DESPOINA
His jerking motion away from her is noticed and she withdraws in kind. Recognizes it more as a kind of rejection than any kind of threat—how could she not? She has spent her entire life dealing with the very kind of rejection that she is now faced with. From her very first breath, she had known that she was not good enough. The fact of the one she was meant to trust above all else had been twisted with derision.
She has known nothing but the back of those who she might have loved.
So when he withdraws she feels the knife’s edge of it in her belly. She feels it slice clean through her and she wonders that such a thing can still make her feel pain. How strange that she still has the capacity.
For a moment, Despoina contemplates running. Considers simply turning on her heel and retreating, but she is caught be the fierce edge of his gaze. She hangs there for a moment, feeling the ground give out from underneath her and she swallows, trying to catch her breath, catch her bearings—anything.
“Life has shown me that it matters very little what I want,” she hates the way that her voice trembles, how thin it sounds out there between them. There is a pang of jealousy at the thought that he had once had something—how pitiful, she thinks, to be envious of something that he himself does not even have any longer—and it shows for a moment on her face. “It must be special though, to have the memory of it.”
There had once been an almost memory—a family that she could have pretended was her own. With two parents who loved another and an entire brood of children. The kind of family she had dreamt about.
But it hadn’t lasted.
She had ruined it, as she ruins all things.
“It is nice to share the silence,” another soft whisper. “For now, at least.”
Even though she is not sure sharing something with him is nice at all.
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do