You are the night-time fear
He wants to get lost in the motion, swirl down the drain with the filth pooling at the bottom of the tub—dissolve, become fragments, and disappear. His fingers touch threadbare cloth, worn edges, frayed seams—It's not that he wants to die, it's just.. so jarring, to be thrust from an all-out war, to.. this? He's used to the tension, the stress, the anxiety and the excitement, the worry and the relief, the constant, gnawing uncertainty and his own convictions. He's used to always being on the move, always expecting bad news, to have to disappear like a ghost in the night: to flee, to rescue, to search, to mourn. He licks his lips. A memory of the world flashing by beneath him surfaces, then drowns again.
He's glad for her presence, wild and untethered as it is. It chases the ghosts and questions from his mind, at least for a moment, until her head shakes and he realizes—
(fingers in his braid)
He glances down at himself, into the tub, at his pale forearms and the rolled-up white shirtsleeves. "If anything can be done for it," he says softly, picking up the coat, wringing it out where the water soaked into it too much. "It's very frayed." Brittle. Like something gently rocked by stones and gravel for three centuries. "I'll leave it outside the door?" he suggests with a mild shrug; he doesn't care if she watches as he strips. His body holds no meaning in that sense anymore.
He waits for her to stay or go, undoing his long braid with trembling fingers in the meantime. He thinks he remembers enough to know it held some significance, that he's erasing something which can never be returned, but he does it anyway, untangling snarls and pulling the strands from each other.
Then he plugs the drain, and turns on the tap again. Strips, leaving his clothes neatly outside the door (or in her hands, had she stayed), and steps into water which he as no idea what temperature it actually is. It neither freezes nor scalds him, so close enough, he guesses.
What takes the most time is his hair, working through it with deft but hesitant fingers, and when he rises again he looks like something drowned: white hair is plastered to his pale torso, a chilled, deathly sheen to his skin. Gratefully he grabs one of the dusty towels Mabel has left out, drying himself off and doing what he can for his hair, before wrapping the cloth around himself and padding out into the house to see if his host has escaped.
You are the morning when it's clear
AAMU
