Poor Man's Crusade [Closed/Evelynn]

The breeze was refreshing, though it burned against the wet trails that stained her cheeks. She sat atop a collapsed, brick wall that had once been the side of a building, long claws of bright, green grass reaching up nearly to her knees despite the four feet she sat above the ground. The hilly plains were dotted with assorted buildings, each in various states of decay. Some still standing, most fallen and eaten by nature.

She wasn’t sure where she was, to be honest, though the place was quite nostalgic. In a lot of ways, it made her happy, though in just as many ways it was a bitter area that seemed to be tainted with whispering screams of anguish. Maybe it was where she had died. It would explain why she was drawn here when she felt dead inside for the first time in decades.

For once, everything was quite. The voice had grown silent when the couple grew violent, probably stuffing its face with popcorn at the sight, though even now in the peace it was lying dormant somewhere else in Evelynn’s mind. A brief moment of pure silence with only the wind to interrupt her thoughts.

She reclined back a bit and closed her eyes, feeling her hair being pulled by the wind as her shirt tugged open a bit more. In that moment, she wasn’t Evelynn. Wasn’t Robert’s ex-girlfriend, or the whore of the worlds. She wasn’t anyone. She didn’t exist except in people’s memories as the girl who disappeared without the trace, quietly haunting a deserted town somewhere in England. Her laughter and songs of eternal peace ringing out with the winds and providing hope for lost travelers who stumbled upon her resting place.

But the fantasy didn’t last. Far too quickly, the chill of night time bit at her skin and forced her eyes open. For hours she had been sitting unmoving, a smile on her face as she reveled in the brief escape of hers. But now, reality came back and slapped her on the cheek as hard as she had slapped Robert.

She wasn’t dead and in heaven. She wasn’t a child, pure and innocent, running through the fields of grass. She wasn’t free of her sins and the weight of regret that she carried everywhere.

She was just a beast whose shoulder and neck were burning with stiffness. The bones in her back and arms cracked as she leaned forward, stretching them out and wincing at the pain that came with the sharp motions. A few bugs that had come to rest on her body fluttered away, their own sleep disturbed by her movements, though most of them quickly returned to her legs or shoulders, seemingly knowing that she was of no harm to them.

Only when she pressed her palms onto the stone and slid off the building did they leave her for good. The grass reached far above her head, their edges tickling her nose as if giving her reassuring pats on the back. She couldn’t just stay here forever and wither away. It was her fate to man up and return home. To realize her mistakes and beg for forgiveness like so many had before her.

With only a moment’s hesitation, she stepped through a new garganta and appeared in her room silently.

Everything was destroyed.

Clothes thrown against cracked walls and shattered dressers. Her furniture, once amazingly well maintained, were shattered into pieces, thrown out across the room. All but one painting was smashed in and haphazardly thrown to the side.

The sight alone wanted her to burn Robert from existence. Though right as that thought hit her, she looked down to see him laying on what remained of the bed, sheets sprawled out and the mattress completely ruined. Eye red and puffy and his cheeks a bright cherry color, it was easy to tell how he had felt in her absence. Quietly, sure not to wake him -- though given how hard he was asleep, she doubted she could if she wanted -- she made her way to the bed and sat beside him.

For a few quiet seconds she just watched him sleep, feeling a familiar lump in her throat start to creep up. gathering herself and forcing back the need to cry over his chest, she reached down and grabbed one of her ruined shirts, tearing it slowly into a fine strip.

Carefully, she started to wrap it around Robert’s bleeding hand before moving to his next, slowly but surely patching up wounds that she doubted even needed the attention anyway.

[767. 15]
[154]

~Thread End ~