He hadn’t expected it to hurt to be here.
He had expected to find some relief in coming home.
But this is not his home, not really.
It is different and so is he.

It has been days now since he swam back to the island and the exhaustion is just now beginning to dissipate. He wanders now, through the meadow and the forest and down by the river, the only parts of this world that remain largely unchanged. He doesn’t dare stray toward the places he once lived because he can tell even from a distance that they are not the same.

He carries the hurt and the grief and the longing with him as he ventures down to the edge of the river. The sun is relentless, merciless as it bores its heat into his skin. He does not hesitate before he casts himself into the water, cold and wild. He closes his eyes and tries not to think about how alone he is or how that aloneness translates into loneliness.

He stays there a long time, braced against the vicious current, until the muscles quiver and he has to drag himself from the depths. He lingers on the riverbank as the water beads and drips from his skin. He shackles his thousand-yard stare to nothing in particular as the sun continues its beating and the water does little to insulate him from it.

He is lost in his thoughts until the sound of a branch breaking arrests his attention and he casts a glance toward the forest’s edge.

It occurs to him that she seems startled.
That there is something in her eyes that suggests she had not anticipated being seen.
And he could dwell on it, certainly.
He could devote hours to trying to work out exactly what in her life had led her to this point, staring back at him as if surprised that he can see her just as plainly as she can see him.
Did he look like a predator? Was there something about him that led her to believe that, should she make the wrong move, he’d scurry up the bank of the river and sink his teeth into her? Lay her to waste?

Alas, he does not. She blinks and he looks away instead. It is not disinterest that averts his gaze but rather preoccupation. He is too thoroughly sunk into his thoughts to pay mind to much of anything else. He is too focused on trying to breathe beneath the terrible weight of these new things he carries to try and decipher the motivations of anyone else.

She catches him off-guard, though he does not give a start. The heart gives one single twinge as it acknowledges that he should be startled by the sound of her voice. But he has nothing at all left to fear, so he does not jump or exhale a breath of self-conscious laughter when she draws closer, armed with a question he doesn’t immediately know how to answer.

Instead, he merely swings his head around to fasten his focus to her face again. He smiles but there is no warmth in it. It does not reach his eyes, merely lingers in the corners of his dark mouth before it burns out. She offers her name before he has offered a fitting answer to her question and he stows it away, wonders if he’ll ever need to use it.

“Kensley,” he says, though he still feels as if he no longer has any claim to the name. Because the name had belonged to someone good and warm and he is neither of those things.

“I don’t know if ‘thoughtful’ and ‘lost in thought’ are the same thing,” he muses with another faint grin.  There is no mirth in it, really. It comes off tired, hindered by his grief. 

( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
------------------------------------------i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )

Why so lost?
His useless heart lurches and his gaze lingers on her face for only a beat before he looks away.
As if she might see in his eyes all of the things he’s carrying.
All of these things that cripple him beneath their unbearable weight.

Why so lost?
He has never known himself to be a failure. He had been reliable once. An unmovable force. He had been the shore that others slammed their storms against and he had weathered them all. He had been patient and kind and steadfast. He had never given himself the opportunity to fail and one had never been presented to him.

Why so lost?
She had smiled at him and he had been so tired from his travels and he’d wanted nothing more then than to be with his sister, his family. He had failed her first by failing to notice the dark thing that had stalked him for miles.

Why so lost?
He doesn’t want to think about it, not right now. She lends him a mercy he does not deserve in speaking again before he’s had a chance to offer up an answer. He can not speak for how lost anyone else is, he knows, but he nods anyway. He nods because it saves him from having to compare how lost he is to anyone else. The last thing he wants is to dissect it.

The furthest corner of his mouth quirks then and he drags his gaze back to her face. “I guess so,” he says, quiet.

Her second question is perhaps harder to answer than the first. It is innocent enough, he can see that in the grin that accompanies it. But it puts an impenetrable ache in his chest and he swallows thickly in an effort to loosen the vise tightened around his throat. He’d found joy in loving fiercely once, he’d found joy in raising his daughter, he’d found joy in his family. His happiness lies buried now, he knows. His happiness had undoubtedly died with the collapse of the Chamber.

But he rolls his shoulders in a kind of shrug now, shackles his gaze to hers and admits without a shred of shame, “I don’t know anymore.” He draws in a measured breath and, without looking away, asks, “where do you find yours?”

( but you had a halo made of diamonds resting on your head----------------------------
i should be dealing with my demons but i'm dodging them instead )