#I’m retired | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

legal-graffiti · 1 year

Text

Self-indulgent ideas you get when you combine “Rowan should be an artist” and “Citra’s been dead for 117 slutty slutty years”

~~~

Humans never got used to thinking of the universe without themselves in it: still spinning stars and weaving galaxies in their absence. Even before they realized they were going to live forever. It was the same thing with Citra. Every time she thought she could finally wrap her head around her death, she would have another thought: Ben must be older than me now. And she would have to stop thinking for a moment to stay sane.

Rowan still hasn’t told her yet how long she had been gone. From memory, the shortest possible time would have been seventeen years- most of her lifespan. It makes her queasy to think about. She still loves him the same. But everytime she notices that his freckles are in the wrong places, or that his words come out a little differently than they used to, Citra realizes how lost she really was.

And not in the literal sense, although at the moment, she is wandering around the ship. It isn’t her first time, but she certainly hasn’t found every room and hallway yet. The planet itself is still off-limits, until adequate tests have been run on the terrain and the atmosphere.

She isn’t entirely sure why she was the first person to be revived, but that means Citra has most of the ship to herself. Everyone is buzzing with excitement to see their new home, and to welcome the newly revived. They crowd the windows and the labs and the revival centers. Citra is excited too, even if it is subdued by her disorientation. She stops in front of a door.

“This room is off-limits,” someone mentioned to her. If it is so important, why is it so far from everything else?

Citra is only human. And like everyone else, when a door is locked, she tries opening it anyway to see if she has the magic touch. But when it takes her biometrics, the door unlocks. Her heart skips. She isn’t sure if she should go in. Only to peek inside, she tells herself. Curiosity wins out. And besides, she needs to be alone for a moment.

To her surprise, the only things inside are artworks. Artworks or canvases and half-finished sketches and palettes and easels.

The first thing she sees is gold. Her dress glitters, every point of light given its distinct dapple of paint, its own hue. The balustrade and the curtains in the background are from the opera where they met. Her gaze pointedly turns away from the viewer. If someone only went by these paintings, they would assume that the most beautiful thing in the universe was Citra with a bored stare.

"I look so young," she murmurs to herself, stepping around to see it from different angles. It is so lifelike that her mind wonders why the shimmer of her dress does not change with her motion.

In another painting, she poses beneath a statue. If it is possible to have an aura of reticence, then she certainly has one here. Everything is visible and distinct, but hues of blue and gray create the illusion of shadows and night. The light turns her into a fiery silhouette. She looks stunning.

Here, Citra stands with her head held high, and her hand as well- with her ring on it. The canvas watches her from the side. She wears her regular clothes, with no robe yet. With the marble columns behind her, she might as well be the idol of an ancient temple. She is radiant. And terrified.

Citra can’t stop looking at all of these artworks now. And she starts to suspect she knows who made them. In this one, her eyes are closed, and her arms are folded across her chest. If not for the dark, bloody wound on her side, she would look like she is merely asleep. A dozen hands take the edges of her robe, folding it into a burial shroud. How beloved she looks here. And how disturbing it is, to see herself as she had been while dead. She is never getting used to this.

There are a few paintings of Scythe Faraday, always in his robes, always respectable and solemn. And portraits of girls with freckles, and boys with dark hair. To her eternal shame, Citra can’t think of who they are until she remembers about Rowan’s family. She was so excited to spend the rest of her life with him that she never even thought about what he left behind.

These aren’t just “better than mediocre”. All of this art is exceptional. It’s the kind of skill that takes years to master. The oeuvre on its own would’ve taken years to create, even for someone who already had that talent. Citra is in plain awe.

If she could think of a point in her life, it’s depicted here. Fully colored paintings of Citra standing tall and proud in her robes, sketches of her writing in her journal as an apprentice, or somber and still at conclave. Some of them are stylized- dreamy and ethereal, or bright and sweet as stained glass. In some of them, she is standing or sitting around doing nothing in particular. All of those times she never bothered to remember, immortalized forever.

Citra pulls a cover off of one of the works-in-progress. Silk and feathers splay from her shoulders, wings stretched in flight. There is attention to detail, down to the eye and shaft of each teal feather. It takes her a moment to realize that the robe was not laid with a true blue- it’s different hues in every stroke, playing with color in every drape of fabric. Transparent where it touches dark skin, and iridescent in the light. A fiery glow catches every coil of her hair.

Her face is softer, as if memory and time eroded the details. A fierce blush turns her face pink. And her eyes are pure wonder and affection. Citra looks preternaturally beautiful on this canvas, fully human and fully divine. She knew at once that only one person had ever seen her like that.

Citra tosses the cover back over this one specific painting. Whether anyone can tell the context or not, that is something that she does not want to be shared with other people. And she isn’t used to seeing herself like that. Pride and vulnerability do not mix. At least she isn’t naked in it.

The door opens behind her- Citra turns, startled by the sound. It’s only Rowan. Citra doesn’t know why she’s surprised to see him in his own studio. They both stare wide-eyed at each other.

“Shit,” he mutters. “I thought you were a painting.”

“No, I’m real,” Citra replies, although she sounds like she isn’t sure.

Rowan walks over to her. He looks around, even though he has surely seen his own art before. Citra wonders if he’ll be annoyed that she tampered with his work. He takes her arm, then traces his hand down her wrist, and laces his fingers with hers.

“Do you like them?” he asks. He sounds like he would throw them all into a fire if she answered ‘no’.

“… It’s strange.”

Rowan doesn’t take offense to it.

“Would you believe it’s weird for me too?” he says. “I was geriatric last week.” Those words are like missing a step on a flight of stairs. Her brain stutters.

“How long was I gone?” Citra asks. Rowan bites his cheek. He was so excited to talk to her again, he didn’t think about what he was saying.

“Do you really want to know?”

And no, she doesn’t. It’s more like she needs to know. Citra can’t stand being left in the dark.

“I must seem very young to you.”

“Not at all.”

“Explain that to me,” Citra says with a doubtful expression.

“You’ve just been… eternally twenty. It’s not like turning a corner-“

“Not that I would know anything about that,” she says bitterly.

Rowan frowns. He rolls his thumb in a circle against the side of her hand in long silence. Citra wishes she didn’t say anything.

“I’m saying that you’re exactly the way you’re supposed to be,” Rowan tells her.

“If you got tired of waiting for me, I would-” Citra stops. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what I would do.” Rowan stares at her like one of them is crazy.

“Do you really think that’s something I would do?” he asks. “Get tired of you?”

“How do you know that I would have waited for you?”

“I don’t.” Rowan shrugs. “I never thought about it.” He presses her hand to his cheek. “But if you’ll still have me-”

Citra kisses him.

“Of course I will. I chose this. I never meant anything else. It’s just…”

Rowan holds her tight. It reminds him of seeing Citra after three years, except much, much longer this time. Whatever overprotective instincts he had, watching Citra die horrifically in front of him certainly did not lessen that effect. Everything is quiet. He runs his fingers through her hair and kisses her face. And he doesn’t say a word.

“Uh, are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He sounds like he’s going to cry. Citra almost feels bad for dying. “It’s been a while.”

“Hey.” Citra kisses him on the cheek. “I love you.”

#scythe #arc of a scythe #I’M RETIRED #I NEVER HAVE TO WRITE AGAIN #AMEN AMEN

12 notes · View notes