Work Text:
We are adrift. Floating in the In-Between. You desperately want to latch onto something that’ll keep you from constantly moving while being still. I have no wings but I feel like I can fly higher than you. I feel so less than you.
You told me once that you’ve always lived in between everything. In between life and death, defiance and allegiance, rules and paradox. A deity, you are, vile and innocent in one shape. You have a heart but cruel hands. You want me to stay, to keep you still and warm, but I fade away faster than the light of a candle.
I lost my family. I lost the only girl who ever taught me that love is a quintessential state of the human mind, both complete and partial riddance of enmity, the ability to appreciate all of creation. When I have gained my new family, as I deny to say so, there is a sense of completeness in me. A love founded by my own loneliness, by my own tendency to feel that it is always my duty to make sure everyone is safe.
There is a family in my home and the rooms don’t feel cold anymore, not like this, where I am in the void. Absolutely hard to maintain, like children who never grew up, children who never got to be children, children who were just themselves. Where they can be themselves.
Somehow, I never got to tell them this, I don’t intend to either. You. You never got to say goodbye either, didn’t you? You can live for long but can only find love as short as you say. I can still see you in this void. Your wings are useless. They weigh you down rather than pulling you up. Your legs are up and your head is moving down; you’re wailing, I can hear you, I’m sorry.
My head is wrapped with nothing but a tight force and I can do so much to pity you for not keeping yourself afloat. I want to go to you and hold your hand and if it’s not enough, at least I want to hug you until you are safe. You don’t have to have the courage to hug back. I am too numb to be warm but I can promise you that I will keep you in constant stillness until you can manage to do that on your own.
When I am gone forever, or when you don’t need me anymore, you have my handkerchief. You can cry. I’ve cried a lot but am still too numb to melt the ice and bring myself to tears. I learned to love because of my family and learned to make it eager when I am with you. If I am my own candle then they are the fire ignited in me and you are the warmth that keeps the fire burning.
And so I hold you, because why not, because what if this is the only time I’ll ever do so without hurting myself, because you are warm but not scorching. We are warm. Still adrift, though. There are two souls together in the void, like twin asteroids, like astronauts without their gears, like flesh without its life.
This is your dream, I guess. A painless death. A beautiful ending. Death is not always vile. It is not an aversion to all things wonderful in the creation of the universe. Death is the denouement of a stage play, the relief of an aftermath; the bridge to a new beginning.
If I am not part of your beginning, that’s fine. All that matters to me is that you have what you’ve been wishing for, and maybe you get to meet people who will see the angel and devil in you but still have means of loving you. They see your innocence and indolence yet they want you for you, not for what dauntlessness you’ve shown them. They will love you for the times you’re down on the ground and when you’re so high up.
We’ll keep floating. We’re almost there. No need to rush the journey.