Enzo
His teeth imprison a deadly plea from reaching her ears, a dark desire that Mort's perfect halls should have made him forget how to want. Maybe it's being here that makes it come back like a full-color picture intruding into his monochrome, timeless existence. The humanity of this plane, the humanity of her, is a poison he only remembers being addicted to when he's in her arms.
Enzo will go back, and forget, and be mindlessly happy in his promised eternity of bliss - because dead things cannot dream. Dead things cannot hope. So here and now, while his body is corporeal and his mind is flawed, he weeps for wanting.
"I don't want to," he admits like a frantic secret, and his arms like chains drag his sister back down to the sand like a demon clawing an angel from its golden perch. It's a confession that will hang around her neck like a noose, but he is too selfish to spare her the pain. "I don't want to go back. I want to be here, with you, alive." The green of his eyes is unnatural in the vivid light of the sun, wet and starving as they search for hers. "He'll make me go back even if we wait him out. He'll be smiling and understanding and sad, and I'll go with him because we all know I have to." All of them human and hardwired to never anger Mort, to quail at the very notion of it. Something so terribly unnatural it can't even be envisioned.
Enzo's hands come to cradle Flora's face in his palms; perfect and unscarred, the way they'd been on the day he'd died. "Death is like a dream, and there's nothing I could want for. Nothing but you, and I can't reach you." The perfect happiness Mort promises breaks its own logic when the only happiness he's ever had is her, so the desire itself has to be cut out of him to grant him any kind of serenity. "If you ever find a way -" fuck, but what a curse he puts on her, and his love feels monstrous as he kneels in front of her half-risen form, "- I don't want you to hesitate a second taking me from there." To hell with anyone who might tell her he's at peace when he'd trade it all in a heartbeat to have one more try by her side.
Pressing his forehead to hers, Enzo's hands sink into her golden hair like it's a lifeline that will slow the racing of his heart or quell the bile of regret in his throat. He doesn't dare close his eyes. If he memorizes the array of freckles on her collarbone, maybe he'll take enough of her with him this time that he won't feel confused by the hollow feeling in his chest as he wanders sunlit Greatwood roads. "Leave them. Stay with me. I want every second we have left to be for us." Mort, their parents, it doesn't matter. Last time had been for goodbyes, but this time he has more than a fleeting moment and he intends to seize every second. No more tears. No more people. Just Flora and Enzo, as it always should have been.
Standing, Enzo grabs his sister's hands and walks backward toward the ocean with a grin so bright it overshadows the edges of the tearstains on his cheeks. "So let's go swimming, dress and all." She won't tell him no. He knows she won't. He wants to throw her into seafoam and hear the pitch of her shrieking laugh, wants to feel the burn of muscles that have mortal limitations again, wants to memorize these new shapes and angles she's formed in the years that passed in what was a blink to him.
And when the final grain of sand trickles over in the hourglass, as the doorway opens and his name is called, Enzo presses a kiss to Flora's cheek and says, I love you, forever and always, but it really sounds like until next time.
He leaves his hope behind with her.
- Fin
Enzo will go back, and forget, and be mindlessly happy in his promised eternity of bliss - because dead things cannot dream. Dead things cannot hope. So here and now, while his body is corporeal and his mind is flawed, he weeps for wanting.
"I don't want to," he admits like a frantic secret, and his arms like chains drag his sister back down to the sand like a demon clawing an angel from its golden perch. It's a confession that will hang around her neck like a noose, but he is too selfish to spare her the pain. "I don't want to go back. I want to be here, with you, alive." The green of his eyes is unnatural in the vivid light of the sun, wet and starving as they search for hers. "He'll make me go back even if we wait him out. He'll be smiling and understanding and sad, and I'll go with him because we all know I have to." All of them human and hardwired to never anger Mort, to quail at the very notion of it. Something so terribly unnatural it can't even be envisioned.
Enzo's hands come to cradle Flora's face in his palms; perfect and unscarred, the way they'd been on the day he'd died. "Death is like a dream, and there's nothing I could want for. Nothing but you, and I can't reach you." The perfect happiness Mort promises breaks its own logic when the only happiness he's ever had is her, so the desire itself has to be cut out of him to grant him any kind of serenity. "If you ever find a way -" fuck, but what a curse he puts on her, and his love feels monstrous as he kneels in front of her half-risen form, "- I don't want you to hesitate a second taking me from there." To hell with anyone who might tell her he's at peace when he'd trade it all in a heartbeat to have one more try by her side.
Pressing his forehead to hers, Enzo's hands sink into her golden hair like it's a lifeline that will slow the racing of his heart or quell the bile of regret in his throat. He doesn't dare close his eyes. If he memorizes the array of freckles on her collarbone, maybe he'll take enough of her with him this time that he won't feel confused by the hollow feeling in his chest as he wanders sunlit Greatwood roads. "Leave them. Stay with me. I want every second we have left to be for us." Mort, their parents, it doesn't matter. Last time had been for goodbyes, but this time he has more than a fleeting moment and he intends to seize every second. No more tears. No more people. Just Flora and Enzo, as it always should have been.
Standing, Enzo grabs his sister's hands and walks backward toward the ocean with a grin so bright it overshadows the edges of the tearstains on his cheeks. "So let's go swimming, dress and all." She won't tell him no. He knows she won't. He wants to throw her into seafoam and hear the pitch of her shrieking laugh, wants to feel the burn of muscles that have mortal limitations again, wants to memorize these new shapes and angles she's formed in the years that passed in what was a blink to him.
And when the final grain of sand trickles over in the hourglass, as the doorway opens and his name is called, Enzo presses a kiss to Flora's cheek and says, I love you, forever and always, but it really sounds like until next time.
He leaves his hope behind with her.
- Fin
I'll tell a guy I like him but only if I'm drunk
I might take shots real fast, but I take love real slow
I might take shots real fast, but I take love real slow
