"Say something, I'm giving up on you.
I'll be the one, if you want me to.
Anywhere, I would've followed you.
Say something, I'm giving up on you."
Say Something by A Great Big World
He sets his arrow into the nocking point in his bow.
She does the same.
Neither of them speak and yet both are muffled, as if a heavy fog has descended upon them and they can't make out anything except the bow of the other.
The wood makes soft yet sharp groaning, irregular noises as their elbows draw back at the same time from years of practice. It is habitual. The two no longer notice the whisper of the bows' limbs as they bend, as the tension grows and the bowstring becomes taut.
His eyes flit from their prey to her face, calculating it as her brow furrows in cold concentration. Distant. But he doesn't fail to release the arrow at the same time she does, as always in perfect synchronization, as if they were one and the same. Fresh and brisk, the whizzing of the wood and the stone of the arrowhead through the air leaves the silence hanging thick, with too strong of a presence. The string leaves its memory on his fingertips, sore from the pressure, and the fletching of the feather cuts his cheekbone as it begins to spin in midair.
A perfect gash on the skin of his face emerges in red.
She doesn't even notice as she reaches behind her to pull out another arrow from her quiver.
His eyes sting, a dry sort of sting, just like his cheek pulses with a hint of pain. By now he knows more of pain than he should. He ignores it easily, furthermore distracted by her absence of mind. It is unremitting and everlasting. As far as the man can tell, it will come to have no end, not for him.
Though forever he wishes it would. He blinks and mechanically follows her lead.
She has been hollowed out, she blindly continues to hollow herself out, and he is caught in the middle of it, receiving all the worst blows.
The tips of the arrows leave their quivers humming with vibrations, one slung across a back rippled with cords of muscle from strenuous labor and one slung across a back that is weary with the remembrance of hunger.
The strings of their bows tighten again and his eyes roam over her features again and what they see is dull and lifeless, yet dull and lifeless for him, solely in his presence. The man digs his sharp canine tooth into his lower lip to keep from yelling at her in that moment, from asking her why, from asking her how she manages to do it and how she can bear to do it and how she can slip by without being reprimanded for it, each and every time. It.
It.
She steals from him.
It is what she is stealing. It is his caution, his compassion, his morality, his sanity, his love, and she pilfers it directly out from the palms of his hands and he lets her do it. Slowly but surely, effortlessly but achingly, absent minded and yet somehow still intentionally. He would like to tell himself that he doesn't know why he allows this of her, that he doesn't know why he can't refuse, tuck his hands behind his back for once and cut her off, cut it off, cut it off with her. But then every time he sees that flash in her eyes, that quirk of her lips, pulling up just enough in the corners, a light is reignited inside him. She refills him with half-hearted, depressed hope and then proceeds to drain him back out, but every time she replaces the things inside him, the bobbles and trinkets, they are always just ever so slightly off. Wrong. Ever so slightly more damaged than they were the time before.
And in that way she reduces him. She does him a disservice.
But the damaged hope is still better to look at than the damaged heart.
The man's jaw flexes its muscle and he lets the arrow fly sooner than their routine calls for. Anger, built up from past minutes and past days and past months, comes to the surface and he can't meet her eyes as her bow lowers slightly, as she finally pays him a fraction of her attention though the two used to be closer than anyone, as she finally cares about what is wrong. And simply because his actions didn't match hers perfectly. He rubs his chin, coarse from the stubble that has grown there since when he shaved earlier that morning in his grubby bathroom, and he glares at the oak tree in the distance, the one that is covered in lush moss, ivy climbing up its rugged bark and twisting itself around its trunk.
"I can't do this anymore," he mumbles, half to himself, half hoping she wouldn't hear him, half wishing he didn't have to say it.
Her bow is still poised in the direction of the deer, who fled through the woods mere seconds ago with twigs crunching beneath their hooves and leaves rustling as the graceful creatures bounded away from the humans with the weapons.
Between the soot from the mines that clouds his sight and stains his pores black, and the poisonous mist that burns her skin when it comes in contact, and the arrows that fly in unknown directions, it all goes over his head. He stumbles and falls. And she turns around and around again, looking for someone who isn't and was never there. He has known this ever since the ripe berries, with their dull gloss, rolled between her fingers and threatened to end her life and take her away at the same time; two completely different things.
Where they are, deep breaths don't work to calm him down and ebb the pain.
She is nothing but oblivious to him, and that is the worst pain he could ever feel.
He can't get to her.
And in all this fog between the two, with all the distance and the blankness, he has lost who he is and he has forgotten who she used to be. Everything is crumbling apart in front of his eyes; Her mind, their bond, his love, her will, his will, their will for each other. Through all this, only now has he realized once and for all that he can't continue on feeling so insignificant to her despite his loyalty, despite the fact that he would have followed her anywhere had she given the word. Now he knows that he can't. Now he knows that she won't let him follow. Now he knows that she won't even let herself lead. Despite his love, the love that sits in the pit of his stomach unpleasantly, uncomfortable and expiring, he still doesn't know what she wants. He knows that even she, herself, doesn't know what she wants, with her dark-haired braid and her golden pin, shining in the sun like a beacon.
He puts a hand on her bow and steers it away and down towards the dirt, taking her face in his wind-burned hands.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you," he whispers before placing his lips gently on hers one last time. He looks into her grey eyes, stormy and infinite, and brushes his calloused thumb against the smooth skin of her cheek. "I'm giving up on you."
For the last time, the man swallows his pride and says goodbye to the one that he loves.