Silver Skies
Summary: Love is a burden that must be revaluated every single day.

No copyright infringement intended. No money is being made. I'm just trying to fill my moments with words.

Silver Skies

The weather was as uncertain as he was about how he was supposed to feel today. The shy sun fought bravely against the silver skies, and its feeble warmth was not enough to dispel the chill that surrounded that cold morning.

He stood before the grave, and felt uncharacteristically quiet. The constant torrent of words and ideas that usually marked his ramblings was silenced by the heavy weight that restlessly insisted in crushing his heart, turning almost impossible the very simple act of taking the next breath.

He stared at the gravestone, where the simple words he chose as a memorial of the woman she was seemed incapable to fully represent the whole scope of her presence and the vitality of her personality. Even during those last few years, when insanity slowly eroded her grip to reality and turned their shared days into nothing short of a test of patience and love, her strong personality still sometimes bravely surfaced from the murky sea of strange thoughts she was taken hostage by.

He closed his eyes briefly, and felt stubborn tears slowly drifting down his face, as his heart felt divided between extremes: relief at the certainty that, wherever she was, she was in a better place than the dungeon without walls she found herself in for so many years; shame for feeling the relief at being set free of the responsibility of caring for his ailing parent, which he did lovingly for so many years, but sometimes he felt the burden heavily set on his shoulders as he did not have anybody to share its weight; and deep unmitigated pain for losing his last link with his past, and the bitter realization that now, he was truly definitely and utterly alone.

He breathed deeply, feeling the cold chill of the morning filling his lungs with oxygen and ensuring that he could go on living, another minute, another day. This very act was something that she would never be able to do again. He closed his hands in a tight fist, trying valiantly to keep hold of the torrent tears that threatened to spill if he gave even an inch of breach on the wall he kept around his self.

His heart stubbornly kept pumping blood, from his chest towards his extremities, bringing much needed oxygen and nutrients to the organs it flowed through. Another thing she would never do again.

He lowered his head towards his chest, and felt the dam slowly cracking under the pressure of his thoughts, the pain and solitude becoming a living serpent uncoiling as a boa constrictor, surrounding his chest with its sinuous body and slowly taking away his will to fight.

The tears started to run unchecked on his face, and the sobs surfaced from deep within his soul. The end had been near for so many years, but he never imagined that the finality of saying goodbye would be so excruciating.

"Oh, mother," Ducky said between sobs.

It was hard to say goodbye, but he did.

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