tomorrow on every shore

Wander finally breaks down four months later, on the deck of the Forecast, over a spilled ladle of soup.

The world fragments: Heat where broth landed near vis knee, warm and sticky as blood over cloth. An abrupt hush, then indistinct voices, muffled as if through glass. Empty skin under vis thumb where ve tries to spin a ring currently sitting safe on vis bedside table. Vis own racing heartbeat. Someone guiding ver decisively away by the elbow—Linares, never gentle but always attentive, waving Bennett forward in the lunch line and pulling Wander into quiet, open air. Ve lets it happen the same way ve let Temple drag ver away from Parson's dying breaths all those weeks ago, the way Bette let ver lead her through the shaking forest, not bothering to wipe vis face or ask where they're going.

By accident or design they end up at the bow, where in the lunchtime lull only open sea and the patient figurehead greet them. Released into the wide shelter of the tern's wings, Wander props verself against the railing and cries verself down to gentle sniffles, then hiccups, then silence, as Linares stands sentry beside ver. Around them the waves roll almost lazily by, rich blue in the sun and matched by an equally serene wind that feels cooler than it should against Wander's damp face.

Linares makes the first move, handing over a handkerchief Wander didn't know he carried. "Better?"

"Kinda." Wander blows vis nose with no ceremony and a great deal of noise, and for lack of better ideas crams the handkerchief into vis pocket. Linares doesn't complain. "Thanks."

"Sure."

He eyes ver sidelong. This time Wander is the first to crack. "What?"

For a moment a one-shouldered shrug looks like all the answer ve's going to get. Then he shakes his head, shrugs again, and says, "Been wondering when you'd let yourself stop acting."

Simultaneously tactless and circuitous as ever, that; I've been wondering means I've been worried. Wander tries again to fidget with the missing ring. Anything ve does—cry, not cry, laugh; Ripred forbid ve gets frustrated or anything else that looks too close to anger—seems to worry someone, lately. "It's not—" Linares has turned back out to sea, but he raises his eyebrows. "I gotta," ve tries instead.

"Bullshit you do," Linares says with a sharp look. "Says who?"

"Not like that." Staying positive around the kids is one thing, but if Wander cared how other people thought ve should live vis life, ve would have spent half of it suffocating under the weight of trying to be a boy. "I just..." Ve takes a deep breath, only to let it out slowly, unsure where to start. Cadenza won't look me in the eye anymore. I think half my old friends hate me for getting a chance they won't have if they need it. I've never been scared of forgetting who I am before, but I still wake up reaching for a spear and I don't know how to stop. "I just wanted everything to go back to normal."

Linares watches the water for a while. Slowly, as though measuring each syllable on its way out, he says, "It was all still real, for you kids."

A small noise tugs itself unbidden from the back of vis throat. "But it's over."

"Can't patch a line until you reel it back in."

Ve wrinkles vis forehead, momentarily puzzled out of vis melancholy. "Am I the line or the person?"

"You—both?" Linares snorts. "Not the point."

Wander tries, fleetingly, to smile, then leans vis shoulder into the tern's wing right wing. "I don't know how to patch this." Sometimes ve isn't even sure ve's finished reeling. Every piece of wood fits vis hands like a weapon; every unexpected sound sends ver looking over vis shoulder, heartbeat lurching.

"Bullshit," Linares says again, no less sharply. "You just can't do it if you're pretending you don't have to."

"That makes more sense than I want it to."

"Mhm."

In the ring's absence Wander leans vis head against the tern and starts vis first round of daily stretches against the railing: index finger, pressed as far back as it will go without searing, two, three, four. "It's just—I fucked up so bad Cadenza hates me." Eight, nine. Vis hand goes out of focus; ve squeezes vis eyes shut. "How do you fix that? I—how do you even do that."

There's another long silence before Linares says, "It was real for the rest of us, too."

"I didn't mean to scare her."

"It was the Games."

None of that is comforting—she doesn't, or you didn't, or even you did but it wasn't your fault—but it's honest, at least, and direct. Early on it was all anyone would talk about; now, already, almost everyone aside from Annie dances around it. For the most part ve only gets annoyed at the doctor who checks on vis hand—since the accident, she keeps saying, and one of these days ve won't bite back you've got a weird definition of "accident"—but the obvious avoidance rings as loud as anything they could say.

Nineteen, twenty, next finger, and somewhere in Wander's hand a scab that shouldn't exist tears. "It was."

Ve makes it almost all the way to twenty before Linares says, again in that awkward, measured tone, "It wouldn't hurt her so much if she didn't love you." That's so unexpected that Wander almost asks whether he's okay, but ve pauses too long on that thought and he sighs. "That's not a guarantee, Wander." Ve blinks vis eyes open at the first name. Linares is still staring away, shoulders stiff the way they were at the Justice Building. "It doesn't mean nothing. Give her some time."

Twenty, and Wander relaxes vis hand instead of moving on, too busy tilting vis head upward and puzzling out what to make of this. Some of the Forecast crowded ver when ve first got back, asking questions ve didn't mind as much as they seemed to think ve might and offering abundant, not-always-consistent advice on the arm—infected wounds and physical therapy aren't regular on a fishing vessel, but they're not unheard of, either, in the long weeks offshore with arms elbow-deep in bait. Linares wasn't one of them, and Wander had spent enough time both talking to and gossiping about him to not take offense to that—to read we'll work on that ice when your arm gets better as welcome back; you still have a place here; I hope your arm gets better. He really has been worried. "Okay."

Despite how weird this conversation has gotten—has been from the beginning, now that Wander is calm enough to look back with clear eyes and vague embarrassment—his silent nod is comforting. It feels like proof that he thinks this isn't completely unsalvageable. Vis first instinct in the face of distress has always been to say something, to do something; if it's a little daunting, the idea that ve came all the way home from the Capitol only to find that the journey isn't over after all, it's a bit of a relief, too.

Wander doesn't say anything else, and Linares, apparently having exhausted his capacity for emotional directness for the moment, doesn't prompt ver. As they lapse into a more if not entirely comfortable silence, Wander half-waiting to be told to go back to lunch or to work, ve idly finishes the round of stretches and moves on to gripping the railing as hard as ve can. Seven, eight—

An elbow, gentle but insistent as the first breath of a rising tide, interrupts ver. "Sibley. Look."

At first, stretching onto tiptoe to see over the tern's wings, Wander can't find what he's pointing toward. Then a huge, subtle shadow resolves into a dark mass and a bright plume of spray, and Wander's breath catches in vis throat as ve scrambles for a better vantage point. "Is that—?"

"Two." Now that ve knows what to look for, Wander finds the other beneath the water, a looming mass of deeper blue, in time to whistle long and high as it breaks the surface in near-unison to join the one ahead. Linares makes a laughing sort of breath and adds, "Wait for it."

Wait they do, and for once Wander doesn't mind. The whales float like great logs, seeming content to watch the Forecast back as they breathe and the humans hold their breath and the water washes patiently around them all, the only thing vast enough to make creatures that massive look like toys off the sixteen-year-old mobile that traveled from Wander's room to Nate and Teresa's to Cadenza's to the living room. They're at home in it like nothing ve's ever seen, not even the tuna or the seabirds that follow ships for days without landing, and no wonder; what could intimidate something that knows it's the biggest and most alive thing it will ever see?

"You know Famoye cried when you talked about her," Linares says at length.

Wander can't tear away from the whales, but vis eyes bug out. "No." Arlene Famoye is rough gestures and bright laughter, as easily at her own expense as someone else's. She would be nearly the last person Wander knows that ve would put money on for crying about much of anything.

Linares laughs, a soft but unmistakable rumble. "Swear it to Ripred. Said she didn't think you remembered that story."

"Course I did, it's cool." Ve taps a finger. "Scary for her, I guess, but cool." A beat passes. "Hey, you think they're real? Bakekujira?"

"Dunno, Sibley. I've been around too long to think I know everything about the ocean."

Beneath them, their need for air or answers or whatever unknowable mystery they search for sated, one whale and then the other arches its back and begins to disappear back into the water. Wander makes a small sound of disappointment, but Linares says "Wait" again as the first one's fluke curves into the air, and ve stretches higher onto vis toes, straining to see.

Waves swallow the ripples. Sunlight dances over the unbroken water and wind over Wander's now-dry face; the world feels eternal and whole, right under vis fingertips and stretching away into the distance, the way it did on those first evenings at sea in the last summer when Wander didn't know how to be scared. When the first whale breaks far to the left it's with a crash deeper than screams and louder than cannons, and Wander doesn't even think to look over vis shoulder; ve only tracks it, eyes wide and heart full, as it clears the water. It hangs there for a handful of racing heartbeats, tremendous and weightless with momentum, before it turns with impossible grace, leans back into its own spray, and lands home.


Title song is "Come Sail Away" by Styx (we live happily forever, so the story goes / but somehow we missed out on that pot of gold / but we'll try the best that we can to carry on). Sometimes I worry I get too repetitive and/or on-the-nose about ocean stuff with Wander, and then I think about that for 0.5 seconds and decide I don't care enough to stop.

""Researching"" this post largely consisted of getting distracted reading about the viscosity of blood and watching 3927435 videos of humpback whales breaching. Partly because this post kicked my tail, honestly—I've been working on it since around when I started Wander's death post, initially as an AU word doodle—but also because whales are cool as hell, y'all. (Vaguely on the research note, I'm envisioning the tern very roughly like this, so the wings come up over the railing a little.)

A bit I culled because I decided Valentín wouldn't actually give her away, but wanted to mention somewhere, for reasons: Cadenza has been badgering other people (him included) for updates on Wander in secret. She's as scared for ver as of ver, right now. They have a ways to go, but they both want to get there.