An Amputation: Part Two

She Is The Arrow

Bard's first instinct was to go to Golden Dragon – the week without drink had been ghastly – but he found himself wandering home instead; his mind in such turmoil that he scarcely perceived the cold around him.

He'd been woken up, that morning, by an awful dream that was really a memory; in which Sigrun pouted sullenly at him and muttered 'You curse yourself'; her face bearing no trace of hurt; her eyes bearing all the hurt that her face concealed.

Sig.

A self-loathing so deep it hurt him had invaded every part of his being, and in his mind he had seen himself remaining silent; saying nothing; not hurting her. He had seen himself listening to her; listening to her story about his ma being the right arm that his da had only noticed when it was gone. He had seen himself shutting up until the end, then saying…he didn't know, something suitably clumsy about Sig being the same thing for him: something that would make her happy, or at the very least make her laugh.

Then Alfrid Lickspittle had kicked him in the ribs and told him he was out, and the dream had faded out of the world at the same moment that Bard faded into it; the hope that the dream was real fleeing with it.

Bard had rolled onto his side and told Alfrid to go away and find another person to interest in his little games. Alfrid had remarked that he already had, but that he hadn't seen her in a while. Bard had demanded to know who 'she' was and why she would be interested in games. And then the whole sorry business had come out and made him feel worse than he did already.

Oh, Sig.

She'd paid two silvers to keep him in gaol. In gaol and away from drink. Two days' worth of food, maybe three. And as the prison gate shut behind him, expelling him into a cold so fierce it made him gasp, he saw her face in front of him; felt her voice in his throat as it cracked:

I haven't minded being in this horrible place with all these horrible people who bleed the ones they should be saving. I haven't minded any of it, because at least there was you.

And he had laughed at her.

The shame was an inferno within him. The loss of her – because he didn't doubt that he had lost her – it was –

He squeezed his eyes shut to stop them from watering.

Sig, I can't – I'm so sorry, please –

He'd been drunk out of his mind, but that was no excuse. He couldn't unsay his words – even if she did, by some miracle, forgive him – that her own struggle was nothing compared to his; that she didn't understand; that she couldn't understand; that he didn't need her; that he could do without her as long as he could drink without restraint.

He couldn't do without her as long as anything. She was all of him. He loved her.

He expected the realisation to hit him, and incapacitate him. He had heard people say that it was like a lightning strike; a glorious, earthquake-like shift as the world ceased to be the world, and became a person instead.

He experienced nothing of the sort, because Sig had always been the world. What he felt was like walking out of prison, and seeing the sky for the first time. It was a kind of peace; a realisation of the beauty of something that had always been there.

And he had treated her like the dirt beneath his feet.

He saw her face whether his eyes were open or closed; her composure snow-like in its whiteness. He saw the bones in her shoulders sticking out through her shirt; the fierce, protective, misplaced love in her eyes each time she spoke about her da. He saw her turn her face away as she remembered that her mother was gone; felt her ribs beneath the palms of his hands as he told her that she was too thin to be healthy, as she replied, 'so are you.'

That is barely comparable, he had shouted at her.

That is barely comparable.

Who am I?

He reached home, and hesitated outside his door; his fingers welding to the handle in the cold. He glanced quickly across the way. Sig's door was closed.

It took every inch of self-restraint he possessed not to cross the way, break the door down and beg for forgiveness.

Because an apology was not going to be enough this time.

He pushed open the door and went into the house; ignoring his body as it screamed at him for liquid relief from the agonising throb and beat of reality made razor-sharp. He busied himself with tasks that had been normal before drink had been normal – throwing open the windows to let out the smell of sweat and ale, heaving empty half-pint barrels of ale out of the window and into the canal – busying his hands while his mind went mad. With guilt. With Sig.

His body was numbing itself with his resistance of habit. Every moment, he wanted to leave, and knock on her door: ask her something, tell her something, insult the frizz in her hair, if he couldn't find anything else. Every move he made; every thought he had; seemed linked somehow to her; to her being there; to finding her if she was not there. How had he never noticed it before?

Because before, you hadn't done what you have done. Before, you could take your own decency for granted.

That was why he could not apologise now. That was why he could not tell her. He could not treat her like some piece of filth from the gutter, then storm in a week later with 'I'm sorry and I love you.' He could not efface his words with more words, because words were no longer things that she could trust. He needed to act before he could speak – to prove himself worthy of her forgiveness – and he had no idea how to do it.

And suddenly the room was freezing as a glacial wind blew down off the Mountain; stirring the thin, ragged blankets of his parents' bed so that it appeared inhabited by ghosts; making the ancient, half-rusted pots and pans on their rusty ceiling hooks clink and bang together. The pantry door slammed shut, making him jump and drop the kettle he was carrying.

And as he stared at the door that was usually open, he perceived his da's bow; suspended on it by a hook; forgotten.