i worshiped at the altar of losing everything
It fills him with gladness, to know that her own quest had not been in vain.
It is not lost on him, though, that she divulges no other information.
She does not elaborate and he does not ask her to.
It is a kindness she does not have to afford him, he thinks, but it does not surprise him that she does anyway. Because they have known each other only a short while but she had made it clear when they’d met that she was good and kind, selfless in a way he had been once but no longer is.
He smiles and nods. “I’m glad,” he murmurs, the voice strangled by the gravity of what settles over them. She had made it out unscathed and he had not. He will undoubtedly spend hours trying to work out exactly where things had gone wrong for him. Eventually he will chalk it up to his inherent inability to get anything right. He will inevitably decide that it all fell apart because he had orchestrated it and he will carry the blame like a stone in his chest, too. He will add it to the pile and perhaps, someday when there are enough stones to weigh him down, he will walk into the sea and let them drown him.
It is the same question he’d been asked by the first soul he’d encountered after escaping the rusty jaws of death, it is merely posed differently. Moselle had asked if he’d missed it and now Agetta asks if it hurts. Were he still a living thing, perhaps he would have swallowed thickly. He might have dragged in a shuddering breath and held it fast.
But he is a dead thing, so he merely studies her for a long moment. The silence pulses in his ears as, finally, he nods. “Yes,” he says and the voice trembles, thin. He presses his mouth into a thin, contemplative line, glances between the earth that separates them and her face. As if he is ashamed to admit it. As if he is ashamed to be in this position at all.
“Not physically,” he continues, “but…” The silence stretches elastic between them as he frowns, trying to dredge up the words to explain it concisely. Until, finally, he shrugs and says, “my soul.”
and i still chase you into heartache every time you take a step