Late in the evening, when he thinks everyone else has gone home, you find him. The only illumination is from the computer screen and the melancholy light of the moon as it filters into the room to wash over him like the tide. He stares out the window, lost in a world of his own private thought. Of memories, of mysteries and nightmares he keeps locked up tight behind the mask held fast in place, a habit so long-held that even solitude does not relax the iron grip. That glass shard of knowledge pierces your heart, and you wonder if anyone understands the silent wars that wage behind his eyes. He hides it well. He lies so well.
He is invincible.
He doesn't realise you're here. His face is a blank slate, showing nothing. No matter. You know him. You know some of the well-worn paths his mind follows. You may not know all of it, but you know some of what haunts him. You're acquainted with a few of those ghosts that set him running headlong for the wall and the safety of the protections he's built up around himself. Ever vigilant. Ever on his guard. Ever wary. Ever weary.
But he is invincible.
He throws himself into his work full-bore. Others see it as a relentless and dogged pursuit of the truth. And so it is but not only. They don't know the half of it. He pursues the truth while he runs from it - the very portrait of paradox. He drags truth out of other people. He cannot face it in himself. But he will overlook this taint.
He is invincible.
The weight of sorrow hangs heavy and deep within him, a constant companion, a constant torment. It is the cross he has chosen to bear in penance for sins of the past. He is a perpetual mourner who never allows himself to grieve. All this, he hides behind the bull and bravado, behind histrionics and hyperbole. You alone have seen the face he wears behind the grin, the lies behind his eyes. The look in his eye reminds you to mind the line, so you pretend to turn a blind eye to the toll you see it all taking on him. As a growing darkness fills the hollow man he has become, the outside feeds on his inside. Even as you refuse to watch it happen, you cannot stave off the worry.
But he is invincible.
Maybe he really believes you don't know that his strength lies in his ability to draw it out of others and into himself, to store it up. This is how he interacts with the world around him. And the situation with you is especially unique. When he hurts you, he hurts himself; and your wounds become his scars. When what he feels begins to scare him, it's how he toughens his own exterior in order to protect the tender, easily injured interior. Even Samson had a weakness. But his weakness? He won't allow it to show.
He is invincible.
He stands in your doorway now, somber and quiet and trying like hell not to let anything show. There's a tireless hunger in his expression that he can never quite conceal. He's come seeking your forgiveness without knowing how to ask for it. The funny thing is, you've already forgiven him because you realised long ago that nearly everything he does - no matter how crazy, no matter how upsetting or reckless, no matter how dangerous, no matter how seemingly thoughtless or careless, no matter how painful to you or to him or to anyone else - it's all for one purpose: you. In his mind, in his twisted way of reasoning you know that somehow, that's at the heart of it.
So let them think you soft because your arms are always open to him no matter how he behaves. You know what they don't: he needs your love the most when he least deserves it. You've become a vital part of him without either of you intending it. He can't be who he is now without you.
For to be invincible, he needs your love.
A/N: This short ficlet was inspired by my favourite Fallen Poets who also provided the closing line.