you can hear when the heart stops - kensley

[Anaxarete]

YOU CAN HEAR WHEN THE HEART STOPS. She freezes as soon as the word leaves his lips. But she does not retreat. Doesn’t step away from his strangled confession. She can see the war inside him, and it gives her no pleasure to watch him struggle. She hates it - hates what time has done to him. To them. “If you want me to go, I will go.” Her tone is flat. Cold. But still softer than what was typical for the shadow-mare. However, she means what she says. If he truly wishes her to leave, she will disappear into the shadows. She’ll return to Pangea. She won’t seek him out. She’ll leave him to disappear from her life and her memory once again. “But - “ she adds, the word hanging in the still air.  “What if that’s not what I want,” she adds, after a brief pause. Anaxarete is not used to such vulnerability.  She was not one to want. Not anymore. Now she simply takes what it is she wants.  But not this. Never this. And tonight, she wanted. She wanted him to come home with her - to find life in this strange new world. To live. To thrive. With her. She can’t remember the last time she’d encountered someone who truly had the ability to hurt her as he does.  But at this point, she doesn’t care if it hurts.  Everyone else has forsaken her.  Everyone else has abandoned her to the darkness.  Why not him, too? “What if I don’t want you to let me go,” she asks, keeping her voice neutral - her cool voice betraying nothing. That’s why the shadows had become her sanctuary. Why the shadows welcomed her.  Consumed her. They took away her pain, breathed life back into her weary bones. They filled the void left by so much loss. “You aren’t the only one who has lost everything, Kensley,”  she says.  You aren’t the only one who’s been lost, is perhaps what she means. Anaxarete is not afraid to lose anymore.  She knows how to survive. She knows the shadows will extinguish the hurt - take up residence where feeling and life once was. Turn it into something new. Eventually they’d consume her.  The shadows. The darkness. She couldn’t bring herself to stop them. For they brought strength too. They freed her from pain and memory and regret.  The moment she’d begun giving in (giving up?) is when life was breathed into her anew. There was freedom in this new power - and she luxuriated in that freedom. The fact remained she would release him, if that’s what he truly wanted. She could survive another loss. Perhaps he could not. And she refused to be the one to pound nails in his coffin. - A N A X A R E T E - been there, done that

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@[kensley]
i love/hate these idiots.