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Breathing was getting increasingly more difficult under Adam’s eyes shining with absolute dispair and impotence under the skinny shaft of illumination that still braved the walls of your enclosure. There was a dull but throbbing ache in both your heart and on your left side. One emotional and one physical, you could still identify.
Despite you not regretting the past in the slightest, Adam had warned you this could happen.
‘I carry death, my shadow brings misfortune and sorrow to anyone I love’ he had said back when you opened up your heart for him to freely take it since it was already his. Back then, you had dismissed it, thinking love was strong enough to fend off the darkness.
And you had been right, he wasn’t the one carrying evil behind him. It had been mankind.
Mankind who didn’t see him as one of his own, who looked at him and screamed in terror when they saw him instead of trying to understand the gentleness and kindness of his gaze the same way you had.
Mankind which had hunted him down under the nonsensical excuse of him being a danger.
They who had come in the cold early morning, knockind down your world and forcing you both to run away into the forest.
They who, when you were within reach, did not doubt to violently smash your bones in an effort to force Adam to slow down.
They who only seemed to put a pause to the chase when rain began to downpour, your tracks turning to mud and the water curtain giving you a chance to seek shelter in a burrowed cave.
Despite it, you couldn’t exactly blame mankind for the sudden mud that flooded the cave entrance, its levels rising until both your chests felt cold as the thick substance filled the small space, advancing agonizing milimeter after milimeter with slow but certain speed.
You were going to die. And it seemed Adam knew so as well.
“It… It’s lovely here” you spoke with barely a thread of voice, your right hand tracing the streak of an unknown mineral drawing faint rivers in the rocky walls.
“Shh, shh… Keep your air, my love” Adam begged, pressing his forehead to your own since his hands were busy trying to keep your upper body as up into the oxygen pocket as possible while not furthering your injuries.
You gave him a soft smile, genuine since both the cold from the escalating prison of mud and the waning oxygen made you unable to feel pain anymore. The soft, affectionate kiss you placed on Adam’s lips hopefully conveying everything you wouldn’t be able to say anymore.
“I think I will be going to sleep” you admitted, eliciting a choked sob from your gentle lover
“I failed you… I’m sorry” Adam mumbled against your lips.
You were quick to shake your head smilingly, making use of your dying sense of pain to accomodate your bodies in the narrow space to your liking. If you weren’t entrapted by the earthy concoction, it could have very well been one of the many cuddles you had lovingly shared during a rainy afternoon.
“You took care of me to my last breath… Like you promised” you noted.
“I will keep doing it. i will not leave you alone” Adam assured, even his powerful voice now reduced to a murmur as the oxygen became preciously scarce in the space between you.
“Will you sleep with me?” you asked with shallower breaths.
“It is all I want” he replied earnestly.
One last kiss was shared in the peaceful wait for death’s merciful arrival before the air became empty of its life-sustaining element. Even the faint crack where the thin shaft of light had come through earlier was snuffed almost as if it had done so out of respect for the love it had witnessed.
For both lovers had passed under the sweet sleep of hypoxia. Even if Victor Frankenstein had planned his creation to regenerate like a bonfire fed by a never-ending stash of wood. But even fire could not burn without oxygen.
Adam had seemed to realise this with the very last spark of consciousness his brain gifted him, leaning onto the body of his beloved, deciding that if they were to sleep forever, any distance between them was too much to bear just as it had been in bed.
Cuddled against each other, you waited for eternity to catch up to the feeling between you both.