He had not wanted the memories to come back, not exactly, but they had given him something. It had been worse, when they had been distant, haunting things, feelings of unease and despair that clamored inside of him, but when he turned himself fully toward them they skittered away. It had been a strange, purgatorial time, as he moved across the land that was familiar and not-familiar at once, with reactions to things he didn’t understand.
(Like the burn of his own orange eyes when he peered upon his reflection. Looking at them and thinking those goddamn eyes without knowing why.)
He remembers it all, now, or he thinks he does – certainly the greatest hits of his sins, the memory of Craft dying, his own eyes rolling on the sand, Cancer leaving him for another, leaving Sleaze, that boy, that terribly young boy…
He wallows too long in the thoughts of memory and has to fight to draw himself from it, his past is a whirlpool that would happily drawn him down if he allow it. He cannot. He must keep whistling past this particular graveyard, he must focus on her, because she is what matters right now.
“Oh,” he says softly, and he welcomes her closeness, relishes it. His orange eyes flutter close to more fully savor this, the feel of her body and the scent of her, and his lips trail against her, running over the tense muscles.
“You deserve all the peace in the world,” he says, then, against her skin, “you’ve shown me more peace than I knew existed. I wish I could do the same for you.”
But he does not come with peace, does he? He comes with sin and with heartbreak, with all those stupid memories piled up and up and up, and of course he cannot bring the peace she deserves, of course he can’t.
@[Agetta]