He's not a man who cries.
He's not a man prone to outbursts of foolish sentimentality. He is not impetuous or impulsive. He's not a man who sits in the dark, alone, and drops his face into the cradle of his hands. No.
Even in rage, he is precise, deliberate, intentional. He is a man who walks slowly, still dressed in the most expensive tuxedo pants, shirt and vest, blood spattered though they may be, and squeezes off rounds from a shotgun as the world crumbles into madness around him. He is a man whose pulse does not quicken as he strides across a prison yard in the world's blackest black site and drives demons back to hell so that he might retrieve love and light from its fiery depths.
He is a man who can wait without breaking a sweat. He is a man who can sit and hold steady for hours on end, days if necessary, like a hunter in the brush.
He is not a man who burns wildly out of control. He is a man who smolders.
He is not a man who quakes in the stillness, whose hands shake and squeeze open and shut around the air. He is not a man who paces off the hours of night with trembling in his gut. No. He is not this man.
Or so he tries to tell himself.
He urges himself to pull it together even as he covers his mouth with his palm and whispers her name, the four syllables creating little puffs of air in his hand. He bites the pad of flesh at the base of his index finger. His shoulders rise and fall. He feels the maddening tickle of a tear making it out of the corner of his eye. He bites himself harder and longs to punch something.
How had he lived apart from her all those years? How had he managed to compel his heart to beat, his lungs to breathe without the sensation of her heat next to him? How he not languished in painful pining every second of his life while she was not by his side?
He tries to remember what life was like, before that day he kneeled in supplication at her feet. The FBI thought they had captured him, thought he was submitting to their wily authority. Little did they know he bowed down only for one soul, which they delivered to him in a golden goblet as he sat there in chains.
He tries to remember the women and the wine. The intrigue and travel. Even as he sits alone he could have anything he wanted. He could have beautiful women brought to him with a snap of his fingers, as many as he wanted, all at once even. He could have the most expensive bottle of scotch to sip languidly as an entire harem stroked his every whim upon silk sheets. They would be willing and voluptuous. They would live to please him. They would not be bitter and skeptical. They would not reject or misjudge him.
He shakes the idea away. He'll have none of it. None of it could ease the pain of losing her, of knowing she too suffers alone.
How many times a day does he calm himself by whispering her name. How many times does he allow his tongue to stroke the syllables of her because it is all he has left?
He reaches for a piece of paper and a pen. He is not a man who writes a woman's name over and over on a piece of paper and then tears it up and casts it like a hundred wishes into the breeze. He is not this man.
Except he is.