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09-24-2015, 05:14 AM
‘You were asleep for so long—I didn’t know what to do, I—’ “You could have woken me, I didn’t need to sleep, I didn’t—you—you could have done anything, could have, could have—“ It is an angry hiss that quickly dissipates in to despair, into quiet, breathless pleading. Saved her; it lingers on your tongue, so heavy, but you do not, cannot, will not say it, because, somewhere deep down, you know that nothing could have been done, and even if there had been something, he would have tried, he would have, even though she was never his to save. And so your red-hot anger burns and burns inside of you, wordless, formless, vehement and ugly, until it cannot burn any longer, leaving its ghost of guilt, your apologies bitter in the back of your throat, your tears coming faster and hotter, and your breaths harder. “I’m sorry,” is all you manage before you are too stricken, your throat too tight, to do anything but weep some more, drowning in sorrow. You weep for her, for him and the wound you are certain your black tongue, blind heart, have opened. Weep because it is the only thing left for you to do, the only thing you know how to do. But he is there; you feel his grace against your mess of hair, offering comfort when you do not deserve it, for all the wrong and the nothingness that you have done. ‘You need to rest,’ “I need her,” your face quivers, body shaking as his touch trails down the side of your face, this intoxicating warmth of his more comforting than he would ever know. His next words do not produce a flutter of your heart, does not twist your stomach in to juvenile knots. It provokes a sickening feeling of falling in your chest, vomit to the back of your tongue as you remember all of the horrible things that you had thought of her before she even had a chance to prove you wrong, all of the terrible things you had wished. They haunt you now, in the glassiness of her eyes, the stillness of her frail little body. “This is my fault, only mine.” It stings more than you ever thought it could, twisting your heart in all its weariness, all its anguish. “I am not beautiful, Rohan, I am a monster. When I told you that I was afraid of everything the future held, I was … I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to love this child, that I would keep it so far from me it would be a stranger, that I would blame it for everything that Caleb has done, when I knew even then it was so utterly innocent.” Your body shudders, a shaky breath leaving you within the waiting silence. “I did not stop hoping that I would never look upon its face, remembering him and all of my mistakes, did not stop wishing that it would cease to be.” For a minute you are still, the shock of all of this slowly settling in to your bones. “I didn’t stop, I wished her away, and now—“ you suck in another breath, its return to the atmosphere jagged and uneven, all too forced when you want nothing more than to disappear, to not feel this hole that you have dug within your heart, the weight of your guilt too, too much. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to have her back, though I do not even deserve her.” It is not angry words that you are met with, not a look of disgust, but his warmth once more, too hot to the touch but a burn you would endure until there was nothing left of you to burn at all. Your body presses to his before you are fully aware of it, and it is only now that you realize you need him just as much as your heart needs her, the thought of being without him so terrifyingly lonely, blotting out for a moment the pain of loss, of guilt. You lift your head, lips pressing to his muzzle, eyes catching his for the first time in too long, your heart forgetting momentarily the hurt that clutches to it with vice-like fingers, forgetting for a moment that everything is not alright. You breathe against him easily for the moments between, moments that you cling to so fervently, wishing that all of this, all of this besides this weightlessness that you feel would all just be a dream, before the quietness of his voice shifts your attention back to her, thrusts you too abruptly into your tremendous loss. You pull away from him nearly instantly, hair shuddering against your neck and in to mismatched eyes, shielding you from speculation, from prying eyes that may just see too much should they even look. You do not know if it is the love that you have lost, the pain that has grown to every corner of your soul, or if it is something real that swims inside of you, a fragment of the place between worlds he had held you in, of him. You do not possess the courage to look at him, afraid once more of what you will not see, did not see, before; afraid that you will look to him and find he had not felt anything, does not feel anything, where you are struggling not to. And so you shelter it once more, choosing to forget, to ignore, anything but to indulge, wide eyes examining your little girl, your heart bleeding once more as you seem to hear his question for the first time, after minutes of being lost within yourself, within things you do not, cannot, understand. You do not ask him if it would be right to name her, do not hesitate as one is plucked from your memory, from one of the stories Ama used to tell you, where everyone always found happiness with someone who loved them madly falls from you gently: “Quinn.” Your supple lips bend into a small smile, a sense of finality washing over you, the utter devastation that you have felt since waking somehow both deepening and numbing all at once. |
@Misael @Rohan
