[for greta]

[pylades_drunk]

[dated to roughly the 20th or so of june? we can move it around, but maybe ~two weeks since neil left?]

There's a part of Grantaire that derides himself, has since the beginning, for not coping better with this. Another one is pretty damn certain the idea of coping well with your husband walking out is a fiction, if it even truly exists at all. He'd told Greta the day after it happened, in vagaries; let her know that Neil and they were taking some time apart and that right now he wasn't well fit to do the job and would need some time, he wasn't sure how much. He's not proud, but it's better that he hadn't tried to keep going. Or forgotten altogether to tell her, the way things have been.

At the time, he might have thought they were taking some time apart, that that was all. Now he knows better. He's not sure if he ruined any chance of that when he showed up at Marcus' house, or if Neil never really needed just space. Since then he's not sure it matters. If they were to try to reforge something, anything, something entirely different even, he's not sure he could trust Neil to stay. Not after not even saying anything to them, not even trying to talk through what was going on in his head. Or, he might believe Neil wanted to be with them, but he couldn't trust himself not to be thinking about it, not to question whether every word or action might be too much or not enough.

Even now, he catalogues it all, goes over every memory in search of something, some proof, the straw to the camel's back. Something to blame, something to carve or burn away so he can be rid of that part of himself, of the both of them. He can't find it, of course. So he drinks, and he fights; he paints and he destroys the paintings; he cries more than he'd like and he clings: all of it with and without Edgar, who weathers this in stormy silences and eruptions of emotion both, whose unstemmed grief makes Grantaire feel even more worthless.

This morning, he sits at the table and pours a shot of whiskey into his coffee, and stares. What just last night had hit him with a sadness somehow even more profound and gutwrenching than it'd been all the time before -- free of anger, full on loss -- has faded to a sort of apathetic, bleak melancholy that feels endless. It isn't a feeling Grantaire's never experienced before; it's just a new, nastier reason for the nothingness.

He passes a hand over his face. He's not sure how long he's been sitting when the knock comes at the door.

Comments

[andhiswife]

Greta frowns, though it's not much worse than she'd anticipated, really. If they were doing well, even relatively, this visit wouldn't have been necessary.

"You needn't apologize," she insists, gentle but firm. "It's..." she pauses, lips pursed as she chooses her words. "We've all lost people, and it's hard enough when it's just Darrow's doing. When it's deliberate...?" She shakes her head slowly, as if such a thing ought to be unheard of. There might be some silver lining, she supposes — having Neil still in the city, particularly if his home isn't one worth returning to, could provide some small relief. But for the most part, she can only assume it just hurts, knowing all this pain and upheaval comes down to a choice that someone made and not some force beyond anyone's reckoning.

But she didn't come here to dwell on that, or to encourage Grantaire to dwell, either, and she sits up a bit straighter. "Anyway. Erm. I know that normal is going to take some finding, but I'd like to help, if I can. Beyond just... throwing food at you," she adds with a sheepish gesture towards the counter.

[pylades_drunk]

He purses his own lips wryly, nodding. Jyn had said something to the same effect, and having done both, Grantaire knows, logically, that it's not necessarily reasonable to expect every relationship, every friendship to go on forever -- and also, feels bitter about it. At least with Tunny and the girls, he had had the choice to imagine that -- had things gone completely differently, had they both remained on the Island -- they would have been perfectly happy. It'd been a future he'd grieved, but one he'd been able to be angry at the island for, not Tunny.

Of course, he doesn't want that future anymore; he wouldn't change ending up here, even now. "I wouldn't wish him gone, not -- not with the life he had back at his home," he says, painfully. "But it is hard, knowing that he chose to leave. I just end up cataloguing everything, wondering at what point we should have gone back to to make it end up right..."

He trails off, and when Greta interrupts herself and him with Anyway, it's probably for the best. He smiles a little. "The food's more than you should have done to begin with. But -- I'll be damned if I know how to start making my way back towards normal, even. If you've a map to being all right, or some hastily penned directions, I'll take all the help I can get."

[andhiswife]

She gives Grantaire a quelling look when he insists the food is more than she owes him. While she's technically his employer, she likes to think they're on friendlier terms than being mere colleagues would suggest. The thought of just leaving him to his grief without any acknowledgment seems intolerably cruel to her, and food is an easy, natural thing to provide, not too much.

But her mild indignation doesn't last long. She hadn't expected him to welcome guidance quite so readily, and she blinks at him for half a moment before recovering herself. "I think... well, in my experience, anyway, it helps to have a routine. And an excuse to leave the house, so you're not just... dwelling." A certain amount of raw grieving is necessary, she thinks, but the line between that and wallowing can be a thin one — and hard to make out, especially if you're not giving your mind anything else to contend with.

"You might come back to the Gardens," she gently suggests. "We all miss you, as I said, but it would also just be something else to do."