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Casca opens her eyes and her head feels heavy. She brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face.
She pauses and thinks, wait. That’s not right.
She’s in a field somewhere, absent of grasses or flowers. It’s one that feels familiar to her, reminds her of the soil her family had tilled—she’s always relished in the warm, sweet smell of turned earth. She feels like she wishes she had been able to tell someone that.
Someone.
She smiles lightly, thinks about her father’s gentle grip on her shoulders as he taught her to work the earth, how she has his dark eyes and how that grounding sense of purpose he had gifted her was always enough.
Her stomach turns then, and she can see the sweat on his brow, her mother’s thin face, the ache of an empty stomach. All fruitless, all for a strange man to paw at her.
No, she reminds herself. It hadn't always been enough.
She stands up, doesn’t bother to brush away the dirt on her dress. She feels the need to leave, to go somewhere else, but it seems that everything is only endless countryside.
It’s not a dress, really. Plain and off-white and loose. Curiously, she can’t feel its texture against her skin.
“Hey, commander.”
She startles, whips around with her arms in front of her, although she knows that voice.
It’s Judeau standing there and she relaxes almost immediately, it’s Judeau and for some reason she wants to cry. She tries to shout his name, but it comes out softly, and she wonders when her voice got so quiet. He smiles, reaches out to brush his hand against hers familiarly.
“I know you hate them, but I always thought you looked pretty in dresses,” He says, tone playful and open.
It’s a smock, she almost says. Instead she closes the distance between them, wraps her arms around him tightly. He reciprocates, and she feels so calm.
“I’m sorry, Casca. I’m really the worst with words, even now.” Judeau says, and she can feel the warmth of his words on the back of her neck.
“Now?” She asks, can barely hear herself. His hair is like refined flaxseed, tied loosely as always.
He pulls back to look at her. She’s in awe, feels like this could be the first time she’s ever seen freckles.
“You know.” he says, almost apologetically.
And amazingly, like a weight crashing down all at once, she does. And then she’s on the ground, Judeau’s firm grip on her upper arm keeping her from being fully crumpled atop the dirt.
“I’m,” she chokes out, fat tears beading her vision and clogging her throat. He sits down closely, doesn’t loosen his hold on her. He sits in silence as she processes.
Casca intermittently wails and sobs and cries noiselessly, doesn’t know how long he allows her to be, how long she takes comfort in his warmth so near her.
“Everyone’s safe,” Judeau murmurs as he allows her to interlace their hands. “I’m here now, maybe because they figured I’d have the most to say.” He scoffs, self-deprecating as always.
Casca somehow doesn’t want to pry further, doesn’t feel the need to know everything—it feels too beyond her reach anyway. She looks up at him, allows him to lightly wipe her wet face with his fingertips.
It’s there again, that look on his face that she hadn’t been able to dwell on before, when everything had been so quick and brutal and final.
Casca leans over toward him, her forehead resting against his chest. She knew then in those moments, knows now. “Yeah.”
Judeau smiles, that familiar one of wordless understanding. “You know, you’ll have to leave soon. Go back, with him and everyone else.” She nods, doesn’t move to get up.
“They’re all waiting, but especially him.” She clasps her hands on either side of his neck, savoring the warmth and solidness there.
I’m sorry, she wants to say, but knows that’s not what Judeau wants or feels. She doesn’t, either.
And so they stay that way. She has the sense that time means little here, on this eternal stretch of soil.