i'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece, ether

[Briseis]

little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep,
little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories,
little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece

Like a lighthouse on a stormy sea, his eyes slowly appear in the dark, the veil of his shadows peeling back to reveal what she had been searching and praying for. Her name fits so perfectly on his tongue, like a secret being shared between them, and it makes her heart stop, for just a moment, before stuttering again in her chest. But there is more than just figurative secrets; she doesn’t know if he will see the way her almost-black eyes hide an anguish that she can’t describe, the burden of what she is hiding eating away at her from the inside.

There was a part of her that was terrified that he wouldn’t come – that she had pushed him away to the point that he wouldn’t even entertain the idea of seeing her. There was another part of her that didn’t know what to do now that he was here. She stands, silent and nearly trembling in the milky light of the moon, leveling her gaze with the golden ones that still peer from the shadows. In her mind she is walking towards him, she is pressing against his cool skin and letting her lips trail across his neck, like she had before. But intrusively, beyond her control, there is Tunnel’s face, his teeth pulling her by the neck towards him, and her jaw clenches tightly, and she remains rooted to the spot. Ether was perfect; he was flawless, unmarred, and he didn’t deserve someone that had been broken, tarnished.

”I...I’m sorry,” Her voice is impossibly soft, wavering with the tears that she refuses to let even gather in her eyes. She can hardly look at him, the shame and humiliation filling her to the point she is afraid it’s going to spill over, to a point that she cannot contain it anymore, and so she averts her gaze to the ground. Hesitantly, she takes a step forward, and then another, until she is a matter of inches from him. It would be so easy, then, to reach out and touch him, but something inside of her holds her back; he wasn’t the last to have touched her anymore, and she is afraid he will know. She knows Tunnel has probably left marks on her neck and withers, almost flinching at the memory of where he had drawn blood. The idea of his rejection is enough to stop her.

”I had another nightmare and I just...missed you.” The last part escapes before she can rein it back in, and for a moment her quiet and reserved guise falls and she is transparent – shattered and anguished, clearly fighting a battle that she cannot win on her own. But it vanishes just as quickly, willed away as she withdraws away from him again. She shouldn’t have called for him, when things couldn’t even be the way she had envisioned them. It doesn’t occur to her that there is a reason that he was so close; that she hadn’t ever really been alone, that if she could just find it in herself to verbalize what had happened, she would have someone to help her pick up the shattered remains of what she was. ”I’m sorry I disappeared,” she gives him that much, lifting her eyes to his, and hoping that behind the stoic image she desperately tries to display that he can see, or feel, the honesty in those words.

BRISEIS

underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside,
I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind