shatterverse | (no subject)

It's easier, at this distance to take it. Mel slides to the floor, hugs her knees and stares at the radio, finally letting come the tears she hasn't let herself shed since Erin died.

The radio is silent for several minutes this time. Waiting, maybe. Or just giving up.

Or maybe giving the speaker a moment to think.

His voice, when it comes, is soft. Not out of calmness but to hide the strain, the break that shows in his words.

"...I just don't want to ruin anything else, Mel."

Mel stays away from the radio long enough to wipe her nose dry and clear the snot out of her voice.

Then she picks it up, and shakes her head (even though he can't see it.)

"What makes you think we're gonna give you the chance?"

Katara.

Zuko.

Harth.

"...a lot of shit has happened to us that we couldn't stop."

Well, Mel can't exactly argue with that, but...

"Where I'm standing, only we got left to lose is each other."

"I'm coming back."

"Yeah," says Mel with little to no expression. Either it means she knows, so she doesn't need reassurance, or it means she's heard it before and doesn't quite believe it.

She's not even sure which one is true. Maybe they both are.

She takes in a breath, like one does when they have something else to say, but she stops herself asking when.

Maybe he hears it anyway, with the silence that follows. It's not as if she's always been so quiet about that question.

"I'm not going to keep apologizing. I wanted to know about Steph."

If you count asking the question once then dropping it completely as not being so quiet.

"Never asked it of you.

"She's got stuff of her own to work through. Glad she got there OK."

"You should have told me she was coming. I wasn't done working stuff through."

And now his girlfriend is there with him, in the one-room tent and even smaller igloo they'll be moving into soon.

"Yes. No."

Mel covers her face with her hands for a second.

"I'm a terrible sister. This isn't news."

Many more people would be alive if she weren't.

Silence follows for several seconds.

"...stop that. I can't be mad at you and reassuring at the same time."

Mel shrugs. Not that he can see that, but she shrugs and the forced indifference can probably be heard in her tone.

"Did you wanna do some more yelling?"

"No."

He sounds defeated, tired, far older than he was than he left.

"You want to tell me more about how my nieces are forgetting me?"

"Not much to tell."

Which is the truth. Loo used to cry every night that she asked for him and he didn't come. Then she just asked for him. Now she doesn't. Hana doesn't even seem to notice he's gone.

"They're bigger."

He doesn't think she's lying. But to have stayed near them, with all that was going on in his head and his heart, what he might have said or done to them...

Better to leave.

Even when Mel's tone and her words and the thought of his nieces forgetting him just hurts.

This whole conversation is worse than Sokka expected it to be. And he expected it to be bad.

"What do you want me to say, Mel? You want me to come back tomorrow?"

Mel's hand - the one, thankfully, not holding the radio - clenches into a fist, and she bites her lip hard enough that she tastes blood, in order to choke back on snapping at him.

"No," she manages quietly. "You take all you need. I got things to keep me busy."

It's fall, now. Things need harvesting.

She doesn't need him.

The voice that answers her, when it finally comes across the radio, is tight and clipped, soft to hide the hurt - and failing miserably.

"Bye."

Mel lets the radio fall limply to the ground, and collapses backwards until she hits a wall.

She'll have to get up in a second; there's a lot to do and it feels like she's the only one doing it. She needs to check that Hana did go back to bed and that Loo's still managing without her diaper overnight.

But he didn't even ask how they were growing, and Mel seizes the opportunity to fall apart. Even for a second.