annie places a hand to his heart, feels it beat under her palm.
the sun was beating down, and still she gleamed like a rare diamond in the night.
when her hand found purchase on his chest, he could've sworn he heard something beyond his own heartbeat. a low hum, strange in the way something feels when it ain't meant to exist and yet sits exactly where it should. unnatural naturalness in the flow of time between them. he didn't stop her. didn't move to. her innate conjure settled through him, breaching beyond his doubts and things he hadn't known how to silence. it was... right. harmonious. like in that beyond she easily breezed past the noise, and touched something deeper than it. something whole.
when smoke came out the war, his head never left the war.
it stayed lodged behind his eyes. in the corners of his thoughts. silhouettes of the dead loomed and moved with him, rose up in places they didn't belong. bloated carcassesâwhite and black alikeâwatches. sometimes they walked beside him. sometimes they waited for him to stumble, to look down and find them staring up through the dark, wet black soil, their lifeless faces vested between malice and curiosity.
and sometimes it wasn't them.
sometimes it was that man.
the older version of him. the crooked man. born wrong and wrong in the ways that didn't follow any rule he knew. his frame stretched and bent like it had been pulled apart and put back together without fascinated care. his oily black skin seemed ready to give way at any moment, and from the breaks in him, things squirmedâworms, maggots, feeding, spilling, gathering at his feet in pale, restless clusters. he didnât mind it. never did. just sat there, grinning wide across a face too thin to hold it, his one good eye fixed on smoke like he had all the time in the world.
like none of the rest of him existed.
smoke hated when he came.
those nights ended the same. his heart racing, eyes snapping open, wide as frogs, searching every corner of where he slept, paranoid if he had been followed back. the thought crossed his mind. ending it. a clean whistler and violent splatter over the wall where nothing would matter anymore. stopping it before it had the chance to start again. but something in him wouldn't let it come to fruition.
smoke wasn't a good man. he knew that. so the thought didn't scare him as much as it should've. but it didn't pull him under either.
instead, he buried it. packed it away like any other cargo. no label, no opening, just weight stacked somewhere in a good part of his mind where it couldn't spill out unless something shook it loose and knocked it down. he kept moving. kept working. kept liking like a man who hadn't found peace but refused to stop anyway.
annie, who reached him where none of that could follow. who pulled him clean from that place without ever raising her voice, without forcing anything from him. the noise quieted when she touched him, dispelling the dark allure of what threatened his inner peace. the awful shapes of despair disappeared. the pressure of all his owes eased and melted down. whatever held him down loosened its grip just enough for him to stand without feeling like he was about to sink.
not something he could explain. he wasn't man much for poetry. not something he tried out either. not too much. when gives a piece of his mind, it's raw, jagged, but real.
when her hand rested over his heart, everything that crawled beneath his skinâthe unease, the phantom sensations of silk-skinned snakes and spiders, or just the feeling of something always just out of sightâfell away. like his body remembered something before his mind did. like it knew her.
that's what it felt like.
not a place or thing. it was her.
he had spent years talking about powerâwhat it took, what it cost, what it gave back. the kind you could take, the kind you could build with blood and will. but whatever she wielded didnât look like that. didnât move like that. it was somethin' ancient, perhaps haven't seen for thousands of years. but despite how old it be, it was somethin' to believed it. somethin' that didnât need to prove itself to be felt.
â â â â â â â â â â it's like we eighteen all over again. â he said, huskily, breaking through the silence.
because it still beats like this for you.
the rhythm of his heart speaks in volumes without needing his mouth to follow.
he drew a slow breath, then lifted her hand from his chest, holding it in his own with a care that harkened back to their teenaged years.
before tragedy fell upon them. before the loss.
his head dipped, lips brushing over her knuckles, softly kissing the sweet bones and skin. and staying there, just for a moment longer, before anything else could come between them.
