01-24-2025, 01:56 AM
If the words sank in, they were shrapnel ricocheting inside a steel drum, never finding an exit while memories clung to the edges of his awareness like smoke, impossible to catch and choking him all the same. He squeezed his eyes shut, hard enough to hurt, but the images didn’t fade. They never did.
He swallowed against the rising bile in his throat, knowing that being sick wouldn’t purge it, just like drinking hadn’t numbed it, and fighting hadn’t silenced it. Pretending to move on failed. And somewhere, buried beneath the anger and exhaustion and pain, was the certainty that even death wouldn’t bring peace. His luck, there’d be an afterlife: an eternity to sit with his failures, his ghosts, and the faces he couldn’t save. Maybe even hell, where he’d finally get what was deserved.
But there was a whisper—faint, buried under all the noise, but still there. A reminder that he wanted to live... with her. It was a hollow kind of hope, more like a reflex than a conviction, a hopeless wish, thin and unreachable, but it was enough... it was enough. That whisper gave voice to the pleading question he asked Natalie, and her answer felt worlds away. He had as much hope as grasping another planet than succeeding, but after a long time, quiet began to settle. His breathing, jagged and raw, started to even out, though it still rasped in the quiet night.
Finally, he reached out, his hand practically numb as it slipped into hers.
He swallowed against the rising bile in his throat, knowing that being sick wouldn’t purge it, just like drinking hadn’t numbed it, and fighting hadn’t silenced it. Pretending to move on failed. And somewhere, buried beneath the anger and exhaustion and pain, was the certainty that even death wouldn’t bring peace. His luck, there’d be an afterlife: an eternity to sit with his failures, his ghosts, and the faces he couldn’t save. Maybe even hell, where he’d finally get what was deserved.
But there was a whisper—faint, buried under all the noise, but still there. A reminder that he wanted to live... with her. It was a hollow kind of hope, more like a reflex than a conviction, a hopeless wish, thin and unreachable, but it was enough... it was enough. That whisper gave voice to the pleading question he asked Natalie, and her answer felt worlds away. He had as much hope as grasping another planet than succeeding, but after a long time, quiet began to settle. His breathing, jagged and raw, started to even out, though it still rasped in the quiet night.
Finally, he reached out, his hand practically numb as it slipped into hers.
Only darkness shows you the light.