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ananxiousgenz · 8 months ago

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SONG FOR A CAGED LOVEBIRD: PART 9 (?)

i've lost track by now ngl. we're at over 9,000 words so i get a pass. this part is. ouchie central. so i am expecting a lot of people yelling at me in the comments and tags. this is fun for me.

LETS GO TPP CREW, ROUNDING THE CORNER WITH MY TPP CREW: @smidgen-of-hotboy @ceaseless-watchers-special-girl @urjover @one-joe-spoopy @waters-and-the-wilde @demonic-panini (@the-private-eye i'm tagging you too bc i can :))

The silence was what finally woke him.

Juno had been solidly asleep, dreaming about things he couldn’t quite remember but that made his stomach twist. When he finally opened his eyes, the room was abnormally quiet. No rain, barely any wind, and… he rolled over to check. Nureyev wasn’t next to him in bed. That was not entirely out of the ordinary, as his insomnia often took him on long walks through the woods as he tried to find sleep, but this morning it set his teeth on edge. Something about it felt… wrong. Like he had walked out of the door for the last time, and would never come back.

Juno shook the thought away. It was a ridiculous notion. He loved him too much to let that happen. If Nureyev was having trouble, or looking to leave, he would have told him. Juno trusted him.

He dressed and washed his face and walked downstairs to grab some breakfast before starting to get the bar together for opening. Hopefully, the rest of the day would pass without incident, and he could chalk this nauseous, nervous feeling up to a nightmare that he couldn’t quite remember.

It was what he saw at the bar while half-way down the stairs that really made him feel sick to his stomach.

Buddy was leaned over a half-empty bottle of whisky, rubbing the bridge of her nose, tear tracks shiny on her face. That bottle had been full when he had replaced it on the shelf last night. She never drank this early in the morning, and never that much. Always said it made her unfit to serve the public or interact with any decent human being. Jet, the man she had employed as a bar bouncer when times were better, was standing next to her, a large hand on her shoulder. He was crying too. Buddy only called him when things were drastic, like when their latest whiskey shipment had been stolen by pirates on its way to the bar.

And then there was Rita.

Rita, who wore her heart and its many thoughts on her sleeve like a badge of honor for her humanity, was nearly silent. She was snot-nosed and puffy-eyed, like she had been crying for hours, and said absolutely nothing outside of the occasional sniffle and a quiet request for Jet to grab her a glass of milk from the kitchen.

Juno thought he might hurl right there on the stairs. A silent Rita was new. Juno had known her for years, and she had never stopped talking once.

What the hell had happened?

He cautiously came down the rest of the stairs and approached the bar. Buddy looked up at his approach and tried to wipe some of the tears from her face just as Jet returned from the kitchen with the milk for Rita. “Good morning, Juno.”

“Hey, big guy,” Juno responded, nodding in Jet’s direction before looking at each one of the weeping figures in turn. “What happened? You guys look like hell. Did we get another snowstorm in the middle of the night or something?”

The three of them exchanged a look that Juno couldn’t quite decipher before Buddy answered.

“I think Rita can answer that question better than Jet or I can,” she croaked before downing another swig of whisky.

Juno turned to Rita and reached out to wipe a stray hair out of her face. “Hey, Rita, what happened? It’s okay, it can’t be that bad, right?”

At that, Rita burst into tears again. “It is, it really is that bad, Mista Steel! You don’t get it! It’s the worst thing! It’s about Mista Nureyev!”

Juno’s heart dropped through the floor the second she said his name. “Rita. Rita, look at me. Rita. DAMMIT, I need you to tell me what happened to him.”

Rita looked at him then, with such a look of despair and heartbreak on her face that Juno’s heart ached for her. And then he realized. He knew that expression. It was nearly second nature to him. He had seen it every morning on his own face in the mirror after Benten had-

And then he knew.

He breathed in, breathed out. Took a step back. The floor was spinning. He dropped to his knees. “No. No it can’t- no, no, no, no, this can’t be right, Nureyev can’t be…”

Rita nodded, tears still flowing steadily down her face as she clambered off the bar stool to hug Juno. “He came back after dark last night, and I thought he was actin’ real sketchy, so I watched him for a while, and then when the sun started comin’ up, he packed up some stuff and left, but I followed him, only he didn’t know, ‘cause I acted real sneaky-like, and he went to a train station that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there before, and he met these big, creepy guys, and they gave him paypawork to sign, ‘cause I think they were makin’ some kinda deal, and once Mista Nureyev signed it, he fell down and started coughin’, and then one of the big guys said somethin’ about not havin’ enough time to wait for him to die, and then the otha one pulled out a huuuuuge knife, and then he- then he-”

She burst into sobs again on Juno’s shoulder. His ears were ringing and he knew his face was deathly pale. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

Buddy looked at him hollowly from the bar. “Rita said he called your name. It was the last thing he did before he… before they loaded his body up onto a train and left.”

‘He called your name. It was the last thing he did before he died.’ And Juno didn’t even hear him. He hadn’t been paying attention. How long had he been calling? How long had Juno been ignoring him? Why was he only now hearing his echo instead of his voice? How pathetic was he, that he prioritized a fucking song over his husband? What was wrong with him? But of course, as soon as he realized his problem, it was already too late to solve it.

He never got to say goodbye.

Dimly, Juno realized he was shivering and tears were flowing down his face and Rita was apologizing profusely that she didn’t do anything to try and save him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so horrible about himself.

Now, it was all over. He’d lost him forever, and it was all his fault.

He would never get to see Peter Nureyev again.

He sat there, curled up on the floor for a moment longer before a different wave of feeling crept over him.

No.

This was not the end. He wouldn’t let it be the end.

He was going to get his husband back if it was the last thing he ever did.

He sat up, wiped the tears from his face, and grabbed Rita by the shoulders, lightly shaking her out of her self-deprecating ramble.

“Rita. Rita, look at me. I need you to tell me everything you know about the Underworld. It’s important. Really important.”

“Well,” Rita sniffled, wiping her face on the sleeves of her sky blue sweater, “I heard a while back about there bein’ a back door. A way to get in without havin’ to actually, ya know, die or somethin’.”

Jet nodded sagely. “This is true. I walked that road with a friend of mine years ago, trying to save people from unwise decisions.”

“It’s not easy though, Mista Steel. The road is reeeeeaaaaally long and difficult, and with the weatha bein’ the way is it, you could get caught in a storm and get hurt, and I don’t want you to get hurt, Mista Steel!!”

Buddy looked at Juno again, an odd kind of hollow despair marking her face, like she saw something in Juno’s set jaw and bright eyes that made her want to disappear. “I know what you’re thinking, Juno, and it won’t work. I’ve tried. Believe me.”

“I’m not going to give up on him this easily.” There was a defiant flame rising in him now, melting the shards of his broken heart back into a semblance of hope. “I can get him back. I know I can.”

Jet walked over from his perch next to Buddy and crouched on the floor next to Juno. “Rita is right, Juno. The road to Hadestown is not an easy one to take, which is why I must ask you: how far are you willing to go for your husband?”

The flame grew into a wildfire.

“To the ends of the fucking earth.”

There was silence as Jet examined him for a moment longer, face expressionless, before letting out a small sigh and standing up again. “Very well then. Pack your things. I will take you to where the road to Hadestown begins. If you are going to make stupid choices, I will at least make sure you can begin making them safely.”

Buddy started shaking her head vehemently. “No, no, no. You can’t let him go, Jet darling, he’s just going to get himself killed too. It’s not safe.”

“And yet you took the same course of action all those years ago, Buddy. What does that say about you?”

A muscle in Buddy’s jaw twitched as she took another long swig of whiskey. Juno slowly stood up, like a prey animal caught between two predators trying to remain ignored. He desperately wanted to know what had happened between the two of them, but somehow got the impression that any requests to know would be soundly ignored.

Buddy glared at Jet with one sharp eye, but said nothing.

Jet sighed again and put a large hand on Juno’s shoulder. “Go grab your things. We will leave in two hours.”

“Wait for me, Mista Steel! I’m comin’ too! I gotta go get my stuff and then I’ll go with ya! Lil old Rita isn’t as fast as she used to be! Wait up!”

Juno sprinted up the stairs, Rita’s voice carrying after him. And in spite of the loss he had just suffered, he was grinning.

Hang on, Nureyev. Just a little longer.

He was going to get his husband back. At any cost.

#the ending isn't that sad tho right #like it's a lil better #good luck guys #as always #i love y'all <3 #the penumbra podcast #tpp #tpp hadestown au #song for a caged lovebird

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