"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
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
She knows it is going to hurt but all of the preparation in the world does not prepare her.
Every time, his rejection slips between her blades and steals her breath and she feels her vision swim. Every time, she feels it somehow stronger, somehow fiercer. She can feel the way that it steals under her skin and plants new poisonous flowers in her veins. It should be enough to drive her away, but she knows by now that she won’t be going anywhere. She knows by now that this is what she is meant to live, what she is meant to experience. She knows that this is her fault because she keeps walking back in the flame.
This time, she cannot stop the tears that come to her eyes hot and fierce.
She breathes in deep and feels the way her throat burns.
She is such a stupid, stupid girl.
She had promised herself.
But he is so clear this time. There is no implication. Nothing for her to hope to. ‘I will never be able to love you,’ he says and she hears it so loud and clear that it pounds into her chest.
She will fall asleep to the sound of it.
She will wake to it.
I will never be able to love you.
She is quiet for several minutes as she tries to steady herself, as she tries to come up with some reason that this is okay and she will survive him not loving her. Her love is enough, maybe. She doesn’t need him to love her back. She can take his friendship when it means pressing platonic kisses to her head (she had been so dumb to think that it was more, that this meant more) and watching over their daughter.
“If we hurry, we can make the forest soon.”
Her voice sounds alien to her. Dull and a little lifeless, an echo of a hollow thing.
“Maybe we can split up when we get there to see if one of us can find her.”
So she will not have to hide the creaking sound of her heart shattering in her chest.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He is a simple man.
But he is not stupid.
He knows that he’s said the wrong thing. Perhaps he’d known it was the wrong thing even as he was saying it. But he has never known how to be anything but honest, sometimes brutally. She goes quiet, doesn’t even make a sound. He had meant to say it with a kind of softness.
He had not meant that he did not love her. Or even that he would never love her. He’d meant that he would never be able to love her with the tenderness she deserves. He would never be able to love her freely, without inhibition. And it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with him.
He is inherently selfish, if only because he has never had to think about anyone but himself. He has never had to consider the emotional lives of anyone else. He has never had to dwell on matters of the heart – his or anyone else’s, really. He does not know how to take care of a heart, especially one shoved into his hands when he had not known to ask for it.
He nods but does not speak. He has said enough, he knows. There is nothing left to say. Nothing left to do except go along with her instruction. He picks up his pace without further prompting, occasionally breaking into a trot. Her heartbreak curls itself into the hollow cavern of his chest, smarts and pulses in time with his heartbeat.
“Alright,” he concedes. They’ll split up and one of them will find her, he’s certain of it. But he doesn’t say this out loud, sees no reason to. He moves in thick, studious silence, his brow furrowed in concentration.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Maybe they are destined to always have this kind of miscommunication.
Maybe they are always destined to never quite understand one another.
Or maybe her heart is such a selfish, greedy thing that it rips apart whatever is placed in its hands. Maybe she is so terrified of him breaking her apart that she is breaking herself apart first. Maybe she thinks that it will hurt less if she is the one to detonate the bomb. At least she will know when to expect the blast.
All she knows is that she feels all of the dangerous hope sputtering in her chest, crackling and then dying and she is left with the cold aftermath. They move silently together and she wishes for the moments when he had been asking her questions—even when they hurt. When they had been opening up to one another or, at least, she had been opening up to him and he can’t been turning his cheek to her during it.
She wishes for that closeness, that intimacy.
Even if it now is cast in a platonic light.
She feels that soft whine in her chest where her heart threatens to give out, but despite her suggestion, she doesn’t actually make a move to separate herself from him. She just continues to walk next to him, her scaled head swinging to look around them, Loess beginning to bleed into the forest, the dark thickening.
Then, she stops.
It is sudden and her head whips up, serpentine eyes flashing to thermal.
The world maps in entirely new hues and her nostrils flare.
“This way,” is all she says, her voice tight when she sees two shapes in the distance—one that calls to every maternal bone in her body. Then without another word, she charges, crashing through the dark.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
There is a kind of darkness in his silence.
Or a gloom, perhaps.
It is thick and murky and there is that furrow in his brow and that set in his jaw.
He almost does not realize she’s stopped. It takes him a moment to catch on to her stillness and he is a few paces ahead when he finally stops, too. He turns to face her then, considers the expression. She looks alert, staring into the darkness that surrounds them.
He thinks she must smell her. He is oblivious to the shifting in her vision, the fact that she can see the two figures in the distance. He peers into the night and sees nothing at all but a yawning gulf staring back at him. His expression darkens but he says nothing, asks nothing of her, expects that she’ll tell him if there’s anything he needs to know.
And she does. Says, ‘this way’ and plunges into the forest. He follows as best he can, trailing as close as he can without clipping her heels because he knows he’ll lose her if he does not keep her close enough to feel.
He does not know what they’re running toward until they stop short in that clearing and there is his daughter, bloody and grinning, with another strange creature curled around her.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
