All of my memories keep you near

In silent moments, imagine you'd be here

All of my memories keep you here

Your silent whispers, silent tears

- Memories, Within Temptation

He's gone.

This suddenly hits her as she slowly climbs the steps up to the flat, their flat, now her flat, drifting along like a ghost, thoughtless, aimless. Except she isn't thoughtless, far from it, actually. Her mind is whirling in a sort of bubble, and she can't really hear anything except for a throbbing silence, so quiet it's screaming.

He's gone.

She bites her lip, worrying at the flesh with her teeth. She's at the door now, and somehow she's opened it, and there's the room, full of papers sloppily formed into piles, and an old tea mug, and some experiment he put on hold before they left. Something he wanted to finish, but now never will. She has to close her eyes suddenly, and puts out a hand to the wall, feeling the smooth paper under her cold palm. Then her hand snaps away from the surface as swiftly as if she had been burned, her eyes opening so fast it makes her dizzy. (Unless she was already dizzy, because she can't quite remember now.)

He's gone.

He used to shoot those walls, cracking the plaster and adding pounds to the rent with each metallic bullet, saying bored bored bored. She wishes he was here, because if he was she would let him blow up the whole damned place.

She floats into the kitchen, pausing before the fridge, her hand settling lightly on the slim silver handle, then lifting up, then touching once more, over and over, like a sparrow deciding whether or not to take flight. Finally she stops, and her fingers are hovering above the handle, so she turns away, silently putting the kettle on. She stand and watches it, waiting for the piercing whistle to break the suffocating nothing around her.

Then it does, and she pulls it off the burner, hating how steady her hands are as she pours one cup, then two. The first has sugar, just a bit, and the second has none, and neither have cream, and she removes the soggy bag from the second cup, tossing it in the bin, then picks up both cups and carefully carries them into the other room, and every move is memory.

Darkness is drawing outside, leaning long shadows across the floor, and for just a few seconds she can believe he's really here, that he's just getting something in the bedroom and that he'll come back and sit by her and watch the telly, that she's just waiting for him and closing the curtains and pulling the lamp cord, and now there's light in the room, and silence is still there, and he still isn't.

Because he's gone.

She tells herself that the tears in her eyes are from drinking the tea too hot, and she blinks them away quickly, flicking on the telly and sitting on the couch, myriad colours dancing across her vision. He'll be in soon, because he likes Doctor Who, even if he won't admit it. So she sits, and people dart around the screen, and she doesn't really pay attention, and then all of a sudden it's over, and those are credits, and one cup of tea is cold and full and the other is cold and half-full. And then the noise is obtrusive and horrible, because it isn't him, and so the screen darkens abruptly as she presses a button and stands up, and the tea is left there because she always leaves it there, and everything must be the same.

But it can't be, because he's gone.

She shoves the thought away, and now she finds herself moving towards the bathroom, and then somehow she's there and she's holding her pyjamas, and there's a woman in the mirror, and she looks awful and tired, like she's been crying and not sleeping, blonde hair dirty and held back loosely, and suddenly she wants to break the glass, but instead she turns away. She turns the tap on and waits for the water to heat the pipes, pulling her creamy jumper over her head and yanking the band out of her hair, letting it haunt across her shoulders like the ghost of a light-fingered touch.

Steam is rising into the air like a cloud, and she steps onto the smooth tiles, and the water pours over her back and soaks into her hair and it's so, so hot, and she thinks it must be a little like trying to warm the winter Thames, because only one thing will do that, and that's spring, and spring is now winter, forever winter. She scrubs soap into her hair, then sticks her head under the rushing fall and the suds run down her body, pooling at her feet and mingling with the clear water before sliding in the drain. She stands like that, and isn't sure how many minutes have gone by, when suddenly it's too hot, and she leans over and presses her cheek against the tiles on the wall, and that's cold, and she likes it, and so she stands there for more long short minutes, waiting for something and nothing.

But he's gone, and within an instant of that thought the shower sounds just a little too much like its much larger, much louder, much colder cousin, and she has to fumble and turn it off as fast as she can. It's too late though, and now she's shivering as she towels off her hair and yanks the flannel shirt over her head, tugging on the pants next, and before she fully realizes it she has his robe on over her shoulders, the soft blue fabric like a caress against her skin.

He's gone, even though his things are here.

Another moment passes as she scrubs her toothbrush around her mouth, staring blankly into the mirror, but this time she doesn't look at the woman standing there, just spits into the sink and forgets that she usually likes to rinse afterward.

Her feet wander out into the hall again, and she has to follow them as they lead her into his room. She stands, with silence around her, as always, peering into the shadowed room as though her eyes could actual form real shapes in the heavy darkness. The only thing she can see is four green numbers and two letters on the digital clock, 10:02pm. She flips the switch and everything is flooded in a shout of brightness, and she frowns and flicks it down again, waiting for the spots before her eyes to clear. They do, gradually fading away, until they're altogether gone; it was a little like watching the ripples of a disturbed pool as they lapped out of existence, somehow calming in the complex simplicity of it.

Now the streetlamps are merging with the moonlight, and she can actually see where the bed is, and the tumbled stacks of books and rumpled papers, so she steps into the room. When she crosses the threshold the the pounding beat of the silence is suddenly gone, and now she can only hear her heartbeat, but it isn't slow and calming, like the pool spots, it's fast and scared and she is too, and she bolts to the bed, his bed, sometimes their bed, but now it's really her bed. (The flat, their flat, her flat, all over again, the same and different, infinitely more painful than the first.)

The room smells like him, and the bed even more so, but that shouldn't surprise her, because whenever he slept he slept here, except for when they argued and didn't make up before nighttime, because then he would sleep on the couch, even though she would be upstairs. Now her eyes are burning and her throat hurts, so she splays out across the tops of the sheets and clenches her eyes shut, and refuses to cry again.

He's gone.

In a moment she's sitting up, and the silence has been shatteringly smashed by shuddering, gasping sobs, and dimly she knows they're hers, and that it's her breath hitching like that, struggling for enough air, and that it's her own tears on her face, her hands clutching the blankets so tightly she's certain that something will break.

Years must have passed, she decides finally, when her chest has stopped heaving for breath and the wetness is drying stickily on her cheeks. She turns her head, and now the four green numbers and two letters say 10:58pm. She doesn't try the arithmetic, but she knows that tears must have been spilling over her face for nearly an hour, and she desperately wants a glass of water and a handkerchief. She feels cold though, and doesn't want to leave the bed that smells like him, smells like nothing and everything all at once, because that's what he is. Vanilla and spice and wood and soap and wind and something else, everything in the world and nothing at all, because he is everything and those things are nothing.

He's gone.

She pulls the folds of cloth around herself, the thick down comforter settling over her shoulders warmly, and sticks her nose into the smooth cloth, breathing deeply, her filling her lungs with the smell of everything and nothing, and feels her heart calming. If she closes her eyes tightly and pretends very hard, she can, for just a moment, believe that he's next to her, lying there in a companionable silence, not the achingly empty silence that prowls the rest of the rooms like the beast it is.

If he was here, he would tell her that she was being childish, because monsters aren't real, only things in fairytales and imaginations and maybe Doctor Who. And she would honestly tell him that they are real, and they have horrible names. She's met many of them, like War and Anger and Jealousy, ones that everybody knows by heart, but this one is new and nameless and she hates it more than any of the others, and she thinks that maybe it hates her more, too.

He's gone though, so he can't tell her and she can't tell him, she can only whisper it in her heart and hope he can hear. She wonders if there is a god, something beautiful and bright to keep away any monsters from him, something gold and shining and wonderful, and then she can feel more tears stinging in her eyes, because he was beautiful and bright, and he kept away her monsters, but he was silver and glittering and extraordinary, and the words make her think of moonlit meres and birch trees glowing in the night like mercury pillars.

He's gone.

Suddenly she knows that she was the thing that was gold and shining and wonderful, but she doesn't feel at all like it, because she was supposed to keep away his monsters, and she didn't. Because he had a monster that hated him more than the nameless one hates her, only it hated other things too, so he got rid of it to keep the other things safe. It couldn't go without him, though, so it dragged him down, down into the abysmal, roaring chasm.

And now he's gone.

The four green numbers and two letters have changed again, and now they glow out 12:14am. She feels very tired then, and she burrows deeper into the hidden softness of the comforter, closing her eyes and pretending that he's lying there too, and that companionable silence is gathered next to them instead of nothing. As she imagines she also wishes, wishes that he was back, wishes that he was never gone, wishes that years actually would pass or would at least replay.

Years really do pass, three of them, like a countdown, although it feels more like a count up, because she has nothing to count down to, just minutes and hours and days and weeks and months to add. People think she's found what they call life again, but really it's just life's shadow, because life died alongside two other things, one as horrible as the other was great, and now all she can do is hang onto the slippery substance of its shadow.

Now she's staring out a window, and dully remembers him looking our of it, four years ago, and leaping and yelling about dead people being Christmas, and somehow the corners of her mouth twitch into the ghost of a smile. It fades away though, slowly and unsurely, as someone crosses the street and carefully climbs the steps, the short little steps leading to the door with burnished gold shapes spelling out three numbers and one letter, 221b. The person is familiar, but she doesn't know why, because she's certain she's never seen him before. And yes, now he's knocking, and she drags her gaze away from the window and trudges down the steps, remembering that four years ago, ten minutes before him looking out the window, she had first climbed up these steps, with two feet and one cane.

The knocking is more insistent now, and she swings the door open fast in her growing irritation, and then the irritation is completely swept away by a rush of other emotions, and the only one she can really pick out of the tangled web is surprise, because he's standing there, and the world is tilting, and then suddenly she's sitting and he's crouching in front of her. His face is the same, but different, wearing an expression that she sees on everyone when they think she isn't watching, but one she almost never sees on him. She wants to say something, anything, but then she can't talk, because he's pressing his mouth to hers, and his lips are hot and soft and it tastes like everything and nothing all at once, and her hands are in his hair, twisting into the inky raven curls, holding him there until they both must surface, panting, the chilled London air feeling like a perfect summer day. They stare at each other then, his gray-green eyes searching for something in her blue ones, and she searches back for a moment, but then knows that she's found what she's looking for, because she surfaced from the nightmare when she surfaced from the kiss. And when he smiles, she knows that he's found it, too.

A/N: Thanks for reading! This piece was an exercise/test with a new style of writing, so this isn't how I usually write. Feedback (aka reviews) is absolutely loved to bits, and any errors, spelling, grammatical, or otherwise, are apologized for immensely.