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byrdstrolls · 5 months ago

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Wherefore Art Thou Rollyn

The last beams of sunlight drip their colors onto the sea like wax splatters off a candle. The waves carry the fragile slices of a discordant and violent light over their waves, rocking them to sleep like a cradle. Clouds stalk the edges of the horizon, reaching towards the last embers of the far off sun as if moving to smother the celestial being in slow motion. On the balcony, the young troll stares at his namesake.

Grief is a funny thing. He had imagined it so far behind him, but he never lost it. It’s a pursuit predator. It was waiting for him to tire himself out. To pause. The manor on the upper hills had many balconies. The troll standing upon it had many manors. But he chose this one for a reason. Lately, Sunset’s therapist has been telling him to allow himself to feel his emotions. And so, as futile and clinical as he found the practice, he had begun to work hours into his night scheduled specifically for feeling things. He had woken up and thought, okay, I have an hour before work. This is when I want to mourn losing Rollyn. That was one of many griefs, but at the forefront of his mind in the past months, after everything that had happened. He had stared at his bedroom wall for a long time, only to find his emotions weren’t playing fair. His mind was full of other things. Every other hour of the night the thought of her consumed him except for the hour he has specifically set aside.

Alright, Sunset had told himself. If his heart wouldn’t play fair, neither would he. And so he came here. She had come to this specific balcony many times, later in the relationship. One night he had wrongfully assumed she, well, couldn’t actually fly with her wings, simply on the basis she never seemed to in public. From that point forward, they had been determined to prove him wrong, despite flying this high often triggering their asthma. She would show up on the fifth floor of this place just to prove she could. He had taken to keeping an inhaler for her in the dresser drawer, just in case. Now, staring at the empty place on the railing she had often landed like something from a fairytale, he felt sad. He felt triumph on outwitting his emotions like this, before he remembered winning just meant feeling terrible.

Only forty five minutes of sadness. He better milk this for all its worth. He had no time to be miserable later. Let’s not pull any punches, he thinks.

Rollyn wanted to not care if you died. He thinks. If you died right now Rollyn would feel only relief and she wanted that. He thinks, cruel to himself in the way only he alone could be.

You could die now, and no one would mourn you, because no one could stand remembering you. No one could bear the burden of knowing you. What is there about you worth keeping?

The last few beams of light are vanishing into the ocean. Sunset's thoughts bury in him like seeds, rooting him to the spot. There's something cathartic about talking to himself like this, the way he knows he's not supposed to. The monologue runs on loops in his head, and everytime it passes through him, part of him dies with it. The manor’s proximity alarm goes off, and he turns back towards the inside of the building, confused and mildly annoyed at the interruption midway through his sadness hour.

Suddenly a full force slams into him with a thud, and Sunset falls to the ground, pressed there by who had just collided with him, wind knocked out of his lungs. He takes a moment to process what has just happened, because it's so difficult for him to believe. Rollyn Firlyn has landed on his balcony, and she has a baseball bat. He stills his hands from where they instinctively raise to defend himself, not wanting to hurt her, but his ex seems to be making no such reservations. She slams the bat into his head. They’re wheezing and panting, worn out from flying over, and not a particularly skilled fighter.

“Ow” He barely manages before they wack him on the head again. The man deduces she's not here to talk, she’s clearly just trying to knock him out. He makes a strategic decision to close his eyes.

“Rollyn-Ow!” He says, interrupted by another badly timed wack. “Rollyn, before you knock me out” He insists, raising his hands in surrender. As he watches her struggle to breathe as she tries to beat him.

“Rollyn, the black dresser, second drawer, your inhaler” He manages.

This only seems to make her angrier, she slams the bat into him one last time with a frantic yell, before finally conceding she really does need it, stumbling toward the dresser and pulling out the device, pressing it to her face, humiliated.

Sunset lays perfectly still where she had left him.

“Don’t move!” She shouts around the inhaler anyways, pointing the bat at him.

“Okay” He says.

“How did you have this!” She yells, panicking. “How and why did you have this in your dresser drawer!”

He squints up at her through what is quickly swelling into a black eye at the disheveled woman in front of him.

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth! Why did you keep this!” They say, their voice cracking over the shout.

“I don’t know,” He mumbles. “The way a hopeless romantic does when he thinks there's a millionth of a chance the love of his life might show up on his balcony.”

This is apparently the wrong answer. She pulls the bat back and swings it again. And it really does knock him out this time.

Sunset comes to a couple minutes later, in the nearby room, tied to a chair. He wiggles his hands against the duct tape and frowns. There’s something big and heavy around his neck, like a shock collar. A voodoo suppressant, he realizes. Where did she get one of these? They’re hard to come by. His head aches and feels fuzzy and sharp all at once. He's not sure if it's the collar affecting him or he has a concussion. He opens his eyes. Rollyn is sitting in front of him, stray hairs peeking disobediently from her ponytail. She has a gun.

“Wrong answer…?” He groans.

“No mindgames” She says. “When Sereni attacked you months ago,” They hiss. “You told her I asked you to get my memories erased. Why?”

“Because you did” He answers truthfully.

“Ha!” She barks back. “You knew that would freak me out!” They say, pointing their gun at him. This would be a hilarious way for me to die, Sunset thinks. How come no one else noticed that alarm going off?

“You knew,” Rollyn rambles, beginning to pace back and forth like a mad woman. “That I’d get so freaked out, wondering why I’d do that- wondering what would make me feel guilty enough to do that- you knew I’d get scared I did something to you! And couldn’t remember it. Well? Was that it? The 3d- 5d-”

“Don’t say chess” He pleads.

“Don’t interrupt me!” She says, swerving back around to point the gun at him again. “Was that your whole 5d chess game! You wanted me to come here and ask you what I did?”

He stares at her.

“No”

“I said no mind games!” The frazzled woman insists, her eyes wide with fear.

“Yeah” he says softly. “I heard.”

“Don’t fuck with me” They command.

“You thought all that was a trap to bring you here and then you just… came anyways?” Sunset asks.

Her gaze falters for a second. “You get one chance,” She says. “You get one chance to explain yourself. Tell me the truth. What happened?”

“If you wanted the truth,” He says. “You wouldn’t have asked me to erase it from your pan.”

Rollyn fires the gun into the air, as if to prove she’s not fucking around. It works, and Sunset goes still, as if the gravity of the situation has just hit him over his pounding headache

“...okay” He stumbles. “I told you an incredibly vulnerable secret about myself. You and I fell deeply in love. You then got worried I was risking myself too much in my line of work, and asked me to erase everything from that secret onward from your mind so you wouldn’t have to mourn me if I died.”

“You say that like that's not- some crazy thing you cooked up for months in a lab to say specifically to make me feel terrible and want you back!” They accuse frantically, despite something in their bones knowing this to be true the moment they heard it.

“Why ask me for the truth,” Sunset says. “If you’ve already decided in your own head what the truth is.”

“What is it then? This secret that makes me fall madly in love with you?” She huffs, disbelievingly.

He stares up at her, eyes clouded over with a dangerous storm of pain and hurt and love and acute sorrow. “Oh Rollyn” He breathes. “Why would I tell you that again?”

She takes this sentence like a spear to the chest. Hearing and understanding the undertone of disappointment and distrust that permeates the final word, a sob rises from her chest.

“I hate you” They cry, shaking him in his chair. “I’m so confused.”

“I know.”

“Fuck you!”

“If you can’t trust me” He says slowly. “Trust yourself, Rollyn. You wanted not to know this.”

“I didn’t want this!” She snaps. “I don’t know who that troll who asked you for it was but that girl wasn’t me!”

“It was you,” He says, dejected.

“Why should I get punished for her mistakes!”

“Just because you don’t remember it,” He sighs. “Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“That's not fair” They say, shaking him again.

“Is it fair to me?” He says. “To break my heart and then tell me it can’t be broken, because you don’t remember breaking it? Do you have any idea how many clients that have pulled the same ‘stop flinching Sunset, I don’t remember hurting you’”

“It’s not fair” She repeats, like a prayer, tears welling in her eyes. “Why did you do it? Why did you listen to me?”

“I would have pulled the moons down from the sky,” He says. “If you asked me, Rollyn.”

“Fuck you” They repeat, sobbing.

“Everything okay Sunset?” Enin interrupts, suddenly and jarringly, appearing next to your reflection in the window, and stepping out of it, probably to check on the alarm. The mirror demon stares at the sobbing Rollyn straddling Sunset tied to the chair, unsure how to react to the scene in front of him.

“Not now Enin,” Sunset pleads, as Rollyn points the gun at him. “Kind of in the middle of something.”

“You sure you’ve got this handled” He says, staring down the barrel of the gun pointed at him as if it were a particularly interesting bug.

“Yes!” Sunset insists. “I’m sure.” The mafia boss huffs. “Tell everybody to steer clear of here.”

“Okayyy” The creature says, disappearing back into the reflection, and then vanishing.

“I don’t know how long that will hold them off” The mafia boss admits, staring at the spot where he vanished.

“I wanna know” They say, pointing the gun at your chin. “Fuck what past me said, I want to know the secret.”

“What if you don’t?” He says, “What if you ask me to do the same thing, all over again.”

“I won’t” They insist.

“Why would I believe you?” Sunset says.

“I promise” She pleads, like that means something. He had seen such promises turn to paper so many times. Crumbling under the weight of things people didn’t want to know, didn’t want to feel.

“You understand that this information will only be a burden to you?” He pleads. “It will only make you feel worse. You didn’t want to know me” He says, his voice cracking. “You hated what you found. I can’t do this again. Don’t make me do this again.” He begs.

“I won't,” She says, cupping his cheeks. “Please” She pleads. “I wanna remember you Sunset. All of it”

And he caves, the same way he always caves.

Enin enters the room an hour or so later, from that same reflection in the window pane. She’s long gone by then. She had said she needed time to think. Sunset has wiggled out of the duct tape, and is staring at that same night sky that had captivated him so earlier that morning.

“I had your eight am meeting for you” The shapeshifter says, turning into Sunset and back again for emphasis.

“Thanks.” The purple says. And then is silent for a long moment.

“Should I go have your 9am too?” Enin asks. “Do you need a recovery buffer?”

“She’s probably” The purpleblood mumbles. “Bad news, isn’t she.”

“They did tie you to a chair” The creature replies, cautiously. “And fuck up your face.”

“The media would have a field day, if they knew,” Sunset says, staring at the lawn. “She’s too much publicity. We couldn’t date again now if we wanted to. We’d have to put up a whole pr front. Or do it in secret. Matise would throw a fit. And I’m so busy right now.”

“Yeah,” Enin says. “And she tied you to a chair and pointed a gun at you, Sunset.”

“Yeah.” He says. Watching the waves shimmer in the distance with starlight. He again does not speak. Lost in the way the waves break apart the moons reflected on their surface. It has been a hell of a sadness hour.

“None of that's going to stop you though, is it?” Eninot guesses.

Sunset stands up, and immediately runs straight into a nearby wall.

“Ow” he says. “I think I have a concussion” He says, his hand going to his head, he glances down at the voodoo suppressing collar. “And I need some bolt cutters.”

#sunset writing #rollyn writing #my writing #fantoll #fantroll rp #homestuck #homestuck oc #homestuck rp

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