Title:
Goodbye
Author: Pheo
Summary: Remus tells Tonks
goodbye. Written for the January rt challenge at LiveJournal (prompt
1, photo of a winter beach).
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Crushing
cold waves licked the corner of each iris
And his words didn't
match his voice at all—
His hoarse baritone, the rumbling, dark
caress that once
Tickled her ear in the morning light
Even as
they fell asleep as the day began—
Now a soft, clipped murmur,
As if he'd taken a hatchet to his own chords,
Struck
swiftly—cleanly—severing all ties—
Rendering himself so
colorless,
Purposeful, but dull, deadened.
But when he shifts
and his shoulders sag,
And he trembles when her hand draws
near,
And he sighs so softly, like shifting sand,
And he turns,
the flicker of the deep fathoms she'd seen a million times—
Across
the table, beneath the sheets—
Barely visible before his feet
shuffle unfamiliarly towards the threshold,
She knows he doesn't
mean a word—
Because he's drowning—drowning—and she—
She
is, too.