It was a gift.
That was what they all told him.
A truly wonderful thing.
He couldn't even argue.
For as soon as his irritation, his indignation flared, he killed it.
He used his so-called gift to kill it like he killed all his other unpleasant emotions.
And, in turn, killed himself, leaving only a shell behind.
Until its use was so instinctual that it felt like he no longer even had any choice in the matter.
It wasn't long before it spread to even his positive emotions.
After all, euphoria, joy?
They were too heavy for him.
He could no longer bear them.
His fragile, mutilated heart could no longer support the flux of human emotion.
Perhaps he had simply become addicted to the unnatural, inhuman clam his accursed gift had allowed him.
For as much as he wished otherwise, he couldn't help but embrace it.
Perhaps he would have been better born a machine.
So he wouldn't have had the ability to understand the humanity of which he was depriving himself.
Perhaps if he no longer felt alive, he should just die.
After all, even the prospect of death no longer had the ability to frighten him.
A hand grasped his.
Fingers intertwined.
Firmly yet gently pulling him away from his thoughts.
He could feel the warmth of the blood that rushed through her veins.
It was proof that both he and she still lived.
And as he stared into her eyes filled with a tsunami of emotion he could barely recognize, he desperately wished he could look away.
Yet like those of a beautiful siren, her eyes transfixed him, and he felt fear.
A fear that seeped into his bones and suffocated his very soul.
He tried to kill it, yet it pierced through his coddling prison.
He was afraid.
He was afraid of those eyes.
He was afraid of what his death would do to those eyes.
The eyes of the only thing that he could truly say he loved in this world.
A girl so filled with emotion that it overflowed.
So consistently animated and exuberant that even he could not destroy her barrage.
And before he knew it, emotion exploded within him.
He felt happiness.
He felt joy.
He felt irritation.
He felt hatred.
He felt love.
All of it belonged to her.
He belonged to her.
She was his heart, and she was his soul.
And so if she lived, so would he.
And if she died, so would he.
That was his promise.
That was his vow.