"Jessom, you have to eat."
Kirie's voice held more exasperation than anything else. Which was better than despair, he supposed, but not by much. Though she had sworn not to give up on him?which was more than he was able?her voice these last weeks had begun to belie her hopelessness for this thankless task. He tugged at the cloth bound around his wrists; the cuts itched where new skin was beginning to form beneath the scabs, where he had ripped out the stitches. His gaze remained on his lap. Or would have, had his deep brown eyes been anything more than empty, useless orbs stuck in his skull.
Jessom felt her press bread to his lips, her fingertips playing lightly on his patchily shadowed cheek. "Please." It was not an entreaty, a breathy whisper in his ear, nor was it a demand. Kirie simply expected more of him than this. He took the bread, bit off a heel and chewed it slowly. It tasted brown, earthy and thick with whole grains. He worked the break around his teeth, cataloging tastes, textures. Practicing.
The night he had cut himself, Kirie had come, lain with her body pressed up against his back on the narrow cot, gently stroking his tangled hair and damp eyelids in the empty dark. His world was always dark now, even in daylight, but Kirie brought color back with her. In the scent of her dark hair, the warmth of her skin, the unique music of her voice and the quiet susurration of her breathing, her gentle touch. She had fetched a whipping for her absence, he knew, though she had not told him. He could hear it in the ginger caution of her movement, the wince in her breath. Jessom did not know how he could go on like this. Their future had been ripped out of his grasp, just as he had thought to reach out his hand to take it. Kirie didn't understand how he could try to take his own life, being craftbred, and indeed he was ashamed that she knew of it, but he could not live with the greater shame. She was a low-paid kitchen drudge with no family to speak of, and no one to speak for her. He was blind, a cripple, utterly dependant on his family for support. What little independence he had hoped to have from his father's hold was stripped away in a single stupid accident. Without it, he could do nothing for either of them. A horrible stalemate, one he could not live with.
"We might be apart, for a while," she was saying, "but no matter what, Jessom, I swear I will find a way to come to you."
Jessom choked on crumbs and spluttered. "What?" he demanded in a rasp, clutching the wooden arm of his chair, the other groping for hers. His face turned toward her out of habit, and he could feel the skin and muscle beneath contorted into an aghast expression. He could feel his sightless eyes flicking side to side, moving only from the lingering prompts of lifelong memory. He wondered if it disconcerted her, meeting his visionless gaze. Another weight, a shameful stone added to the pile in the pit of his stomach, a burning ache that never went away.
He could hear in the pause her hesitation, biting the side of her lip with her crooked teeth in the way that he loved. He knew her mannerisms by heart, and even blindness could not take that away from him. "I think.," Kirie murmured hesitantly, "I think I may have found a way out."