cowt 11 sett 5 M2: even the damned love (dark tower, eddie/roland, pg13)

[janie_tangerine]

Even the damned love, Roland had said once.

 

Eddie remembers it very, very well.

 

Sometimes he thinks that he remembers it better than he remembers the face of his fucking father, not that he ever did anything for him.

 

It was on the beach. Just after Eddie kissed his cheek, and told the bastard he saved his fucking soul in the middle of the fucking Addicts Anonymous Speech About What It Meant To Be A Junkie, and he remembers that Roland had been crying before, and —

 

Yeah.

 

It echoes in his head at night.

 

Sometimes during the day, too.

 

He can see that he wants to keep a distance even if he’s bad at it, with him at least. It makes Eddie feel somehow — good, like that man can’t resist keeping away from him, white trash junkie extraordinaire that no one in his family would have bet a cent on.

 

And still.

 

And still, Roland had pretty much said that for the fucking Tower he’d betray the both of them. Him, Suze, and apparently he did betray someone else too, from the way he talks in his sleep sometimes.

 

And yet.

 

And yet, Eddie thinks he doesn’t care because if it happens it’ll still be a better end than anything he’d have met had Roland not met him first.

 

So.

 

He thinks about it, sure.

 

But it never makes him feel… upset, or angry, or like he should put effort into getting the hell out of Midworld Dodge, whatever passes for Dodge here.

 

God fucking damn it, he likes the mad bastard, he thinks, and so he’s going to stick with him, and if he betrays him, too, well.

 

At least he’s going to be upfront about it and it won’t be Henry doing it throughout their entire lives, making it seem like he was fucking paying him a favor.

 

That’s definitely a step in the fucking right direction, if you ask him.

 

— —

 

That is, until they find the kid and he learns the whole story. Sure, Jake doesn’t seem to blame Roland overtly much, not after they get him through the fucking door, and hadn’t that been a goddamned ride he’ll never forget, and Roland does seem heartbroken every time the episode is mentioned and he has been — well. It’s obvious he’s making up for it. Or trying. Fucking hell, that guy has a paternal streak in him, doesn’t he, Eddie realizes, and he kind of wants to laugh at the thought because who’d have thought, and yet.

 

And yet.

 

Sometimes he says that name in the night, Susan.

 

Was that someone else you betrayed, Eddie wonders sometimes, and then feels bad for having wondered it, because whoever that woman was, Roland certainly loved her, it’s obvious from the way her name slips from his lips, and for how much that man is flawed —

 

He still saved his fucking soul, didn’t he.

 

Roland and no one else.

 

He doesn’t ask.

 

He supposes one day he’ll learn, if Roland ever wants to tell him. If not, well.

 

He might have betrayed Jake, he might have betrayed this Susan, but he hasn’t betrayed Eddie yet, and that’s enough for him, for now. More than enough.

 

— —

 

That is, until he does tell them about Susan.

 

And until they see him getting tricked into killing his own mother.

 

Later, long later, after they’re back in Midworld, he sits next to Roland near the fire at an ungodly time in the night after having woken up and noticed that the mad bastard hasn’t gone to sleep at all.

 

“You know," he says, “after seeing that? Can’t be too surprised you’re a tower junkie now, though I think you've been a lot less intense about it, lately.”

 

Roland scoffs, staring ahead at the fire.

 

“First time I betrayed someone for it,” he whispers. “Susan, I mean.”

 

“I don't think she’d think that,” Eddie says. “And she didn't die resenting you, did she?”

 

"She should have,” he whispers. “She should. She needed me and where was I?” He shakes his head. “And my mother, well. I should have known.”

 

“My friend, I think that you think too much about how many people you supposedly betrayed and not enough about how many people betrayed you,” he shrugs, and Roland’s eyes go wider at that, those slivers of blue staring right into his and fuck aren’t they intense.

 

He always thought they were.

 

He wonders how they looked, when Susan Delgado met them for the first time.

 

Surely less old and tired than this, and yet, he thinks he loves them well now.

 

“I — never thought about it in those terms,” Roland says.

 

Eddie doesn’t know what possesses him to reach out and grab the man’s hand, feeling how rough it is, not that he doesn’t remember how it feels when it touches your skin, because he damn well does —

 

Roland doesn’t pull it away.

 

“You should,” Eddie says, “you really should.”

 

He doesn’t go to sleep that night, but the next day he doesn’t feel that tired, either.

 

— —

 

“You know you’re asking me to betray my wife,” Eddie tells him the day after he actually agrees to it.

 

Not that he hadn’t told Roland the exact same thing before.

 

But still.

 

It’s sitting badly on his stomach.

 

“I know,” Roland says, “and I wouldn’t, if I knew for sure that whoever’s gotten into her wasn’t listening.”

 

Thing is — he’s right. Eddie damn well knows he’s right.

 

He hates that he is.

 

He hates that she’s not having his kid.

 

But more than that, he hates how horribly it sits on his stomach, how it makes him want to hurl, and he should keep his mouth shut but when was he ever good at that, when was he ever —

 

“How could you survive it?” He asks.

 

“What? Be a bit more specific,” Roland replies dryly, eyes staring into his own again, and fuck but Eddie would like to know why they always make his knees weak —

 

“I feel like it’s killing me. And you did far worse than that, not that I hold it against you. How did you survive and stayed sane?”

 

Roland shrugs minutely. “Depends on what you call sane, but — I don’t know. That’s my nature, I guess.”

 

Eddie has to laugh at that, and Roland smiles thinly back, looking pleased that his joke was apparently funny, and oh god how could the universe hate him so much, Eddie thinks —

 

“Well played, Roland, well played,” he says, grasping his arm, and suddenly that weight on his stomach feel a bit less heavy.

 

He’ll take it.

 

He’ll fucking take it, at this point.

 

— —

 

No one know, what’s his last thought as he dies.

 

It’s not his last words.

 

It’s he always did right by me.

 

He has a feeling he should have told Roland sooner.

 

At the clearing at the end of the path, he thinks, I will tell him, I willIwillIwill —

 

— —

 

“I was waiting for you,” the young man says the moment Roland steps through the door.

 

Roland looks at his own eyes from the man’s face in the mirror — Eddie, his name was Eddie, he heard it when he opened it, brown hair falling all over that face way, way younger than his own is, he can’t remember the last time he was this young, he can’t —

 

“You were?” He speaks, knowing Eddie will hear him, and Eddie smiles, just a bit.

 

“Where’s the door?” He asks, and how does he know there is a door?

 

He turns Eddie’s frame until he leaves the bedroom they’re in, and the door is right there out on the hallway, leading to —

 

It’s not a beach, this time. It’s a desert. Still, that doesn’t change things.

 

Eddie smiles as he steps through it and comes in front of Long Tall and Ugly himself, who this time round has managed to not get his own fingers eaten by a bunch of lobostrosities, but then again Eddie — having remembered everything — has taken care to not even touch heroin ever and to not listen to his brother from the very fucking beginning.

 

It’s also nice to feel like he’s one step ahead of Roland, this one time.

 

“How did you know about the door?”

“I see you don’t remember the previous time round, do you?”

 

Roland stares at him, mouth parted.

 

“I don’t,” he says, slowly, carefully. “There — there has been another time round?”

 

“Oh,” Eddie says, “yes, but I see that it’s going in a different order, now. Never mind. Guess I was in it for the long haul, but I think I don’t mind.”

 

“What — wait, we — you do feel familiar, I guess, but —”

 

“I came with you almost all the way to that bloody tower once, Roland,” Eddie says, “I think I can stand doing it twice.”

 

Or maybe more, Eddie thinks, maybe I did it more than once too but I just remembered one of them, I think I got deja-vu the last time round, but what do I know.

 

Never mind.

 

It doesn’t matter now.

 

“You — you did,” Roland whispers. “And you — you want to do it again?”

 

“You were a lot of things to me,” Eddie whispers, “but you know one thing you were, that no one else ever was to me? Not in the way you were?”

 

“No,” Roland says, his voice dry, sounding oddly vulnerable, “tell me.”

 

“Someone who never did wrong by me. Not even once.”

 

The way Roland’s eyes go wide, as if he can’t conceive that someone exists that he actually did right by all the time, it’d be almost heartbreaking.

 

He reaches out, grabbing Roland’s hand again.

 

“No,” he whispers, “not even once.”

 

“And who tells you I won’t do it?” He rasps, moving closer, the door shutting behind them, but Eddie barely even cares — he always has known he was meant to come here and he hadn’t even thought of going back, the moment he stepped through.

 

“I know you, Roland Deschain,” Eddie whispers, “and as many people as you might have betrayed, I never was one of them. I have no reason to think you might do it. And I think someone should point it out to you.”

 

“How — how do you seem to know more than I do about — this?” Roland blurts, and Eddie has to smile back, moving closer, knowing that this time he’s not going to be an idiot about things, and he knows that he and Jake will be the only ones and as much as it pains him that Suze wasn’t meant to be his, he thinks —

 

He thinks that he was meant to be Roland’s at the end of it, and he thinks he has nothing against that.

 

Nothing at all. After all, he did save his fucking soul, didn’t he? And what’s worth more than that?

 

He thinks not much.

 

Maybe nothing.

 

“Because, as stated, I’ve done this at least once already and in the one I remember, I think someone should tell you that you’re not a lost cause. Same as you did for me.”

 

“… Did I?”

 

“Want me to tell you about it?” Eddie says, and then Roland’s fingers grasp his, tight, and —

 

“Yes,” he says, “yes, I would like it very much.”

 

Well then, Eddie says, walking towards what’s obviously Roland’s camp, feeling those rough fingers threading with his own.

 

Oh, he will.

 

And this time, he’s getting to that Tower. With him. No betrayal in sight.

 

He likes that plan very, very fucking much.

 

 

 

End.