05-07-2023, 11:29 PM
who could ever leave me, darling,
but who could stay?
but who could stay?
She doesn’t know what it means, being tired of fighting with him.
She thinks it feels a little bit like failure, like some integral part of herself was suddenly malfunctioning, when she finds that the only thing his anger inspires in her is apathy.
She had never been the type to give up before—had never let her heart grow cold if even a flicker of love still existed. But standing before him right now, with his sharpened words clearly meant to maim, she is not sure where the emptiness in her chest comes from, why his words have nothing to bruise. She does not know if after years and years of him puncturing holes her well of love for him finally ran dry, or if it is just the darkness swallowing that remaining ember whole and extinguishing it.
Her pitch-dark eyes meet his flint-like own, and she wonders if maybe she just struck herself hard enough against him if the fire would reignite.
“Now if only you could manage to grow a heart,” she answers him in a voice much more similar to what he would have been accustomed to, coming from her—soft, with notes of melancholy, a whisper of sorrow ghosting across her face. Somewhere behind the shadows the girl that once loved him is still there, patiently waiting for any kind of sign that she did not have it all wrong.
There is a moment where it almost seems as though she is going to let him force her to shoulder the blame (for what, she still isn’t sure). Last time, he says, and she reaches again for that gap in her memory, reaching for something, anything to shed light on what he is referring to, and she is met with only a frustrating emptiness.
This frustration, amplified further by the shadows that now bled from her skin, shifting like smoke, finally pushes her over the edge she was so precariously balanced on.
“I have no memory of what you’re speaking of, Ashhal, but clearly you do. Perhaps you want to enlighten me, or perhaps I can just find out for myself,” the last word falls sharp and heavy from her tongue, and before she can register what she is doing she reaches for his emotions. But she does not just look for them, because it is not enough, she decides, for her to just know what he is feeling.
She wants to be in control of what he is feeling.
She drains away the anger and the hurt, weeding out all the negative emotions until she finds the barest trace of love left for her, and she latches onto it. She has never purposely used her empathy to force emotion onto someone—and certainly has never used it to make them love her, but she does it now. She takes his love and amplifies it, until that is all he can feel. Burning and warm and bright, she lets him be consumed with love and contentment and peace, while her own anger licks like a flame against her ribs. She realizes she is still unsatisfied with him feeling only his own love, and so she adds her own.
She revives everything she had ever felt for him and she plants it alongside his own emotions—the exhilaration and lust, the longing and hope, and the aching love that he never let her show him. She lets him feel what it’s like when love finds its match, when two halves make a whole, and feel what it might have been like had their paths been different.
When she takes it away, it is not a slow bleed; she does not ease it away, letting it gently diffuse.
She cuts it off entirely, like a candle being blown out in the wind.
The anger and bitterness rush back to him like a flood, filling up the empty space the ghost of love had left behind.
“I loved you, you impossible fool,” she says in a voice that is oddly steady despite the way she trembles and her skin seems to hum with an unnamable electricity, not realizing that the darkness is already rising around her like a shield in preparation for his possible retaliation, “and that is something that cannot be undone or erased.”
She thinks it feels a little bit like failure, like some integral part of herself was suddenly malfunctioning, when she finds that the only thing his anger inspires in her is apathy.
She had never been the type to give up before—had never let her heart grow cold if even a flicker of love still existed. But standing before him right now, with his sharpened words clearly meant to maim, she is not sure where the emptiness in her chest comes from, why his words have nothing to bruise. She does not know if after years and years of him puncturing holes her well of love for him finally ran dry, or if it is just the darkness swallowing that remaining ember whole and extinguishing it.
Her pitch-dark eyes meet his flint-like own, and she wonders if maybe she just struck herself hard enough against him if the fire would reignite.
“Now if only you could manage to grow a heart,” she answers him in a voice much more similar to what he would have been accustomed to, coming from her—soft, with notes of melancholy, a whisper of sorrow ghosting across her face. Somewhere behind the shadows the girl that once loved him is still there, patiently waiting for any kind of sign that she did not have it all wrong.
There is a moment where it almost seems as though she is going to let him force her to shoulder the blame (for what, she still isn’t sure). Last time, he says, and she reaches again for that gap in her memory, reaching for something, anything to shed light on what he is referring to, and she is met with only a frustrating emptiness.
This frustration, amplified further by the shadows that now bled from her skin, shifting like smoke, finally pushes her over the edge she was so precariously balanced on.
“I have no memory of what you’re speaking of, Ashhal, but clearly you do. Perhaps you want to enlighten me, or perhaps I can just find out for myself,” the last word falls sharp and heavy from her tongue, and before she can register what she is doing she reaches for his emotions. But she does not just look for them, because it is not enough, she decides, for her to just know what he is feeling.
She wants to be in control of what he is feeling.
She drains away the anger and the hurt, weeding out all the negative emotions until she finds the barest trace of love left for her, and she latches onto it. She has never purposely used her empathy to force emotion onto someone—and certainly has never used it to make them love her, but she does it now. She takes his love and amplifies it, until that is all he can feel. Burning and warm and bright, she lets him be consumed with love and contentment and peace, while her own anger licks like a flame against her ribs. She realizes she is still unsatisfied with him feeling only his own love, and so she adds her own.
She revives everything she had ever felt for him and she plants it alongside his own emotions—the exhilaration and lust, the longing and hope, and the aching love that he never let her show him. She lets him feel what it’s like when love finds its match, when two halves make a whole, and feel what it might have been like had their paths been different.
When she takes it away, it is not a slow bleed; she does not ease it away, letting it gently diffuse.
She cuts it off entirely, like a candle being blown out in the wind.
The anger and bitterness rush back to him like a flood, filling up the empty space the ghost of love had left behind.
“I loved you, you impossible fool,” she says in a voice that is oddly steady despite the way she trembles and her skin seems to hum with an unnamable electricity, not realizing that the darkness is already rising around her like a shield in preparation for his possible retaliation, “and that is something that cannot be undone or erased.”
Ryatah
@Ashhal