THREE DAYS

it has only been three days and she has missed nomi. she thought it was just the loneliness - fuck, maybe it is just the loneliness - but in this moment, right here, she can kid herself into believing that if she were stuck here with anyone in the damned world, she's glad it's her. 

and she feels awful seeing those circles under her eyes, the stressed pallor of her skin. her own fingers are wringing together with anxiety. she's been fortunate enough to work her body to the bone, to the point where she has no choice but to collapse after a hard day's work.

parker bites her lip. and then she puts a hand on nomi's knee and she gives her a smile. not the wolfish one, made for display, with glinting teeth and a calling for battle. but a more intimate one - that curls at the corners and lights up her eyes and eases away the tension in her jaw. 

"i know ya will, doc. and i'll help ya however i can." she gives a squeeze. 

and it starts something. some new hope. some fragile blossom amidst a landscape of toxins. she's scared. they're both scared. but she won't lose hope. and she won't leave this woman.

because if she does, then they have already lost. 

SWORD RAID - CIRCHESTER
Naomi Sato

☉

SIX MONTHS

she still takes her bodyguard duties seriously. one week turned into two, turned into three, and then four and five, and somewhere around then she lost count. they adapt, because they have no choice. they adapt, because the alternative is despair. acceptance isn't so hard, though, and it gets easier every day/week/month that passes because she is there. 

she watches over her while she studies. the corners of her eyes crinkle when nomi's nose scrunches as she reads in the late hours, and this is when parker dramatically insists she's tired and please let me take you home so i can go to sleep. 

she listens patiently as she talks to GIDEON GRAVES - while they philosophize and hypothesize and try to fulfill her promise: that she won't stop trying to get them home. the confession comes, of what she did, why she did it, and nomi understands. of course she understands. and that passes too. 

and they recover. and they heal. and eventually she can meet gideon's eyes without flinching. 

when they are at the baths, she is carrying science equipment (or what can pass for it in this time). nomi skirts around the edges of the bath and she sets it down, rolling her left shoulder. it popped out again a few weeks ago. nomi helped set it back in. 

old wounds from a lifetime ago. 

her name is called and she's beckoned, she stands by the water's edge. it sparkles brilliantly, nothing like the oily, horrific surface it had been when they first came upon it.

we never did get to skinny dip, did we?

her eyes light up. they've skirted around the edges of whatever this is for months. she has thought about this a hundred and one different ways, but it's here and it's now, with nomi thumbing at the hem of her shirt, that parker makes a decision. and when parker jones makes a decision, it's quite impossible to change her mind. 

"whatever you want, cupcake," she says and she strips off her own shirt. and then she steps closer, and then she is wrapping one arm around nomi's waist, and she is grinning like a damn fool as she presses their hips together and she is searching her eyes, looking for and finding everything she wants, everything she needs, and she is tilting her head, lashes fluttering, lips on nomi's own - finally, finally, and it is not soft. 

it is rough with desperation and pent-up emotion, months of falling and falling and falling only to crash now, so fervently and desperately and wantonly. 

she laughs against her lips and, like the shit she is, drags them both into the bath. 

SWORD RAID - CIRCHESTER
Naomi Sato

☉

THREE YEARS

the attacks are scattered, but they are devastating. there is always work to be done. three years of this has been hard on her body. when her shoulder pops out on the regular, nomi's concerns turn to frustration. 

and she gets it. if they don't have each other, what will they have? the people of circhester love them still and yet there will always be a divide. but still they drink with them (turns out folks across all ages and dimensions love skyler dross's bootleg moonshine) and they laugh with them and they share stories and griefs and dreams and desires and hope. 

always hope.

she and nomi make friends with a married couple; they attend their funerals a year later, and it hits her harder than she thought it could. 

elbows on her thighs, head hanging, nomi rubbing circles on her back - suddenly she is reminded of when they were last in this room, sharing companionable silence, until the woman confessed her love for her. 

i love you. you know that, right?

she hadn't said it back. not at first. and it only took a few more days, but those days had been awful. awkward. painful. confusing. parker knows it hurt her.

now she can't stop thinking - if their lives could be cut short at any moment, she'd kill to get those few days back. she would do it all over again, if she could, and in a heartbeat smile and laugh and whisk nomi off her feet and tell her with mouth and hands and soul that she loved her too. 

she will always love her too. 

"i thought it wouldn't matter. i thought they were just dust. and now that they're not? that i'm sad they're fuckin' dead and gone? this was s'poseda be a dream. what does that mean, nomes? we keep holdin' out, thinking we can get back, but everything's blurry now. and i don't know what to do."

SWORD RAID - CIRCHESTER
Naomi Sato

☉

SIX YEARS + EIGHT MONTHS

it's not a priority, not really, but it breaks the monotony. they've been working on this end for so long. and now? now they're building towards a new beginning. it had seemed foolish, at first, like sitting down and talking to the local tavern keeper about what flavor of cake they would have. 

but then she looks at nomi and sees her enraptured, working everything to the finest details because of course it's got to be as perfect as it can be. the crops still struggle in the soil, but she promises she can get the strawberries delivered; he can keep half of them, so long as the other half are used for the cake. 

it's like that over the course of months. planning something like this back home usually takes a long time. eight months ago, she'd thought that would be it - be proposed to and  she'd take the ring and she'd say, well duh, and they'd find the nearest qualified person to do the damn thing. 

but fiance had sounded so wonderful. they held onto it for a while, this new thing between the two of them, because it was theirs and it was real and it was something new. so a couple months in, parker said, "let's do this for real."

they get distracted. scheduling and tasting and coordinating is difficult in a post-apocalyptic world. who'd have thought? nomi's studies pull her away. parker is called to the walls. armies attack and it's rinse and repeat, on and off for months, until finally they're sitting across from each other with quills and ink, putting together letters with a date three days from now. 

nomi's doing most of the penmanship. for consistency. and because, as she puts it, 'by the time you're done, there's less parchment than there is ink.' despite this, parker has slipped a few personal notes, splotchy as they are (writing with quills is hard as fuck) in the scrolls when nomi isn't looking:

GIDEON GRAVES : HAHAHA i got the girl. your GRADE A STUDENT. my WIFE. dance at the wedding? 
angelo vestri : come back down from the clouds every once in a while. miss you, fucker
skyler dross : fuck you i'm still king of the wall and you know it (gunners a dirty cheater)
Gunner Graves : o captain my captain (skyler thinks u cheated to win king of the wall)
Aidan Hereford : nomi said the tavern's open bar for everyone but u but i already told bart what's up - yw

the night wanes on. they curl into each other as the last of the candle's wick snuffs out. cheek to cheek, flush with the woman she loves drawn against her, she says, half-asleep, "it's gonna be a good day."

SWORD RAID - CIRCHESTER
Naomi Sato

☉

NINE YEARS + SIX MONTHS

dad used to tell her she oughta die young. nothing work living for when your body's old and broken, when the world spits on you for being useless. she thought it true then. of course she did - eight years old, watching him lick his plate clean while she dug through the neighbor's trash. and now?

she is held by the woman who loves her. the first signs of nerve damage had been a battlefield between the two of them, fostered out of love. they both wanted to protect the other, in their own way. but for parker that meant sacrifice. and she'd do it all over again, in a heartbeat. 

much of that day still eludes her. a particularly bloodthirsty, gargantuan beast had grabbed her by the arm. they say she flew a good sixty feet before hitting the wall. but all that matters is that she woke up. that she can walk. that she's whole.

it's hard, looking down at this useless thing pinned to her side. there are times she goes to reach for nomi, but nothing happens save a small lurch, and she remembers, but she puts a smile on her face and grabs her with her other arm, laughing and joking that she can still hold her tight. (and who needs a dominant hand when i've got a tongue?)

but she asks, a day or so after GIDEON GRAVES breaks the news that the nerve damage is permanent this time, if nomi will please take off her ring. and this foolish woman, after all these years, blames herself. as though she has not given parker so much love, and life, and breath, and meaning. 

but parker is the fool too, for not saying quickly enough, "to put it on my neck. to put it where i can feel it. please, i want to feel it," but she says it eventually. so nomi fashions a silver chain and hangs it from her neck and the metal is cool against her skin, and nomi is warm against her. 

parker tells her what her dad used to say and tells nomi how she used to think it was true, but now she says, "it's just sad, 'cause i'd lose all my limbs and let my body break down to nothing if it means getting old and gray with you."

SWORD RAID - CIRCHESTER
Naomi Sato

☉

THIRTEEN YEARS

the gauntlets have given her new life. she had always managed with a smile on her face, had swallowed the pill and said fuck it, i'm fine, but nomi always knew the truth. just as she knows that giving her these weapons would put her further in harm's way. 

but it would also set her free. 

the pokemon outside the walls never stop with their relentless attacks. she and angelo vestri make a game of ripping the creatures apart. one point per body, five points if the kill is sick as hell. no points if they get help from their partner pokemon (and parker has a sneaking suspicion angelo's invisible airplane thing helps him, but whatever). 

something new is in the air. a quivering, anxious thing. the hope they'd all had for so long has returned, as the prophecies start to unravel. as studies are made and folks say seven years left. we have seven years left before the battle.

parker thumbs the ring on her neck. suddenly seven years doesn't feel like enough time. 

SWORD RAID - CIRCHESTER
Naomi Sato

☉