11-13-2021, 07:45 PM
selaphiel
A quiet plea in the center of his chest, (please, please, please), that blooms and swells until it echoes across every inch of him.
(Can she hear it?)
There is a trembling in his knees, a quiver in his brow, as the sob rakes its way up her throat and collapses into the negative space between them. She takes a step toward him and he does the same in return, though there is still such a tremendous gulf between them.
(Despite how desperately he wants to go to her, to smooth her troubled brow, to take the tears onto his own skin.)
He swallows thickly, still drowning in the stench of death. (His, hers, his mother’s, all of the death that they have witnessed). And the heart struggles to beat around the unbearable weight of it. The unbearable weight of his want to embrace her, the unbearable weight of the possibility that this might be some cruel ruse.
But he had convinced himself that she was still inside the shell she’d worn, when she had hurled her words at him, cutting him to the quick so efficiently that he should have wilted before her. When she’d told him of the things she’d endured to protect his worthless family.
Her apology sinks into the meat of that stuttering heart and he goes to her then. He goes to her and so gingerly presses his mouth to her cheek, collecting her tears before he draws away again.
(There is so much pain. Always, always so much pain.)
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, searching her face. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you.”
And he is. So terribly sorry.
That he couldn’t save her, that he couldn’t save his mother.
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Mazikeen