[Fic] Soul of the Sea

[kittydesade]

Title: Soul of the Sea
Prompt:
We were in between lovers
At the peak of a sigh
Hit the beach in December
'Cause we barely survived in the month of July

And what I want to know is
The very thing that you choose to ignore
Why we go back again to a place when we know
That we've already been there before

Now the breeze all over me
Breeze, let everything be
Set it free
And me, I will leave all the rest behind

We had scars on our spirits
And bruises that swelled like the sea
We were gun-metal grey, but you say that's the shade
That a heartache is just meant to be

But what I want to know is
Why at night when I climb into bed
Instead of resting my mind, I'm rehearsing the lines
That I tell myself I should've said

And the breeze all over me
Breeze, let everything be
Set it free
And me, I will leave all the rest behind

It's night, I'm afraid, and the dark unfolds
It's a fog and a rain that surrounds my soul
What's the size and the weight of the kind of love
It would take to repair what I'm so scared of

Let them fall by the wayside
You say, just leave them behind
All those tough words are wrong, baby, I'm not that strong
And the tenderness suits me just fine

But what I want to know is
Why I'm so quick to climb into their heads
And pointedly stare, and then judge me from there
When I could just dance by the sea in the breeze instead

And the breeze all over me
Breeze, let everything be
Set it free
And me, I will leave all the rest behind
Word Count: 3,000
Rating: PG
Summary: ... I can't think of one. I'm fairly sure the song doesn't apply. Written for lyric2lit, a husband and wife argument over when enough is enough.

It was too cold to stand outside without a jacket, and too warm for her heavy overcoat, so she compromised with a velvet shawl her mother had left her. It saw more use in her home than it ever had at her mother's, who eschewed formal occasions where black velvet would have been appropriate. The fridges tickled along her arms in the wind. It felt like little spiders were crawling over her skin.

Every morning for the past week Tisha had walked out onto the balcony and stared out at the harbor, wondering. They were supposed to be back by now.

From the porch she could see the harbor, and as much of the town as remained unobscured by the forest that they had protested and fought so hard to keep intact. She loved the woods, and even though it was too cold to go down and spend much time in them now, at least as she wished, barefoot and running about, she tried to keep her eyes in the treeline and look for the hawks.

It was better than looking for the mast.

Too many arguments. Too many years of just one more season, and it wasn't as though they needed the money anymore. He had a small fleet of boats to do the work for him, men that he hired to drag the nets and carry the pots. And while she appreciated that he wanted to be a part of that and stay connected, the storms and sea were just as hard now as they had been twenty years ago.

There were small concessions. After the one deadly season that had claimed so many ships and lives she had screamed and wept until he agreed to stay off the two king crab boats that were his moneymakers as well as his pride and joy. The two captains, the young man to whom he had turned over the boat and the older, experienced sailor with whom she was only slightly familiar, had spoken with her afterwards. They'd told her how bitter he was to be off the boat, and how glad they were that she had made him. That alone was enough to scare her. If the other deckhands, the other captains thought that he was too old for it, why wasn't he listening to them?

No, she thought, turning away from the porch at the whistling of the kettle. No, that wasn't fair. She knew why, knew that he had the restless spirit of a born adventurer in him, and he needed his adventures to be physical. Meaningful. These days one could have many adventures that were physical, but it was hard to find meaning in jumping out of an airplane with a bunch of brightly colored canvas on your back and flying to nowhere in particular for no reason other than you could.

It was the kind of thing that chafed at him if he was made to do it. Their financial advisor, when they had been discussing retirement planning, had suggested it. Nick had pushed his chair back and stalked from the room and it had taken her the better part of the day to calm him down and reassure him that she didn't think he was too old.

Laetitia smiled a little as she caught sight of her reflection in the kettle. Dark hair gone gray by the time she was thirty five, it was silver now, and bound in a thick braid down her back. She hadn't cut it since she was sixteen. It gave her a distinguished look, she thought.

Maybe that was the tack to take next time. If he resisted being too old to do the things he loved, what was she? Three years younger, she was no spring chicken herself, and had turned over the last of her rescue birds in favor of her less dangerous hobbies. Though she did still go down to the nature center on occasion.

It was different. She knew he wouldn't see it that way, would remind her of her visits and ask why she was still allowed to keep her hand in but he couldn't. The hot water spilled as she poured her tea a little too vigorously, burning her hand. "Oh, shit."

Her voice sounded loud and more obscene for the silence. The kind of silence that films tried to emulate and writers sometimes came closer (she thought) to describing but no one could ever quite capture. It was heavy, thick, smothering her warmly enough that she didn't feel the winter air anymore, not with her eyes turned towards the harbor and her heart like a stone in her chest. Waiting for his return and dreading it.

Their time together was reduced to strained days of falsified happiness and bitter, clashing arguments. Both of them knew this wasn't the way they wanted it, neither of them wanted to give way, no one knew how to fix it. And now they were overdue and she was filled with the repeating thoughts that seemed cliché and nevertheless true. That their last words to each other in this life may have been spoken in anger.

She had learned, though, far too young and in one horrible season, never to wish he didn't come back. The guilt had almost killed her.

Now, instead, she wished he found a reason to stay. That he would come to his senses. That, he would leave her in peace and go live in the town was the extent of her telling him to go away.

But she couldn't imagine him living in the town either, and she sighed as she wrapped her hands around the mug and used it for a shield against arthritis, the cold, anything else that might bother her as she went back out to the porch to watch the few ships that remained. The few ships whose masts had suddenly become more. She set the mug very carefully down on the railing knowing it would likely be spilled or shattered by the time she returned, and bolted for the truck.

Words echoed in her mind. She replayed every conversation they had had in the days before he'd sailed out and knew it was wrong, and still she couldn't stop thinking. Her hands beat an impatient tattoo on the steering wheel at every stoplight. If there had been a single cop paying attention she would have had it. Whatever god looked after sailors and children was looking after her, today.

By the time she got to the dockside area of town everyone knew her truck, and they knew better than to try and convince her to slow down. There was some yelling when she strayed too close to a pedestrian, or a cart, or something equally fragile and beloved. She apologized with a wave and parked as soon as she could manage, realizing only when she stepped out that she hadn't changed her house slippers for real shoes.

He was being helped off the boat by one of his crew, a young man whose name she vaguely remembered was David but that didn't matter now, not that nor the puddles of various thicknesses of liquid, nor the ropes that she leaped over, nor the arthritis in her hands, nor the heavy objects she avoided walking under or near. There were a few shouts, but fewer than there might have been. They knew her. They trusted her not to do anything stupid, and they understood. There were other wives who had made other dawn runs.

He was coughing. He shouldn't have been coughing.

Michael Whelan caught her arm before she went up to confront him, an urgent look on his face. "He's been coughing since we weighed in the last time. Don't know what it is, but Tancred thinks… you know Mike used to be a corpsman?"

Tish nodded. She didn't want to hear about Michael Tancred, she wanted to hear about Nick Loomis.

"He thinks it's pneumonia."

Her eyes swung back to him with horror and fury, but she swallowed back the screaming. It wasn't Whelan's fault. "Thank you for telling me. Is there anything he needs to…"

"No, we'll send them up to your place, best thing to do would be to get him in a warm bed." He smiled a little crookedly. "Really, the best thing to do would be to get him checked out at a hospital but…"

They both smiled, and it was worried and brittle as ice. "He won't go to a hospital. I know." Their family doctor knew too, and still made house calls. Thank the Lord.

"Tish…" He stopped at the look on her face. "Tish, I know what you're going to say, but…"

"Not right now, dear," she smiled, tucking her arm into his. "It's cold out, and you sound terrible, and I'm in my slippers. Let's get home and then you can hear all about it."

Some of the younger deckhands chuckled, some of the older ones cringed, knowing the aftermath of those fights. All of them bid a fond farewell and some offered to help them back to the truck, which was, after all, not that far away. They made it to the truck in silence, drove back up the hill in silence. They made it into the house without saying anything and she looked over at the mug which had miraculously neither shattered nor spilled over. Perhaps it was a sign.

He coughed on the threshold and she pushed back the screaming that she still wanted to do, ducking under his arm and dragging him to the couch.

"No. Arguments." She found she could say it without yelling. "I'm sick of arguments. You're going to sit down, and you're going to bundle up in the blankets, and we're going to have a talk."

"Hmmph. You mean you're going to talk and I'm going to listen."

He had already set himself into an argumentative mood. She did not fill her hands with anything to throw.

"Yes, I'm going to talk. And you're going to listen, and then I will listen to you trying to justify your going out on a boat when you can barely breathe in a winter wind. Did you know Michael Tancred thinks you may have pneumonia? Did he tell you that while he was trying to keep you off the deck in a rainstorm? Because I'd love to know if you just didn't think it was that bad or if you deliberately tried to give yourself hypothermia, or, or a broken neck or a broken skull because you were coughing too badly to see the pot coming at you!"

"Tish, you're exaggerating…"

"I am not exaggerating! Every time you go out you come back sick, or, or injured! Or both! And I am sick of it! You are sick, Nicholas, you are sick and you …" Her hands clenched, and it hurt, and she didn't care. It wasn't as bad as the cold steel around her heart. Cold crab-pot steel, and maybe that was just the shade that a heartache was meant to be for her. Cold and swinging.

"Every night." She swallowed and made her voice even. "Every night you go out I lie there thinking back, why we do this. Why we go back again to a place… when we know that we've already been there before. Over and over again. You know … you know better. I know you know. And I don't know…"

She was shaking, and she couldn't stop the tears. "I don't know, Nicholas Bradley Loomis, why I put up with you. Except that, after all these years…"

Oh, hell. Let him fill in the empty spaces with the words she meant to say and couldn't because there were no words for the terror. No words for the waiting unless you had done it yourself, and she was tired of having to explain. They had been here so many times before.

"You wouldn't do that to me, Tisha," he was cold hands on her arms and trying to hold her and brush the tears away, but she wouldn't let him. She knew where this was going to go.

"I would. I will…" The resolve wasn't there yet, but it was close. "Nick, you have to stop. The long trips, the seasons, you have to stop going out for the entire season. You're not thirty anymore, you're not even fifty anymore. It's time to let go…"

He pressed a tissue into her hand, and she smiled a little as she wiped her eyes.

"It's time for one of us to let go, Nick. I don't want it to be me. I know it's selfish, but I don't want it to be me. And …"

But it was too late to take it back and his face had already gone cold and craggy, shaking his head. "We need to compromise, Laetitia. There needs to be some kind of compromise. I won't give up…"

"I know." Impatient with herself, impatient with him and her misspeaking and everything. Impatient with the situation, she threw the wadded tissue at the opposite wall. "I know! You won't bend, you won't …" But he was already storming to the door, talking about things to do. "Nick, please…"

"Please, what?" he turned and shouted at her. "Please what, please spend the rest of your life a hollowed out cripple on your porch talking about the good old days? Please let go of everything that ever meant a damn to you …"

And now he realized he'd gone too far, watched her hands come up to her mouth and then clench into fists on her cheeks and the tears pouring forth again and he didn't even close the door, sighing as he rushed to her quick enough to make him cough again. But she didn't go to him this time. He put his arms around her and led her to the couch, but he couldn't talk until he stopped coughing.

"Love, you know I didn't … I don't…"

"Do I? How do I, when you … you don't think. You don't … you just wander off into the sunset, you get on your boat and you sail away and I have to … I have to live with knowing that whatever we last said to each other may be the last thing we ever get to say. I have to wait, I have to put my life on hold and wait until you come back, and I … it's harder, every year, because w-we …"

He was listening. It made it harder, because he was actually listening, and she put her head on his shoulder and cried.

The words were there. They had to be. "I don't want to live like that anymore. And I know you want to still be a part of things, but I still want to be able to take long rides in the woods, and go to work with my birds…"

"But you still can, you go…"

"No." Another tissue went flying. "No, I can't. I have arthritis in my hands, my bones are … what if I was thrown in the woods, without anyone there, without any way of contacting anyone or going for help? What if I broke my hip or my leg and you had to wait by the door until one in the morning, wondering if I was going to come home at all? How would you feel?"

He didn't have anything to say to that, not then. But he was thinking about it, she could tell, by the way his arms tightened around her, by the way his mouth twisted.

"The sea is all I have… no, not like that. But I'm not like you, I don't have hobbies or things to keep me occupied here. I don't know …. What I would do with myself if I didn't go out for the seasons. For at least one season. I gave up the crab and you know what that was like…"

She laughed a little, rueful. "You were a bear. I remember."

"What do you want me to do? Give it up … I won't charter boats for tourists," he pointed a finger at her, and she laughed again. "You know I hate tourists."

"And you know I do too, but there will be other things. You could… You could take one of your old boats and, what do you call it, ground it. Leave it in dry-dock and teach the new hires on a real ship, instead of waiting till they get out on the water to learn."

He nodded a little. "I'd have to find a place for it, find the … find the space. Find the funding…"

"Oh, please." She smacked him on the arm. "Since when have you had to worry about funding?"

"I'm not … it's not …"

"Do you remember when we were told we could retire? Do you? The current president's predecessor wasn't in office then, that's how long ago it was. Stop that."

They laughed. The steel eased from around her chest, her heart resuming its normal beat. She thought. Her lungs moved, air in, air out. She could breathe again. But he couldn't. He was coughing from laughing so hard.

"I'll call Dr. Rhodes."

He nodded. She knew he was in trouble when he didn't even fight her on it, and sighed a little as she picked up the phone.

"I don't want to give this up, Tish…"

"I know," she sighed. "But I don't want to give you up either. I want to welcome the next sea breeze that blows on my face, not curse it like some character in a fairy tale for stealing my husband away."

He smiled a little, leaning back against the couch when she told him to, one hand gesturing and the other holding the phone still.

"You'd make a terrible fairy-tale heroine anyway, love."

The last tissue bounced off his chest.