07-21-2016, 11:54 PM
I thought the world would shatter around me if I told her the truth. If I let her see that I can’t give her all of me, because part of my heart has always belonged to Argo, from the moment he blinked baby brown eyes up at me. Instead, she smiles like it’s nothing, like it isn’t some big secret that could tear us apart and break everything forever. She smiles, and my eyes drift closed as she kisses my forehead, my cheek. “I’m okay with that.” Four little words that chase away the fear--until she jolts to her feet.
I didn’t even hear him come in, so wrapped up in Lee, in her touch, in her acceptance, that nothing else existed. The fear she just chased away is back, an instant of panic that cinches around my chest and squeezes, heart racing, breath fast and shallow as the world gets pushed to the verge of shattering all ove--I smell blood. Everything else falls away in that moment, the fear that I’ve broken everything, the stomach-clenching anxiety at the thought of Dad’s face, the sick feeling in my gut as I remember the crushing disappointment in his eyes after the wolf attack, knowing I’m going to see that again or worse and the thought of letting him down kills me. All of it, though, all of it vanishes the second I smell his blood on the air.
“Dad?” I echo Lee, but my tone is frantic, concerned. I can barely see him, silhouetted in the cave entrance as he is, but he looks so weary. Exhaustion weighs down his tone, and even if I can’t see the look on his face I can hear that same crushing weight of disappointment in his ragged voice. I want to run over to him, to check his wounds and make sure all that blood I smell is dried and clotted and not free-flowing. But his words stop me before I do anything more than shift the weight of my body forward.
“I have failed you, haven’t I?”
I feel fractures starting to form on the surface of my heart at the sadness in his words. My head starts to shake, because how could he have failed me? The man who took me in, who kept me safe, who watched over me while I slept curled around Argo, his crimson eyes full of love. I was the one who hid, the one who held my pain so close to my chest no one could see it, the one who played quiet storyteller and calm adventurer and watchful brother and kept everyone just a little too far away. I was the one who ducked away and hid in the dark when their love got too heavy, when hugs and cuddles scraped at something still jagged and bleeding inside me.
If either of us failed the other, it was me. If there is distance between us, it is my fault, not his.
“You have no idea what love entails.” My shoulders slump, those fractures in my heart growing deeper, faultlines just waiting to slip and shatter and leave me quaking because I know that. I know I have no idea what I’m doing, and every second I’m scared I’m going to fuck it all up and break something beyond repair. Lee’s heart, my relationship with everyone I love, my whole family, the whole world, the weight of it all so heavy. How long until I ruin it all, how long until I shatter someone because I can’t get it right, can’t even be good enough at loving someone to just love one? How long until it all falls apart because of me, and I’m alone with shards of glass instead of a heart in my chest?
I open my mouth, but I have no words, because he’s right. But it doesn’t change how I feel, not about Lee and not about Argo. I shouldn’t love them, shouldn’t risk the whole world and both of them and all our family when I’m only going to wreck it all. But shouldn’t doesn’t change the way they make my heart feel less broken, make me feel like even just for a moment I might be something good instead of a wraith made of dirt and ash dressed up in shadows and smoke and painted to look like a man, nothing but pretense and plastic smiles covering up the fact that I am nothing.
The love in their eyes, in all of their eyes, is the only thing that makes me feel like more than a worthless little child left to die in the dirt. And I’m too selfish not to hold onto that love with everything I have. Maybe I shouldn’t love Lee and Argo the way I do, maybe it’s selfish to want their hearts racing with mine, their eyes staring deep into mine and straight into my soul, the love I see there lighting up the dark in my heart for just a moment. But I’m not a strong enough man to look away.
I wonder if Lee can hear me breaking, because she lashes out, before I can find words. Before I can tear myself open and spill all my secrets onto the cave floor, she is drawing the fire to herself. Breaking in my place the way she always tries to, but this time out loud. For the first time, out loud. I failed you too. I should have seen how deeply she still hurt, should have pushed her the way she pushed me, gently cajoling until all I could do was pour my heart out at her feet. I should have done more than just holding her in the dark and needing her touch like a drug.
She steps away from me, and I want to follow, want to hold her and chase away every ounce of hurt I didn’t notice, too selfish and wrapped up in how she made me feel to think about how she was feeling. If anyone should have seen, it was me. If anyone should have known how badly she was hurting, it was me. Dad wasn’t the one who spent every spare moment at her side, talking about old hurts and new dreams and touching just a little more, wanting just a little more, needing just a little more every day. He didn’t fail her. I did. I let her down.
“I let you down.”
My head jerks back to Dad and to the voice that is most definitely not his. I didn’t even see Mom come in, so wrapped up in my own breaking. I barely hold back a bitter laugh. So focused on myself I didn’t even see. Isn’t that just the story of my life? Her words echo my thought, and I know that tone so well. It’s the one in my head every moment, quiet and heavy and full of self-blame. Her angel eyes find me, and for a moment I feel like I’m staring into my own. “Just me.” My lower lip trembles and tears fill my eyes, and I shake my head just a tiny bit, knowing she won’t accept my fault--knowing she will accept me for all my faults. She always has.
The first person who ever looked at me with love in her eyes, the first person who ever made me feel like I mattered, like I even deserved to exist. “I came for you, Nevi. Won’t you be my little love?” She is the angel who came to me beneath the shade of the oak tree I picked out to die beneath, and raised me from the jaws of oblivion. She is the center of gravity, the shining star we all revolve around. She is everything, and she is doing what she always does. Drawing the weight of all that guilt, all that blame, and pulling it into herself. “I should have been more for you.” I can feel the shape of the words in my mouth as if she’s taken them and said what I couldn’t. Tears threaten to spill down my cheeks and I take half a step toward her because I know the weight she is taking on with those words.
I know that burden, know how it can slowly crush a soul, and I would die if it made the light in her angel eyes fade. But I know them all. My fault is an echo around the room, and no matter how deeply I feel the truth of those words in my chest, if I speak them too where does it end? “It’s no one’s fault,” I whisper when silence finally falls, and I will myself to believe the words instead of hearing the echo of it’s my fault underneath them.
“It’s no one’s fault,” I say again, looking each of them in the eye in turn. Dad, who has taught me what it means to be a man, even if I’m still trying to learn it. Mom, who has only ever given me all the love in her heart. Lee, who has come to me in the dark over and over and done her level best to make me believe I am something more than the dirt where I was found. Not one of them should bear the blame for this moment, where the whole world is half a breath from shattering.
Mom’s last words slowly sink into my skin, filtering in from every direction and settling in my chest. “Even imperfect love is worth fighting for.” She lives her life by those words. They’re what shone from her eyes the first time she looked at me, She was talking to Dad, reaching out to him to try to mend what’s been broken between them since the wolf attack, but her words are so much bigger than that. Dad isn’t the only one she thinks is worth fighting for. She would fight for each one of us, loves each one of us, no matter how imperfect or flawed or jagged inside.
“Lee.” I murmur her name, closing the distance between us and resting my forehead against hers. I can’t tell if she’s the one shaking or I am, but I just take a deep breath, my eyes closed against the rest of the world so all that exists for just one moment is her and me. “I know you’re scared, honey. And I know it’s so much easier to push people away than to watch them leave you even while you try to hold them close. But please, please be brave with me. Can you do that, love? Can you do that for me?” Can you do that for you? “Mom and Dad love us. Even right now. Exactly as we are. Maybe they won’t approve, maybe they won’t understand, but they will still love us.” I raise my head from hers and look her in the eye. “Even if we’re not perfect. Even if we’re jagged and broken and slowly bleeding out inside and we don’t know how to find the words to say we desperately need to hear it, they will always, always love us.”
I touch my nose to hers, hoping to help anchor her with velvet-soft reassurance, and then I turn to Mom. “You could never have been more for me, because you were already everything. Don’t you know that? Mom and home and family were nothing before you found me. They were meaningless sounds that only got to be words for other people, for better people, for people who weren’t disposable. For people who deserved to matter. Deserved to live. You’re the reason I’m breathing, Mom, don’t you know that?” Twice-over, she saved my life, even if she doesn’t know about the second time. Even if she doesn’t know that her angel eyes were the only thing that kept me from falling off the edge of the world and made me drag myself home instead.
“Dad,” The name of god comes out so soft, quietly pleading, and I take one step toward my father. “It’s not about failing anyone. And you’re right. I don’t know anything about love. I can’t even get it right enough to love just one person.” It’s so hard to meet his eyes, so damn hard to believe what I told Lee and drag my gaze from the floor to seek out crimson eyes that, when last I looked, were full of weariness and disappointment. I don’t know the words to make him see, don’t know how to make him understand--but it’s not about me. How he feels about me, what he thinks of me, that’s not what matters right now. “You didn’t fail me, Dad.” The words come out thick and heavy with emotion, but they finally come out.
“I’m not half the man you are, and maybe I never will be, but I’m learning. Slowly. From you. You didn’t have to love me, didn’t have to hold me close and welcome me into your family. I could have been just some kid Mom dragged home, but you loved me from the start in that quiet, steady way of yours. That first year, you and me and mom and Mari and Argo, you took time away from important kingdom matters just to play pirates with me, or to be the big scary ice dragon from our stories. You watched over me, protected me, loved me like I was your blood. You taught me what a father should be. I’d never have known otherwise. I don’t even know my sire’s name, I mattered that little to him.
“You were there for me when I needed you the most, when I needed a dad to take care of me and help me learn and grow.” Lee didn’t come to us until she was older. Until she was more independent, and her need was quieter, a deeply hidden wound that even I missed, when I was the closest person to her in the world. “You have always been there, watching, letting me take my own risks and make my own mistakes and find my own way, knowing that I can come to you when I need you. And even the thought of disappointing you breaks my heart, because I want so badly to be the man you believe I can be. Even when I don’t believe it myself. Even though deep down I’m still just some throwaway lost boy waiting for everyone to finally see that I’m not worth that kind of faith.”
One of those tears that has been threatening finally rolls down my cheek, and I drag in a shaky breath. “I love them, Dad. Lee and Argo. And I don’t know what to do. I should have come to you. You shouldn’t have found out like this, I’m sorry for that. But I’m not sorry for how I feel. I don’t...I don’t expect you to approve. And I know...I know you’re disappointed in me. But could you help me understand? Could you help me figure it out? Because I’m so scared I’m going to screw everything up, and hurt everyone I love, and I would rather die than break this family. Please, Dad.”
I didn’t even hear him come in, so wrapped up in Lee, in her touch, in her acceptance, that nothing else existed. The fear she just chased away is back, an instant of panic that cinches around my chest and squeezes, heart racing, breath fast and shallow as the world gets pushed to the verge of shattering all ove--I smell blood. Everything else falls away in that moment, the fear that I’ve broken everything, the stomach-clenching anxiety at the thought of Dad’s face, the sick feeling in my gut as I remember the crushing disappointment in his eyes after the wolf attack, knowing I’m going to see that again or worse and the thought of letting him down kills me. All of it, though, all of it vanishes the second I smell his blood on the air.
“Dad?” I echo Lee, but my tone is frantic, concerned. I can barely see him, silhouetted in the cave entrance as he is, but he looks so weary. Exhaustion weighs down his tone, and even if I can’t see the look on his face I can hear that same crushing weight of disappointment in his ragged voice. I want to run over to him, to check his wounds and make sure all that blood I smell is dried and clotted and not free-flowing. But his words stop me before I do anything more than shift the weight of my body forward.
“I have failed you, haven’t I?”
I feel fractures starting to form on the surface of my heart at the sadness in his words. My head starts to shake, because how could he have failed me? The man who took me in, who kept me safe, who watched over me while I slept curled around Argo, his crimson eyes full of love. I was the one who hid, the one who held my pain so close to my chest no one could see it, the one who played quiet storyteller and calm adventurer and watchful brother and kept everyone just a little too far away. I was the one who ducked away and hid in the dark when their love got too heavy, when hugs and cuddles scraped at something still jagged and bleeding inside me.
If either of us failed the other, it was me. If there is distance between us, it is my fault, not his.
“You have no idea what love entails.” My shoulders slump, those fractures in my heart growing deeper, faultlines just waiting to slip and shatter and leave me quaking because I know that. I know I have no idea what I’m doing, and every second I’m scared I’m going to fuck it all up and break something beyond repair. Lee’s heart, my relationship with everyone I love, my whole family, the whole world, the weight of it all so heavy. How long until I ruin it all, how long until I shatter someone because I can’t get it right, can’t even be good enough at loving someone to just love one? How long until it all falls apart because of me, and I’m alone with shards of glass instead of a heart in my chest?
I open my mouth, but I have no words, because he’s right. But it doesn’t change how I feel, not about Lee and not about Argo. I shouldn’t love them, shouldn’t risk the whole world and both of them and all our family when I’m only going to wreck it all. But shouldn’t doesn’t change the way they make my heart feel less broken, make me feel like even just for a moment I might be something good instead of a wraith made of dirt and ash dressed up in shadows and smoke and painted to look like a man, nothing but pretense and plastic smiles covering up the fact that I am nothing.
The love in their eyes, in all of their eyes, is the only thing that makes me feel like more than a worthless little child left to die in the dirt. And I’m too selfish not to hold onto that love with everything I have. Maybe I shouldn’t love Lee and Argo the way I do, maybe it’s selfish to want their hearts racing with mine, their eyes staring deep into mine and straight into my soul, the love I see there lighting up the dark in my heart for just a moment. But I’m not a strong enough man to look away.
I wonder if Lee can hear me breaking, because she lashes out, before I can find words. Before I can tear myself open and spill all my secrets onto the cave floor, she is drawing the fire to herself. Breaking in my place the way she always tries to, but this time out loud. For the first time, out loud. I failed you too. I should have seen how deeply she still hurt, should have pushed her the way she pushed me, gently cajoling until all I could do was pour my heart out at her feet. I should have done more than just holding her in the dark and needing her touch like a drug.
She steps away from me, and I want to follow, want to hold her and chase away every ounce of hurt I didn’t notice, too selfish and wrapped up in how she made me feel to think about how she was feeling. If anyone should have seen, it was me. If anyone should have known how badly she was hurting, it was me. Dad wasn’t the one who spent every spare moment at her side, talking about old hurts and new dreams and touching just a little more, wanting just a little more, needing just a little more every day. He didn’t fail her. I did. I let her down.
“I let you down.”
My head jerks back to Dad and to the voice that is most definitely not his. I didn’t even see Mom come in, so wrapped up in my own breaking. I barely hold back a bitter laugh. So focused on myself I didn’t even see. Isn’t that just the story of my life? Her words echo my thought, and I know that tone so well. It’s the one in my head every moment, quiet and heavy and full of self-blame. Her angel eyes find me, and for a moment I feel like I’m staring into my own. “Just me.” My lower lip trembles and tears fill my eyes, and I shake my head just a tiny bit, knowing she won’t accept my fault--knowing she will accept me for all my faults. She always has.
The first person who ever looked at me with love in her eyes, the first person who ever made me feel like I mattered, like I even deserved to exist. “I came for you, Nevi. Won’t you be my little love?” She is the angel who came to me beneath the shade of the oak tree I picked out to die beneath, and raised me from the jaws of oblivion. She is the center of gravity, the shining star we all revolve around. She is everything, and she is doing what she always does. Drawing the weight of all that guilt, all that blame, and pulling it into herself. “I should have been more for you.” I can feel the shape of the words in my mouth as if she’s taken them and said what I couldn’t. Tears threaten to spill down my cheeks and I take half a step toward her because I know the weight she is taking on with those words.
I know that burden, know how it can slowly crush a soul, and I would die if it made the light in her angel eyes fade. But I know them all. My fault is an echo around the room, and no matter how deeply I feel the truth of those words in my chest, if I speak them too where does it end? “It’s no one’s fault,” I whisper when silence finally falls, and I will myself to believe the words instead of hearing the echo of it’s my fault underneath them.
“It’s no one’s fault,” I say again, looking each of them in the eye in turn. Dad, who has taught me what it means to be a man, even if I’m still trying to learn it. Mom, who has only ever given me all the love in her heart. Lee, who has come to me in the dark over and over and done her level best to make me believe I am something more than the dirt where I was found. Not one of them should bear the blame for this moment, where the whole world is half a breath from shattering.
Mom’s last words slowly sink into my skin, filtering in from every direction and settling in my chest. “Even imperfect love is worth fighting for.” She lives her life by those words. They’re what shone from her eyes the first time she looked at me, She was talking to Dad, reaching out to him to try to mend what’s been broken between them since the wolf attack, but her words are so much bigger than that. Dad isn’t the only one she thinks is worth fighting for. She would fight for each one of us, loves each one of us, no matter how imperfect or flawed or jagged inside.
“Lee.” I murmur her name, closing the distance between us and resting my forehead against hers. I can’t tell if she’s the one shaking or I am, but I just take a deep breath, my eyes closed against the rest of the world so all that exists for just one moment is her and me. “I know you’re scared, honey. And I know it’s so much easier to push people away than to watch them leave you even while you try to hold them close. But please, please be brave with me. Can you do that, love? Can you do that for me?” Can you do that for you? “Mom and Dad love us. Even right now. Exactly as we are. Maybe they won’t approve, maybe they won’t understand, but they will still love us.” I raise my head from hers and look her in the eye. “Even if we’re not perfect. Even if we’re jagged and broken and slowly bleeding out inside and we don’t know how to find the words to say we desperately need to hear it, they will always, always love us.”
I touch my nose to hers, hoping to help anchor her with velvet-soft reassurance, and then I turn to Mom. “You could never have been more for me, because you were already everything. Don’t you know that? Mom and home and family were nothing before you found me. They were meaningless sounds that only got to be words for other people, for better people, for people who weren’t disposable. For people who deserved to matter. Deserved to live. You’re the reason I’m breathing, Mom, don’t you know that?” Twice-over, she saved my life, even if she doesn’t know about the second time. Even if she doesn’t know that her angel eyes were the only thing that kept me from falling off the edge of the world and made me drag myself home instead.
“Dad,” The name of god comes out so soft, quietly pleading, and I take one step toward my father. “It’s not about failing anyone. And you’re right. I don’t know anything about love. I can’t even get it right enough to love just one person.” It’s so hard to meet his eyes, so damn hard to believe what I told Lee and drag my gaze from the floor to seek out crimson eyes that, when last I looked, were full of weariness and disappointment. I don’t know the words to make him see, don’t know how to make him understand--but it’s not about me. How he feels about me, what he thinks of me, that’s not what matters right now. “You didn’t fail me, Dad.” The words come out thick and heavy with emotion, but they finally come out.
“I’m not half the man you are, and maybe I never will be, but I’m learning. Slowly. From you. You didn’t have to love me, didn’t have to hold me close and welcome me into your family. I could have been just some kid Mom dragged home, but you loved me from the start in that quiet, steady way of yours. That first year, you and me and mom and Mari and Argo, you took time away from important kingdom matters just to play pirates with me, or to be the big scary ice dragon from our stories. You watched over me, protected me, loved me like I was your blood. You taught me what a father should be. I’d never have known otherwise. I don’t even know my sire’s name, I mattered that little to him.
“You were there for me when I needed you the most, when I needed a dad to take care of me and help me learn and grow.” Lee didn’t come to us until she was older. Until she was more independent, and her need was quieter, a deeply hidden wound that even I missed, when I was the closest person to her in the world. “You have always been there, watching, letting me take my own risks and make my own mistakes and find my own way, knowing that I can come to you when I need you. And even the thought of disappointing you breaks my heart, because I want so badly to be the man you believe I can be. Even when I don’t believe it myself. Even though deep down I’m still just some throwaway lost boy waiting for everyone to finally see that I’m not worth that kind of faith.”
One of those tears that has been threatening finally rolls down my cheek, and I drag in a shaky breath. “I love them, Dad. Lee and Argo. And I don’t know what to do. I should have come to you. You shouldn’t have found out like this, I’m sorry for that. But I’m not sorry for how I feel. I don’t...I don’t expect you to approve. And I know...I know you’re disappointed in me. But could you help me understand? Could you help me figure it out? Because I’m so scared I’m going to screw everything up, and hurt everyone I love, and I would rather die than break this family. Please, Dad.”