The tundra is bare and quiet.
Standing miles from any city, Barry inhales darkness and exhales yellow lightning. He reaches up and presses a fist to his mouth, numb fingers warmed by his breath, his silence purposeful. The earth sleeps beneath him, and he ventures across it with great care, listening to the crackle of ice under each footstep. A trail of footprints stretches to infinity behind him, separated by ten-foot-strides, great leaping bounds that disappear in two miles, because sometimes he runs so fast even the snow does not know he was there.
There's a camera around his neck. Untucking it from his shirt, he cradles it between numb hands, holds it up, and presses the shutter down with a delicate click. He doesn't tell anyone where he goes on these sacred jaunts into nothingness. He simply takes a picture, tucks the camera back beneath his shirt, and lets the lightning keep the memories warm.
When Iris is slow and tired, he will show her these beautiful places that are slow and tired, too.
If he aches for these soul-soothing places, he can return to them, but they will have changed. They will have aged with him. Age is a flavor like winter in twenty years, some subtle, unfamiliar taste in the air making him tuck his hands closer to himself as he tries and fails to find the earth he knew.
Over time, he's come to love the earth's changing demeanor. He brings it gifts: his attention, his footprints, his lightning. He brings his presence to this quiet, unceasing place. In return, it is present for him, and together, they find an understanding in the silence. An acceptance of each other that has nothing to do with what they bring.
Because ultimately, he brings nearly nothing – only the clothes on his back and the camera tucked against his chest. The camera is a gift to others. He loves to give gifts, even if he does not always know what to bring. He brings what he loves. He brings what he thinks they might need. He seeks to give them the essence of this soft, subtle, soulful place where silence lives and existence exhales like yellow lightning in front of him, a tangible, magnificent thing.
Perhaps it is selfish to bring no one else here. But it is a long journey, and his face feels raw with the cold. It is a long journey, and his tired feet can only carry him so far. It is a long journey, and he fears bringing anyone into this space who might look around, and look at him, and see only something cold and lonely.
It is cold, it is lonely. But it is also a place where he can let any emotion show and not be thought less human. It is a place where he can be alive without needing to justify it.
(It's a chant in his head and it canters along without stopping, without taking a breath – What can you give us? What can you give us? What can you give us?)
Kneeling in the snow, he gathers fistfuls of it in his bare hands. Reaching up, he brushes it through his hair and lets a laugh bubble out of his chest. He presses his numb hands to his mouth and keeps his smile, because that is a relationship: a thing which moves another, which changes another. The earth asks for no words, and he offers none, and theirs is a perfect relationship.
His breath fans out red with each measured exhale, wild and quiet like the lightning inside him, and the world itself turns blue, and he rises on numb legs to his feet. He looks around at the great everything around him and feels tears freeze on his cheeks.
Existence is touted as complicated, rules and books and traffic lights, coffees and work orders and bouquets, measuring cups and clock hands, but here it is simple. Underneath the city noise, existence is the sound of silence, and the breeze sharp against him, and the breaking of ice underfoot. It is the way he feels every limb, every breath, in sync with the present moment. It is the lack of judgment for the way he holds himself, the freedom to stand or crouch at will, to stand back and marvel the earth, and know that no one will question whether his space would not be better filled by another.
He knows his seat has been replaced. At the precinct, it's gone, the place where he used to sit in front of (the, the round-and-round-and-round machine that has a name, it has a name, but he breaks the marker before he finds it) – one-of-too-many-devices that were part of his other life. He doesn't have a seat in some hallowed academia. He doesn't have another self out there in the cityscape of black and blue. As far as the world is concerned, Barry is simply there, existing to exist.
He walks for a time, listening to the ice crackle steadily underfoot. Staying in his own world, he can't describe the emotion that fills his lungs out here, but he can pause and cup his hands around his mouth, howling, a long, deep sound that frees some of the bridling tension under his shoulders. It is less piercing than a scream, but still more human than a roar. Tilting his head back, he keeps his frozen hands to his mouth and pours his soul out to the silence until he has no more voice.
Heart pounding, breath coming in short, electric blue spurts, he lowers his shaking hands, lowers himself to his knees, and bows his head.
He stays like that for a long time, but no rebuke comes. The wind ruffles his hair; the snow crunches when he reaches out to press cold hands against it. His muscles comply when he forces himself to his feet again. Here, the shadow of his self remains, impressed on the ice, and he smiles at it, for if he can take an image of the snow back with him, how apropos that it should keep the image of him?
With measured steps he walks away, gaining speed slowly. He takes his time, knowing that he will never come back to this same ephemeral place again. It will be different, and so will he. Looking over his shoulder, he pauses, and smiles, and turns back towards the city far beyond, out of sight, and takes off at a run.
. o .
Barry reaches for the shattered remains of the vase with shaking hands, frustration and anguish building in his chest. The red rose formerly inside it has but two petals left, but he lets his fingers curl around its stem and lifts it tenderly, pressing it against his chest. He's too cold to cry, too tired to cry, so he kneels with the glass digging into his knees and holds onto the rose until she finds him.
Existence is not complicated, but the reality he lives in is. The responsiveness of the snow to even his shaking hands does not transfer to the delicacy of a rose in a vase. His admiration killed it. It sticks like an icicle in his throat: his admiration killed it.
Sobbing silently, he holds the dying rose to his chest and aches to do better.
When Iris kneels in front of him, carefully avoiding the halo of glass around him, he keeps his gaze low, away. He doesn't want her to look at him, doesn't want her to see the broken creature that he is. I can't do this, he thinks, and the tears finally come. I can't be any better than this. This is not enough.
This is not enough.
He lets the flower drop from his hands, and immediately feels guilty, but he does not pick it up from where it falls. Iris reaches forward, and he wants to tell her not to touch it, she shouldn't touch it when it is this dead thing, but she doesn't touch the rose; she lets her hand hover just above his wrist, his still faintly blue wrist, clumsy with cold. He settles heavily back onto his haunches and dares to look at her, but he cannot hold her gaze, her aching, forgiving gaze, because he knows he failed.
He knows. Because it is so easy to break things in this fragile existence around him.
He pulls his hands close to his chest, trying to protect himself, and she reaches for the glass shards instead, and with delicate ease she picks up the pieces. She stands and slides them into the trash bin before returning to him. He turns away, curling inward, but it's not enough. He closes his eyes, aching for a place to hide, and finds the world frozen when he blinks. With unneeded haste, he scrambles for cover, and nearly topples over the small table in the middle of the room that has a special name before sliding between the big chair and the wall.
For good measure, he drapes the honey-honey-sweet-and-sunny-colored blanket over himself, covering him head-to-heel. He sits in his own little artificial world and hugs himself, shaking with the sharp warmth, the unforgiving warmth that is so unlike the gentle, silent snow.
He stays there, even after he hears her move, even knowing that she glances over at him. He shrinks further into himself, burying his face against his knees and hugging them to his chest. He doesn't make a sound, but he hears her glide through the apartment quietly. Part of him aches to join her, to shrug off his shield and pretend he knows exactly what to do, how hard can it be? But what would he even begin to say, how could he possibly explain the impulse to remove himself entirely from this exhausting and breakable world to her, when she is such a beautiful part of it?
He doesn't want to leave her, not really. Heartbeat slowing gradually, he realizes that he simply wants to inhabit her space, and not destroy it.
Eventually, he hears her approach, but he doesn't shrink away. He stays exactly where he is, sending a clear message that she respects. When she sits not too far away, he doesn't immediately acknowledge her. He accepts the weight of the world, of this world, of everything he must be to inhabit it, and shrinks from the idea.
Because he runs-out-of-words-like-he-runs-out-of-silverware, and if he runs out of words they will never understand him, and he will never understand them, and how can he possibly move them if he cannot even reach them?
With soft hopefulness, he extends a hand underneath the blanket, palm upturned. She tucks her hand in his and squeezes it gently. He closes his eyes and tries to picture the cold open spaces, the places so unlike the confining heat around him. Cold keeps his soul warm. He lifts the blanket between them, still wedged in a corner of their too-big world, and looks right at her.
She says, "I can replace everything but you."
He looks down at her hand, intertwined with his. There's a silver band on her finger. He presses his thumb against it lightly.
She repeats, "I can replace everything but you."
He lifts her hand to his mouth, like it is precious, like it is as sacred as the snow, and presses a kiss to it.
They sit on the floor, an ocean apart, and still she does not leave him.
. o .
Hand curled around the back of Barry's right shoulder, Iris sways with him under a halo of snow.
They're far beyond city limits where the cold is unsheltered, but he projects heat and keeps her close, and she does not want for warmth. She thinks about cuddling under the covers, she thinks about curling up in front of a warm crackling fire, she thinks about cradling a cup of coffee in her hands, but she rests her cheek on his shoulder and finds all these things, sheltered in his lightning.
She thinks about the life they had before, full of fast-paced conversations and grand gestures, affection broadcasted on a wavelength she regarded as standard. When he came back to her three months ago, the contrast upset her equilibrium. She found void spaces.
Following his steady movements now, she can feel his love, a low, almost unconscious purr in his chest keeping her warm. She wishes she had words to tell him she never needed his.
He's enough. They're enough.
The cold quiet something between them is more than enough.