[private] you'll wish for time to turn back around

[elio]

elio

some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

There isn't a single time that Elio imagined his reunions with his family going well. When he pictures them, his family is awkward and shifting or angry and bitter. Where have you been? Lepis and Wolfbane are dead. You have a new family you're late to meet. You left us. You abandoned us when it got too hard. Their voices are a chorus when he fixates on them and a whisper when he is distracted, but they are always, always there.

And oh, the regret is a bitter tang he chokes down every day. A mixture he convinces himself is a tonic. A saccharine syrup that leaves him with a stomachache and uncomfortable buzz.

Like a child, he wishes for his mother. Lepis wouldn't want him to wallow, but once again he cannot see past the pain of growth long enough to actually get taller. His once proud, if mildly paranoid, head hangs low to the ground. His once vibrant and kingly wings now hang dully and unkempt at his sides.

Elio hardly has pride, and he hates himself with each passing day, wondering how much more of his name he can drag through the mud. He hardly takes a second to recognize his unconditional love is mutual, that those that see him at his worst only wish to lend a hand a little compassion. It's simply unfathomable, a way out of the abyss he's dug himself into. There's hardly a glimpse of sun and no green to keep himself fed: he's dying.

"Nash?" Elio says on a gasp, lifting his lowered head to find not a boy but a creature on the cusp of a man, handsome and youthful. He draws his wings tight to his sides and shakes out his painfully tangled mane. Shame chokes him.

What is there to say?

"I'm sorry."

@[Nashua]