08-15-2015, 11:14 PM
you taught me the courage of stars before you left
A moment ago she had stood before him like a tree bowing to a storm. She had felt her bones bending and breaking and caving through her skin, had felt her veins unravel like yarn and fall away into the dirt. Her heart had beat itself ragged months ago, but the tattered remains were little more than a flayed pulp now, thudding wetly within her imploded chest. How could words hurt so much. How could he cleave the flesh from her bones with something as simples as a sneer slashed across his mouth. It was becoming impossible to breathe, she realized abruptly, to force her lungs to expand beneath the press of furious, frightened muscle.
Her soul thrashed in wild death throes.
Something had to give.
So it would.
Like a switch, Oksana dimmed. Her lungs expanded without the clutch of muscle to stop it, her pulse slowed to a steady thump-thump. She felt, in an instant, calm. But even this was a lie – how could it not be, how, when everything else was, too. She watched him distantly, those glittering emerald eyes flat and dull like stone. It wasn’t that she had stopped listening, the words still registered somewhere deep, somewhere that still bled and broke and writhed in agony – it was that she didn’t care. Couldn’t remember how.
It’s better this way. A voice whispered in her mind.
But in an instant she is toeing the line of lucidity again, and she doesn’t bother to hide the flinch that tightens beneath her skin. I love you, Oksana. I love you so much. It is a phrase so devastatingly familiar that the cruelty warping it makes her sick. “It was never a lie for me.” She says in a voice so mechanical, so dull that even she doesn’t recognize it. “And I will spend my eternity loving you, a suitable punishment for being so stupid, don’t you think?” It isn’t really a question, not when she knows he’ll agree, so she disengages again, her face slack in the twilight.
He mentions the Falls, and of course he must, but she doesn’t have anything to say, nothing left to give him. For a moment she had thought to remind him that he had been the reason why. To see if he still remembered his dying days, or the kingdom that had tried to steal him from her, that pivotal moment when she had realized Makai meant more to her than any kingdom ever would. But the memories flash and burn out, turning to ash on her mute lips. They mean nothing now.
I believe we’re done now.
“Yes,” she tells him quietly, those flat green eyes settling pointedly on his face, “I think you are. You should go.”
Not me.
I’ll never be done with you.
And even through the haze of coming undone, of pretending so perfectly (oh, Makai, it’s easier than you think), she has a moment to wonder why he’s still here, why he’s stayed so long.
He’s just bored, dear. Doubt whispers in her ear.
Her soul thrashed in wild death throes.
Something had to give.
So it would.
Like a switch, Oksana dimmed. Her lungs expanded without the clutch of muscle to stop it, her pulse slowed to a steady thump-thump. She felt, in an instant, calm. But even this was a lie – how could it not be, how, when everything else was, too. She watched him distantly, those glittering emerald eyes flat and dull like stone. It wasn’t that she had stopped listening, the words still registered somewhere deep, somewhere that still bled and broke and writhed in agony – it was that she didn’t care. Couldn’t remember how.
It’s better this way. A voice whispered in her mind.
But in an instant she is toeing the line of lucidity again, and she doesn’t bother to hide the flinch that tightens beneath her skin. I love you, Oksana. I love you so much. It is a phrase so devastatingly familiar that the cruelty warping it makes her sick. “It was never a lie for me.” She says in a voice so mechanical, so dull that even she doesn’t recognize it. “And I will spend my eternity loving you, a suitable punishment for being so stupid, don’t you think?” It isn’t really a question, not when she knows he’ll agree, so she disengages again, her face slack in the twilight.
He mentions the Falls, and of course he must, but she doesn’t have anything to say, nothing left to give him. For a moment she had thought to remind him that he had been the reason why. To see if he still remembered his dying days, or the kingdom that had tried to steal him from her, that pivotal moment when she had realized Makai meant more to her than any kingdom ever would. But the memories flash and burn out, turning to ash on her mute lips. They mean nothing now.
I believe we’re done now.
“Yes,” she tells him quietly, those flat green eyes settling pointedly on his face, “I think you are. You should go.”
Not me.
I’ll never be done with you.
And even through the haze of coming undone, of pretending so perfectly (oh, Makai, it’s easier than you think), she has a moment to wonder why he’s still here, why he’s stayed so long.
He’s just bored, dear. Doubt whispers in her ear.
how light carries on endlessly, even after death
Oksana