I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
It has been the quiet life he had always so desperately wanted.
Though it is not always living with a viper, they have settled into a kind of easy routine.
He loves her the best way he knows how, which isn’t always the right way, but he makes an effort. It is more than can be expected from something that was not built for this kind of love, he thinks, though he seldom ever says this out loud. Only on the occasions when she still finds fault in the way he loves her.
Things have changed and he has resigned himself to the fact that they will never again be as they had been once. When it had just been him, just as he’d liked it, wandering. But it is a small price to pay for her, he thinks. Even if their children -- most notably their daughter -- have never been particularly fond of him, drawn always to their mother. Or, in Gospel’s case, to something else entirely.
But there have not been children in years. Just the two of them.
He finds her by accident. If he were being honest, perhaps he’d have admitted that he hadn’t even realized she’d gone. Not a matter of indifference but of domestic comfort. The kind of comfort that meant they could come and go as they pleased without raising alarm.
But he finds her by accident and he feels no glimmer of joy. No, he finds her now and he is doused quite suddenly in ice water.
“Adna?” he asks, quiet, so quiet that the tears cutting rivers down her cheeks are almost louder. His gaze falls heavy on the blood where it pools at her feet. He is seized by panic. It interrupts his heartbeat, gets his breathing heavy. “Adna, what happened?”
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
