The sun was sinking low beneath the horizon and the evening shadows stretched out, long and spooky tendrils of darkness amongst the final dying rays of sunlight.
There were no people in the streets anymore; people had not frequented these streets for years, the dead city losing its ability to host life years ago. A light blanket of rain had dampened the air, making it heavy like a fog. The dampness made the city all the more eerie as the light droplets drifted on the breeze.
Footsteps echoed loudly through the empty crumbling buildings, a rhythm continuous and even like a heartbeat pounding at ease.
But there was no ease in these steps; they were the weary trudge of defeat and heartbreak.
There was a pause in the steady footsteps as the feet that made them paused at the foot of a crumbling staircase, the flagstones chipped and worn – reduced to rubble – by an unseen force from years before.
There were memories here, powerful ones that hindered the trudgers advance. Eventually the echo began again crisp in the stagnant, oppressive air as they ascended the stairs.
The groaning of unused hinges broke the monotonous rhythm as she pushed open the heavy wooden door. The door was not seized shut as she had expected, for it had been opened quite a bit in recent days.
"I know why he comes here…" She whispered to herself as she continued into the building, her footsteps muffled now by the creaking wood of the church floor, "I even feel you in the air…" She crossed the threshold one hesitant step at a time, seeking a seat upon one of the few pews that had not crumbled into little more than firewood. It groaned as she sat, a lamentful sound, as if the lifeless wood too sought the return of something it had lost.
"How sad she would be to see this place now…" she whispered, eyes wandering around the church, its three sad walls, crumbling furnishings. The roof was filled with holes, those which once held significance could no longer be picked out from the rest.
"But… they're still here." She said, standing up and dragging her feet along, scraping the floorboards with the soles of her shoes, struggling to find the energy to even lift her feet. Though really energy had nothing to do with it, she could have slept for weeks on end and her body would still feel heavy and listless.
She knelt beside a bed of flowers, blooming as they always had, in the patch of earth exposed between the floorboards. Though the entire city remained as barren as in its hay-day, this one spot still bore the symbols of the love and care it had been nurtured with. She could almost still see the gentle fingertips still tending the delicate blossoms of life in the darkness, was it still thanks to her that they bloomed? That they lived on even in her absence…?
Could flowers feel loss? Would they eventually wither and die without her love as he had? Or would they continue to flourish in her memory, as he should? Or would they continue as she did, alive but not living, merely existing from a sense of some untold duty.
"I don't know if you're listening…" She began her voice a whisper, a ghost of a voice, "But… I wanted to talk to you." She stretched out a gloved hand, stroking the delicate yellow petals of the nearest flower.
"I still can't decide you know…" She continued in the silence, tilting her head so her raven black locks would slip from their place behind her ear, "whether or not it was worth it… worth you." She straightened from the flower bed, brushing the lock of wandering hair back behind her ear, silver droplet glinting in the rays of fading sun from above that broke through the crumbling roof in shafts, like spotlights from heaven focusing on the actors in a play.
"We won… but at what cost? Were the lives worth saving in the light of those lost?" Her body quivered with emotion as she restrained the urge to scream out her frustration.
"Destruction and chaos… it destroyed you, and now it is destroying him… destroying me."
A silver droplet would tumble from the down-turned face, shattering like glass and seeping into the parched wood beneath her feet.
It had been a slow process… unseen as a shadow in the night, creeping up to strike unawares. The joy of victory had been bittersweet, the light of hope darkened by the uncertain haze of loss. He'd never said anything, they didn't really talk much at all; words were too few to say on most topics, but the one that burdened them both was just too hard to remember.
They both missed that light, the shining ray that lit the darkness and brought them the will to go on. The optimism that fuelled their drive – now long gone – left only sadness in its wake. The fond memories were far too few to make the thoughts those of reminiscence and instead only dragged them deeper into the storm. They both knew how her presence lingered with them; those awkward moments of 'imagine what she'd say' or 'she would have wanted that' resulted only in an impenetrable silence and the end of whatever discussion they'd been having.
It started with mere silence; he would sit on his own staring out the window, a glass of untouched wine poured out in front of him. When she queried him he would shake his head, stand, and leave, mumbled words "I'm fine" falling emptily from his mouth. Then came the disappearances, he'd leave for days on end without a word. Upon his return the silence would begin again.
Now there was no life in his eyes, as if he were a shell whose will to live had taken flight. They argued from time to time when she confronted him…
"You wouldn't understand…" The woman quoted, her voice slightly bitter, "That's what he says… but what does he know…" She folded her arms, hugging them tightly against her chest as an uneven breath shuddered through her body.
"You were…" She began, a hand rising to her throat as she choked on the words, "my best friend." The hand now rested upon her lips as she dropped to her knees, legs spread angled either side of her, "Without you I feel alone, even when I'm surrounded by people… what is there I don't understand?"
The door jingled as it opened and he looked up from the drink he wasn't drinking, one sip had been too much as it was, it wasn't the drink he really wanted.
She entered then, a bag of groceries under one arm and two bottles held in the other free hand. She did the shopping every day at the same time, but it baffled him how she could take so long and return with so little.
She greeted him with a smile like she always did, and without a word went to the bar to unpack the goods she'd brought home.
"How was your day?" She would ask and he would reply with a rudimentary shrug, like he always did. Then she would sit opposite him, remaining silent for a few moments as he continued to stare at his glass, blue eyes cold and empty. Normally then she would ask him a question and he would answer her the same way he always did, before heading upstairs to wish the children goodnight. But tonight she did not ask, she silently sat opposite him, expression strangely unreadable.
The smallest of frowns crossed his face, her behaviour worryingly peculiar, she was normally the practical one but this expression was far too pensive.
"Is everything alright?" He asked his voice an emotionless monotone, fear preventing him from expressing how much he truly cared.
She looked up at him, and smiled again, one of her warmest smiles that he often thought she reserved for him alone, "I'm fine." She replied standing and heading over to the bar.
"Where did you have to go today?" She asked as she polished clean a glass from behind the bar, which he mildly remembered having already been propped on the clean side of the sink.
He shrugged in reply, not wanting to talk about it. He picked up his glass and swirled the contents around and around.
There was the clink of glass and a small sigh before she spoke again, "I wish you'd speak to me." She said, now standing beside him, cleaning rag still clutched in her hand.
"You wouldn't understand." He replied, standing up and placing his full glass on the sink, "I'm going to say goodnight to the kids."
He began his climb of the stairs, sparing a brief glance over his shoulder at her to wave an emotionless goodnight.
He did not notice the way her hands wrung at the cloth she held.
When she came upstairs and quietly cracked open the door he was fast asleep in his bed by the window, no peace in his expression even as he slept.
With only the creaking floorboards making any sound she crept across the room to her own bed where she removed her shoes and lay down to sleep. But she would sit there for well over an hour, staring at the blank wall. Eventually she lay down and reached beneath her pillow, withdrawing a tiny child's sketch on cheap yellowed paper.
Even this way she was immaculately beautiful, her features perfectly captured by a child's broken crayon; even the wings of white sprouting from her shoulders were closer to accuracy than fiction. The young girl they cared for had drawn this picture and given it to her as a gift, a strange act from one who could not possibly understand.
With a shaking finger she reached out to touch the smiling face, stroking a non-existent cheek.
"You were cold that day…" She whispered to the paper, slipping it back beneath her pillow and curling ready for slumber, "You gave your warmth to the planet… but you wasted it, this world is not warm."
She closed her crimson eyes, a single tear rolled down her cheek and soaked into her pillow, a single water-stain marking where it fell.
There is no use in talking of the unhealable; words could not bring back the dead.
And anyway… they would not understand.