She knows there are days he has wept because of her. Because of this. That he - the strongest of men, her rock, her home - has cried and been broken and done so alone. He shouldn't be that strong, he shouldn't have to be and she knows this. He keeps it hidden so as not to break her, takes all the weight, carries them both and she knows it is crushing him. She keeps adding more without meaning to. He won't speak to her of this pain, won't add to hers and yet she knows that she adds to his with every movement that is slower than it should be, every thought that she does not articulate with previous clarity, every strand of hair that he finds in the sink. Every strand that falls weightless from her head is another burden that he will carry.
She lets him. He lets her. She hates them both for that.
She should be stronger, he should be weaker. They should be as they were before - even, balanced. They are not. And now she sits on their bathroom floor. She doesn't know how long she has been there. But her feet are cold. Her legs are bare, her shirt half unbuttoned, her shower forgotten. Her face is streaked with the salted water weeping from her eyes. She couldn't stop them anymore; she has long since stopped trying to stem the flow. She can only fight one part of her body at a time. She has already lost one battle.
Her hair her hair her hair, clumps of it at her feet, cascading as always over her shoulders but now uprooted and falling free. Traitorous. Betraying. She is trying to be quiet. He will be home soon. He cannot he cannot he cannot see her like this. She covers her mouth with her hand to swallow back the sobs that are now shaking her body. She feels her head hit against the wall with each tremor that she tries to suppress. It is cold, it is bare, save for a those few scant hairs that cruelly mock her by refusing to leave with the rest.
She has taken to running her hands through the thinning mass, weeding out dissenters, turning on them before they could abandon their post. He has repeatedly asked her to stop (stop looking, stop pulling, stop rushing to the end). She couldn't. An awful habit that she could not cease, the more they fell the more she pulled and now...
She runs her hands over her head, the ghost of her locks, a phantom feeling of hair instead of skin. The tremor increases. Such betrayal. Has she not done all that was asked of her? Treatment after treatment, day after day, poisonous drop after poisonous drop. How vain she feels in this moment, how small, how petulant. She should simply be happy to be alive (she is she is she will try to be). Her mind and her body are so battered by this disease and its cure, they do not feel like her own anymore. The simple grace of at least looking like herself was now scattered around her, gone. Would Bill be appalled? (by her attitude? by her appearance?)
She thinks he must hate her body. He must. It is taking her away. She hates it for that; she hates it for being weak, for failing her, for turning against her so maliciously. He must hate her too, a little, for leaving, little by little everyday that she does not get better. He must believe that she is not trying hard enough, her faith so ensconced in being the Dying Leader and not just a leader who is dying. Maybe it's just her. Seeing that in him which she feels in herself, her own hate emanating from within, radiating out and reflecting back off him. She must she must she must remember that it is this insidious disease that he (and she) hates, what it is doing to them both.
LauraLauraLaura. She hears his voice, it sounds far far far away, vague and distorted as if heard through a fog. She only registers it beside her (as is he) when she feels the touch of his skin against hers, jolting her back into herself
"Oh." Her voice is shaken, from surprise, from crying. Her hands fly to her head, trying in vain to cover it, cover herself (her fear, her death). She has hidden the extremity of the loss beneath a wig, to shield others, and herself. Mostly him. The wig is more severe than her own hair. She hates it. It makes her look harsh, makes her feel harsh, makes her think harshly. She hates it (and cancer and death and not being covered when he came home). This lie that she had been telling to hide the truth that had rotted underneath it - Things are not that bad. Yet. (Things are that bad. Now).
He makes no attempt to move her, simply lowers himself to her side. He pulls her legs across his lap so that her feet no longer touch the cold floor, warms them with his hands before removing her hands from her head, pulling gently, insistently. She gives in (only to him). She cries harder. He is a good man. A good man. And she is dying, leaving him. She cries harder and harder, into his neck, into him. She should be stronger than this, this terrible weakness of spirit.
She becomes aware of his voice, his fingertips are tracing along her head, a thumb moving in slow, sweeping lines. His mouth kissing an inch, two inches into where her hair line should be. His voice a murmur, she hears the words, hears the underbelly to them too.
"I don't care." (I do I do I do. But not about your hair)
"I won't care if it never grows back." (Only only only that you're alive)
"It doesn't matter if you're here." (Please please please don't leave me)
"Laura." Her face is in his hands. "It's hair. It's not you." (You're still you). She leans into him more. "It's hair, it wasn't...it isn't...I..."
She kisses him, her love for him so fierce in that moment that she does not need to hear him declare his. She knows she knows she knows. She tastes the word on his tongue, where it lies, waiting for her for her for only her. She kisses him for a long moment, her tears easing. Her heart too.
She moves to kiss along his jaw, to whisper silent words of love into his skin. She knows he can tell from the motion of her mouth the form her lips are taking against his flesh. This is love she thinks. This moment, this exact moment that cannot possibly be replicated. This tiny moment out of time when she is whispering silent words into his skin and he is looking at her as if she is filled with life and not its opposite. He knows, he knows, he must know...but what if he doesn't? Her mouth caresses the path to his ear, her lips press close against it. "Bill, I love..."
But he turns and kisses her before she can finish, not allowing the final word to be spoken. She realises her mistake. He thought it would be her final word, a last confession before giving up. She lets him swallow the word into silence before pulling back to break it. Her fingertips across his mouth to still him. Her gaze holds his. "I'll fight harder." She sees him hear this, hear the words, hear her promise (declaration of love) that is a beginning, not an end.
It is relief that breaks him, relief and hope is his undoing within her arms. They sit on their bathroom floor on a cushion of her hair and cry, together.