2021-07-17: Defanged

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<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Xander did not fall expecting to die. He pulled one of his health vials from his belt, injecting it into his thigh before he hit the water. A reckless, risky maneuver, but one he intended to survive. Would they think he hadn't? Good. Would Riley think he hadn't...?

Emotions swirl, all at odds with each other, and all desperate not to fade away.

Surviving the river is something to focus on. He breaks from the surface, gasping for breath and grabbing onto a nearby rock to keep his weakened body from getting washed away in the currents.

And then he sees Riley.

Did Riley... jump after him?!

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Riley thought Xander intended to die. There are few other things that would have convinced him to jump from a cliff. Even so, he feels like he waited too long. It's less like dying with him and more like refusing to live without him. But there isn't much edgeroom to dwell on regret as the terror of the fall grips him. There's a strange kind of pride that keeps him from screaming out as he falls, a sense that no one who heard it would sympathize. Not even Xander. But whose fault is that...?

He plunges into the water, and after the initial shock, is surprised to find himself not broken by the fall or smashed on rocks. But in a terrible way, that almost makes it harder.

He tries to stifle his instinct to find the surface again -- better this should be fast than to struggle -- when a hand seizes his own and yanks him upward, holding against the swift currents.

He breaks the surface with a gasp, his eyes locking on Xander's face with a flood of surprise and relief.

"Xander!" he sputters.

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Xander doesn't look directly back at Riley. His face is darkened by exhaustion, his complexion pale and his breath labored. His eye struggles to have any glimmer at it all, and the way he focuses, or rather, doesn't, is all too much like those days back in Cereza where he refused to hear Riley calling out his name.

But he moves. His fingers squeeze into Riley's arm, and even as he loses his grip on his current rock, Xander's quick to attach to another before they're both sent rushing more than a few meters.

"...Why?" he asks, like the one word is all he has the strength to say.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

...Xander's alive. Riley wants to throw his arms around him and laugh or cry, but they're still in a life-or-death struggle with this river.

Xander's hurt and exhausted; he's in no condition to be trying to rescue them both. Riley pulls closer to Xander to get his arm around him, and then reaches with vines that slither from within the earlier cut he made in his other arm to wrap around the rock and secure them more firmly. They're still in the middle of a raging river, but this could give a moment to breathe.

...Why?

Riley gives a small, wincing smile. Not all of Xander's earlier accusations hit the mark, but some of them did. "...I gave up, like you said. We kept getting stopped... I thought our time was up. And I didn't want you to kill everyone in that town."

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Even in the middle of a river threatening to wash them both away, Xander reflexively jerks himself from Riley's grip. He pays for it, swept away, but only by a few feet this time as slams, back first, against another rock. His whole body jerks, forcing another cough from his body as he barely grips back on it.

"You were always so charming... smiling and spinning stories for everyone else..."

Xander still refuses to look at Riley beyond his peripheral vision.

"I don't know why I thought I would be the exception."

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

It's strange, maybe, that Riley doesn't anticipate Xander pulling away from him, and he watches it happen with a stunned expression, like he can't quite comprehend it. The result is that Riley ends up lashed to one rock, while Xander clings to another nearby.

"X-xander..." Riley's voice shakes. It's not that there's anything strange about Xander pulling away from him. But it was supposed to have happened a year ago, when Riley first betrayed him. When it didn't happen then, he lost his fear of it. He let his guard down. Now that fear has come raging back.

"You came back to me after I ruined your life--" he sweeps his arm out, trying to incidate the curse, the... everything they've been through.

"Why are you talking like you've lost faith in me now!?" A few beats pass, and he reaches for him. "At least let me help you, and we can talk about this on dry land?!"

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

"Help me?" Xander barks a laugh and coughs, wincing instead. "You tried to kill me!"

Or them. Together. That's just as bad.

Xander swallows. He reaches for his eye again, clutching the rock with one arm instead and shivering. Not because of the cold. He's not sure he feels cold. He's not sure he feels anything.

"You want to know when you actually ruined my life?"

His nails dig into his brow, throat tight.

"Four fucking years ago when you left."

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

You tried to kill me!

"I already did kill you! I thought that was -- just a thing you'd weirdly decided to accept!" The evidence was there if he'd thought to look for it -- how desperately Xander always fought for each new day.

But to Riley, things had already been 'over' until they suddenly weren't. Until they began this surreal second life. It's almost unfathomable to him that if Xander would let him close after taking his eye, taking his future, taking his family -- that there's anything he could do to drive him away. It never made any sense for him to overlook it, but it was a gift Riley greedily accepted. The thought that he could lose him now...

You want to know when you actually ruined my life? Four fucking years ago when you left.

That one isn't fair, but Riley crumbles anyway. "...I'm sorry. How can I fix this?"

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

I already did kill you!

Xander laughs again, tired and coughing and still refusing to reach back for Riley. For everything he thinks he isn't feeling, the tears are falling again, lost in the river and swept away like so many other hopes.

Yeah. Yeah, okay -- he should have seen that coming. He should have known that. That Riley saw it that way, and never how Xander saw it. Did Riley do it seeing it like that? Intending that?

How mixed up has this all been? How long has Xander been burying himself in delusions? ...Is he delusional...? Is there anything there? The emptiness is eroding him from the inside all over again.

How can I fix this?

"...I don't know. Turn it into a joke. Make me forget. Then do it again until it finally takes and you're rid of me for good."

That's even more unfair than before. Riley been here. Riley's been with him through the worst moments of his life, even when he didn't want to be with himself. But it's so raw, each time he felt pushed away by Riley -- when they were seventeen, then with the knife in his eye, getting taken by Valmar at all, apparently? And now. Colliding together and ripping open the wounds. Fuck, that stupid dream with the stupid poisoned mangos and he ignored that, too.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Then do it again until it finally takes and you're rid of me for good.

Fair or not, the accusation sinks in like a knife. It's another overdue reckoning. He'd have preferred to pay for his murders rather than his crimes against Xander.

"I don't want to be rid of you! I don't want to be without you! The only reason I ever left without you is I thought you didn't want me!"

He reaches his hand out for Xander again, praying he'll reach back but no longer believing he will. Why should he?

"Please don't leave me. I love you."

<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.

Riley's words are knives of their own. Xander finally looks at him, then looks to his hand, and meets Riley's gaze again.

"...Riley..."

He pulls his hand from his wounded eye -- the wound Riley gave him -- fingers trembling as he barely moves forward.

Xander already knows there's no where else to go. There's never been anywhere to go, except back to him. There's no color without him. The sounds are all wrong without him. Food doesn't taste like anything without him.

I love you.

He wants so badly for that to be true. It's the only thing Xander's ever wanted to be true. But how stupid is he if he grabs that hand now? His eye throbs as a constant reminder of what Riley's capable of -- no matter how many times he declares Riley incapable of all of it.

Riley tried to kill him today.

Riley thinks he killed him already.

Xander curls his fingers back in, unable to hide the hurt and fear and uncertainty written all over his face with his thoughts.

"Do you?"

He dives down into the water instead, trying to disappear back into the currents because he doesn't want the answer to actually change.

<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.

Do you?

Riley tenses with alarm as Xander dives under the water. Once again willing to risk death to escape him.

If he let the waters sweep him away too, would Xander try to save him again? Or would that just prove he was the manipulative liar Xander said he was?

... ... he doesn't want to lose him. He wants to know that he's safe. He wants to look at him again and see acceptance and welcome.

But any way of reaching for him right now feels like it could make this worse, make it permanent for sure.

For now he needs to have faith that the determination to live that made Riley's actions so horrifying to Xander is going to be enough to get him to see himself safely to shore.

...he'll give him some time. He'll find him again. He hopes it won't be too long to wait and wonder...maybe he'll see him in the garden.