Far From Home

Evaline took a few more steps closer, crouching down so that the glowing blue water could wash over her feet. She reached in with a hand and briefly felt the algae touch her fingertips, but she let it go through her fingers.

It was amusing to imagine living here. But it was just that: an amusing thought.

"No," she said as she looked back at him when there was a pause in the breeze. The water lapped up her feet again, stealing her attention away from him.

"I guess I'm a bit like you. Not settling down. Never staying in one place for too long."

James nodded. She didn’t have to say more for him to understand the sentiment. He let a small pause pass between them. He didn’t feel in a hurry to speak, and the wind and the waves seemed to agree.

His eyes settled on the moon in the sky. It seemed... bigger than the one back home.

“So you’ve been traveling all these past five years as well?” he asked, only just audible over the wind.

Evaline let the water wash over her feet a few more times until the wind died again and James asked another question. She paused, standing up again and taking a few steps closer to him so he could hear her. She stood diagonally from him and Elliot, the water just barely reaching her toes.

She didn't mind that James was asking her questions. If anything, she was glad he was talking, even if it was about her. She knew she longed for conversation that was not shallow or about work.

"That's where we differ," she said. "You travel to new places, but the places I've showed you aren't new to me." She paused in thought. "I can show you a map when we get back. There's a designated area of land on the coast I've been following. You might hear it be called the safe zone. It's fairly large, but small compared to the rest of the map."

James nodded, and let his gaze drift across the horizon, where the sky met the sea. She didn’t exactly answer his question. He didn’t know if it was deliberate or not, but the reworded question came out anyway. If she deflected again, he’d change the subject.

“So you’ve been traveling in the safe zone all this time?”

Evaline looked over her shoulder at James. Not so much to study him since it was dim and she knew it wasn't going to do her any good anyways, but more so because she wanted to see how he was taking all of this in. The view, the answers, her.

He seemed to be going okay. And just like how she was curious about his life, he seemed curious about hers.

Like everyone else, she wished she could tell him what she was truly doing out here. But she knew better than that.

"Something like that," she responded after thinking her answer through. "Not just that, though. It's mostly for the refugee effort. Traveling is only an effect of that." She paused, wondering the hypotheticals. "But yes. Even if I wasn't involved, I'd probably be traveling anyways."

James could sense that there was more to be said. He knew what omitting information sounded like, but he knew better than to press it. Evaline didn’t seem to be trying to actively decieve him, but she wasn’t being completely forthright either. But the truth of it was — she didn’t have to be. He’d done nothing to earn that kind of trust back, and he didn’t think he ever would.

To her, he was just a distant memory. Perhaps mildly pleasant, or at best, a dull companion during her days on Nye, but it was clear that she didn’t remember their deepest moments, and she never would. The memories were gone.

If he was young and naive, he would’ve told himself that they could just create new ones - and of course, they were in a way. But it wasn’t the same. It would never be exactly the same, and as long as Evaline couldn’t remember the pain of their past... well, he would probably never find closure.

But he couldn’t really complain. He’d already assumed that he would never have closure because he never expected to see Evaline again — and even though seeing her again pained him greatly, he was still glad to see her.

It was hard to describe.

“That explains why you’re so familiar with the area, then,” he finally said.

Evaline nodded. "Yeah. That's why."

That was only the surface of it, but she didn't want to get into it now. Or at all, really. It was exhausting to think about.

She paused, trying to put herself in his shoes. It felt like the past day or so he was only giving her basic replies and small talk, but she knew he could do more than that. Not only because she remembered enjoying conversing with him, but also because he had conversed with her. But... she did shut him down before. Maybe that played a part on why he was hard to talk to now.

She sighed. "I know you're probably wondering what I've been up to since we last met all those years ago," she said slowly, looking back at him. "But I'm okay. Really. Life hasn't been too bad out here."

She looked down as the water came up to her feet again.

"I should be more worried about you," she said again, almost not wanting to say it out loud. "Have you been okay?"

James could feel the conversation shifting before she turned it back to him. He could feel it in the tone lf her voice. He could sense it in the way she looked back at him. In the way she constantly looked at him like she was trying to study him, in search of answers that wouldn’t be made plain on his face because he always made sure it didn’t, and now he didn’t know how to reverse it.

His knee-jerk reaction was to lie as seamlessly as he always did. He knew he could this time. He could sell it, with the casual, relaxed confidence of someone who didn’t have a care in the world. He could pretend, and she probably would never know.

Except for the fact that she’d seen him the first two days... cracking. At his breaking point. Desperately holding himself together until he could bind all of his worries up in a noose and let them hang there until they died into heartless apathy like the rest of them.

He knew she was asking more about the last five years, than she was the last three days. Because no one could reasonably be “okay” waking in a foreign world. But now he felt torn.

He didn’t want to be honest at the risk of sounding edgy, and he didn’t want to lie at the risk of sounding blatantly insincere.

Both options were bad.

“I don’t know by what standards I’m supposed to measure my objective state of being, but I suppose, compared to whatever you could call the ‘average’ person, I haven’t been ‘okay’ for a very long time. But for someone in my circumstances, I’d say I’m as well as I can be.”

He wasn't okay.

But that by itself was okay. Evaline was glad that James admitted to it. She knew he wasn't, and she didn't want to dance around it anymore.

"It's sometimes okay to not be okay," she said after a long pause so she could pick and choose her words carefully. "But it should be a temporary state of being. And besides..." She glanced back at him again with a hint of a smile. "Your circumstances here are different. Better, I hope."

James didn't know what she expected him to say to that, but he wasn't going to get into it. Sometimes okay to not be okay seemed to come with conditions, and he didn't want to know what those conditions were.

"If by better you mean I'm not actively being hunted, then yes."

"That's right," Evaline said back as she thought of the implications. "No one's after you here."

Five years, in the run. It must have been exhausting. She couldn't imagine how many other close calls James had, and she didn't dare ask if he did get caught. She didn't dare ask if he was tortured again. It wasn't in her place, or any of her business. She just wanted him to heal, physically and mentally.

Evaline knew that him "not being okay" concerned more than just bounty hunters, but she wasn't sure if it was also in her place to ask. Part of her was afraid to ask since she could be a reason he was not okay, and she wasn't prepared to hear it.

She sighed, patiently reeling her thoughts in.

"Remember, I was in your place once," she said, still gazing out at the ocean. "Unsure of the unfamiliar world and my future. You might've told me that things will be okay, I don't know. But words couldn't fix what was wrong or my problems. I don't think anything I say can simply make you be more okay, and I won't try, if you don't want me to." She paused.

"It helped to have time to breathe, reflect, and think, though. And a friend to count on."

James wanted to take her words to heart. He wanted to recieve her words of comfort. Or something. But he felt... empty.

He didn’t know what him and Evaline were anymore, but he didn’t know if they would ever be friends like they used to. Evaline seemed to keep wanting to extend the offer of friendship without addressing their past. She wanted to give him spacd, let him heal, and recover — but he didn’t even know what she meant by that. He didn’t even know what he meant by that.

What if he wouldn’t have “time to heal?” What if the fates that brought him to earth ripped him away just as quickly? He would prefer that over the alternative. He considered: if he hypothetically did have time to “heal,” what then? He’d get ripped away only after finally “healing” just to have another open wound tearing through the others?

He knew Evaline understood what it felt like to be in another world with uncertainty of the future. But they both knew she didn’t understand what it was like to be in his shoes, after everything else he’d gone through, and that truth went both ways.

But... Evaline seemed to be trying. To whatever degree she could handle.

Gods, the millions of replies that lined up at the tip if his tongue. All of them half-truths and blatant lies.

James was quiet, and he stared down at the glowing blue algae inching closer to him, and he backed away another few inches.

“I’d told you I would wait.”

But he didn't expect her to wait for him.

His voice was soft, and he didn't care that his voice got lost in the gust of wind that took it.

“I appreciate it,” he said louder.

James had inched back from the water, and he said the next words so softly, Evaline wasn't sure if she heard it right.

I'd told you I would wait.

He said that to her when they first met back then?

Wait for... what?

She wanted to ask more about this, but she wasn't even sure if she was ready to know. They had met each other again only a few days ago, and that was after five years of radio silence, and four months of memories that affected her so much, she decided to repeat history and have them removed.

It wasn't like she was going to ignore what happened forever. But... they had just met again. She had dulled his existence at the back of her mind and then reduced him to a strange dream. How was she expected to suddenly have this conversation with him? It was hard enough to talk to him like this was a normal day in her life.

If he said he would wait for her, then she hoped he still thought that today.

"Of course," she said softly mostly to herself, and she decided to take a few steps back as well so she was standing next to him. The wet sand lodged between her toes as she sunk a little deeper.

"And you do start to forget over time, you know," she said after a pause. "I know I was difficult at first. But I think staying in Nye was like an escape, and the longer I stayed, the more my past became less relevant. It's not that I'm telling you to stay here longer, just..."

She bit back a sigh. She was trying to comfort James, but she wasn't really knowing what she was saying. It had been a long, long time since she discussed Nye out loud.

"There isn't any note that we know of telling us to reveal our pasts," she said instead, looking over at James and crossing her arms as the breeze gave her the chills. "So you don't have to feel forced to reveal anything you don't want to. And that's okay with me."

James stared down into the sand where Evaline's feet had been planted. Her toes, digging in. Her feet, sinking as the water pushed and pulled the sand around her ankles. He still carefully avoided the touch of the water, but now she stood beside him, no longer speaking to him at a distance. He had a feeling she heard every word. A part of him didn't really care. How could he? It wasn't like she remembered anymore, and he didn't know if she wanted to yet, if, at all.

He knew he didn't want to forget. He couldn't forget, and he wouldn't forget. There were countless things that his mind chose to forget and his body remembered, but so much of the time he spent with Evaline had melded into his memory.

He never forgot. He just ignored it. Like the two of them were doing now.

And of course, she kept talking about what happened in the last five years. As if it was completely separate from everything else. She kept saying she wasn't going to force him to share, but why did that not feel true when she kept saying it over and over? "That's okay with me." But was it? Was it really?

James wished he didn't feel so far away. Elliot and the lead in his hands was the only thing that grounded him.

"Can your past truly become irrelevant if it's shaped you?" James asked, staring blankly and emotionlessly out into the sea.

It was a rhetorical question, and it was about him. Not her. He didn't want her to answer. At least, he didn't think he did.

Evaline paused to study how James had blankly stared out in front of him, and she wondered what was running through his head as he posed the question. She decided to copy his gaze to the sea and think through his question carefully.

"I used to wonder the same thing," she finally said. "But I think wisdom comes with time, and now I believe that your past doesn't need to define you. You can learn from your mistakes, but it doesn't have to define who you are."