[mature] here we are in the heart of the darkness; Briseis

[Briseis]

little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep,
little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories,
little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece

She leans into the touch that he lays against her cheek, her lids closing over her tear-filled eyes. She craved his touch so deeply that even in the midst of her heartache, her body cannot help but to respond to the feel of his lips against her skin. The sigh that shudders from her lungs trembles with the last remnants of her hurt and anguish, the sudden swelling of emotion slowly beginning to ease away. She was still not accustomed to baring her feelings so openly; she has always been so quiet and reserved, but so many events have transpired in the recent months that has created surging waves in her once calm soul, until not even she was strong enough to keep them at bay.

He withdraws, and although it is tempting to follow, to reclaim some sort of contact, she refrains. Her cheeks are still damp from tears, and though her eyes still reflect every fragment of hurt that remains, she has managed to regain her composure. Enough to listen to him quietly, though she can see that he struggles to put his thoughts into words. But when his explanation comes, faltering and unsure, her mind slowly begins to place together the pieces of the broken puzzle, and when she does, she can feel her heart drop.

“Ether,” she doesn’t think she has ever felt sorrow quite like this, to realize that her own inability to explain things properly had been what led them to this; to know that he has spent all this time thinking he was a mistake to her. That he had been the monster she had met in the forest. She remembers everything she had said to him with such painful clarity, her own voice ringing in her ears, and now, she understands where she had gone wrong. She had essentially driven him away from her with every word she had uttered, and it is a wonder that he had even come back at all.

Her own mind is racing with so many things she wants to say, and yet she can’t seem to form them into coherent words. Instead, she moves forward, and she presses so closely into him as though she could convey what she felt through physical contact alone. With her delicate chest against his, and her heart thudding against his skin — as though every beat of it was trying to tell him, to explain to him the things she doesn’t know how to say — she finally says in her hushed voice, “Everything about that night — about you — was perfect.” Her black lips caress against his neck, the memories of that night once more finding their way to the forefront of her mind, as they so often did. “Never think that I didn’t want you.” The fact that he had ever thought otherwise was nearly incomprehensible; she knows he had felt everything that she had felt, but her own unskilled way of speaking had completely unraveled everything they had started to build. “I still want you. I’m...I’m yours,” It is said in almost disbelief, and complete sincerity all at once. Disbelief because she never thought it to be possible for her unusual heart to fit so perfectly with someone else, and yet somehow even in the middle of such tribulation, being with him is the closest she has come to feeling peace. “I could never be anyone else’s. Not after what I felt with you.”

BRISEIS

underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside,
I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind