It must be so easy to see the cracks in her surface. Cracks that run deep into her soul. She doesn't see the beauty in those fissures, only the hideous imperfection. She would never be whole. Would never wear the strength everyone else seemed to so easily. She had inherited only the worst parts of her parents and none of the pieces that made them so formidable.
Though she does not move, her gaze follows him as he brushes past her to linger at the water's edge. She wonders then if he would leave her without a word. As impermanent as the phantom he had briefly appeared to be.
But he doesn't.
Perhaps she should have left, but she doesn't either. There is something about him that draws her. Something that stirs a long suppressed thread of memory. Of what it truly means to be alive. It shouldn't matter so much. And yet, it does. Neither should it keep her here, but she can't seem to turn away.
As darkness closes swiftly (too swiftly) around them, he returns to her. The dangerous gleam in his eye should repel her, but it does the very opposite. And though she stills beneath his intensity, she doesn't try to move away. Not even even the cool touch of his lips whisper across the curve of her neck, or when the dichotomous warmth of his breath fans her skin.
Tell me what it is that broke you, he demands. There are so many answers she could give to that question, but only one that matters. "Love," she replies, her voice barely a thread of sound.
Not once had she even considered denying his command.
Make me a promise that time won't erase us
That we were not lost from the start
Rapture
