The names pluck at the loose strings of her sanity and she flinches against him, startled, unraveling. “Nerissa.” She agrees with a fragile whisper. “Lena.” This sudden revelation, this confirmation of things that should never be, could never be, but somehow were breathed a new sense of unease into her veins. “One bad, the other worse.” This confession an escaped thought as it drifted through her mind. It felt suddenly impossible to hold still, reminded her of a time when she could only be still. She had so resented the loss of her will. In an instant her very core was at war with itself- the need to be pressed against living flesh clashing with the more feral instinct of flight. Her cheek lifted from the smooth of his back but her chest remained pressed against his. The hollow at his withers, the slant beneath his spine were filled suddenly with the worrying of soft lips and gentle teeth.
“We can’t have both been there and not been there together.” She tries again, pinching his skin between her teeth as her frustrations bled out. “It’s impossible.” There is a sense of humorous desperation in the laughter that dies on her woolen tongue. And then, so quiet, so firm, “This is impossible.”
She pulls away then, smothering the gasp that flares at the way the sudden cold throbs in the space he had been just a moment before. But she needed to see his face now, to see his eyes. The truth would be buried there somewhere, she was sure of it. “Are you playing a trick on me?” Can you read my mind, do you know my thoughts, my fears. Her expression in impossible to untangle- the reflexive stoniness, the steel, the way it had welded with fear and vulnerability. “How can I trust you when you know impossible things.” But her voice is softer now, no edge. When she looks at him she doesn’t see an enemy, when she looks at him, she knows.
Her brow furrows and her jaw tightens as she debates internally for a moment. This secret could die with her someday, this impossibility, this dream that wasn’t. Days would come and go and maybe the memories would fade, maybe the color would fade. There would be nothing left to remember it by. But if she broke those secrets open and let them spill into him, this nightmare would take root. It would grow. And yet how could she ever forget, doomed as she was (though she had no idea) to an eternal life of remembering. So when her green eyes return to fall on his face and swallow his gaze, her face has changed. There is still and there is vulnerability, but the fear is, for the time being, quenched.
“I didn’t die, but I wanted to.” Her chin levels, her chest tight. “Death would have been easier. For me.” For any coward. “Nerissa broke me. Lena fixed me. And then she gave me back to Nerissa to be broken again.” It should have been a string of incoherent words, half statements, but she suspected he would know anyways. Only then does her bravery fade, that fragile façade, and she can feel her feet shifting impatiently beneath her.
“I hate to be still now.” A quiet confession, a gentle pleading in the raw green of those shadowed eyes.
MALIS
makai x oksana