(Her voice is quiet, but he doesn't think he's ever heard something echo quite so loud.)
She talks to you still. Tells you things, everything, just the way she used to- how her blue nail polish is chipping, and of the hole in her favorite sweater, and that she's just gotten this new book that is fantastic, really- but all you can hear is her voice. It drowns out the syllables and sounds that make up the words coming out of her mouth and yes that is possible. Because her voice speaks other things, things she doesn't tell you and never will. All the dips and pauses and inflections tell you of her love and loss, and all the things she never got to see or do or feel. All of the people she never got the chance to love or would never love again. And she would've-had-loved fiercely, you think.
But that's ruined now. The War-because it's capitalized in your head, marked on a box filled with that specific pain and shoved to the back of your mind-The War has taken all of that from her and she won't. She can't.
You wonder if she even knows.
And it hits you, just then, watching her mouth form words that don't match up to what she's saying, that you were a part of that. You were one of them, once, one the people she'd loved and one of those she couldn't ever love like that again. She would've loved you fiercely, with no inhibitions and no fear, and she can't now because The War has taken that piece of her, ripped it from her chest and replaced it with it's own special brand of emptiness.
You know this. You see it, sitting there and listening to what she says and what she speaks, because this is what has become of you, too.
(They sit side by side, two people who were once lions and loved like it, and pretend that they are whole.)
A/N I am so sorry, I realize this is crap and ugh, I'm so tired and its one in the morning and I have so many feels right now its not even okay.
