he pulls the mask on, slips the cord back around his head and takes another drag. breathes in deep, tries to make the fumes permeate every cell in his body like it could cure him. it doesn't, it makes him even worse. hooks a thumb underneath the bottom of the mask and pulls it far enough to let the butt fall from his lips.
his fingers itch, the twitch and teeth-grinding urge to light another, but he licks his lips instead and slides onto the rotting wood floor. fingers instead pry up a loose board and fish underneath. his catch is the rusted pipe that
he doesn't hide behind the mask, he's had it pulled off once or twice. it serves a different purpose entirely. he's someone else when its on. the things he does, he would do without the mask. it doesn't allow him the accommodation of anonymity or an outlet with which to hide his shame.
he hopes she realizes that when he whispered the words 'i will always love you', he didn't foresee this, standing a yard away and somehow still miles away. maybe not even miles, maybe the distance was the years between then and now; between the day she started this and the space they didn't dare cross between 'em in the dumpy motel room where they had called a truce, six years later. its dark and he tries to find the words.
the distance shrinks to maybe a foot, and then even less and he opens his mouth to tell her. tell her that he the words still rang true even after everything he'd done,
but he realizes that the distance is even more than the six years, its the space between the blade and the set of ribs she slips it in his back it's lightyears between them and then less than nothing but the space between molecules as her arm wraps around him and he presses her lips to her forehead and feels the knife again and again.
he can't find the words, can't open his mouth to say them, just tastes the blood and smells her shampoo and lets his legs give way under him while the warmth seeps down his jeans and boots
She is dripping wet.
The tattered sweater that she girds herself with, a garment unfitting for one of her stature (but it smells like him and she can't bare to part with it) is sopping as she wades through the waters that turn her blood to ice. or maybe it's the lost that chills her through flesh and bone.
"YOU CAN'T LEAVE--" she calls after him, the figure in the distance. The voice staggers him, the voice that shaped him, the voice that he was made to worship. Stumbles, but struggles upright, even though the current rages and the water churns and appears as if it's boiling. Pulling at the bandages, limping away from her. Wind howls and the sky dims and greys. If he turns around, he will see her rising, slowly, slowly, off her feet until she's all but christ-like, standing on the water's surface. She pulses. With dogged persistence, he moves forward.
"I MADE YOU--"
alt 1. he can hear her words in his head, over her enraged, pleading shouts. his birth, his genesis. "I made you, I pulled myself apart and made you from blood and bone and marrow and heart. I breathed air into the lungs I gave and brought your dead heart to life."
memories hammer in his head and he almost remembers the lips and teeth pressed against him, skin pressed against skin.
"YOU'RE MINE YOU WILL ALWAYS BE MINE--"
Feet stuttering to a stop, heart stuttering to a start, she stands in front of him. "You're mine." A reminder, a reminder that burns into his skin, into his chest, and even deeper as she presses her hand there. he's a statue, carved of marble and flesh, watching her with woe-filled eyes. fingers trace a shape there, and she could just as easily tear it out of him. her mouth crushes against his and he feels the strength seep from his bones and he is hers once again.
---
alt 2. it's the last thing he hears.
the water, it laps and tugs and pulls, and suddenly it wraps and twists around his ankles. He kicks, bare feet savage in their attempts at freedom, but it's already to his waist, to his chest, to his neck. With desperation, he cries out and a hand reaches out towards her, fingers splayed. He swears feels her hand slide against his and then he is swallowed.
It's deep and it's endless bluing darkness and all he can see, thrashing desperately against the arcane forces that bind him, is her. her face watches him, unreadable. It builds and builds in his chest, lungs burning, body greedily bleeding them of every ounce of air that they hold. struggling to the surface, body clawing at the blackness that cradles him, cages him.
and when the waters empty him of his last breath, lungs brimming, he's devoured by the darkness. she reaches down, hands plunging into the cold to find shirt collar. effortlessly, she pulls him up, presses lips to him, and breaths life back into him.
---
alt 3. there's a wail, a warcry that freezes bone and he feels the blaze of heat as the deadened sky lights up. He wheels around, mouth open as if he has something important to tell her. Hands, trembling hands and trembling fingers reach up to the hole that gapes in his chest where he could have sworn was filled before. She watches as the tide carries her love away and the waters of life swallow him up.
