Work Text:
“And what are you doing now?”
Jay hums, and digs the shovel into the ground again. “Just cleaning. You?”
“What am I doing?” He nods, and waits. “Many, many things... Moving, mostly. Always.”
“...right,” he says, scraping the wall with the shovel, tearing characteristically red plants off their roots. He tosses the plants onto the pile, and moves on to the next overgrown spot of the wall. “Well, why are you here?”
“I'm never not.”
He digs the shovel into the ground harder than necessary, making a loud scraping noise against the stone bricks. “But why did you decide to talk today?” Jay closes his eyes, huffs, and gets back to work. There's a long silence. He finally looks up, thinking he's alone again, and turns to the beach.
She's still there, only a translucent head and elbows coming out of the waves. He can never quite make out a face, but he knows in her voice that her eyebrows would be furrowed. “I was... curious.”
Jay looks away, back to cleaning the lighthouse walls, and the vague answer turns into a cold rush over him. The sight had taken his voice away. With his back turned, he finds it in himself to answer. “Curious?”
There's a sloshing sound, almost lost among the other sounds of the ocean on the shore. “You're not like the others,” she points out, and he almost wants to laugh, but he's listening. “You have power.”
He keeps his back to her, knowing his face must be all twisted from this conversation. “I'm the elemental of Lightning.” He tosses a few more plants to the pile, and moves on with a shrug, trying to shake the pain from his throat.
“Yet you live here.” States the echoey, distant voice. He can almost pretend it's just the noise of the waves for a moment, but a moment later, his ears are back to searching the air for an answer, eager to pick out the next time the shore sounds out real words. “You belong in the sky, not the sea.”
“I belong with you ,” Jay barely even realizes what he's saying. He doesn't stop there. “I made a promise, and I'm keeping it.”
“Huh. A promise...” The ocean rustles, sloshes around a bit again. He stares at the wall. “I never make promises. It must be inconvenient.”
Her words have him missing the dirt and slamming the shovel straight onto the wall with a grating scrape.
Jay winces at the noise, and at the way his heart is shattering. He just walked right into that one, though, didn't he? Of course that's what she'd think, she doesn't know, doesn't care about this stuff anymore. She doesn’t remember. She can’t.
Except... “Is there anything… Is there anything else?” Jay sticks the shovel into the ground and turns around, taking another look at her. She's sitting up, sitting on top of her feet on the sand, waves moving back and forth around her... form. He sniffles, pulling up his sleeve to wipe his face. “Anything else you're curious about?”
She lingers on his face for a moment, as if he needed even more proof that he must look like hot garbage. But a moment later, completely unfazed, she turns to look at the discarded pile next to him. “Why do you remove the kelp?”
Jay frowns. “That's not... I... I don't know,” he shrugs, crossing his arms tensely. “'Cause the lighthouse looks abandoned if I don't, I guess.” He thinks he hears a noncommittal hum from among the waves, but there's nothing else. Once again he thinks she's left, and he doesn't know whether the thought makes him miserable or relieved. He makes his way around the lighthouse digging up the weeds, almost finished when he finally caves. “Are you still there?”
“I'm never not,” she repeats, and this time there's something almost amused in it. Is she making fun of him? Jay bites his lip and trains his eyes on the weeds. He tries to make quick work of it, thinking to himself, the sooner he is done with this he can... He can what? Run up the stairs and hide from the conversation he started? Run from her ?
“Right, right,” he sighs, swallowing down a new swell of tears. The moment he's done, he hauls the dead plants into the trash bag, then ties it and marches to the stairs. The handle of the shovel leaves a wood-patterned imprint on his palm after he drops it against the wall.
Jay reaches for the doorknob with a rapidly melting bravado. Looking over his shoulder is a mistake, and he slams the door because of it.
—
It's a day and a half later that he walks out again, wrapped up in a thicker jacket because of the cold front of wind. He brushes some hair out of his face and feels a prickle of an oncoming beard on his chin, but is quickly distracted from it by...
He remembers what Cole said last week, that he can go back anytime, that the doors will be open. The moment he sees her just sitting there , he almost considers taking him up on the offer. Almost.
Still, by some unworldly force, Jay realizes he's smiling. Faking a smile? “Good evening,” his tone comes out flat. He almost forgets what he came here for. The shovel is dirty and moist, rust clinging to its edges, but he can clean it. Its sight reminds Jay of another friend, tucked away in a corner and forgotten there, neglected, rusting in the salty air.
“I wonder where Echo is,” he sighs, picking up the sorry shovel.
“Echo,” she says. It's not a question, doesn't even sound confused or interested. It just sounds dead. It's not her — at least, he tells himself as much.
“Yeah, Echo. Echo Zane, really, since the two of them had the same name. Not that there's a whole lot of echoing around here, but we didn’t come up with better ideas while we were here and he didn’t really seem to mind, so,” Jay babbles, shrugging. He spins the shovel around in his hands, twirling it like a staff, careful not to hit himself. “We never did find him.” Maybe I killed him , he thinks, but doesn't say.
The figure's face is turned towards him, watching the shovel swing through the air. The movements come to him easily, and for what might be a minute, he exists by the ocean in a settling silence. A seagull comes to sit on one of the rocks, and you could almost call it peaceful. Then, he swings the tool over his shoulder, and turns to leave.
“I need to go.”
She doesn't say anything.
—
At the end of the month Jay is, admittedly, surprised to open the door and not see any person-shape sticking out of the shallow waves. He takes one round walk over the island before hopping on the boat to actually do his chore of the day.
Wet sand crunches beneath his shoes. He dusts off the necessary surfaces of the little boat, re-checks the net, ties up the sails... As far as boats go, he knows what he's doing— even if they don't actually sail that often and this one is way smaller than the Bounty. There's no bunk beds or tea sets here, though there's probably room for the latter if he really wanted it. The supplies he brought with him from the city are going to run out, but he would still like to avoid visiting the port-town for as long as he can. Too many people could recognize him. So, today he has a really dumb plan: he's going fishing.
The sails fill with wind and the tiny ship hobbles over the waves. As it grows distant, the lighthouse tower tilts this way and that, smaller and smaller. “I don't need to go very far,” he mutters, tying up the last of the ropes, “and I really don't feel like getting lost alone in this thing.” He sighs and anchors the little vessel, looking over the side. “Does this count as alone?” He mutters, absently scratching his chin. He doesn't feel bothered enough to shave. “Yes, it does.”
Bait on the hook, hook in the line, line overboard. Jay takes one more look at the lighthouse, making sure the tower is still within view, and sits down. He rocks with his little ship, a gull or two sit and watch him, the hours pass and he wonders if this will even work.
Something tugs on the line eventually, and Jay pulls. His enthusiasm dies fast when dripping fingers hook over the side of the boat. He backs away, watching two humanlike arms cross underneath a chin. The fishing line stays in the water, and he does his best to move around the figure and pull up the rest of it. There's no fish at the end at this point. With a huff, he looks for more bait to try again.
“Why are you here? Are you coming back?” He doesn't know why he asks this. His chest hurts.
“You came to me,” she points out.
Jay shakes his head. The can of bait is almost full, still. “Not the ocean. That's not what I'm talking about.”
“I am the ocean.”
“I know.” He sits back down, squinting at the hook to stick the bait through it. “What do you wanna say? Do you have a question, am I supposed to do something? What do you want— I mean, I’m sorry— Ugh!”
Nothing.
“ Why are you here ?” He asks, stepping forward with the loaded hook in his hand, ready for casting.
She stares back at him until he's thrown out his line, swinging the fishing pole in a very impractical way. Plop, goes the bait, into the ocean to wait for its victim.
None of this fazes her. “How does fish taste?”
He sits back down, looking up while he ponders this. A few drops of rain begin to fall, gradually graying the sky. “I don't know how this one will. Salty, probably.”
Nothing.
If there’s a ranked least of Jay’s least favorite things, silence is quickly climbing up to the top of it. “Why do you ask, anyway?”
“Curious.” She remains motionless, perched with her chin over the boat. Like a mermaid from some kid's book. And who knows if she has legs either, this transparent form more faded than a dead jellyfish on the shore. “I’m an observer. You act upon me, and I know.”
Jay squints, shaking his head. “That makes no sense.” He tugs up his jacket’s hood, a little bit of extra protection from the slight weather. His eyes go to the horizon, making sure the tower he's been living in stays in view.
“You fear me.”
Before Jay can respond, there's a tug on the line, he starts to reel it back in. With the way the weather's going, if he doesn't catch anything, he'll have to go back empty-handed. “I don't,” he says, standing up. He shakily catches the line with his hand, pulling out a small, furiously flapping fish. He drops it into a box, making sure it can't hop out before turning his attention to his fishing pole. Jay looks up at the lighthouse, then at the figure with a sigh.
“I’m going back now, to the lighthouse, you… Do you have any more questions, anything else?” Is he desperate, is that what he is now? There's no way this isn't her trying to remember. It has to be. It has to be.
“No,” the voice decides, and splashes onto deck, giving up on any form and instead turning into a foamy puddle at his feet. Jay gulps, wipes at his face, and looks away. It's starting to rain, and he needs to go.
—
Back at the lighthouse, loud rain overlaps with the sizzling of frying fish. He hangs a few jars out of windows to collect it, fresh water being his ticket to staying even longer without going to town. The voice in his mind sounds a lot like Zane when it says you'll still have to go back eventually . Jay shakes his head. You can't avoid everyone forever, Kai grumbles to him from the past, and Jay flips his one-person meal into a clean plate.
It rains through the windows, because of the wind, so he's moved the easel— wooden— into the middle of the room. The beginning sketch of a painting sits on it, but it doesn't look like anything but a mess of erased and redrawn pencil blurs at the moment. There's one sketchy eye he hasn't erased, his own eye in some poor attempt at self-portrait, but it looks stupid.
The sounds of droplets on tin and tile hike up. He chews on the fish, careful of any bones he might have missed— one bit of excitement in an otherwise very monotonous dinner. The top room of the lighthouse is the most exposed to the weather, and also to outside lights. This means, when lightning strikes outside, for a moment everything is bright, and the graphite eye seems to widen in shock.
Jay smiles lightly. “Silly drawing, it's not lightning that you should worry about.”
Washing dishes takes him back near the edge of the room, where he's subjected to the pelting of raindrops. One of the buckets he left outside to catch the water squeaks where the wind throws it back and forth. Momentarily silencing it, thunder rolls in, then out. Like it's going in one window and out the other, passing through casually like an old friend.
“Are you in the rain?” he finds himself questioning. Wave and Storm… without bothering to dry his hands on his even-wetter shirt, Jay approaches the window and looks down, leaning on his elbows there. “Are you in the rain, too? Are you even in the ocean to begin with?” A laugh. His own?
Flash of lightning strikes, illuminating the waves outside, and he thinks he sees something.
Down from the tower, out the door, Jay finds the island empty, only raging waves on the lower part of the stairs, foam and sprinkling against rock. He catches his breath from running downstairs, hands on his knees, staring at the ground. By this point, he's soaked anyway.
“I’m sorry. Aren't you listening? Did I say something wrong?”
He doesn't know how long he stays there, or how late it is. The storm is probably as strong as it's going to get by now, and it's dark, almost impossible to see unless lightning strikes.
“Where are you?” Waves lap at his bare feet. “I know you can hear me. I know you can hear me!” Fists clenched, sparks on his knuckles. “Is none of this interesting to you? Don't you wanna ask me anything? Ask me anything!” Wind forces hair into the corner of his mouth.
The storm rages on around him, waves and clouds up as far as he can see, drawing complex patterns he can't distinguish in the pitch dark, but he can see the movement, he knows they're there. Everything around him moves with the wind, almost like the island is moving and the world is passing by it.
“Are you in the rain?” He asks one more time, hoarsely, throwing his head back to squint at the sky.