their arm was seized , their breath hitched , and they glanced back at tash as though they were a small animal caught in a trap — it was how their love felt sometimes , as though there was no avenue to escape . they were so embroiled in one another , the curves of their DNA intertwined , that a life without the other seemed near impossible , although the months without tash at their side had granted a bittersweet kind of freedom . for once they were able to live life untethered . in their mind it didn’t matter whether they had lived or died , knowing that she would be there beyond the pearly gates ( or the fiery depths ) to greet them once death took them back to the earth . was it love ?? was it codependency ?? either way , dark eyes flitted between the face of their ex and the fingers bearing down into the pale flesh of their arm . a sheep in the claws of the wolf .
“ i can’t . “ every fibre of their being wanted to tear away from roswell , to throw caution to the wind and fall back into bad habits , but what would happen to their siblings ?? although it seemed none of sparrow’s siblings particularly liked them in that moment , abandoning them the second time would have been the final nail in the coffin . “ tash . i want to , but i just .. i can’t . “ the echoes of the arguments with emmett , with rollo , with lyla richotted off the inside of sparrow’s mind ; perhaps none of them would miss their sibling if they disappeared into the dust once again , but was that a risk they were willing to take after so many missed opportunities , after countless setbacks and restarts ??
tash’s utterance confirmed everything they had thought , yet had been reluctant to believe . he had made the trek to roswell for sparrow , they had thrown everything away to pursue what was dead , gone and buried . their ex stood as a physical manifestation of everything they had left behind , and sparrow found themself stuck on the fence , toeing the line between sinking back into their previous life or clawing to the summit of a life with real purpose . “ the better part of town , huh ?? you’re really moving up in the world . you’ll soon forget about the little guys . soon forget about us , “
Massoud bit their teeth together, grinding them till their jaw hurt. It wasn’t that Sparrow really couldn’t, it was that they were completely incapable of moving. But it also wasn’t that they didn’t want to. They knew them well enough now, they knew that whatever kept Sparrow from making decisions of their own, it wasn’t something they decided themselves. He had always believed that he could keep them from making their own decision, from leaving him, from falling for someone else, from supporting another body that wasn’t him. It had been easy, for such a long time anything they suggested, Sparrow would do. But that stopped. Because once Massoud had been unable to speak, unable to keep them from leaving, they left.
And now they would no longer follow him blindly, now they were caught in another spell, and Massoud had no idea how to break it this time around. He would have to figure out.
He knew he could never have Sparrow if they were this connected to something that wasn’t him, he knew he’d lost them if they didn’t figure out soon how to get them back. He knew that even if he wanted to get lost in them again, it would take time, because trust was broken, but most importantly: he didn’t know how to feel about this.
He tried to find some lie in what they said, tried to find the joke, the laugh. He decided when or how he would forget about them, he would decide when they got to joke about it. “No,” he said. “I’m moving up in the world to not forget about where I started,” he said.