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Jay seized up, chest hot and angry and disgraceful at being caught mourning, at being asked to share himself. He looked at Gaia, wondering how she could even have guessed. And how dare she ask him how he mourned for, when she had never known. For all he knew, Gaia had come fully formed out of nothing from the wormhole itself. He wasn't being fair to her, he knew he wasn't and that just made him upset with himself too. And filled him with that same white hot shame. "I-- She-- We was gonna get married," Jay said finally, trying to get the spike of emotion of his under control. This wasn't like him, not anymore. Guilt was for the man who had bound his wings up. And here Gaia had made him feel like that just again, been so direct it felt for a moment like she had been mocking him and he was right back to the end of last December. Marriage. The union of two consenting peoples under the law. She had looked it up after watching a film with Laura. Love. Hot and cold burned in her head. Anger and sadness and the sour tinge of regret. Gaia, for once, embraced the feeling. She took a few steps further, puzzle coming together in her mind. "And these... your music... they were for her?" Out of the mouth of anyone else it would have been a callous question, free from the customary condolences, but something in the girl's tone was gentle. The gentle way Gaia asked, the gentle way she looked at his music had the flame of guilt at carryin' on this way she'd fanned burn out just as fast as it came on. Jay got the sense that Gaia didn't mean anything by what she was asking. Hell, her asking about his music for Julia was more comforting than any platitudes. It made the fact he wasn't moving on and buttoning up like he should didn't feel like a failure for a second. "Yeah," he confessed. "I wrote a lot for her." She nodded slowly. Something tugged at the back of her psyche. This… this was not all unfamiliar. Motioning to the nearby guitar, she queried, “May I?” Trusting a string instrument to someone was intimate, in a way, but Jay nodded. He wanted to hear music, even if he couldn't bring himself to make it right now. Patiently, Gaia sat down beside Jay and took the guitar, laying it flat like one might play a zither. She tested the strings, hearing the tones they made thoughtfully, before settling into something that might have been a song. It was off tune, discordant, and utterly unlike anything considered musical. It sounded horrid. Well, maybe not horrid, but it was far from a pleasing combination of sounds. There was something, though, like a pattern and after a few moments of listening it didn't sound so horrid anymore and more just... very very poorly played. And, looking at how Gaia was laying the guitar on her lap, likely played on the wrong instrument all together. It made Jay pay attention. It felt like a sorrow shared. Strings were plucked like they were something precious, delicately. A far away look came over came over the girl’s face as her brow furrowed in concentration. The farther along the more the melody revealed itself. Jay listened intently, hung on every pluck. The song felt so empty. So sad. It made him feel like maybe he hadn't cried all his tears after all. After a few minutes the song ended, just as all things do. Whatever trance she had entered returned her to this plane once again, and Gaia looked at Jay with misty eyes. The guitar was placed in front of him, but she didn’t move to get up. "Thanks," he told her, blinking back his own tears. "Thank you for playing that for me." Her head tilted in acknowledgment. “It fades… but never goes away.” |
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