sixthiterationlogs | 11 - Lost Heart [OPEN]

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11 - Lost Heart [OPEN]

WHO: Moana
WHERE: 7I – Ocean
WHEN: August 3rd
OPEN TO: EVERYONE
WARNINGS: None

Sad Thoughts & Losses

Small earthquakes had begun to tremble through the two villages but Moana didn't pay them any attention. She crossed the breach and made her way towards the ocean that rested on the other side, hoping to find a friend waiting for her.

She stood at the shore, her feet bare while the wind tugged softly at her grass skirts. There was so much that Moana wanted to ask the ocean but she couldn't find her voice. She knew that it wouldn't reply to her, she was too far from the home that she knew. Frustration rose in her chest and she kicked at the water, sending thick droplets into the air around her.

"Why aren't you here!?" She yelled at the water before falling to her hands and knees. Everything hit her at once: the loss of her friends, the loss of the heart and the constant reminder of her failure that hung like a beacon around her neck. Moana began to cry softly, her body shaking as the tears streamed freely down her cheeks.

"I need you." She whispered to the ocean, her voice soft as she begged for some way to escape the crushing defeat that weighed heavily on her shoulders.

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It seems kind of inevitable in a place like this, after earthquakes and unnamed dead, complete displacement from entire lives--that he'd skulk around enough and find someone crying. He hadn't expected it over here, where it seemed only those intrepid enough to make the trek, but not so involved as to be busy elsewhere, deemed to tread. He hadn't expected it right there on the beach, staring at the distant horizon.

He kind of prefers abandoned buildings for his breakdowns, as far out from everyone as he can find. It's one of the draws of the new canyon: new information, the hope of some fucking change, and a certain level of solitude. If he laughs at the wrong time, if he chokes up out here, no one has to know.

That's probably what she expected too, and he holds to his position behind the rocks, wondering if he should come out or not. The old him would have. Robin would have a cape to wrap around her shoulders, and the confidence to conquer her fears. Something like that, anyway. But there's an older him, too, that's much closer to the surface. There's a kid who hid in his closet at the manor, sniffling into his hands until Alfred found him. Crying's for punks, he'd said, and Alfred--god how he misses Alfred--had answered, Master Timothy, I have never known you to be anything else.

Really, that decides it: looping back around the other side of the rocks, he lets it look like he's just walking up the shore, coming upon her suddenly. "Hey," he says, the concern genuine, if the surprise isn't; "are you okay? How'd you get all the way out here?"

Moana had always felt a deep connection to the sea. She had played with the ocean as a child and dreamed of a life out on the waves. It was a voice deep inside of her that called her to its endless horizons and seeing it now, after months of being away from it, hurt.

Someone had told her that it might just be a very large lake but Moana didn't care. All Rivers ran into the ocean. That's what she'd always believed. Her fingers curled into the sand while the cold touch of the tide brushed against her hands and knees. The sand cemented around her limbs and then broke apart in clumps when she felt the strength to move. She had promised Ned that she'd keep trying but she didn't feel like she could.

Moana hadn't expected to see someone else out here. The small earthquakes made the pass dangerous thought it wasn't the sort of thing to deter Moana. If she wanted to do something, then she wouldn't let anything stop her, that was before now.

She sat back and quickly wiped the back of her hands across her cheeks. Specs of sand dotted her cheek but Moana didn't mind. She was used to sand and in a strange twisted way it was comfortable. "I walked. Through the breach." She brushed her palms against her island skirts before turning her head to look up at Tim. Her eyes were still puffy but she didn't know him and she didn't want him to worry about her. There were enough people worrying about her, that was why she came out this far in the first place.

"I'm fine." She lied, trying to force a lightness that she didn't feel into her words. Moana was not a good liar.

"Oh geez."

It's quiet enough he doesn't quite realize he's said it aloud, hunting the pockets of his scrubs for anything--kerchief, rag, scrap of paper--when he catches sight of her face. That it's paper is probably better than cloth--far as he can tell, it's salt water, and wouldn't he be an ass to soak something in that for her eyes. "Here," he says, thrusting his latest scrap paper forward, notes crumpled in his grip.

He'll make them up later. Maybe he'll actually remember it all, this time. "Just, here, you can wipe your face."

Handing it over, he digs his hands back into his pockets just to occupy them. "It's okay if you're not fine," he points out. "Do you want some company?"

Of course he's here. Not because he thought he'd find Moana here, although he's not surprised, but because he couldn't hear rumors of something that might be an ocean and not go and take a look for himself. If it really is an ocean, he wants to see it. Smell it. Which he can do, as he approaches, even before he sees the water stretching out to the horizon in front of him. It's the smell of wet, and of fish, and a bit of salt, though it's not quite like the oceans he's spent years sailing on.

He steps lightly on the shore behind her (as much as he prefers the boots he'd worn during the wedding, for walking long distances, the hiking boots he's wearing now are much more practical), not wishing to startle her, but still wanting her to know that he's there.

"Let me know if you get an answer."

Moana looked at the paper, her brows furrowing in a brief two seconds of confusion. She hadn't expected him to offer the piece of paper. Resources were scarce in the villages and paper was one of those things that they didn't have a lot of. Moana took it, offering him a weak smile before running the rough side of the paper against her cheeks. Most of her tears were already dried but it removed a bit of the sand from her face.

"Thank you." She sniffed softly, turning to sit more comfortably on the sandy shore.

Her fingers rand through her hair, pushing the thick black mane over her shoulder so it wasn't in her way anymore. "Yeah. I was just--" What had she been doing?--Yelling at the ocean and then crying at it.

"Thinking."

Moana knew that someone was there but she wished that they would go away and leave her to cry. She felt every loss like a pin prick against her shield; there were too many to hold herself together. Her island, her family, Jyn, Jean... so many people torn from her life before she was ready to say her final goodbyes. What made it worse was that she had been the one to leave her island, thinking that she could do something to help.

Hearing Killian's voice made Moana tense uncomfortably. Out of everyone she could have met out here, he was the last person she wanted seeing her like this. He might understand the call to the sea but she love her island too. It tore at her in a way that was hard for her to explain.

Moana sat back and hastily wiped at the tears that had streaked down her cheeks. She wanted to tell him that this wasn't the ocean, that it wouldn't reply back to her, but the words turned to salt on her tongue.

"You sound like Maui." He hadn't believed that the ocean spoke to her either.

Edited 2017-08-02 12:09 (UTC)

"Great place for it," he agrees, about as awkward as asking hey, see the Knights game last night? Still, he's the one who offered, and he sets himself a little gingerly on the sand, a good couple feet between them.

She doesn't seem like a threat, but--last time he helped a lady in need, it didn't go so well for him. When Bruce took him in, he thought he'd be done sizing up everyone he met, wondering if he could outmaneuver them. Instead, Bruce taught him better ways to do both, stressed constant vigilance, and waking up in the fountain to no clear answers had made it all the more necessary.

Excuses, really: it's still a shitty way to think, finding some girl crying on the shore. "We don't really have this where I'm from," he tries, steering his own gaze out over the water. "I mean, we have beaches, but it's a lot of grimy docks and smoggy horizons, in my town."

Moana noticed the distance between them but didn't bring any attention to it. She was getting used to different cultures and tendencies of those she met in the village. She assumed that there was a reason and that was enough. Besides, she wasn't really in the mood to question everything around her.

Her toes curled into the sand making little toe shaped intends before the water washed them away. She liked the feel of the ocean even if it invited a wet sandiness to her lower half. "I've always felt close to the ocean." Her voice was soft but slowly gaining strength.

She wasn't sure what to say but she was silently grateful that she wasn't alone anymore. "My home was an island. I grew up near the ocean and always dreamed of a life on it." Her voice broke and it took her a few seconds before she could continue. "I've been here for awhile. Since winter." She didn't know the exact time but it felt like forever. "I've heard about cities and streets and people called hipsters." It felt so strange talking about it now.

"It's all hard to imagine. Not being able to see the ocean like this... I can't imagine it." She didn't want to imagine a world without an ocean. "It's silly, isn't it?"

Honestly, Amy's starting to feel like sad is becoming the permanent emotion in her life lately. She's not feeling as overwhelmed with grief as she had a few weeks ago, but she still feels a little like she's sleep-walking through life, taking advantage of the help that she's been given by her friends.

It means that when she sees one of those friends having a fairly epic meltdown on Amy Pond proportions, she feels like maybe it's her turn to stop being sad for a little while, seeing as whatever's going on is more important than her months-old grief about Rory. She hadn't expected to see anyone here, truthfully, having come out to think (and to search for the TARDIS, a sliver of a hope that maybe, just maybe, the Doctor would be here).

Prying herself away from where she's been curled up, sitting and waiting, she wanders towards Moana, standing a few feet away as she awkwardly crosses her arms over her chest. "Throwing stuff always makes me feel better," she admits, but then, Amy's always had a violent streak in her.

"Is that a friend of yours?" He understands the call of the sea. It has never literally called his name, of course, but for centuries now he's found himself returning to it as often as he could. It's the same thing that got him to come here now, when he heard that there might be an ocean here.

He just doesn't know she's calling to the ocean to come back to her.

"I mean, I'm from a city on an island, but we were on a river. It's not really the same." Still, even staring out at the beauty of an ebbing tide, pure nature all around, he misses it. Home is home, even if you wind up somewhere folks might call an improvement.

It's less a coin toss than a balancing act, deciding how well the good about this place stacks against the bad. He hadn't been around for the big earthquake, but he's felt the little ones, and if there's some kind of regional or planet instability, they could all be in very big trouble, very fast.

"But I don't think it's silly. I can't imagine a universe without the place I left behind either. I just have to tell myself that it's still there, even if I'm not."

Jax has no idea who Moana is calling out to but he's not going to let her cry. He's fond of her, the way a big brother is fond of a little sister, and after making the trek out to the lake he should have known he'd find her there. She's from a goddamned island. Of course she'd want to go to something that seems like the ocean even if it's not.

"Hey, look, I'm here," Jax says. "I know I'm probably not...whoever, but you can hit me if you want to. Probably make you feel better."

Moana tried so hard to be strong. Not just for herself but for her family, her people, those in the village and those who've lost people they loved. If she could be strong then she could find a way to help them all but she couldn't keep it up forever. She couldn't continue to ignore the doubt that had gathered like a knot in the pit of her stomach.

She hadn't thought that anyone would come out this far but the ocean was here and she had to see it for herself. It didn't give her any answers and it only made the sadness in her chest feel more real.

Her fingers and toes curled in the sand, feeling the grans shift and clump beneath her. The water rolled up smoothing over the sand and then returned to the ocean as the tide slowly began to rise. Moana pushed herself onto her heels, using the back of her hand to brush away her tears. "Me too." Her voice was weak and broken but there was soft laughter behind it. Moana was also a bit violent, though she usually directed those feelings towards the sand using sticks.

Moana wanted to say more but the words somehow dissolved on her tongue. She really thought that the ocean would answer her.

Moana nodded her head numbly. "Yes. Maui is the Demi-God of Earth and Sea. He was going to restore the heart with me. Before I came back here." Her voice was soft and weak but spoken as if it was a moment of the past. A quest that was unfinished but to far behind her to know where she left off.

Her hand rose to her necklace, wrapping around the reflective blue. The heart of Te Fiti's glow had gone out and Moana felt as if her hope had gone out with it.

Moana looked at he space between them and began to draw in the sand. It started as a series of squares before it began to turn into the huts and trees of her island. "I wanted to see the city. When I first arrived- It sounded so different from my island." It was an easy thing to confess and while her voice continued in it's somber monotone inflection there was wonder and awe that seeped into her words.

"My island..." She began while drawing a small family at the forefront of her picture in the sand. "My people, I know they're there but... I was supposed to save them and I wanted to save the people here too..." Moana stopped drawing when the tied rose and washed away her image.

"I failed. I can't help anyone." She turned her attention back to the ocean. "And if I tried to leave and sail across the ocean.... it's selfish." Selfish and dangerous because Moana still didn't know how to sail. Not to mention that the people keeping them here wouldn't want them to leave.

Moana hadn't been paying a great deal of attention to the area around her. She hadn't thought that anyone would come this far but she had to see the ocean for herself. No matter what anyone else said, she believed that this was the ocean. That it had somehow found her but now that she was standing in front of the water it was silent.

She hastily wiped away her tears when she heard Jax come up next to her. It didn't show but she was happy to see him. He was someone that she silently depended on. He helped her feel stronger than she was.

"I don't want to hit you." Moana had some violent tendencies when she was upset but that anger was always directed towards inanimate objects, not people. "I just thought..." Her voice trailed off. "I thought coming to the ocean would mean I could find a way to go home." She knew it was selfish, there were people here who she wanted to help but the heart had lost it's glow and her island was dying. She couldn't do anything while she was here.

"This place is finally getting to you like it gets to all of us," Jax says, giving her a look. He knows, because he's been in this place where he's wanted to cry like a pussy bitch about missing his family but it's not something he's let anyone else see. For all that Moana's capable, she's young too, but she hasn't cracked before now. That's a pretty good track record.

"Look. I don't believe in god or any of that shit but maybe there's a reason you're here. Maybe it's just to keep me from dying," Jax says, laughing a little. "But there's a reason. It's not done with you or me yet."

For Tim, any desire to get back home and help is more to do with redemption than leaving loose ends. Bruce and Barbara wouldn't expect it of him, chasing down Harley, cleaning up any traps left in the ruins. They wouldn't expect--or allow--him to put on the costume at all.

Of course it's still there, still a thing that exists. Bruce will have it in a case by now, and someone else will come along and assume Robin died. Maybe he did.

Maybe he did even if Tim gets home in one piece, any more sane than he left it. "I think if you wanted to sail out along the edges of this thing, you could meet it all halfway," he suggests, trying not to sink deeper into the thought. His own fingers draw a ragged line of a shore around his crossed legs. "Puts you back on the water, and gets information for the people here, maybe information that saves them."

Edited 2017-08-06 04:11 (UTC)

Amy's personally of the mind that she'd like a dalek or a cyberman or something evil to kick or punch or generally be cruel to, but she'll settle for rocks into the water and glowering at the horizon like it's personally done her wrong. She feels bad, not just for taking up so much of Moana's time and energy lately, but for whatever's making her upset.

She thinks back to that talk they had, when Rory had first vanished, and approaches cautiously, not wanting to screw this up. "Are you missing your family? You said you lost your grandmother, right?"

Moana released a huffed breath of laughter as she turned towards Jax. There were specs of sand on her face where she had attempted to brush away her tears and while he eyes looked puffy she didn't looked as if she was going to start crying again.

"That takes a lot of work sometimes." Keeping Jax alive. She was only kidding but it was nice to be able to joke about something that might otherwise be serious. It helped arrange all of her other worries and put them into perspective. "I don't want this place to win." Spoken like the stubborn non-princess that she was. "But it's taken so many friends. Jyn and now Jean too… what if you also leave?"

It was a lot easier to be strong when you had others to be strong for.

"Meet them halfway?" She hadn't thought of that, of course, her thoughts were muddled and clouded by millions of worries and uncertainties. It was sometimes hard to see the simple or obvious solution. "Do you think I could build a boat to do that? To find the edges and come back?" A bit of hope had leaked into her voice, her dark brown eyes flicking between Tim and the ocean. It looked like it was endless from where they were sitting on the beach, but Moana knew that something had to be out there.

She felt it in her heart.

Moana was reminded of her father's warnings, how dangerous the sea could be and then of the storm that she had been caught in on her way to find Maui. It never deterred her in the past but now she felt her uncertainties bubble uncomfortably in her stomach. What if there was nothing out there? What if she didn't make it back?

"We won't find anything out if we do nothing." It wasn't clear if she was talking to herself or Tim. She turned towards him, looking a bit more eager as she leaned forward. "Will you help me build a boat?" They needed logs and tools to strip the wood. Moana thought about bringing a small canoe through the pass except that it'd be dangerous with the recent earthquakes.

The only monsters that Moana has faced have all gotten very close to eating her. She probably wouldn't want to go up against one of them just because she wanted something to vent her anger at. It might not end well given their strength versus her own.

Moana's head turned at Amy's question. "No. I mean." She closed her eyes and reorganized her thoughts before speaking again. "I do miss them but that isn’t why I was yelling at the ocean." She wasn't going to mention the crying part. "Do you remember the story I told you about when we first met. About the Heart of Te Fiti?"

Her fingers run along the shell necklace around her throat, pulling a green stone into her palm. "Well I found it and with Maui's help we were going to return it but somehow… somehow it found me here." Which meant that she couldn't return it and her island was going to die.

For some reason, the question throws him, and his brows lift a bit into his hair. His body tilts at the hip, leaning him away as she leans in, the natural reflex to a stranger in his space. "What, like right now," he asks, the first thought to break through the why and the ever apparently don't touch.

Why not now? What better thing does he have to do, if he's already detouring to sit with her on the beach?

"I mean, yeah, I can try. It's not really something I've done before, but everyone else who's ever been stranded on an island seems to figure it out at some point."

Moana returned back to her own personal bubble when she realized that she might be pressing a little too close to Tim. They might have just met but she has always been quick to trust. Her world and views were smaller than most. She grew up on her little island, never knowing what turned outside of her shores. Even after everything that has happened in the village, she's eager to trust anyone and everyone she's met. Moana didn't even consider that one of her fellow prisoners might be related to their captors.

"I have repaired boats before. If you can help me get the pieces, I know I can put one together. My people were once voyagers, it's part of my history and I know we can do it."

The crying girl appeared to be gone. Those tears now replaced by unwavering confidence and hope. It wasn't that Moana thought she had it all figured out, she knew she didn't, but she was reminded that she wasn't alone. She could keep going, with the people she's met at her side. It was better than sitting and doing nothing. Over time, she might get used to loss, but for now she'll carry that pain and heartache with her and she'll continue forward.

"Look, I'm not leaving. I don't know if I can control that, or anything, but I'm not planning on going anywhere," Jax says. He grins a little, hoping to get a smile back out of her.

"Didn't know I had ranked up there special, though. Makes me feel good about myself that I got promoted from annoying asshole."

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11 - Lost Heart [OPEN]

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