"Did he suffer?"
When he looks back at her, tiny ash-grey china doll on the bed with her eyes as golden as the sun, he can see only darkness encompassing her features. Little hands, broken and chipped lie across her stomach, dried blood still crusting her nails. The same blood mats her hair, leaving bloody dust across the white pillow.
She hardly looks like Noah's dreams.
He plasters a smile on his face anyhow and comes to sit by her side. "Hmm?"
"You heard me, Adam." Quiet clouds the room, and for a moment he cannot see for the darkness clouding his vision. "Did he suffer in the end? When you found him?"
When the fog rises, he realizes that her hand is touching his. Tiny hands, cracked hands with the smoothest of skin.
"Did he suffer?" he echoes quietly. "Did he suffer." And this time, it is not a question, but a simple statement. It hammers him into the ground, his skull cracking in two and his eyes reliving, over and over as he stands above him, him with his ink-black hair and sad, sad eyes pooling with blood and his brother, His brother is screaming, Nea, Nea, get up, Nea and he feels like crying too, crying until his tears run dry and his blood sprints instead, hot and pulsing to be let free.
But he doesn't.
"No, Road, I don't believe he did."
Silence once again, permeating the air. One blink, two from the sun-gold eyes rimmed in heavy black and red.
When she pulls her hand from his, she leaves a smear as red as the blood in her hair.
Quick little New Year's drabble. :) Hopefully the first of many.
