i worshiped at the altar of losing everything
She comes closer and he doesn’t think to stop her.
To save her the trouble.
Because he might have found comfort in the embrace of a friend in the before.
But there is nothing in it for him in the after.
Where it once might have chased warmth through him, the sweet swell of relief, it brings him nothing now. And though he feels so little, he can feel the throat tightening with his own want to weep. Because he has no way of knowing all of the things he has lost until he is confronted with them.
She hugs him and he lets her but he still feels empty. He appreciates the gesture, of course. It solidifies his belief that Agetta is a friend worth having, selfless in a way he had been once but doesn’t know how to be anymore. And he smiles, if only a little, because he is a dead thing but he still recognizes kindness and it is still worth smiling about. It is a rueful thing, certainly, but it is there all the same.
Her apology sinks bone-deep and he shakes his weary head before he briefly brinks it to rest against the smooth plain of her shoulder. He cannot feel its warmth. There is only a faint glimpse of how soft it is, but it is fickle and fleeting and it is gone before he can grasp it. He does not allow himself the opportunity to mourn it, though, not now. There will be plenty of time to think about it later, when he is alone.
Is there anything anyone can do? He has wondered if he could travel back to the mountain and beg for his life back. But for what? And how could he prove that he deserved it when he had treated it so poorly to begin with? He has thought to ask Anaxarete, too. Thought to ask her to freeze the useless heart in his chest so that he might not feel anything at all. But this is the coward’s way out, he knows, and he knows that he deserves to suffer.
He swallows thickly (an age-old habit) and shakes his head, lifts it away from her shoulder to do so. “I only know one magician and I wouldn’t dream of asking her for anything,” he murmurs. Not because he does not believe she’d give it to him but because he’s never asked her for anything before and he feels no overwhelming urge to start now.
“It hurts, but…” he says, takes one small series of steps backward so he can look her in the eye, “this is the fate I deserved all along.” For leaving, for letting his beloved sister die, for thinking he had any right to come back here at all. He tries for another rueful smile and rolls one shoulder in a kind of shrug. “It’ll just take some getting used to, I think.”
and i still chase you into heartache every time you take a step