Michael
OUT OF DARKNESS INTO THE LIGHT
IF YOU WANT ME GONE
IF YOU WANT ME GONE
Short-cropped nails infused with dark dust tapped against the top of the table as she spoke. Indicative of his nerves, always there against the surface of his skin. So raw, a wildness that didn't belong. The shift of his gaze, sharp blue that couldn't disguise the haunted shade. A past too awful to look back on.
He noticed how she studied him, as though she pondered where he might have been hiding all this time. Nothing much had changed aside from the scar and heavier lines between his brows. Lines in his forehead deeper, corners of lips drier, heavily strained. A little narrowed, a little more dehydrated.
A lot more paranoid.
Considered telling her what she wanted to know, her question of where he had been, wasn't sure if he should, trusted her less now than before because where the FUCK did anyone really stand anymore? Robed, not robed. Shoed, unshoed. Peasant, royalty, poor, rich. At the end of the day, it didn't matter. Every dream or goal could be achieved or not achieved, reached or slipped from strained fingertips, they were all just fucked anyway.
And Michael… he was TIRED.
There was nothing for him to achieve. No goal for him to touch or try to reach for. Looking at Maea, he wondered why she bothered.
"Pretty sure that's a lie, but okay." The roll of one shoulder back into a shrug. Numb little pins and needles coursing through savaged scar tissue-bound skin and flesh from shoulder to fingertip. Just one more discomfort for him to endure in this place.
A deeper agitation. What brought you back here, Michael, why HERE in that chair, why IN PARTICULAR the very same table and chair as the last time you saw her?
A long, long pause. A suck of air through teeth that had clenched without him knowing. The dip of his chin, the ripple of muscle along his jawline. No words for nearly a minute, that tapping of digits silent. Until they began again, until he leaned forward in his seat and jammed his other elbow to the top of the table beside his other.
It would have been so easy to lie. To banter into the evening and into the night. Vanish after a few hours and drinks like last time, but this wasn't last time.
This was NOTHING like last time.
"I came here to find you." Finally that blue gaze lifted to meet her own. "Got no one else and no where else to go. Voices in my head won't shut up, and I want them to stop."
YOU PULL THE TRIGGER YOURSELF
