Loss.
What is loss?
Well, according to the dictionary, loss can be described as the state of being deprived of or of being without something that one has had.
But does that definition even apply to him? To feel this deep, excruciating loss that he is feeling right now, he must have had her.
He never had her and now, he never will.
He wasted time and he knows it. He'd wasted time with the doppelgänger, he'd wasted time with the originals, and he wasted all of his precious time without telling her. Without telling her the truth of how he really felt.
And now he blames himself for it. He shouldn't really, he's only here because he tried to help her. How fucking twisted is this world. He got to live whilst she got to die. He was only trying to help her.
Or maybe it's his mind that's fucked up? He should be grateful that he got to live right? He should be revelling in it even. He gets to live.
But living right now doesn't measure up to the way he could be living if she was here.
I'd rather have died with you, than live in hell without you, for all of eternity.
Sometimes he dreams of her and the way that she would say his name in that dulcet yet brave tone of hers. Her emerald eyes. Those eyes that conveyed every emotion that she ever felt. The way they shun with amusement when she laughed, the way they pierced into the coldest soul if she desired. The way they partook in a battle when being confronted with a challenge.
His soul is a chamber held tight by a padlock, chains and all kinds of bonding agent and she was the only one who had managed to get through, whether by intended to or not, he doesn't know, but what he does know is that she did.
Put it this way; if his mind is a constricted chamber, well then, her eyes were the keys that unlocked it.
He's being restrained by the cruel ways of life from seeing her beautiful olive skin, her petite body, and her heart-shaped lips. Whether they were soft he'll never know, but he could bet all of his money that they were soft and sweet.
He holds onto this image so carefully, painstakingly so, afraid that if he doesn't, he'll be punished with having no memory of her at all. And he could never risk that.
Oh how he misses her, more than he feels that he should.
He likes to think that she can still see him and that it could be like before, when she was on the other side and she'd watch everyone live their lives. Their short time on the other side was spent talking, reminiscing about their old lives, about his pain and her own.
He never used to understand how she could sacrifice herself so easily, but with time, she made him see, she made him understand.
She'd been there for him and him her.
They were like two sides of a coin; both different, yet indefinitely bonded by the same thing.
He misses her with every fibre of his being to the extent that the thought of swapping places with her, just so he wouldn't feel this way passes through his mind.
But then he reminds himself that he would rather feel this pain, than feel nothing at all.
An infinity of bourbon and fresh blood, or even switching off his emotions could never compensate or fill the void that is within him.
The minute it happened, the moment that he disappeared from the dead and appeared among the living, he was distraught and anxious. But he still tried to hold it together.
The moment that undid him was when he realised that they wouldn't make it back; that she wouldn't make it back. They wouldn't appear like he did. He would be stuck here alone with nothing to look forward to.
Every day he visits the location where they left him, where she left him. He remembers exactly what she was wearing, exactly how she smelt, the way her eyes depicted the pain that she was going through. That was part of the reason that he came back, he saw the effort that she was going through to make things right again and he couldn't bear it, so when he went to prevent her from falling he wanted to make sure that she was okay. That his wide-eyed beauty was okay.
Look where that got him; without her in his life, living and breathing the same air.
At times he gets angry, because she knew that she was never going to live and she hadn't told him. She'd made the decision to leave the town, leave her life behind… leave him behind.
But then he'd remembered that she didn't know about the way he feels, because the coward in him never told her.
And he blames himself all over again.
Now, he's at the same spot where he lost them and he cries.
He sits on the moist ground on his knees, the dry autumn leaves crunching under his weight.
He unscrews a bottle of bourbon he snagged from the boarding house and pours the brown liquid into a clear tumbler. He gulps it down in one sip, the familiar burning sensation that he's become accustomed to fills his throat and he sighs.
He continues to drink as he waits for the sun to rise.
I miss you.
A beam of orange and yellow makes its way skywards as the day begins.
He pours what is left of the decanter filled with bourbon in his glass and raises it to the sky as if toasting and drinks it. He savours it this time, the smell and the sensation, the thrill.
Placing his tumbler beside him, he closes his eyes and thinks of her.
He places his fingers on the middle finger of his left hand where his daylight ring is located and takes a deep breath.
Slowly, yet surely he pulls the ring off of his finger and places it inside the empty tumbler beside him; the contact of glass and metal reverberates through his whole body.
Soon the burning sensation will engulf him and he will be with her.
In 5
4
3
2
1
"I'm coming" He breathed. "I'm coming for you"