they call kids like us vicious and carved out of stone
but for what we've become, we just feel more alone
The pain is visceral. It is tangible in its physically—the way it clogs his throat and twists his gut and burns his skin hot with self-loathing. He had stumbled away from Oksana half-blind with it, not even bothering to say good bye, but hoping that he had been able to play it off as if he no longer cared to see her. (She had to see right through him, he thought in one moment. Dear God, please let her believe it, he thought in the next.)
She had to believe it. He had detonated everything he had held dear, and it had to be worth it. It was the only thread that was holding him together—the belief that what he had done was right. The hurt in her eyes, the sheer agony that had mirrored his own so well, had nearly crippled him, but he had to believe in his heart of hearts that she would heal and be better for it. The temporary pain was better in the long run than the poison of keeping someone broken like him in her life. He was a monster, and he accepted that burden, but he was a monster with the best of intentions. It was the only thing that kept him going.
Now, he is racing through the meadow as he had done before she had collided in his life like a supernova. His neck is lathered with sweat, his nostrils flaring, his powerful body catapulting through the trees with reckless abandon. He can feel all of his ghosts as the press down upon his shoulders: the flashing dreams (no, memories, he knows that they are memories now) of his own death, the faces of each child that he has abandoned, the water-logged jungle where he had hunted for days to find his dead parents, and her.
She is the most cutting of memories: her green eyes flat, her expression blank with pain.
It is only when he cannot run another second that he he finally stops, gasping for breath, his chest feeling as if it might explode with agony. He wanted anything—anything—to take his mind off of it. He wanted to hurt, to be hurt, to kill; it was shameful the way he longed for the power of it. He was desperate for the distraction or, perhaps, the justification. As if he could only keep proving to himself how unworthy he was of her.
