[ds] sky of atoms drabble ; post ch 19
this one’s for @savage-rhi aka the loveliest author of sky of atoms!!! and every soa fan hehe,, this small niche part of the ds fandom loving this wonder duo has honestly been the purest :> anyways,, i got this drabble of what i think gene must’ve felt during the two months she spent with lou and sam ( i love gene and lou sm hnhhh- she’s her happy little pill, i tell y’all))
—“i’ll teach you how to play one day, darlin.”
it catches her off-guard; gene snaps out of her thoughts and feels uncomfortable with the way the nostalgia settles in the midst of the air. it’s the way she feels chills run through the surface of her skin— a hum of a melody is ever so familiar— that causes her to stop in her tracks, wide-eyed, almost like a deer in headlights. she drops she feels a wring in her heart and tells herself there’s no way that-
she rushes her way to the next room, only a few steps away and— oh.
it’s not—it’s just louise. dear little louise with her tiny fingers gliding across the strings of an instrument that gene has only seen played for a couple times. the strums of the guitar don’t sound as lovely as they did back when she had first heard the strings play a melody complete with chords and a song to boot as well.
it had been a night full of banter and laughter, warm, soft, innocent and ridiculously oblivious to the nights ahead. she remembers— gene shakes her head, refusing to throw herself back in her self thrown pity party— she had promised herself to try and live, for her and for him.
louise giggles when she notices gene’s presence and runs towards her with the widest smile she’s seen in a while. dear god, how gene dearly wished she could withhold the same content innocence with a flair of naivety that louise carried around the bunker right now. it might just help with all the raw wounds unable to heal with all the bandages and medicine sam would fix her up.
gene squats down to the ground and receives the embrace louise comes running to her for and she tries. it’s terrifyingly hard to properly smile with all that’s gone on, but she tries. she really tries even though it feels like such a chore to pull the sides of her face to entertain dear little louise. gene adores her, she does with a certain passion—with the way louise was gorgeously innocent as the fields of dandelions right past the streams out there, who couldn’t?—but gene finds it hard to genuinely give her love for there’s simply nothing left in her chest to offer little lou.
if anything, she can give her the ample kindness she has left. it’s what they deserve for taking care of them, what with the off-handed way sam seems to act around the mention of higgs’ name. sam tells her to try and forget because it’ll help with the pain— he’s right, she supposes, but everyone knows that things linger to reality much longer when they’re tethered to you emotionally, having left a considerable print unto the soul.
so gene tries to forget it all.
she tries to forget that she ever gave anything away to anyone. tries to forget that she’s still in that cage, watched over like some experiment. tries to forget that she gave away her porter life, something she’s held dear to her heart, when she shot rounds into kubler— all for him. gene tries to forget the way she’s reminded of the blood, the sterilizing scent hanging in the air, the murmurs, and the talks with kubler. most of all, she tries to forget the touch.
gene tries hard to stop the floodgates from opening. she tries so so hard and she wishes it were as easy as breathing to simply stop feeling like this. it had been a month in and she still felt like she was being watched. their fingerprints leaving imprints on her skin— it made her feel unbelievably sick to the bottom of her stomach. it felt like there was dirt stuck to the very crevices of her skin and all the washing she did would never wash it off.
she tries and tries and yet they always seem to catch up to her. it catches up, leaving her gasping every time she manages to fall to asleep. every time she lets her eyelids come to a close, she’s done nothing but run away from the bright lights and the sickening view of off-gray walls and glass. she runs away from the hands grabbing at her and fixed smiles stitched unto their faces telling her she’ll feel right at home. if she ever stops running, she’d met with him dying right in front of her one way or another. he dies if she doesn’t try and when she does, she’s met with the world that strangles her, keeping her down, away from freedom.
all she’s ever done since she’s escaped the UCA’s prying hands was to run and try to forget.
gene tries and tries and yet all she ever seems to do is do the bare minimum of keeping herself together. she barely sleeps, the sound of silence often her company at night. she’s extremely exhausted, her body feeling like it’s sunk in to the ground and her chest brims over with a hollow ache she can’t seem to cry out. gene’s long run out of tears like an empty well overcome with drought. she misses walking outside, trudging for miles on end, higgs in tow just behind her and the ocassional banter. she misses and misses and she’s terrified that he might never come back to her. that she might have lost her home for good.
it’s been a month and a week in and every time she visits higgs, gene feels frightening fear reign over her heart that if she touches him, something might happen. at the start, she had stayed away from him, watching from afar and now she often finds solace, closing her eyes and leaning close by his side. but it doesn’t matter for no matter the distance, she realizes, that she had already been losing him from her grasp since the start.
gene should have known how easy it was to forget someone sometimes.
“how can the bad man be home, gene?” louise had asked her once.
she simply replied, “home is… well it’s when i feel at ease when i see him or hear him talk or when he smiles-“
gene and louise had been sitting by higgs, watching over him as she braided little lou’s hair and hummed a faint song higgs had sung her once. gene remembers the way higgs had first braided her short hair, trying to comfort her, and the way he had told her she was beautiful and felt a smile rise to her face. gene remembers the way he talked of the way he loved running his fingers through her hair and how soft his kisses were and the way he’d hum songs he knew whilst burying his face in the crook of her neck, arms around her.
she tried to remember the way he had sung the song, by the campfire, with the worn out guitar horribly tuned. yet all she could seem to remember was the way the light hit his grinning face, the sound sucked into the void, silence ringing over the strum of the guitar and the dulcets of his voice—
—“i got you gene. i got-“
he fucking lied. he wasn’t here to hold her and make her feel safe. he was gone and he wasn’t here to stop the tears from falling and help calm her nightmares. he wasn’t there to shush her and rub circles unto her back nor was he there to kiss her worries away. he wasn’t there to sing his stupid songs and he wasn’t here to tell her how he felt about her. he wasn’t—what a fucking liar—
but dear god, she missed him. she misses his stupid attitude and his awkward quirks and the way he held her the most. she wishes things hadn’t gone so wrong or that she should have stayed away from him.
yet like a sucker, she couldn’t help but be drawn into him and before she knew it he had become a part of her everything. she might just lose him and it terrifies her that it might actually happen. that she might never hear his voice again or see his smile again. that-
gene hadn’t realized then she had started crying until louise had turned around, her braids coming undone, and wiped her tears away over her cheeks with her small hands. gene hadn’t flinched then and she tried to smile at this girl trying to do her best to comfort the pieces gene tried so hard to stitch back together— god, louise was too good for this world— and she cries even harder when louise speaks up, eyes sparkling softly with innocence.
“it’s alright, gene. home will come.”
