Should we go into it
together / if I go into it
with you I will never come out

...

but you will go
alone, either
way is loss

Tell me what it is for

In the room we will find nothing
In the room we will find each other

"Hesitations outside the door" - Margaret Atwood

Alone in this Room with You

II.

There are chains around the door.

A metal leash, they wrap around and around the bars, but they feel like they're around his neck instead. He's having trouble breathing.

He exhales and the sound echoes in his ears. Was it a breath or a growl?

There are chains around the door, but it's not a door – it's a cage.

...

He hears her coming before he sees her, her footsteps are slow and steady across the floor. He's memorized that sound by now - it sounds like a heartbeat.

The doors open, but he doesn't want to see her. He doesn't want her to see him like this. Then again, she was always good at seeing him when he didn't want to be seen.

A gasp reaches his ears, so soft he almost misses it, and he feels her come closer. The bars of his cage separate them, and she's right on the other side, but there's another distance in between them, an ocean, and he's going under, he's drowning. He lifts his face and focuses on her. Her eyes are so bright, and he can feel her pulling him out of the waters. He looks into her eyes and feels her guiding him home.

She kneels down by his side and makes him a promise - I am going to get you out of here - but it's a promise he can't let her keep. He's dangerous, and, out of control like he is now, he's a threat.

But Catherine doesn't see him as a threat because she trusts him, because she believes in him. She took a chance on him and he did the one thing he never wanted to do - he let her down.

He let her down because as much as he wants to, he can't be the man she wants him to be. He's not even a man, is he, not with everything he's capable of. Until a few nights ago, she had never seen what he's really capable of. Now she'll never forget.

Light from the window touches her face and she looks pale. Fragile. It's a reminder that she's human, that he's not. She made him feel like he had a life again, but now he knows it's a life he can never have.

This cage, this is where he belongs.

...

It's you, he says, and he wishes he could have said those words to her in a different time, in a different place.

It's you, he says, and he hopes she hears what he really means, I wish it weren't.

He wanted to have something with her, but not this. Never this.

She moves closer to the bars, and he sees a look on her face that threatens to undo him. She exhales a shaky breath, and it's more than he can bear. He looks down at his hands. He may have washed them, but there's still blood on his hands. There will always be blood on his hands.

He turns away from her and tries to ignore the sound of her heartbeat.

This is how he'll protect her, from himself.

...

There are chains around the door.

They keep her out.

They keep him in.

...

Fin