"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
There is some shred of self-preservation left in him.
Just enough that, when she lunges at him, the muscles pull taut beneath the surface of his skin.
Just enough that, for the breath of a second, there is a tremble.
And then nothing at all.
He holds his breath without meaning to. He thinks that this will be something worth remembering. He knows that she will not kill him, that she cares too much, that she will not let this be what carries her through the rest of her life.
She is right. He does not know her name but he thinks he must know her heart. The ugliest parts of it, even. The way she had loved a man who could not be hers. But the beautiful parts, too, how she refused to leave her children.
He knows nothing. He knows nothing beyond the shape of his name and the so many thousand of miles he has walked. He knows nothing beyond the aching in his jaw. Right now, he knows nothing but the perfect stillness that follows. The absolute stillness in her hesitation. He can feel his own pulse, wonders if she feels it, too. Steady, like him.
And then she lays her weary head against his shoulder and he does not move out of her reach. Instead, he turns his that great head around to press a chaste kiss against her rocky spine. He rests his mouth there a moment. “You have to know that you’re worthless from the moment you‘re born to be like me,” he murmurs into her scaled skin, his confession.
I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words
It is both comforting and unnerving to be standing here like this. She has stood like this with Ophanim both when she thought she loved him and when she knew they could never be anything more than friends; even when she had raged at him for his part in destroying Tephra and in the quiet aftermath. But there is something different in this moment, something different about this strange man and the vagabond spirit that seems to simmer just below the surface—whispering of long roads and long stretches of silence.
She swallows, feeling that discomfort itch between her shoulder blades and the vulnerability that follows, but she doesn’t move away. She just stills, only reacting when she feels his mouth against her back. Her skin twinges beneath it and then settles—like a stone being thrown into a lake and the ripples that follow.
What he says next cuts to the core of her and it takes everything in her to not crumble.
She had just imagined tearing this man open and now she bleeds for him.
Maybe she is unstable.
“Tell me something about you,” she whispers and her voice is nearly hoarse with the need to know anything about him—to pull back the curtain on him and let her heart devour the pieces that she finds. She needs to unlock the mystery of him, to lose herself in the shadows that creep over the angles of his face.
But she knows he is not the kind of man to give anything away for free.
She knows that much.
So she leaves her head where it hangs, her scaled cheek warm against his flesh.
“My name is Adna.”
the only way to being found is getting lost at first but all I find are more bridges to burn
He imagines a quiver at the very center of her.
He knows that he imagines it only because he want some it to be true.
As much as she wants to destroy him, he also wants to bring her to ruin.
But not like this.
Despite the arrogance and the cold indifference, he does not want to hurt her.
She does not move away from his touch, though he had expected her to recoil. To hiss at him through bared teeth, to punish him for thinking himself worthy of touching her. But she does not. She allows him to mutter the heart of his darkness into her skin.
She asks more of him than he can give her and he finally lifts his head. He exhales a rueful sigh but does not move to shake her off. He makes no attempt to unsettle her head from where it has found its home against the smooth plain of his shoulder.
His throat tightens and he drops his hooded gaze to the mossy earth underfoot. Her name is Adna and he doesn’t know why she tells him this. He could tell her his name just as easily. But he doesn’t want her to have to feel like he is anything more than a stranger she once told her secrets to.
“There is nothing about me worth knowing,” he tells her instead.
I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words
She is foolish for thinking perhaps he was softening. She was foolish to think that he would break down his secrets for her and let her see the underside of his heart; that he would let her see.
But she was a fool and she had hoped—she had thought…
It doesn’t matter because he withdraws his touch and she feels the sharp sting of rejection before he has the chance to follow it up with what he says. It’s like a door getting slammed in her face, and it nearly knocks the wind out of her. Instead, she bites her lip and closes her eyes, just sitting there for a moment.
“Oh,” she finally says, and it is defeat in the single syllable. It is everything that crumbles in her chest solidified into the diamond that drops from her tongue—the final bomb that detonates and takes out the rest of her. She wants to pull away but finds that she doesn’t have the strength.
Maybe she’s finally too exhausted to move away.
Maybe she doesn’t want to have to look him in the eye—to see the pity that must be there.
“Nothing worth me knowing, right?” she asks and she tries to inject something like self-deprecating humor in the words but they fall flat and leaden from her mouth. She swallows and makes a noise like she is going to try and say something else instead, but nothing comes but a long and slow exhale.
She should have known better than thinking he’d want to share anything with her.
the only way to being found is getting lost at first but all I find are more bridges to burn
Does he feel her come apart?
Or does he simply imagine her unraveling, too?
He can hear it in her voice, though it sounds more like a sigh than anything, that one dejected thing. He feels no remorse, though maybe he should. Some stirring of guilt or sorrow that he has led her to believe he is anything other than what he is. A stoic expression and an empty cavern in his chest where his heart ought to be.
Just as he is not built for compassion, he is not built for intimacy. He is not built for secrets exchanged in the murky half-dark before dawn. He is not built for being anything other than this someone who has forgotten how to care about anything at all.
He drags in a shuddering breath when she speaks again. He barks out a laugh but it comes out hollow. Perhaps he’d meant for it to be warm, to provide her some comfort, to try and mend the fissure cracks in whatever this is. But, while it is neither cruel nor dismissive, it is mirthless.
“Nothing worth anyone knowing,” he corrects her. “The difference between you and me, Adna, is that I know that I’m worthless and you only think that you are.”
I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words
It doesn’t matter which way she turns—he refuses to give her an inch.
He refuses to submit or yield or give her an ounce of victory in this conversation. She is left scrambling at the stone walls of his exterior, her fingertips bloody, her body exhausted. It doesn’t matter if she slams against him, or cries, or threatens his life, because he doesn’t change—he doesn’t react at all.
She feels the anger come back to her. Perhaps because it is the easiest for her to grasp. Perhaps because it is just never far out of reach. Whatever the reason, it coils in her again, braided with her despair. “Maybe you’re right,” she says against his shoulder and then colder as she steps away, her sage eyes flaring to life.
“It’s what you want me to say right?”
She exhales and feels the darkness of the night around them pressing into them, feels it heavy on her spine where his mouth had just been—feels it in the pitch of night. “You want me to just take your excuse and walk away so you can stay here, by yourself, like you’re above caring. Because heaven forbid you actually feel anything or, worse, let anyone else see that you feel something. Isn’t that right?”
A muscle jumps in her jaw as she clamps down, looking away, nostrils flaring.
She looks back and try to grab at the rags of her dignity, feeling the burn of shame for the way she’s flooded him with her own pitiful story. She’s told him the darkest parts of herself—things that she has never admitted to anyone else—and she doesn’t even know his name. Doesn’t know a thing about him.
“So just go,” she spits again, emotions churning in her chest. “Just leave. I bet you’re good at it.”
the only way to being found is getting lost at first but all I find are more bridges to burn
sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
B E T H L E H E M then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago
He can feel her anger, though it lacks in venom.
The acid in her tone has been replaced by something else entirely.
Resignation, maybe. Bitterness.
And still, he remains unmoved.
He knows that she is trying to coax a reaction out of him. She is baiting him. He has been here before.
He has never had any preoccupation with being right and he doesn’t want anything from her. But he feels no overwhelming need to tell her this.
She has long since removed her head from where it had rested heavy against his shoulder but the nerves still hum beneath the surface of his skin. He can still feel the heat of her there. It is not totally off-base, what she hurls at him next. It is not totally accurate but it is not wildly outlandish either.
He smiles then. A quiet, patient thing as she rails against him. He shakes his head. It’s not that he has any fear of anyone seeing him feel anything, it is simply that no one has ever made him feel anything. Nobody has ever brought him to his knees. Nobody has ever brought him to ruin.
She’s right about this, too. Right that he’s good at leaving. It’s all he’s ever done.
But his jaw aches and he goes on watching her a moment.
“My name is Bethlehem,” he finally relents. “Everything about me and my life and everything that came for me is ordinary. There is no deeper something lurking beneath the surface. I never knew love in my youth, so I set out in search of it. When I didn’t find it, I accepted the fact that it doesn’t exist.”
I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words
It is the last resort, this final railing against him, and when it fails, she is left to face the fact that there is nothing there for her to get out of him. Either he is merely a robot and lacks the heart he claims to have gone missing or she is just not enough to stir him. It doesn’t matter because in the end, she is left wanting.
“Bethlehem,” she says his name, her voice quieter, the girl exhausted for running the gauntlet of all of the emotions before him tonight. Another frown that creases her brow before her expression smooths and she is left to focus on drawing her breath slowly and steadily—just trying to find solid ground again.
It’s a beautiful name, and she would tell him that if he gave her any inkling that he’d care to hear it.
It’s a beautiful name, and she finds that the granite of his jaw is beautiful, too.
But these die on her tongue because what’s the point in telling him anything more when he so clearly doesn’t want to hear them from her any longer. She just rolls her shoulders at what he says. “Maybe you just didn’t look hard enough,” she says, almost to herself and then her lips twitch again with humor.
Because she doesn’t really think he wanted to find love in the first place.
She can’t imagine him wanting anything.
“Maybe I should just go,” she says, feeling the space that yawns open between them like a physical thing, filled with all of the things that go unspoken by him and all of the things (too many things) said by her.
the only way to being found is getting lost at first but all I find are more bridges to burn
sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
B E T H L E H E M then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago
How long has it been since he last heard the shape his name took in someone else’s mouth?
There is nothing special about it, the name.
Nothing in it that makes it worth repeating.
He wants to be moved by it. He wants to be swayed to some extreme. He wants it to mean something. He wants to imagine the way her tongue moves around it, how each syllable clambers up the long column of her throat. But he uses it so scarcely – and it is so scarcely used in turn – that he feels no particular attachment to it. It lights no fire at the center of him. It puts no thrill in his pulse. He merely blinks and nods, a half a thing.
Maybe he didn’t look hard enough, she says, and perhaps she’s right. But he’d been a child when he’d started walking. He’d been afraid once, terrified even. He’d been lost and alone and choking on his grief. There had been a heart there in the cavern of his chest and it had been so desperate for love that he could barely breathe around it.
And then it was gone and it was as if it had never been there at all.
He drags in a shuddering breath then, his heavy eyelids fluttering.
“Stay,” he mutters.
He lifts his head then, angles his body toward her. “Please stay,” he says, louder now.
I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words
Maybe one day her heart will vanish too.
Maybe she will look up and it will be gone and she will be none the wiser. Maybe she will forget what it means to be crushed by her own emotions—to be obliterated by it. It sounds like a relief to her. The idea that she could just cough up her heart and be done with it—never have to be weighed down again.
She glances back at him, carved from stone there in the shadows and then she is ready to take her leave when he speaks again. She feels something like shock lace through her veins.
“Why?”
The word is out before she can catch it, fluttering off her lips and between them. The word exists in the spaces between them and she is forced to live with the fact that she is always the first to break with him. She is always the first one to be reduced to rubble before his immovable object.
She may not be the unstoppable force she thought that she was in her youth.
But it doesn’t matter because he asked her to stay and although confusion flutters on her face, trapped beneath the surface like a hummingbird looking for escape, she doesn’t take a further step away. She takes another step toward him, caught in the gravity of his stoic face, his unfeeling ways.
Desperate—still so desperate to understand how he can live so free.
“Why should I stay, Bethlehem?”
the only way to being found is getting lost at first but all I find are more bridges to burn
