that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried
Her questions strip away his defenses until he is nearly forced to stare back into the darkness that chased him here in the first place. Until he is nearly drowning again in the pain and anguish that had driven him from the shadows every night, death coating his tongue and pulling apart his very bones. Until he is almost a shell of himself once more, stumbling forward on legs that can barely bear his weight.
“I am, I think,” he answers before she can amend the question and then he shrugs. “I don’t know.” He softens it with another smile, but this one doesn’t quite reach his eyes. They stay more solemn this time, the gold of them darkening as the shadows creep around the corners. “Maybe that’s why I haven’t left yet.” He has nowhere to go, he knows. Nowhere to find home because there is no home for someone like him. There is only the endless promise of the run, the endless pain that will always be at his heels.
He doesn’t want to bring that here though.
Doesn’t want to poison this moment with his reality.
So he gladly pushes it to the side and instead lets himself believe the fantasy that she offers. Gladly lets himself think that perhaps he will be able to find sleep and instead of running through the night chased by his curse, he will be able to curl up next to her in this world of her own creation.
His pulse eases the more that he lets himself believe.
“I would like for this to be my home,” he says softly, his voice slightly huskier, his lips curling upward in the corners. “I would gladly wear myself to the bone to find my way back here.” Does she know how much something like this means to someone like him? How relieved he is, would be, to always have a place like this to anchor himself? She couldn’t possibly. Couldn’t know the oasis that she has offered him.
“Where should we start?”
so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried
