His heart had not beaten for a week. After she died, he had gone fifty endless hours without sleep, and had rocked himself in his tears to their music, their song, choking desperate words down the phone to his mother and his friends. Monotony. Without her, normality had ceased and it its place was disorder and confusion. Around their apartment were her things, his things, laying beside each other like they were meant to be or had been; at first he'd touched them just because he knew she had touched them too. And her smell. On his pillow was the floral tones of her hair, so he couldn't even sleep without jerking awake sobbing because she had been in his dream again.

He'd thought he was going mad, but then his friends had been there around him, had helped him out. He'd heard on blogs all across the Internet fans were offering unending prayers and thoughts, and that lifted him, but only a little, because she was gone. She had been taken from him. And yet somewhere in those first few black nights he came to terms with her absence, somewhere between the crying and the frustration and the hatred, and he reached a state of neutrality, a kind of emotional no-man's land where he was neither impassioned or nonchalant. He cared and yet he did not care; he could cry and he could not cry. He taught himself to control the outbursts and trained himself not to look at her things. He moved out of his apartment, stayed with Mikko for a while, adopted [i]his[/i] routine so he didn't fall into his own miserable one.

But he couldn't avoid it for long, and push came to shove, and he was forced into staring into an eternity that stretched on without her, ever. It was unbearable and he had to escape it. When he returned to their apartment after a while it seemed like nothing had changed, and he kidded himself that they'd been on holiday somewhere bright and happy like the Bahamas and she was just late home from work. But no kidding himself could return her to him, but neither would his drifting around in perpetual apathy. Somehow, he was going to have to wish himself into a state whereby he returned in some way to normality. He didn't feel normal inside, but gazing out of his apartment across the city he knew that it was stifling him. A sense of claustrophobia like he'd never known engulfed him. He ached quite suddenly for somewhere else, for the open glassy lakes, solace, peace, a place where he could reconcile himself. It seemed like a good idea, and everyone agreed it was. He might stay out there a week or two; it might be a month or more. The thought of a cabin and the outdoors and himself and an acoustic seemed the only tenable solution. Music in the night, keeping to himself, crying if he wanted to, screaming if he needed it. Solitude. And even if he got worse, the interminable black depths of the lakes would offer to keep him safe forever beside her.

so i'm not even a HIM fan myself, really, but recently i've happened to have seen a lot of pictures of ville's face, and i've been wanting to write something into a similar setting for a while. i don't know why, he seemed to fit as a character. and...yep. this might be a little dark, but hopefully more uplifting eventually, because i've been through two deaths myself recently, one of a boyfriend, and so i think i should be able to deal with it in a sensetive way, and of course ville's beautiful face will give me inspiration either way ;)