08-30-2021, 01:16 PM
kensley
i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
Despite all of the ways he has changed, at the heart of it, he is still the same.
He is still Kensley.
(And who is Kensley? Or, rather, what is Kensley?
A coward, certainly. Afraid and so dreadfully tired, too.
Kind, perhaps. Steadfast. Maybe these are the things she recognizes.
Maybe this is how she knows him, remembers him.
Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with his skin or his face but with the things underneath.)
She speaks, finally, and his expression softens (or does it simply collapse?) around a crooked smile at the sound of her voice. He knows that she would not have always sounded like this. As a child, the voice would have been different, but it doesn’t matter. It is a gift now, just as it would have been a gift then.
But he shakes his head, the long, dark forelock curling around the deep black eye. He is so terribly forgettable, he wants to argue but doesn’t. Nothing at all worth remembering. But something terrific had happened that day, when she had returned to him all of the things he had been so desperately hiding from.
That was worth remembering.
At her question, he follows her gaze down to his chest, as if he might see through it to the cursed muscle inside that insists, again, again, again. And when he meets her gaze again, there is such terrible melancholy in those dark eyes.
“I forgot how painful a thing it is to be alive,” he admits and then smiles again, though it is rueful at its edges. He rolls his shoulders then, because it was a painful thing to be dead, too.
“You found your voice,” he says, such an obvious thing to point out, but he has not forgotten the way she’d been forced to communicate the first time they’d met. Through touch, through memories. “I trust you’ve put it to good use.”
He is still Kensley.
(And who is Kensley? Or, rather, what is Kensley?
A coward, certainly. Afraid and so dreadfully tired, too.
Kind, perhaps. Steadfast. Maybe these are the things she recognizes.
Maybe this is how she knows him, remembers him.
Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with his skin or his face but with the things underneath.)
She speaks, finally, and his expression softens (or does it simply collapse?) around a crooked smile at the sound of her voice. He knows that she would not have always sounded like this. As a child, the voice would have been different, but it doesn’t matter. It is a gift now, just as it would have been a gift then.
But he shakes his head, the long, dark forelock curling around the deep black eye. He is so terribly forgettable, he wants to argue but doesn’t. Nothing at all worth remembering. But something terrific had happened that day, when she had returned to him all of the things he had been so desperately hiding from.
That was worth remembering.
At her question, he follows her gaze down to his chest, as if he might see through it to the cursed muscle inside that insists, again, again, again. And when he meets her gaze again, there is such terrible melancholy in those dark eyes.
“I forgot how painful a thing it is to be alive,” he admits and then smiles again, though it is rueful at its edges. He rolls his shoulders then, because it was a painful thing to be dead, too.
“You found your voice,” he says, such an obvious thing to point out, but he has not forgotten the way she’d been forced to communicate the first time they’d met. Through touch, through memories. “I trust you’ve put it to good use.”
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything
@Aela