Oh, Ms Believer
He holds her as the tears drip down her skin, sliding across old scars as sharp as the nails that put them there.
He holds her as she shakes and screams and melts down to the floor, as the blood seeps through the walls and her skin turns to ice and snow and slowly flakes away.
He holds her, tightly wrapped in his arms, as she disappears and becomes nothing. As the lights of Artemisia's streets flicker off and plunges the city into darkness, as the rest of the palace guards make their rounds in the endless hallways, he never lets go. It doesn't matter at these times that he is not outside her door doing his job- right now, during these nights, all he needs to do is be there for his Winter.
As the hours tick by and the panic refuses to subside, as the sticky red walls flood the room with an invisible heat that just presses and presses in until there's nothing between it and her except Jacin, the only one saving her from its touch. Still, it reaches her feet, and she has to resist the urge to wrap her legs around his waist to escape it. Instead, she curls deeper into his chest, icy fingers grasping the fabric of his jacket even though she knows that eventually, one by one, they will all drop off and roll into the seeping sludge surrounding them as they always must do.
He holds her like she is the only human left on this godforsaken excuse for a planet, like nobody could ever dare to take them away from each other. Like she's still there, will always be there, is not currently shattering into a million pieces when really, she is.
She knows this, and yet she holds him, determined to get through this latest hallucination that she knows is in her deranged, twisted mind. She learned this truth a long time ago, at the same time that she realized that it didn't matter. It was still real- her shoulders were still shaking, her nose and feet were still running, the tears were still falling.
He holds her and holds her and holds her until she hears, through the blood and the snow and the ice, the sounds of their song, one she always knows the words to. They are her words, the ones she lives by, and he tells them to her in that deep, soft voice of his that keeps her grounded in his arms like a single, fragile piece of string against the wind of a blizzard.
Oh, Ms. Believer, he sings, my pretty sleeper,
Your twisted mind is like snow on the road
Your shaking shoulders prove that it's colder
Inside your head than the winter of dead…
As the world ends around them, he is there, one hand in her hair and supporting her weeping face against his chest, the other curled around her trembling waist to keep her next to him.
I will tell you I love you,
But the muffs on your ears will cater your fears
My nose and feet are running as we start
To travel through snow
Together we go
Together we go
We get colder
As we grow older
We will walk
So much slower
He steps slowly, as if they are dancing to the silent rhythm of the song, and she follows, letting her breath freeze and shatter in the air, sprinkling invisible crystals in his hair that he doesn't try to shake off.
Oh, Ms. Believer, my pretty weeper
Your twisted thoughts are like snow on the rooftops
Please, take my hand, we're in foreign land
As we travel through snow
Together we go
Together we go
We get colder
As we grow older
We will walk
So much slower
And he holds her, as the blood splatters his uniform and her nightgown, as the ice shards pierce his skin, as the tears freeze on her cheeks, tracking the shape of her scars, as the lights dim and the scarlet walls keep closing in faster and faster until she can almost touch them...until the snow melts and seeps into the floor and the wallpaper recedes back to its normal position as clean as a fresh snowfall; until she collapses in his arms, breathless and exhausted, the night's horrors over for now.
Until he carries her to the bed and lays her down among the stark white sheets, letting her dark hair spill across the pillow, he holds her, as he always will.