Time is a barred cage, slotted bars that ensnare the mind, wreak havoc on her subconscious. No. Perhaps it isn’t time. Having ample time most certainly does nothing to help ease the acrid ache, but it can’t be helped. It’s never been time, it’s always been memories.
Thoughts and perceptions of those emotions she felt long ago. Emotions that have long since abandoned her, marooning her with what few sentiments she’s left to feel. Halved, easily. She has no longer need for joy, nor the righteousness she once felt. Mahsa found it difficult to look upon most she passed by with any sort of regard any longer. Most people only earned indifference, perhaps disdain.
It’s why she began seeking such alternative sources to feel. Feel something, anything. Even if that something is hatred or unkindliness, or perhaps taking some sweet reprieve in the downfall of others. A pastime that should perhaps evoke another emotion, guilt, but never does.
For some time, she wasn’t certain she was entitled to want. Perhaps it was some Godly hand, ruining her peace of mind down to shambles and leaving her bitter and alone. So countless time ago, she began her walkabout, wandering here and there, wherever the wind might blow her, in search of something. Never certain what.
It’s how she first met him after all.
And it’s what brought her back. A verbose amount of time later, months perhaps. So many days had passed that she had almost forgotten just how thick the macabre Bastille smelled. How the scent tended to linger; death, persecution, misery, and somewhere among it all, him.
She’d be lying if she were to claim she could
ever forget him. The way each of her senses
had absorbed a shred of him, from touch to
scent to taste.
She watches him work with eyes that sting for a reason she can’t pinpoint. Nothing to do with the oppressive fog of the strangely comforting Bastille, or the death cries that permeate the halls and bounce off walls straight into the soul. It’s oddly soothing to see that he still toils. Soothing is perhaps too light a word, she’s utterly flummoxed just how much her souls calls out at the sight she’d perhaps gone too long without laying eyes upon. She releases a taxed breath that she didn’t know she’d be holding when he turns on her. It’s likely he noticed her sooner, she knows he would have.
He notices everything. In ways that should be
discomforting, but had somehow become safe.
She hopes he won’t ask what brought her back; she does not know. And when he continues his task steadfastly, she waits patiently, because it’s to be expected. She knows him too well. A strange thought. Jarring but somehow, not to the extent it should be. He’s as he was when she left, not a hesitation or hint of disparage and it’s both positive and damning.
She feels a stab of something she can’t explain. Perhaps he hadn’t even taken notice of her absence? Aggressively, the stray, unwanted worry is pushed into the recesses of her mind; a thought that would require admitting that she cared and she isn’t quite ready to do that.
Ages pass before he comes to her but he does, and for a second, she forgets how dark and dank the world around them. How unexpected and unending it is; because he’s decisive and reliable in a way that numbs the scattered hateful thoughts.
“It’s nice to see you again.” The words are a bit too bare, genuine, and she fights off the urge to wince at herself. Perhaps she truly was away too long. “I didn’t expect to be gone quite so long, but it seems things are as they were?” Between us.
There’s a question on her voice, and a thinly veiled anticipation. That perhaps things could return to the way they were, before she managed to lose herself.
Straight face as she might have, it doesn’t stop her fingers from twitching to reach out, grasp at the familiar heat of him. She keeps them in check.
It’s funny; she always thought he seemed so cold, but it’s an illusion. The truth is, amongst the rotted, grotesque walls here, he’s the only source of warmth present. A warmth that she missed, a warmth she intends to soak up.
There are flecks of dirt and dancing shadows on the planes of his face, and she breathes in deep.
It is a simple response - “Its nice to see you again” - six words said countless times between people, usually in the most casual of tones, sometimes without meaning, nothing more than a polite gesture, as meaningless as a blink or a breath. The phrase should be, by all accounts, of little importance and forgotten the moment it was uttered.
He feels the words reverberate through him and echo in his bones.
Is it the phrase itself? No; it is hardly a poetic or provoking set of words. It is, accidental as it may be, the genuine meaning behind them, the fact that one could truthfully say such a thing to him - it should not be. And yet. It simply is.
…That such a small thing could affect him so greatly was weak. Shameful. Frustrating.
All of this conflict, and she was not even finished talking.
“Of course”, he answers, far too quickly, a sign of weakness, a vulnerability, a mistake! His tongue had acted before his mind, he did not realize what he had said until after it left his lips. At the very least, he had stood still, his expression unmoving and unkind like the cold stone of the Bastille they stand in. But it did not change the painful quickness from which his answer had escaped - yes, escaped like one fleeing from a prison - his lips.
In a calmer, disinterested, steadier tone, the one used against strangers in his prison, he speaks.
“You were absent for quite some time. Why come now?”
There are many answers he would like for her to say, answers that would state that it is she who wants him, she who needs him, and not…
He may have felt some pointless and spiteful tinge of satisfaction if he had known that his delay in acknowledging her had filled her with certain thoughts. Imagine what she would feel if she knew just how very rattled he had been just at looking upon her again.
For reasons yet unknown, there is a magnetism here, amongst the stone walls and iron cells. Something that draws her back in, again and again. Once she thought it perhaps the influence of misery, the putrefaction of the wicked, stricken down by his hand. The depth of comfort she drew from the sovereign misery, justice, brought her joy she seldom felt.
Now, she is keenly aware.
It’s not the dire straights of this place, those who dwell here, suffer here, the very intention and meaning of these halls for housing immoral souls.
She’s arrested by a dancing sensation along the knots of her spine, goose flesh of raw pleasure as his eyes meet hers and his response is what she wanted to hear.
Perhaps, just this once, if not aloud, to herself at least---she’s willing to admit it. It is no longer the same sense of comfort she draws. She’s acutely aware that it’s him that brings her comfort now.
She doesn’t recognize any grief in his eyes, and does not realize just how desperately similar his own feelings were to her own. But she does sense his ever-so-slight draw back. That smooth, vapid withdrawal that he’s so good at presenting.
It doesn’t bother her.
At least. It never used to.
For a blink, she hesitates. It is with an unceremonious sort of ease that the truth almost tumbles out. It’s curious when she became so close to another that she had to fight off instincts like this; ones that previously stood strong in the sense of self preservation and resentment alike.
In the end, that truth once so easily pushed into submission pries it’s way out of her lips, regardless of want.
“I was lonely. The world called me about, and just the same, something called me back here.” ( Someone )
She had said such words to him before. Just once. The first time. And that time seemed so long ago now. She wonders if he’ll take offense to it, gravely hopes not. Her body aches for satisfaction, the kind only he can provide, and she so badly doesn’t want to return to the dark, grim world outside his mottled, rotted harbor where only desolation and disappointment await her.
She’s tired of feeling bitter and alone for now.
“Have you missed me?” Words slip free yet again, a chill seeping through her bones that might be fear.
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