Lighthouse. And after Venus Lighthouse?" He rolls his eyes and smiles. "You may come back here and tend to your trees all you like. Perhaps you'll even find some slender, willowy sort to occupy a special place in your heart... But, do mind the splinters."
Alex stifles a laugh - he's horrible, if better than those two - and Menardi, while trying to look disgusted, can't quite disguise her smirk. Felix just reddens and ducks his head, with an expression Jenna can't quite read.
"Why can't you just -" He makes a sound of frustration. "It wouldn't kill you to stop and think for once. Rather than just - acting."
"I walk and think," Saturos says drolly. "It's faster." He jerks his head. "We've wasted enough time on this. Let's get moving."
Felix looks to Jenna for support, but she just smiles and follows Saturos. Let him feel what it's like to not have any support for once. Let him! He speaks up for the sake of some strange-looking trees, when he'll barely acknowledge her presence, when she can't even lay a hand on his arm without him jolting away, as though her touch might burn him...
She's angry at a tree because her brother likes it better. What's wrong with her? Has she gone mad? This is just - No, it's the world that's gone mad, when her brother shows more concern for a tree than for her. Isn't it? Oh, she doesn't know.
It hurts her to be angry at him. All she wants is for him to look at her again... Like he used to, just a short time ago... And a short time before that, she thought he was dead...
Menardi makes some jab about his supposed interest in trees, and Felix actually snaps at her. It's the first time Jenna's seen him really backtalk her, and that should raise some alarm, but it doesn't register in this moment. All she can think is that he's still defending that tree more than her.
"What's gotten into you, Felix?" Menardi asks, and Jenna represses a bitter snort. She should have been asking that weeks ago.
"Mind your own business!" he snaps. "We're wasting time, after all! Let's keep moving!"
Menardi looks at him like he's grown a second head, and Jenna can't quite control herself. "Well, I'm sorry you can't be with your lady love, then, Felix, since she means so much to you-"
"It's not-" He makes a sound at the back of his throat, like an animal stuck in a trap, and storms ahead, outpacing even Saturos for a moment.
She scowls at his back, then ducks her head, tears prickling in her eyes. She just wishes she knew what went wrong between them. He was the sweetest brother there could be, everything she could have wanted amid this turmoil, a light in the darkness... More than a brother, a tall, dark, and handsome stranger, who took her in his arms and swore to protect her, and...
She doesn't know where that line of thought would take her, and it doesn't matter, really. Felix is changed now. He's become a stranger in truth, his face closing off behind a mask more opaque than the one he wore at Sol Sanctum, and she doesn't know him anymore - if she ever did.
A flicker of movement catches her eye, and she looks up. Saturos is staring over his shoulder at her, and his gaze slides from her to Felix, then back. His expression is very strange: if she were to guess at its meaning, it would be the face of a man who can't quite believe what he's seeing, and yet is watching all the pieces slide into place.
He raises his eyebrows, then looks away. Anger burns in her gut at the thought of him understanding what's going on between her and her brother better than she does, then despair at the same thought, then anger again. If even he can see it -
But what is he seeing?
Jenna seems to hate him now.
It's better that way, he assures himself, even as he feels sick. It's better this way, for her to lose her attachment to her diseased brother. It would have been better this way all along - to have been totally forgotten, rather than remembered.
He shouldn't have blown up like that at Menardi. She was jabbing at him mindlessly - nothing she hasn't done before. It was just - did she have to ask, in the course of her mockery, whether his sister knew about his perversions -
Damn it.
If he'd been guiltless, he would have just shrugged it off, or turned it around into some jab about whether Karst knew such-and-such about her. That was what he would have ordinarily done. No one could live around Saturos and Menardi for three years without growing a thicker skin.
He just wants...
What does he even want? He doesn't know, anymore. He wishes he hadn't realized there was anything wrong at all, perhaps. That he and Jenna could have kept growing closer, the adoring younger sister and her caring older brother, the lively young woman and...
He's failed his sister. He's failed her, and their parents, and himself. The boy he was three years ago would never have had these thoughts. He would have smiled at his younger sister's antics, watched with annoyance as she acquired a circle of admiring boys, and reluctantly accepted it when she found a man worth keeping. Not this. Never this.
It was easier before the Lighthouse. When - though he shudders to think of it now - there was just him and Jenna, nestled together for warmth against the cold, and nothing in this world could come between them...
It's better this way. It's better for Jenna to hate him, and be safe from the contamination of his perversions. It really doesn't hurt that much, to rip one's heart out of one's own chest. It really doesn't hurt that much at all.
Out Flew The Web And Floated Wide [Felix/Jenna, M] [3/4]
Jenna can curse Mercury Lighthouse, as Saturos and Menardi are doing with every breath, but it's more than that. Unless it has the power to turn hearts cold as well as bodies, which she's beginning to believe it might.
Felix is cold to her now, and she can't understand why. He says he's not, but she's not stupid. She half-thinks he's afraid to touch her, now; he shies from contact, and he won't meet her eyes. Reluctantly, he still lets her sleep in his tent, but she sleeps next to him rather than with him. It doesn't keep out the cold.
Is it because of Isaac and Garet? She can't imagine that was it, yet she can't imagine any other reason for the change. Is he angry at her for not immediately obeying Menardi's orders? No, that can't be it; she read the wariness in his eyes at Mercury Lighthouse, and the way his thoughts wavered from one course of action to another was clear in his face. It's a blessing Menardi was too distracted to read it for herself.
It must be because of Isaac and Garet. It must be that he's angry at them for opposing Saturos and Menardi, and angry at her for still caring about them. It can't be anything else - there's no other reason for him to go from the most loving brother alive to looking like the sight of her appalls him.
It's stupid. If she was feeling more herself, brother or not, she'd take it out on his hide. She'd demand to know how he thinks he can get away with treating her like this, going from warm to cold as ice, over some grudge between others and the madness of Alchemy. She'd bring him to his senses, she'd -
She wouldn't have this emptiness in her chest, she wouldn't feel so hurt and desperate that she'd do anything to bring him back to her. And isn't that stupid - thinking of 'bringing her brother back to her' when he's only a foot away? But it might as well be an ocean, for how he's acting.
What's wrong with her? She's never felt anything like this before. Objectively thinking, the pain is less than when she lost him and her parents in that monstrous night, but objective thinking makes no dent on her emotions. It's as though, when Felix turned his back on her, the whole world fell apart.
Why? It makes no sense. He's here and safe and well, no matter how he's acting. Isaac and Garet are alive and unhurt - perhaps better than ever. Even Kraden isn't about to come to any harm, the way Saturos and Menardi are seeking to speak to him at all hours, desperate to know more about something called 'Djinni' and all the myriad nuances of Alchemy. She should be happy. She should be happy and relieved and grateful, and her only concern should be whether the lighting of Mercury Lighthouse tips the world further towards salvation or destruction.
So why won't these tears stop?
He knows he's hurting her.
He's doing this for her sake. She can never understand - he will never let her understand. This is his fault and his sickness, and he'll shoulder the responsibility for it alone. It's not her fault that she has a broken brother - a brother who can't just look at her as a brother should, a brother who sees a lovely woman in the flower of her youth where he should only see the child she was. Karst is always whining that Menardi only sees her as a little girl rather than the warrior she's become - at least, whenever she thinks Menardi's nowhere nearby to hear her whining in a manner more befitting of a little girl than a warrior.
Why can't he be like that? Why can't he look at his little sister and be outright appalled at the thought of any boy touching her, of his baby sister growing up? Why is it, that when he tries thinking in that way, his stomach does an uneasy flip-flop at the thought of a boy touching her, and from there his mind wanders to...
Oh, why...
Jenna doesn't know any of that. She's an innocent girl who was appalled by the things that befell her through no fault of her own, but grateful to get her brother back, and now she can't understand why she can't even have that. He can never tell her. It kills him to do this, but...
Their parents...
It could all go back to normal if he could stop feeling this way about her. If Jenna could be the center of his world because she's his sister and he owes her so much, for all the hardship she's gone through, and not for any other reason... then they could be together again. No, no, not together again, not together... Then they could be a family. Nice. Normal. Natural.
It's not hard. Even Menardi can be a good elder sibling, and if not for Karst, he'd think she didn't have any sweetness in her at all. Even Menardi can do it, why can't he?
He's doing it for her sake, and it's selfish and monstrous of him to want the comfort of holding her again. Of breathing in the scent of her hair, of feeling her nestle her face into the crook of his neck, of...
What's wrong with him?
He's beginning to think the worst mistake that Saturos and Menardi have made, the vilest deed they've committed, was fishing him out of that river at all.
Jenna cringes at the sound of flesh hitting wood, and then wood hitting the water.
"It's. A. Tree," Saturos says, fist still raised in the air. "I know you're squeamish, Felix, but truly... Trees?"
"I really don't think these are ordinary trees," Felix persists, his eyes darting to the feeble trunk lying in the water and back again. "Look at them, Saturos - you must agree there's something unnatural. Trees don't grow like that. And they don't feel right to my Venus Psyenergy-"
"Well, they obviously do grow like that in this part of the world," Menardi says, hand on her hip. "Honestly, Felix. Not everywhere is Vale."
To her shock, a petty part of her agrees with Menardi for once. Not least because her brother cares for a tree more than her.
"Something isn't as it seems," Felix insists. "We should -"
"'We'?" Saturos repeats. "We will do nothing. We are heading to the next Lighthouse. And after Venus Lighthouse?" He rolls his eyes and smiles. "You may come back here and tend to your trees all you like. Perhaps you'll even find some slender, willowy sort to occupy a special place in your heart... But, do mind the splinters."
Alex stifles a laugh - he's horrible, if better than those two - and Menardi, while trying to look disgusted, can't quite disguise her smirk. Felix just reddens and ducks his head, with an expression Jenna can't quite read.
"Why can't you just -" He makes a sound of frustration. "It wouldn't kill you to stop and think for once. Rather than just - acting."
"I walk and think," Saturos says drolly. "It's faster." He jerks his head. "We've wasted enough time on this. Let's get moving."
Felix looks to Jenna for support, but she just smiles and follows Saturos. Let him feel what it's like to not have any support for once. Let him! He speaks up for the sake of some strange-looking trees, when he'll barely acknowledge her presence, when she can't even lay a hand on his arm without him jolting away, as though her touch might burn him...
She's angry at a tree because her brother likes it better. What's wrong with her? Has she gone mad? This is just - No, it's the world that's gone mad, when her brother shows more concern for a tree than for her. Isn't it? Oh, she doesn't know.
It hurts her to be angry at him. All she wants is for him to look at her again... Like he used to, just a short time ago... And a short time before that, she thought he was dead...
Menardi makes some jab about his supposed interest in trees, and Felix actually snaps at her. It's the first time Jenna's seen him really backtalk her, and that should raise some alarm, but it doesn't register in this moment. All she can think is that he's still defending that tree more than her.
"What's gotten into you, Felix?" Menardi asks, and Jenna represses a bitter snort. She should have been asking that weeks ago.
"Mind your own business!" he snaps. "We're wasting time, after all! Let's keep moving!"
Menardi looks at him like he's grown a second head, and Jenna can't quite control herself. "Well, I'm sorry you can't be with your lady love, then, Felix, since she means so much to you-"
"It's not-" He makes a sound at the back of his throat, like an animal stuck in a trap, and storms ahead, outpacing even Saturos for a moment.
She scowls at his back, then ducks her head, tears prickling in her eyes. She just wishes she knew what went wrong between them. He was the sweetest brother there could be, everything she could have wanted amid this turmoil, a light in the darkness... More than a brother, a tall, dark, and handsome stranger, who took her in his arms and swore to protect her, and...
She doesn't know where that line of thought would take her, and it doesn't matter, really. Felix is changed now. He's become a stranger in truth, his face closing off behind a mask more opaque than the one he wore at Sol Sanctum, and she doesn't know him anymore - if she ever did.
A flicker of movement catches her eye, and she looks up. Saturos is staring over his shoulder at her, and his gaze slides from her to Felix, then back. His expression is very strange: if she were to guess at its meaning, it would be the face of a man who can't quite believe what he's seeing, and yet is watching all the pieces slide into place.
He raises his eyebrows, then looks away. Anger burns in her gut at the thought of him understanding what's going on between her and her brother better than she does, then despair at the same thought, then anger again. If even he can see it -
But what is he seeing?
Jenna seems to hate him now.
It's better that way, he assures himself, even as he feels sick. It's better this way, for her to lose her attachment to her diseased brother. It would have been better this way all along - to have been totally forgotten, rather than remembered.
He shouldn't have blown up like that at Menardi. She was jabbing at him mindlessly - nothing she hasn't done before. It was just - did she have to ask, in the course of her mockery, whether his sister knew about his perversions -
Damn it.
If he'd been guiltless, he would have just shrugged it off, or turned it around into some jab about whether Karst knew such-and-such about her. That was what he would have ordinarily done. No one could live around Saturos and Menardi for three years without growing a thicker skin.
He just wants...
What does he even want? He doesn't know, anymore. He wishes he hadn't realized there was anything wrong at all, perhaps. That he and Jenna could have kept growing closer, the adoring younger sister and her caring older brother, the lively young woman and...
He's failed his sister. He's failed her, and their parents, and himself. The boy he was three years ago would never have had these thoughts. He would have smiled at his younger sister's antics, watched with annoyance as she acquired a circle of admiring boys, and reluctantly accepted it when she found a man worth keeping. Not this. Never this.
It was easier before the Lighthouse. When - though he shudders to think of it now - there was just him and Jenna, nestled together for warmth against the cold, and nothing in this world could come between them...
It's better this way. It's better for Jenna to hate him, and be safe from the contamination of his perversions. It really doesn't hurt that much, to rip one's heart out of one's own chest. It really doesn't hurt that much at all.