The Shadows Bring The Starlight

It almost didn't feel real.

A pain too vivid to be hers, an apathy and defeat that rebelled against her very nature. Coward. She winced faintly and turned her head away, so tired of the refrain of accusations that ate away at everything inside her. Victim. The word felt like a sour taste in her mind, a betrayal of the future she was running from. A ghost in the mirror, a stranger in her shoes, a role she was never destined to play. But she wasn't…she didn't know that girl anymore. She no longer existed; except, perhaps, in his eyes.

It still didn't feel real, though she was soberly aware that she had begun to loose her grasp on the confines of reality a while before now. Was there even a line to be crossed anymore? Maybe she had just stopped looking for it. All she could do now was wait.

Angles of red slashed against smooth white curves, a growing fire burning in a fist of ice, begging to be felt – demanding every last inch of her. She just wanted to feel something…else. It had been so long.

He used to love to run his fingers along her arms, trailing slowly up and down, dreaming and drifting. Absent-minded and teasingly gentle; whispering against her skin and moving in sync to their wandering thoughts; tenderly mapping each other for hours and hours. Now she could feel them rushing away from her, all the memories, music and songs they had written there together.

It was strange. Something so fragile and delicate and yet ruined beyond repair, scarred in ways the world could never see. Stained below the surface, a poison that couldn't be dug out. A weariness that festered in her bones and steadily consumed her mind, a tide that couldn't be turned as it claimed everything in its path – ultimately even the grief-stricken anger.

She watched the blood slip down her arms, flow between her fingers and across her palms, scarlet tears that dripped onto the cool tiles around her. Her eyes prickled and stung but she forced herself to blink them clear, breath hissing in her lungs with the effort. It just wouldn't go. It was under her skin, rotting in the pit of her stomach. Everywhere she looked: shadows that haunted and chased; a void that couldn't be filled; a silence that offered no solace. It wouldn't wash away. The ache in her chest, the sick feeling in her gut; a violation she couldn't heal and a desperate loneliness that wouldn't leave her alone, beating down her strength through sheer persistence.

She could still feel it. Every time she was forced to close her eyes: a shrouded presence that slithered through her dreams, grabbing and twisting, always smothering her voice and dragging her into the darkness of her own mind. She could never run fast enough, could never find the way out or change the outcome. And still he never came. She screamed and cried, fought and pleaded – but she was always left alone. Another broken promise.

The hate seems to fill her veins like venom, aimless and unstable in its confusion, lashing out in any direction it can find release. He doesn't understand. She knows he can't, and yet the resentment threatens to choke her. Words feel empty, stripped of meaning, as if all the power and beauty has been bled out of her world. She searches again and again, trying to break the deathly quiet, and yet she finds herself deaf to the melodies around her. She's lost without her voice.

So many nights. So many lost opportunities, arguments of deflection and frustration, yet she strangely feels no regret. There was no point in that emotion; not anymore. A pained breath escapes her lips, almost inaudible, stolen away by the encompassing silence. She shivers, her fingertips twitching instinctively for the comforting warmth that had always been there before.

The embracing heat of his body beside hers, quiet and still and sleeping, wrested awake by her muffled cries time and time again. Her form writhing and kicking against him in a haze of disorientation and ensnaring nightmares, pushing herself away even as he tries to calm her, all but begging her to let him in.

She feels the coldness seeping up through the tiles, numbing her legs, her thighs, her fingers. She tilts her head against the solid wood behind her, her gaze falling over the dead weight of her body. She can't feel her hand anymore, nerves giving up the last of their strength, the frail clink of metal, and she finds herself forgetting. Yet she remembers the feel of his so well. Fingers linked loosely, palms pressed tightly: pulling her up, urging her on, seeking support in a way words never could. Taking their bows for the last time.

The pain seems to build, absorbing her fractured thoughts in a crushing crescendo, before she finally feels the waters begin to ebb, retreating back into the unknown, willing her to follow. She shuts her eyes and sinks into the guiding tides that flow through her.

A distant crash shatters the quiet. Her brow pinches vaguely but her mind can't grasp the connections. It's an effort to think and her eyes are so heavy. The deepening blackness renews its grip on her offered fingers, reshaping her reality, making it almost impossible to wrench her eyes open. She forgets why she's trying. It's too hard and she wants so badly to surrender to the current that wraps around her. She can feel her breath broken and shallow in her lungs; a tight, erratic rhythm pounding out in her chest.

A voice pushes through the fog, thick and distorted to her ears, yet heartbreakingly familiar. Forever the most beautiful sound in her world, even when raised in fury and raw with panic. She blinks lazily, struggling to recognise her surroundings, unsure which dream she is in. As she hears her name uttered in that rich tenor tone one more time, she knows she needs to know for sure. A surge of desperation flutters in her heart and with a ragged breath, she forces herself to step back into his world – even if it's only for a few borrowed seconds.

Fresh pain breaks over her, acute and reprimanding, yet it's a price she pays gladly for this last moment.

A face rushes into her vision, a figure dropping to his knees, his touch strong but hands trembling as they find her cheeks. Warmth tingles through her skin where his fingers press urgently against her, and it feels like the last, loving whisper of a fading spring. He grips her face but she has no strength left to lift it, barely aware of the words tumbling from his mouth as he roughly pulls her up to meet his gaze.

His eyes are dark and furious as they bore into hers, haunting and almost frightening but unceasingly devoted. Her gaze drops, flickering over his torso, a slight frown falling over her face at the crimson stains that soak his shirt, pressed so close to her, yet he doesn't seem to even notice. And still that voice…calling, reaching, words hoarse with fierce demand. A voice she knew almost better than her own.

"No…look at me!"

And she does. His beautiful features appearing all the clearer as they drift further from her touch. Her lips part only barely, moving soundlessly over his name, as if the very word somehow soothed away the despair that engulfed them. His fingers are rooted painfully in her hair, digging in harder every time her eyes start to flutter and blur, refusing to let go. She studies his face as if seeing him for the first time all over again, letting his presence fill every corner of her thoughts. The only thing she would ever want to hold onto. That same face she had stubbornly kicked out of her apartment only a few weeks ago, cast aside in confusion and carelessly shoved apart in a conflict of bitterness. She knew every detail of his face, every quirk of his expressions, yet the man in front of her now was almost unrecognizable; his features wracked with a devastating fear and anguish that she had never witnessed before.

Blackness encroaches on the edge of her vision, the world fading in and out around them, but she doesn't let her attention stray, her focus lost so intently on his eyes. She tries to memorize every tint of the darkness there, the memories and the secrets and the dreams they shared. Everything he saw in her and all he never said, everything that went unspoken. There was a world of love and grief storming through those eyes, and it captivated her even as she struggled to keep her own open. Helplessness and horror were etched across his face, an agony more acute than anything else she could have inflicted.

And anger. There was so much anger.

He was shouting at her, silently bargaining with a god he didn't believe in, violent curses mixing with the vain pleads on his lips. His gaze burned into hers, trying desperately to pin her to this world against the force of her own. But she was slipping and they could both feel it, the stolen reprieve now escaping their grasp, slowly but surely.

She feels a small, tremulous smile ghost over her lips, breaking through the breathless pain that numbs her. She tries to raise her hand, to touch his face one more time, to let him know all that he is, all that she's taking with her.

His arms are tight around her as her body crumples, her slender frame slumping against his like an autumn leaf, a summer cut too short. She never feels him catch her, yet she always knew he would.

/o/

The surrounding space is dark and quiet, unknown but not threatening. Only the air around her is softly lit, as if by some unseen spotlights, casting a faintly golden hue upon the floor. She's reminded of fresh and misty mornings, the stirrings of youth, temptation and new awakenings beckoning on the horizon, the smell of hay and the taste of thunderstorms. A convergence of paths, the parallel of entwining lives that just couldn't be unwritten. The beginning, the end and all the eternity in between.

It feels like coming home.

Her feet pad lightly against the ground as she slowly walks forward, unsure but unafraid. Her eyes drift over the shadows below her, the twisting vines of growing branches and leaves that spread out across the surface under her bare feet. The defiant strength of nature: always changing, always enduring. She closes her eyes and can still hear the songs of spring sighing through the distant wind. Her lips curve up with tender awe.

"I know this place."

"Where it all started."

His voice speaks up softly from over her shoulder, musing and thoughtful. She can feel him as he moves, walking up to join her, yet she doesn't turn around, waiting and knowing all at once.

"I think a part of us never left." There was a sad smile in his words as he stopped just behind her, a quiet sigh leaving his lips, but it was without regret. "Some stories claim you too deep; steal away your fates into their own."

She nods but doesn't speak. There was no need. In the shared quiet, she feels his arms reach out and encircle her waist, gently clasping over her stomach, wrapping her up in an embrace of unspoken intimacy, one that they had known and needed for so much longer than they had ever been aware of.

She strokes her fingers through his, releasing a deep breath from her lungs. He rests his chin upon the crook of her shoulder, the warm flutter of his breath caressing her neck, letting her take everything she needed from him. After the heartbeat of a turning season, they finally allow their words to take shape again. She feels the knowing question against her ear, echoing through the light and darkness around them.

"Dreaming again?"

"Perhaps," she admitted with a faint smile, voice almost too soft to hear. "But who's to say what dreams really are?"

The heartbreaking paradox of their existence; the source of the timeless music that ran through their veins. A riddle they had already answered long ago.

"Very true," he murmured, lips brushing the nape of her neck. "And if you could, would you really want to wake up?"

She leans back into him, closing her eyes with a shaky sigh. "I didn't think it would still hurt here."

His fingers clench so subtly around hers. "It never stops."

Salty heat cleanses her eyes, sweet and bitter, and she turns and buries herself in his arms. He says nothing, only pulls her in harder, a fierceness in their embrace that was almost unbearable. She breathes him in, all warmth and pain and love and memory. So close but not complete. The confession burns and heals her heart at the same time.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

His voice slips over her skin in a whisper of forgiveness. He sighs deeply and she feels a tremble wrack his body against hers. He shakes his head almost wearily against her hair. "Stupid girl," he utters in a harsh breath, squeezing his eyes shut and gripping her all the tighter in response.

She could feel the longing and sorrow in his bones, and it tore right through her. She pressed herself even closer to him, nestling her face into his chest and placing her hand over his heart, but it could never be close enough. Not yet.

The hate was gone. The anger, guilt and resentment all left behind, but it was a freedom that came with a heavy price. Yet as she stood there, consumed in his embrace, she saw all too clearly that some ties would bind forever. The love would not leave her, refused to be banished, and it was almost every bit as agonizing as the grief she had escaped. But this heartache did not frighten her; did not make her want to run; did not incite the nightmares. This pain carried a comfort to hold onto, a strength to be patient.

The one promise that could never be broken.

The light had changed around them, drifting and melting into the blue glow of a harvest moon. Over their heads, the night whispers their story across the sky in a chorus of starlight.

"Will you wait for me?" he says at last, pulling away to look into her eyes once more, softly brushing the tears from her face.

"Always," she replies calmly, the quiet vow irrevocable in its truth. Her gaze is bright as it searches his, as if fearful of his answer. "Will you wait with me?"

A small, wistful smile graces his lips, his fingers tracing her cheeks. "You won't let me go."

She nods, silent in her understanding. It was the way of their world and she knew it down to the depths of her soul, in every last part of her. For as long as it took, she would linger until she found him again. Their song would always call them home.

~o~