He doesn’t wipe away her tears, but knows they’re there. Can feel her breath too, feel the pattern of it, the panic of it, he doesn’t say anything of it either other than that steady, ‘I won’t.’ He’s not a father to wipe away tears, not when she’s strong enough to do it on her own, not when those built by pride may rather want to wipe it away themselves anyway, need to. Won’t tell her to try and breathe easier, to calm down - she’ll get there. I won’t leave.
(He doesn’t know if it’s a promise he can keep.)
(He’s not a man of promises anyway, he likes to think to himself, like a reminder, like a skin. But he is. He’s good at keeping promises. Devour his own flesh for them.)
(He’s done it before. Take a part of himself away until he can call it a murder, by his own knife.)
He thinks of her question, maybe longer than he would have for any other moment, for any other person. His accent lingering with her own, lingering with the last of dead flames, lingering with the snow of a blizzard. And he keeps holding her where they sit, rubs her arm almost mindlessly when he feels the flinch.
“Burning alive,” he gives, honestly for him.
“Freezing is usually meant literal, you freeze. Burning can mean what you wish for it. We burn, just by living,” and then a silence, “But you look pretty alive to me, and I’m not here to let either happen,” and then a silence, spoken first in French, both to skies, “More than as the doctor here.”
Says it almost as a joke too, something light, but he means it. Because as he said, there’s more than one way to burn. More ways than he can heal.
Some part of her mind, the part unpreoccupied by survival and fear, registers his mantra, registers his promise, his calming words. Finds that her heartbeat slows with the pace of it, the reassurance of it. Some other part screams rebellion, screams flight, knows that he will break it, or she will have to flee before he can.
Don’t fall for it. Don’t trust it. Promises only tie you down, only trap you in willing prisons.
But she doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to escape the embrace of his arms, the touch of his hand as he rubs gentle circles, like her mother used to do when she was ill.
(Freedom is a choice, right? Then she chooses this, for now. She chooses warmth and comfort and security.)
(This is a form of freedom, right?)
Then he responds to her question, with such frankness that it throws her off, brings her away from the haze of a memory of a mother dying, or a burning building, brings her to the fact of the matter. Away from personal, to the distance of a thought experiment.
Is she the water of her home, slow and gentle, or is she the fire that lingers underneath, that consumes whatever in her path to experience? Does it matter?
Ata reaches up to push away her tears, takes a breath, gives Malachi a shaky smile. “Thank you.” The reason goes unsaid. It covers too many things.
Then she wonders what being alive means to someone like Malachi, wonders what burning means for him. “More than as the doctor?”
