forthsofar | in days to come when your heart feels undone

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caleb

in days to come when your heart feels undone

At first, she'd given that late-night text from Caleb--a friend in trouble, Caleb okay but out of school for the week--a healthy amount of sympathy, but no real concern. She sought out Clint in the senior hallway and divvied up the task of collecting assignments and notes from Caleb's classes, ignoring to the best of her ability the vague sniggers about sex cults she overheard from a few of the other members of the team as she walked away.

It was all working rather smoothly, with very little room for worry--until she stopped by Caleb's apartment that night and actually saw him. Whatever had happened, it left him drawn and tired, something almost lost behind his eyes. Rosie hadn't pried, despite the flurry of questions that rose to her mind, just handed over the collected assignments and made the appropriate vague noises of sympathy before he pushed the front door slowly shut again. Still, the sight was enough to make her worry, to increase that faint concern from before to something far harder to ignore.

Clint had agreed to drop things off the next two days, leaving Rosie time to think--and to plan. By Thursday, she had at least the seed of an idea, something that might provide Caleb with a little more comfort after a situation that had so clearly rattled him. She got Clint's half of the assignments from him after school, then stopped by the small market a few blocks from Candlewood to pick up a few additional things before heading home.

That night, she loads everything into a few tote bags she and Neil had picked up from one Darrow event or another and heads downstairs. She knocks once, twice, then tries the knob, finding it unlocked and barging in before she can quite stop herself.

"It's just me," she calls, nudging the door shut with her foot.

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Caleb ducks his head and blushes at almost the same time as she starts giggling--though he would have, wouldn't he? He'd have felt her delight as it happened, a thought that fills her with a bit of wonder beneath her already-evident amusement. "Anterwold," she corrects, even though they both already know he's recognized his error. "Honestly, I don't think I saw anything with antlers at all when I was there, not even when I was lost in the forest at the very end."

Rosie falls into a thoughtful silence, trying to put together an answer that's not going to sound utterly mad, even by Darrow standards. "I didn't see much of it," she admits, "but it seemed to be...a pocket universe, or another dimension, like people think Darrow is. There was this huge forest, and a little village called Willdon, though the people there seemed to think it was an awfully big city. And it wasn't modern at all, no cars or aeroplanes or even electricity."

Rosie catches her bottom lip in her teeth for a moment, worrying it as she debates whether to keep going. "The strangest part was that they called it Anterwold at all. That's the name the Professor used for the society in the story he was writing."

"D'you think maybe he was writing about that place?" he asks. This sounds so cool. "Like, he'd been there, too, before you?" God, he wishes Adam were here, because he'd probably have so many theories about it, so much to say. He and Rosie would get along well, he finds himself thinking.

"That's what I don't know!" she says, the hint of excitement and curiosity she can hear in Caleb's voice fueling something similar in her own. "I got there through this...it was like a glowing doorway in the corner of his cellar, so it's not as though he didn't have a way to get there himself. But does it exist because he wrote about it, or was he writing about it because it exists?"

She stops to catch her breath, a faintly lopsided grin on her face. "Every time I think too much about it, I end up with a headache."

"It's like that chicken/egg scenario," he remarks with a laugh. "Fuck. Adam would have so much to say about this. He's really good at the philosophy stuff, he'd probably manage to convince you that it's, like, both at the same time?"

This feels good. Caleb is excited to learn about this weird, impossible place, and Rosie is excited to talk about it, which means Caleb is more excited. It's a far cry from the couch moment just a little bit ago.

"Well, that's not going to help my potential headache at all," she shoots back, giggling. "It being both at once, and everything with time passing far faster there than it did back home. Which I hadn't even said yet, goodness. The first time I went through, it was only for a minute or two, but I met this boy. Jay, he was...he wasn't very old. And then I went back a week later, and five years had passed for him. He was practically a man."

The sauce lets out a faint burbling noise, starting to simmer; Rosie gives it a stir, crushing a few of the tomato pieces against the side of the pot as she goes. "Okay, my turn again." She crinkles her nose, thinking for a moment. "How does it work? Being able to feel everyone's feelings. Is it just...you just know, or is it something different?"

"It's... both, I guess. Like, you're curious right now. I can feel it like it's mine, but I know it's not. Other people's feelings usually have a physical sensation, but not always. Sometimes it's a color, or a shape in my body? Does that make sense?"

Adam loves it when he talks about his ability, but that doesn't mean he's gotten better at articulating the finer nuances of it.

Even knowing that he can sense it doesn't keep Rosie from letting out a soft noise of surprise as Caleb so accurately identifies her as curious. She sets the spoon down on the stovetop, turning back to face him. "It does, a little," she says. "The bit about colors most of all, that's...that's not uncommon, for feelings to at least be suggested by colors. In art, or someone writing about it in a book. Having the blues meaning you're sad and all that."

"Mm, but not everyone's sadness is blue," he explains. "Usually, loneliness is blue. Sadness that I've felt from other people can be all sorts of different colors, depending on, like, what they're sad about."

"Oh, brilliant," she murmurs, going over to one of the other stools at the counter and sitting down. The sauce has to simmer and can be left alone for a bit, and Rosie's more than happy to take the time to devote all her attention to this back and forth of the secrets they're sharing. "So sadness is more like...a shading over something else? The other color of whatever they feel."

She thinks back to that moment not long past at all, the two of them folded together on the couch as Caleb sobbed out all his grief and hurt. Knowing now how intense a moment that had to have been only makes her more glad she'd come by, that she'd provided what comfort she could.

"What's your favorite feelings color, then? Or sensation, whatever's the right way to put it."

Edited 2020-01-26 03:25 (UTC)

"Joy, I think," he says, though there's another, more complicated answer that he doesn't want to get into. He doesn't want to dim the mood by talking about Adam. Again. "Feeling someone's joy when I'm also happy is, like... Fuck, it's like soaring, y'know? Everything falls away and it's just this perfect moment where everything is just warm light, and..."

He breaks off, blushing a little, because he's starting to get poetic and enthused. He smiles and shrugs a little.

"Anyway, sometimes, feelings are colors, and sometimes, they're sensations, and sometimes they're both. Like... concern. I felt yours through the door before you even got here. It's this yellow-orange color with pokers that come out and sort of jab me? Like... like you're trying to get my attention, or something, almost like your feelings are reaching out to ask me if I'm okay."

He talks about light and about joy, and the deeper he gets into it the brighter his expression seems to grow, something easing in the set of his jaw and the curve of his smile. Even when he stops, cutting himself off with that sheepish roll of his shoulders, there's still the remains of that delight in the motion. Rosie doesn't say anything, just watches him, taking in the sheer fact of his happiness.

When he moves on to concern, she laughs. "Well, I didn't mean to jab you with pokers or anything," she says, light and teasing, "but I suppose I couldn't help it any more than anyone else does when they're concerned, since I didn't know. It's so strange, thinking about everyone going around making you see colors or feel things nobody else does, and none of them have any idea they're doing it."

That has him laughing a little, but he nods. "It's... definitely weird," he admits. "It took a lot of getting used to. Like... when someone's curious, my arms feel like they're covered in Pop Rocks that are just going off against my skin. Or, if they're stressed, I feel like I have bees swarming around in my belly. And nevermind if someone has a crush on someone else." That has another little laugh bubbling up and he blushes, thinking about Clint and his butterflies.

"Oh no," she says, feigning a little more drama in her reaction purely for the sake of exaggeration and teasing. "I'd never thought of that. The crush bit, specifically. And goodness knows there's all kinds of..." She sighs. "I don't think I've ever gone to a school that's more full of gossip and scandal and all the rest as Petros is."

Though she's aware he may pick up on it, Rosie thinks for a moment about all the rumors that have piled up since the start of the school year; whispers of sex cults and suggestions of impropriety, the lingering hints of the kinds of things David had said and believed about her and the other girls at the Home. It's embarrassing, still, but at this point there's far more annoyance in it than real shame.

"You must come home every day with a headache."

"No, not really," he says. "I mean, I can still get headaches, but usually it's if I feel a lot of the same feeling, or if I get drunk because someone else is drunk." He makes a face. "Oh yeah, that's... a thing. If I'm around someone who's getting drunk, I totally start to feel drunk, too." Which isn't fair, and is really fucking frustrating, but mainly just means that Caleb doesn't go to many parties, or tends to hang out with people who don't mind not drinking around him.

"You didn't figure that last part out because you're friends with Guy, did you?" she blurts, having the decency to look at least faintly ashamed a moment later when her brain catches up to what she'd said. "Sorry, that's not very nice. True, but...no. Forget I said it, please." Rosie makes a vague shooing motion with one hand, falling silent again before she tries to shift the topic.

"What else do you want to know about Anterwold?"

But Caleb laughs, shaking his head. "No, uh. That's actually how he found out about my ability. That winter dance? Someone spikes the punch, and, well." He shrugs, because he knows Rosie will be able to make the connection here.

Then he thinks about Anterwold, the things she's said so far, and he hums thoughtfully.

"Does that professor guy, does he know you've been there?"

"That would have done it," she says, laughing a little even though it's not really all that funny. It's one thing to choose to have a glass or two of the punch that's always spiked with one thing or another at the Petros dances, and quite another to have it effectively forced on you through no fault of your own. "Though if you had to get caught by any of the chaperones, I suppose Guy's the best one for that sort of situation."

The question Caleb asks is the kind of practical thing she might have thought of, if their situations were reversed, and she smiles even as she's shaking her head. "No, he doesn't," she admits. "Not specifically. I tried to...sneak up on telling him, in a way, after the first time. I asked about apparitions, but got nervous a minute later and said it was because I'd read something about one in a mystery novel, which only led to us talking about that for an hour instead of me confessing anything about the doorway in the cellar." That had been the way of all of their conversations, the lazy afternoons she'd spent in Lytten's study with a cup of tea in one hand, soaking up whatever bits of knowledge the meandering path of his thoughts led him towards. It had made her feel grown up, more so than anything her formal education had done for her, let alone her parents.

"And I hadn't made it back home the second time to tell anyone anything at all," she says. "I think I was about to, I'd found the doorway again and had stepped through, but something wasn't right and I turned up in Darrow instead."

"That's fucking nuts," he says bluntly, because it is. "Like, I know a lot of people like it here, and, and even the fucking locals don't realize how weird it is, but, like, fuck this place."

He doesn't mean to sound so fervent, but thinking about how Darrow pulled Rosie from her life, from her chance to talk to the professor about what she's seen and where she's been, makes him so angry. It's like slapping her in the face. And Caleb may not actually have mirror-touch synesthesia, but he does have a slightly over-inflated sense of fairness, and Darrow does not meet those standards by a long shot.

She hadn't quite expected Caleb's reaction to be so strong, and for the briefest moment she's startled--but his disgust is directed at Darrow itself, at the same kinds of unfair and bizarre things that still needle her from time to time, things she more than understands being angry at. And it all was unfair, terribly so. She hadn't even been taken from her home, like so many other people, merely plucked out of thin air and sent somewhere strange for the second time in a day.

Taken in that light, the tantrum she'd had within minutes of arriving, sitting in a pile of silk and tears and fury in the middle of the park, seems all the more justified.

"Early on, I kept reminding myself of what a lot of people here think, that some version of us keeps going or whatever, from whenever it seems that we leave and come to Darrow," she says, her face crinkling a little at how convoluted it sounds. "Still do, sometimes. But if it's true, hopefully that version of me finds a way to tell Lytten all about it and get some answers."

"Wait, wait, hold up," he says, raising a hand. "What d'you mean, some version of us keeps going?"

He knows it's technically her turn to ask a question, but he needs to have this explained before they move on.

He'd heard that time stops, or that he'd go back to the exact moment he'd left with no memory. But he hadn't heard that he was still there, too. That sends a little thrill through him, even as he feels a little jealous.

If he's still back there, too, then that means he's gotten to work through the Damien bullshit, that some version of him is still with Adam — still green. It means that everything is okay.

Whatever she'd been about to say flies out of her head when Caleb holds up his hand and she hears the barely-restrained excitement and curiosity in his voice. "Goodness, nobody told you?" she says, her eyes going a little wide. She chews on her lip a moment, thinking of the best way to put it all. "So I don't know for sure, because it's not like I've had anyone come from home to confirm it," she says, getting down from the chair and going back to the stove, stirring the sauce as it keeps simmering. "But sometimes, if there are other people who come to Darrow from home, they're from...later on than when you left, and they have memories, from home, about things that you've done there."

It's not the cleanest explanation, and she frowns a little. "So it's a bit like you're in two places at once. Home, living the life maybe you would've had if it hadn't been for Darrow hauling you away, and here, doing something completely different."

"No, I mean— Everyone's said that time stops, or something, but they've never said anything about me still being there, what the fuck."

That changes a lot. It probably shouldn't, but it does. It means that his friends and family aren't worried about him. It means Adam's okay. It means some version of him knows what happened to Damien after he'd left.

It means Caleb can finally relax a little.

"It's really very strange to think about," she says. "But, you know, it's kind of a relief, the idea you haven't just vanished. I think my parents would've had a fit if I'd done that."

Rosie knows that to be true, but for just a second, there's a faint twinge of a doubt she doesn't want to acknowledge. It was her brother who'd always done what had been expected of him; leaving school at the appropriate time, going to work, doing the things boys were meant to do. Rosie, by contrast, had dreamed a little too big even as she played at obedience helping her mother with errands or the housework. She'd passed her exams, insisted on continuing at school and being educated, made friends with someone who only encouraged her insatiable curiosity by supplying her with books and jazz records and tales of a fantastical world that turned out to be all too real. Maybe if she'd simply vanished into Anterwold, it hadn't been quite the loss to her family that she wants to believe it is.

"I don't think it stays that way," she says after a moment. "If we leave, I think we just go back to being...who we were before, not that there'll be two of us forever." She smiles, soft and small, as she turns back around to face him again. "That'd just be an awful complication, two Rosies. I mean, which of us would get my bedroom?"

She's trying to joke, but Caleb's still hung up on that flash of doubt, and suddenly, he understands so much. He gets why her feelings are always slightly tinged with that off-gray color. He frowns, watching her, wanting to reach out and touch her shoulder, or something.

"Hey," he says. "Why d'you feel like that?"

It's still her turn to ask a question, but he's still the one asking, because this isn't right. She shouldn't feel like this.

Rosie sees the way he frowns, the sudden softness and concern in his eyes, and she knows in an instant exactly what he's picked up, hard as she'd tried to paper it over with that silly little joke. In some strange way it's a relief, permission to be more honest than she might have been with anyone aside from Charlie, Nick, or Sabrina. "I think I just realized exactly how much I've changed since the last time I saw my family."

She still has the spoon for the sauce in one hand; carefully, she sets it back down on the stove before going back to her seat at the counter. Unthinkingly, she scoots her chair a little closer to Caleb's as she settles. "I was never very good at being who they thought I ought to be, and...I think it's only gotten worse here." She laughs, thinking of rumors and innuendo, of running from one boy's house and into the arms of another. "No, it's definitely gotten worse."

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