I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
The words, so bluntly spoken, drive something sharp into the deepest part of his gut. For so long, he had convinced himself he did not care. Even when he had finally admitted to that unwanted emotion, it had been unwelcome not just by him, but her as well. Perhaps it would not have been so unwelcome had he not waited so long to recognize it, but no one has ever accused him of cleverness.
Though he had removed the confession from her memories, he could not hope to so easily remove his own.
And now? Now it seems it doesn’t matter anyway. Her death ensures that in a way nothing else ever could. He wants so badly not to care. To pretend it doesn’t matter, but the throbbing ache in his belly says otherwise, and fuck if he can will that away. Instead he wraps himself in stone, his expression hardening into something distant and unreadable. Every trace of anger is washed away beneath the coldness that settles over him.
He can’t speak. Not at first anyway. To the untrained eye, it might appear as if the stark declaration had not affected him in any way. A cleverer eye would find that whatever reaction he might have had is instead locked behind a stony guise. A guise he hasn’t bothered to use in years. Decades even.
It takes him a long time to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and then it is only to acknowledge her introduction with one of his own. “Ashhal,” is all he says, his voice low and filled with gravel. There is a moment of silence, then a question of his own rather than an answer for hers. “Who killed her?”
It is spoken as though they are having the most normal conversation in the world. But beneath it all lingers a violence unlike anything he has felt in a very long time.
@Casimira