02-10-2024, 09:38 PM
selaphiel—
Does it hurt?
He pauses, but he does not look up.
Once, someone had asked him something similar. Someone had looked at him like he’d mattered and asked him if it was cold and he had answered the only way he’d known how: it’s not cold if it’s all you’ve ever known.
Does it hurt?
He exhales a shuddering breath and turns his head, lifts that glacial gaze to the stranger’s face. He finds no accusation in the expression, there is no amused twist to the mouth. It is so plainly asked that it chases a twinge through the cage of his chest.
He turns to face the stranger, studying the slouch of the wings, the plaintive gaze.
He could lie, he knows. He could shake his head, conjure up a sad, slanted smile and say, ‘no, of course not’. But he blinks back at the stranger and finds that he has neither the urge nor the energy to pretend.
“Yes,” he says after a long beat of silence. And, though he is a pitiable thing, Selaphiel, it is not pity he’s after here. No, he wants only the relief of the truth. He has spent his whole life protecting those around him from the plain truth that every moment of his life has been painful in ways he cannot describe.
It doesn’t matter what the stranger’s asking because it all hurts. From the crevasses carved deep in his flesh to the understanding that death is not something he has ever been able to save anyone from to the way those deaths have haunted him.
And here, a reprieve.
Here, he closes his eyes and says again, “yes.”
And then, finally, he does smile. But it is something distant, something fashioned not from joy but from something else entirely. And he opens his eyes again, meets the stranger’s gaze and asks, “it all hurts, doesn’t it?”
He pauses, but he does not look up.
Once, someone had asked him something similar. Someone had looked at him like he’d mattered and asked him if it was cold and he had answered the only way he’d known how: it’s not cold if it’s all you’ve ever known.
Does it hurt?
He exhales a shuddering breath and turns his head, lifts that glacial gaze to the stranger’s face. He finds no accusation in the expression, there is no amused twist to the mouth. It is so plainly asked that it chases a twinge through the cage of his chest.
He turns to face the stranger, studying the slouch of the wings, the plaintive gaze.
He could lie, he knows. He could shake his head, conjure up a sad, slanted smile and say, ‘no, of course not’. But he blinks back at the stranger and finds that he has neither the urge nor the energy to pretend.
“Yes,” he says after a long beat of silence. And, though he is a pitiable thing, Selaphiel, it is not pity he’s after here. No, he wants only the relief of the truth. He has spent his whole life protecting those around him from the plain truth that every moment of his life has been painful in ways he cannot describe.
It doesn’t matter what the stranger’s asking because it all hurts. From the crevasses carved deep in his flesh to the understanding that death is not something he has ever been able to save anyone from to the way those deaths have haunted him.
And here, a reprieve.
Here, he closes his eyes and says again, “yes.”
And then, finally, he does smile. But it is something distant, something fashioned not from joy but from something else entirely. And he opens his eyes again, meets the stranger’s gaze and asks, “it all hurts, doesn’t it?”
these days i don’t pray when i close my eyes,
i just bite my tongue a bit harder—
