Chapter Text
Absentmindedly, you study the cards in your hand: The Magician Reversed, Justice Reversed, The Moon, The Hermit Reversed, and Death.
Damn. You frown. This is your tenth bust in a row. A hundred years, and you have yet to win a round of Euchre against Merle.
“On the count of three,” says Merle, his eyebrow raised in a manner that suggests he too is expecting an easy victory. “One, two, three!”
Reluctantly, you flip a card onto the table. And another, and another, until all of the cards make their way to Merle’s pile.
“Another win for Merle!” he proclaims proudly, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Man, you better start making some money on this planet soon. At this rate, you’re gonna be paying off your loser’s debt to my great-great grandkids.” With a deft flick of his wrist, he expertly shuffles the deck and deals out a new hand.
For a while, you remain silent. “I’ll, uh, get on that.” You mean to laugh.
You don’t.
“You alright, Dav?” Merle asks, peering up warily from behind his hand of cards.
“Yeah,” you say, teeth gritted. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s just... strange,” you start at Merle’s dubious expression, “that we have to start caring about stuff like that again. Money, jobs… the future. You know?”
He does.
“Gods, I- I think it’s my birthday.” Your throat tightens. “After a century, I’m turning forty for the first time in my life, and… I don’t know what to do. I don’t even…” Taking a deep breath, you pause.
“What do you want to do, Merle, now that this is all over? How do you want to live? Please,” your voice wavers, just slightly (but it’s enough), “please, just tell me.”
Merle meets your eyes, pensive. “You know what I’d like to do?” he says finally. “I’d like to move to the beach. You know why?"
You do, but you shake your head anyway.
“Because with the ocean, the scenery is always changin’. And I want the scenery to always be changin’, man.” He sounds desperate, almost.
Yes, you are quite familiar with the feeling. All of you are. Your journey has instilled in you a certain restlessness, a constant need for variety, for change, for... anything.
“I don’t wanna be lookin’ at the same thing all the time.” Merle’s eyes light up as he smiles for the first time in weeks. Though he tries his best to hide it, every single report of destruction caused by the Gaia Sash chips away at his positivity without fail (it's eating him alive).
“I wanna see a million, billion shells, I wanna watch the rain come sweepin’ in." Chuckling, he shakes his head. "That’s, that’s the life, right there,” he says wistfully. “Change it up, man! Keep it interesting!”
You smile softly. You were never much of a beach person (you don’t particularly care for sand) but you’ve always loved the ocean. “That sounds nice,” you say.
"What does?"
You blink once. Twice. “What?”
“What does?” says…
Says…
You don’t know.
You don’t know, you don’t remember, something is wrong, everything is wrong, wrong, wrong. You drop the cards in your hand (cards you don’t remember picking up in the first place). Lurching out of your chair, you stumble across the floor, searching for something — anything — familiar, but your surroundings are hazy and distorted and you can’t even perceive where you are.
Someone is muttering incoherently behind you. It’s the man who was sitting at the other side of the table (the man you know, the man who turned to smoke in front of you, the man you journeyed with for a hundred years). He’s shaking, his hand clenching the table’s edge so tightly his knuckles turn pallid. When he looks at you, he might as well have punched you in the gut for all the pain it causes. His face is contorted and his eyes are wide with terror, meeting your own in an anguished plea for help. Something inside of you shatters, the jagged fragments of emotion brutally carving your heart from your chest, and you don’t. know. why.
Everything is slipping away, and you’re slipping too, down to the floor, with a sickening snap. You can’t breathe and it hurts, everything hurts (everything is leaving you, everything is almost gone).
Desperately, you cling to the memories still in your mind with all that you have left (so very little, now, but something is taking your family from you, your home from you, your life from you, and you can’t lose that, you can’t).
The last thing you hear haunts you; the weight of it drags you down and swallows your mind completely as it’s swept away like a pebble flung into the sea.
“Who are you?”