☢
☢ for my muse’s reaction to yours abandoning them
The last thing she sees is his back; wide, solid, almost-proud, and something inside of her knows this is the final time they’ll meet. It’s a realization that doesn’t really hit her until two days later, when his absence suddenly carves a hole where her heart was. Her lungs constrict until she’s gasping for air, clutching her chest and marveling at how much pain there is even when there’s not a physical wound on her body.
The thing inside of her — that which had known his abandonment for what it was from the beginning — had expected it; most of her memories aren’t of smiling faces or kind words but of turned backs and stony silences, after all, and it’s not like she’s ever been worth much. (To a man whose heart rejects sentimentality and whose eyes see only utility, she must have been nothing more than a pebble on the side of the road.)
And still … still, she had hoped. She had wanted.
She’s hurting and numb at the same time, because oh, how could she have been so stupid? For someone like her, someone whose life is nothing but a series of regrets, one after another, something like hope — something like wanting — is nothing short of laughable.
He’s gone, now, and she’s broken.
(Not that she’s ever really been complete.)