anneoftheisland | (no subject)

Current Mood: sad
Current Location: the hidden hamlet

Entry tags:

in-game,
joe dick

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Two days wasn't a very long time, not in the grand scheme of things, but it was enough to Anne to stop bursting into tears all the time and start to move on again. In some ways, it would've been easier if Constable Turnbull had died, and she could comfort herself with the knowledge that he was in God's hands now. As it was, she had no way of knowing what had happened to him, or where he was now. Had he gone home again? Had he gone back to the moment he'd come from? Had he been whisked off to yet another island? Anne chose to believe that he was safe at home, surrounded by the people he loved and who loved him. She also chose to believe that he would remember her.

And so it was she sat on the log outside of her hut, in the skirt that Constable Turnbull had once told her was quite pretty and a blouse that let through the light breeze, with a pad of paper and a pencil in her hand. She had put pencil to paper once or twice, but mostly she was sitting with her chin resting on her hand, staring out at the jungle and the blue sky.

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Billy had told him about Turnbull's disappearance the day it had happened, but Joe hadn't seen Anne in that time. Part of him had wanted to seek her out and see if he could offer some comfort, but he had wanted to give her her privacy as well. They'd only met once, briefly, and he didn't know if she'd appreciate his company or want to be alone.

When he saw her sitting on the log outside her hut, however, the part that wanted to offer comfort won out and he wandered over, clearing his throat as he approached. "Hi," he said quietly, watching her.

Anne smiled at him as he approached her, a sad smile but a smile nonetheless. "Hello, Joe," she said, slipping her pencil into a notch in the log that she'd made just for that very purpose. "Would you like to sit down? I was just..." She actually wasn't sure how to describe what she'd truly been doing as he approached her. "Thinking."

"Sure," he said, accepting her invitation and lowering himself onto the log beside her. Giving her a small smile in return, Joe rubbed the knuckles of one hand against her forearm gently. He didn't have to ask what she'd been thinking about and he suddenly hated the island again. He hated the way it fucked with people.

"How have you been?" he asked.

"As well as can be expected, under the circumstances," she said, giving him that same sad smile again. She took a deep breath and lifted her chin determinedly. "Really, it's the IPD and Canadian Consulate I feel bad for; he did a great deal of work for them and I don't know anyone who can replace him."

"He's a good guy, yeah," Joe agreed, even though he and Turnbull had really only spoken once or twice. It was sort of hard to ignore the enthusiasm he had for his job. "But the IPD and the Consulate aren't the ones you should be worrying about right now. They'll get by."

Anne let her chin drop again and sighed softly. "I'm so very tired of crying, Joe," she said finally, "but sometimes it feels like it's the only thing I'm able to do anymore. I'm not a stranger to loss, you know, but this is... different." She rubbed at her chest for a moment, as though that could do something for the ache.

"There's a lot of what ifs left over," he supplied, although he wasn't sure if that was what she meant. "When someone dies then you know that's the end, there's no more possibilities. This is different." Joe had no idea if he was helping at all or just reminding her of the pain.

Anne nodded and sniffled softly, dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief that she carried around with her these days. "I'll never know what we might have been," she said, letting her head rest against Joe's shoulder for a moment. "I just... I just hope he's all right. We... we kissed, you know. He kissed me."

"He cared about you a lot," Joe said, shifting so he could place his hand on her back when she rested her head on his shoulder. "I could tell just from what Billy said about him. I know you don't ever have to doubt that. That he cared a lot."

"I just never imagined I would lose my first love like this," said Anne, growing slightly louder, more pained. "I can't stop thinking about it, all the time. Does it ever stop feeling like this?"

Joe wanted to answer that, but he didn't know. The only person he'd ever loved like he thought Anne loved Turnbull was Billy and he'd never really lost Billy. Not like she had lost Turnbull.

"It must," he said. "I don't think you ever forget because... that's a fucking disservice to him, isn't it? Forgetting? I don't think you're allowed to forget, but it can't feel like this forever."

"I wouldn't want to ever forget," said Anne, "and I desperately hope that he won't forget me, now that he's gone. He didn't like the island very much, you know. Maybe he'll want to forget absolutely everything and, oh, I couldn't bear to know if he did that. I think I'll believe that he will remember me always."

"I don't think that's possible," he said, and he found that he was sure of that. Even if he couldn't tell her how she might feel in a week, a month, a year, he was sure of that. "I think this is the sort of place that stays with you. And I think you're the kind of person who stays with everyone, especially the people who love you."

"You're very sweet, Joe," she said, and in spite of her, a few tears started to drip off her nose. Anne was a messy crier, a fact which had always haunted her as she always seemed to do it at the most inopportune times. "I just don't know what to do. Everything seems different without him."

"I know," Joe said quietly, rubbing her back lightly and then slipping his arm around her shoulders. He didn't care if she cried messily or if she cried all over him, for that matter. "It's not fucking fair that he was taken away from you like this."

She'd gotten all of the desperate sobs out of her system over the past couple of days, but sometimes the tears still flowed freely.

"I just wish I knew that he was all right," she said, then waved the pad of paper loosely in Joe's direction. "I was trying to... I wanted to write a poem, about him, about us. But it's not coming out right."

Joe wished he could tell her that Turnbull was alright, he wished he could know that somehow, but he could give her no guarantees.

"It doesn't seem to be coming out at all," he said honestly, looking at the pad of paper as she waved it at him.

There were three words on the page, but Anne had to admit that Joe was right about that. "I just wanted to remember him like this, but I just get so upset and so... so angry, when I try to put it into words, and so nothing is coming out at all. It's like it's all stopped up inside my head."

"Then write about the anger," he suggested. "If you love him, Anne, which I really believe you do, you're not going to forget how to write about that and it'll come. But right now you're angry. This fucking island took him away and if you're angry, then write about it. Get it out. Turn it into art."

Anne stared at the page again, the words 'red' and 'love' and 'kiss' standing out against the stark white, until a few stray tears fell on them.

"I don't know how to make angry art," she said finally, which sounded so silly when she said it that way, because of course she knew how to create things, but she'd never created out of anger before. And she was feeling angry, deep inside, which except for when she'd felt safe letting it out in front of Billy she'd been pushing deeper and deeper.

"Sure you do," he insisted, rubbing her back again when he saw the tears fall. "It doesn't have to be beautiful to be art, it just has to be real. It's all those things that people always try to hide from each other that are the most moving. You don't have to feel guilty about being angry."

Joe studied her for a moment, then grinned. "Besides, I once wrote a whole song that basically revolved around the words 'fuck you'. If people can consider that music, then anything angry you write has to be art."

"Oh, I could certainly never do that," said Anne fervently, and it was certainly true that she couldn't. "It's just not proper for me to feel so... so angry about this. I should be happy for him, that he's most likely somewhere that he'll be happier than he was here. But... I'm not. I'm not, Joe. Oh, I hope that doesn't make me a terrible person, but I can't be happy about this, not really, I just can't find a way."

The fact that she was even worrying about whether or not it made her a terrible person was enough to convince Joe that she couldn't possibly be. He shook his head, looking down at her seriously.

"What you feel is genuine," he said. "And it's valid and you're allowed to feel that way no matter what other people might say. The people who don't let themselves feel, Anne, they're the ones who end up unhappy. Having feelings doesn't make you a bad person and, fuck, if I was in your position I'd be kicking logs and screaming and fucking spitting I was so mad."

Anne kicked her log with the heel of her foot, but it didn't make her feel any better. "I screamed at Billy," she confessed a moment later. "Did he tell you? Well, I suppose I didn't really scream at him so much as with him... it just hurt so much and I didn't know how else to get it out."

"He encouraged you to scream?" Joe asked, smiling a bit. Billy wouldn't let her feel guilty about being angry either, he knew that. It was good she'd had someone like him so soon after finding out. "He's a smart man, that Billy Tallent. And he's right. As long as you're not off... hurting people or hurting yourself in some sort of physical way, then you should get it out."