who we are and all that we're trying to be
The rejoinders faded, the gaps too massive, too wide to enclose over the agonies and onslaughts. It was bizarre, strange, to have built up their worlds, their livelihoods, their beings, and have it so easily snapped, stifled, fractured, punctured, was sickening in its own manner. He didn’t even know what they were left with – after all this time, after all his efforts, after nothing seemed to matter. Splinters and shards maybe, left to gauge one another or themselves with, splitting apart each and every seam. The strands kept unfurling, kept unwinding, kept opening, and he had nowhere to evade, nowhere to run, except with the fall of his ax and the distinct measures behind his eyes.
So the Sword rendered his silence, his heartache, his wounds into the movements, watched as the wood split, the wagon filled, maneuvering, motioning, until her words cut across the void, and he could only look up into misty gazes and clenched his jaw. Because he was determined not to shatter into pieces, not after he’d so painstakingly tried to place them back together, fragile in the time between sicknesses, afflictions – but his fingers clenched tightly over the ax handle until his knuckles were white, and his breathing was sharp. “I did.” He deserved far, far more than to be left for naught, than to be told someone he loved and cherished couldn’t bother to support him, when that was all he’d ever done for her. Reached and strived and tried.
That he’d had a chance to be beloved and it couldn’t last. That it didn’t matter. That he didn’t matter. And hadn’t it always been the same? Hadn’t each world, each land, taught him exactly that?
Something in him shook, and it segmented, slid through his bones, piercing gaze fracturing, the strength gone, his voice hoarse, barely a whisper, before he looked upon the ground, a head bowed. “I have always feared being worthless. And you made it very clear that I was.” His tongue ran behind his teeth, stifling something else, but everything still cut like a knife, back into himself, across his chest, another scar to place amidst the others. “You hurt me more than anyone else ever has.” The Sword would’ve withstood a thousand battles, than to be so perilously wounded by her words, by her actions, again. The vulnerability he’d rarely, if ever, exposed to anyone else, had done exactly as he’d predicted – slashed and torn him to shreds. “Just tossed aside, after everything-“ He didn’t finish. It scraped down the inside of his lungs and he couldn’t, wouldn’t, flicker into nothingness here.
His eyes went back to the wagon, an excuse for movement and motion. “I need to deliver these.” Grasping the handles, maneuvering, dragging, pulling, uncertain whether she’d follow or if he wanted her too.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
