You are the night-time fear
He wants to hold her so badly, but all he does is grip her shoulder, his second knee touching the floor too as he sinks down next to her. She's rigid, silent, but the taste of panic is still strong and nauseating in his mouth. She doesn't feel like death; she's not limp and lolling, a forgotten casing which once housed somebody's soul, their hopes and dreams.But sometimes, it's so hard to tell the difference.
Had he had a heart her whisper might've drowned in the roar of it. She couldn't do it and he knows, he knows, and he lets his free hand find her other shoulder. The water: her first grave. There was no one to pull her from it then.
He should've guessed, should've known, but how could he? He has never died, does not remember what powered him down and left him for dead on some lonely mountainside, doesn't know what to fear. He swallows, thumbs tracing little circles over her shoulders, wondering if he'll be good enough, and if a bath is so fucking important anyway.
Is it worth it?
Just to be clean?
(We're Ascended, not savages something, someone, whispers in his memory.) No: but to forget, to move on. To wash her death off, be reborn. He wants to pluck the seaweed from her tangled, matted hair.
"It's alright," he murmurs, an unspecific ache blooming in his chest—a deep, nameless longing. "Do you want me to stay with you..?" An offer she can take either way she wants, and one he (selfishly) hates to make. It leaves him too vulnerable.
You are the morning when it's clear
AAMU
