existential
@syxsonmi continued from here:
‘do you want to live?’
it’s the question henry asked her, not expecting her to take such a long time to answer. not expecting all of those things to flicker over her features. ever so quietly, but he still saw it. he has no idea what it all means, no idea what in the world the ghosts in those eyes mean, or the clenching of that jaw, the lines in her face.
all he knows is that it’s heavy. the kind of heavy he’s felt in his own bones. the kind of heavy that pulls a person down until they’re pressed with their face to the floor begging for it to end.
she’s not begging. much like he never had.
but she’s empty. and he knows, because she tells him her reply and it’s the same he’s kept lodged in his chest between his ribs where his heart’s supposed to be. it’s tiny yet heavy, the stepping stone for a world of hurt that lies just beneath the surface. ready to be dug up but always, always merely shoved further down in an attempt to forego having to face reality.
‘no,’ she says, and he feels it in his very soul, the way the world had come to an end, the way everything became meaningless, useless, without reason. the way life had ended in the crooks of an untold story, in the remnants of blood dripping from his sister’s fingers to the ground.
‘but i will,’ she says next and henry nods is head. like he did. without reason, without hope. without sense or meaning or purpose. just lived, step by step. survived, more so. one day. then the next. and the next. and so on, all the way up till this point where he is aboard a ship of people he’d give his life for. people who have made him smile, made him laugh, made him remember what it means to live. wholly and fully.
to love.
to move on.
his hand quietly strokes her hair a few times, fingers cradling her chin for a moment as he sends her a sad smile. understanding, maybe, reassurance. “maybe one day you’ll want to again too.” he breathes out a light sigh, then lets go of her again.
“you’ll figure it out, kid.”