<i>baruch attah adonai</i> - barret

[Barret]

I love you. Don't you mind, don't you mind? There are lines that connect them, even if neither of them realize; they are two flies with wings caught in intricate silk webbing, and there was a time in both of their lives where if one moved, the other felt the vibrations – even if they never knew. He feels them now, the thrumming of bodies against ropes, the pulse of her presence long before he looks and sees her standing in the sunlight. ‘You are lost,’ she says, with a curl in her tongue that reminds him of Ciel and sends a pang of regret that rings through his heart (an ache that he had thought buried under the weight of all his newer losses). Their accents are not the same, but it has been years since he has noted anything similar enough to stir her memory. ‘You are lost,’ he thinks, and he wonders then if there has ever existed a moment that he has not been. Some claimed him a restless adventurer, and others a hopeless philanderer, but lost is so much simpler. Lost is so much more true. “We all are, aren’t we?” he says, and somehow that crooked flicker of a smile will still find his lips – somehow, even if the last thing he is thinking of is smiling, even if it’s been so long and far in between that he has thought he’s forgotten how. Somehow, it’s there, and for a fraction of a second he won’t look ruined, like a relic reconstructed, as though the seams along his edges are not torn open; sutures broken, and innards spilled out. But only for a fraction of a second. After, his sad, worn eyes will find hers, and they’ll spill his secrets like he’s spilled ruin. “I’m looking for someone,” he will tell her then, because he is always looking for her, because he will never stop looking, not truly. There are words then that will fall against his lips, but he’ll swallow them down before they smuggle through the gaps between his teeth. He doesn’t tell her who. He doesn’t tell her that he’s always looking, or that he sees her face on every horizon, and just before every bend he turns. He doesn’t tell her that he will look until he dies, and then after. He doesn’t tell her that he has crossed worlds before to find Margaery. He swallows it all, and it feels like glass inside him. The memory of her bleeds him dry. The memory of her is a plague that eats him alive from the inside out. barret ---