i worshiped at the altar of losing everything
What he would not give to feel the warmth of her breath.
He would almost certainly forfeit the forgiveness he’d earned in return.
If he had known then what he knows now, he might have ignored the call.
He might have turned his gaze away from that rift on the beach and ambled back to her.
Because the pain – purely psychological now, because he feels absolutely nothing physically save for the faint pulse of pressure at her touch – makes his vision strobe. Because he had not known all of the things he’d lost until he was confronted with them and perhaps this is the worst of them all.
Surely the pain of it could have taken his breath away were there any breath left to take. But there is nothing – not even a sigh in those useless lungs – and he is left to stew in the knowledge that he has no one to blame but himself. For all of this.
There is a twinge of something deep in his chest – not in the heart, for it is useless, too, but someplace at the very center of him – when she asks what she can do. This is not her responsibility, he knows. But he thinks of what Agetta had said, how she’d insisted that the two of them go find this magician friend of his. Let her help him.
He does not speak, not right away. Instead, he turns his head into her, presses the plain of his forehead against her shoulder. Touches her but feels nothing. He knows the warmth of her flesh, fiercely summons the memory as if it might somehow help him to feel it. But there is nothing. Not even cold. He grits his teeth in frustration and shakes his weary head.
He thinks himself pitiful when he finally lifts his head, shifts his focus to the place where she touches him, too. He cannot bear it. And perhaps this is the worst weakness of all. When she draws back to look him in the eye and he forces himself to meet her gaze. He loves her, still. The heart is useless, certainly. But it is still the cause of all of his pain. It still feels, even if it does not beat. It is the thing that tells the brain that what it’s feeling is anguish.
He is a fool, but he does not argue. He merely ruminates. What can she do?
“I don’t want to ask anything of you, Ana,” he says, quiet. And he shakes his head.
“But...”
He does not know how to ask anything of her.
“Can you make it stop?” he asks and then drags his gaze back to her face.
“The heart, can you make it stop?”
Not stop beating, of course, for it has already done that.
and i still chase you into heartache every time you take a step