"I missed you." I felt a need to respond.
But nobody did, not really. The more I tell myself that, the more true it gets. And it needs to be true, or I can't bear it. Telling it to her was always the easy part.
She looks at me with those eyes, eyes which make me feel like I matter. I turn away before they can change anything.
"Why won't you talk like you used to?"
Because it's pointless.
"I miss you."
You already said that. Repetitive. That's recursion. You only see it in computers. Like me.
"But you're not a computer."
I pause for a bit before responding. I suppose it makes it seem like I had to think it through before saying it. I didn't. I liked to pretend that I did, though. Pretending is boring after a while, though, so I might as well stop. And pretending to live is futile.
What makes me any different?
Who said I was any different?
My feelings are dead, my emotions are dead, everything's dead. It's all dead except for the body, so why can't you see that?
A tear wells up in her eye. It falls down her face. I don't know why people cry. "Don't say that. Don't…don't I matter?"
At that, I feel something. I can't quite help my humanity sometimes, even when I try. Regret, sorrow. Longing. I long for her. I shake my head, trying to clear it of its mortality.
I want you to live. Leave life for the living. And you are most definitely alive.
"So are you."
We've been over this.
She fiddles with her fingers. "One month." I finish.
One month, three days, and seventeen hours since I first fell in love with you. And you still mean the world to me. I just…can't…
I pull out the end of it all. She looks at the blade, and her gaze melts. First into shock, then anger, then loss. All things considered, she processed it much too fast. She's been around me for too long. I must be rubbing off on her. I could never see that as a good thing. Living is beautiful, and to see her no longer living…living people shed tears. There are no tears this time, from either of us.
She speaks, and her voice is weak. "Please." It falters until it's little more than a broken whisper from a broken person. "Please." And it is at this moment that I begin to falter, that I want to wipe her brokenness away the way I would've wiped away tears.
Stop hurting. It's not your fault. I don't matter anyways.
"You do matter."
If I do, then I don't want to.
Now the tears come. "Why?"
Regret. Sorrow. Longing. How did it go again? "Parting is such sweet sorrow." I didn't even realize those words left my lips until she looks at me, her eyes pulling on that one line between myself and life. Stupidity indeed. I'd been stupid enough to draw that line myself. Human error.
"We don't have to part." I had a heart, then, and it told me with everything I had not to leave. I didn't have to part, now did I? I raised the end up, clutching it in my hand with a grip that turned my hands to putty. Her eyes hardened, harder than the knife I clutched, and yet they were broken eyes, broken glass that cuts you to look upon, broken eyes on a broken person who I couldn't keep myself together in front of. Her brokenness was starting to break me.
I have to go. I'm holding you back.
The tears come then, and not just from her.
The flaws of humanity.
Through the tears, though through mine or hers I could no longer tell, she whispers back to me. "You never held me back."
You have better people to be with.
"I want to be with you."
There are better people than me.
"Then it doesn't matter. They don't matter as much as you do."
I'm not-
"I love you."
…
…
…
"I can't."
And as these two short words come out of my mouth, I realize that my lack of feeling was feeling all along. That leaving her, getting her away from me, was caring about her more than anything I could really put into words, into actions, into emotions. I had feelings beyond feelings, a love…a love that transcended love itself. If she were to find someone better for her, someone who could make her happier, then she would still choose me. I lifted a trembling knife to my throat. It was no longer so much an end as a beginning to what might be her only happiness, her better happiness. My self, my body feels the need to explain.
"You're wasting time on me…too broken for anything. I'm broken. And being with me won't make you happy."
She smiles, a smile that melted my walls into piles of slag, that pierced my defenses with a scathing light. "That's not for you to decide. I love you because I want to love you. And I'd rather give up any better happiness than lose you." Logic which confounds, logic which destroys. A paradox. And yet I drop my knife and speak with my broken voice.
"I'm broken."
"Then I'll fix you."
I let her come close and hold me close and be close. I succumb to my inevitable human error.