i'm just here to fight the fire, plumeria

[kensley]

i took the poison praying you'd feel it, too i wrapped my neck and prayed that you'd feel the noose He had known in his heart that she was gone. That there was no way that she had weathered as many storms as he had – even more than he had – and come out on the other side. The relief that surges through him is otherworldly. It is absolutely crippling. It is matched only by the insurmountable grief that pollutes his bloodstream as she speaks his name and kisses his head and treats him with a kindness he no longer deserves. His beautiful mother. He has watched her suffer at the hands of his father, watched her smile with all of her brilliant patience when Jarris decided they were worth coming home to. And still, she has lost none of her infinite goodness. And he is so happy to see her that he cannot breathe around it. He wants to tell her that he’s missed her, too. But the words get dammed up in his throat and he gasps for air as everything in him splinters and breaks apart. He has not carried the truth long enough for it to have done any real damage other than weigh him down. He has moved slow beneath the unbearable gravity of it but he has deserved it. He has railed against himself, offered himself absolutely no mercy or reprieve. He has thought of nothing else but the fact that he had fought – they had both fought – as hard as he could and it had not been enough to save her. He’d failed both Keiran and their mother. He pays no mind to the tears that cut dirty rivers down his cheeks when she murmurs to him in that old familiar way, merely lays a cheek against her knee and fights for breath or composure. “Keiran,” he chokes out, the first time he’s said the name since the moments after it had happened or ended. When he’d touched his mouth to her temple and whispered it and felt his heart clench like a fist in the center of his chest when silence followed. “Keiran,” he coughs, “she’s gone.” shattered son of jarris and plumeria