Authors Notes: This began as a therapeutic story for myself and so some of the more obscure allusions/in continuities in it are due to that. Please read and review. I do plan on continuing.
She walks carefully over the broken glass from their last fight. Avoiding the finer powder; knowing it would be harder to get out of her skin… though almost wanting that… she walks dangerously close. Every bare step she feels another piece brush against her skin and heal automatically. "This isn't sharp enough," she thinks to herself.
Walking over to the corner of the crypt she finds a spared pane. The way the moonlight hit's the surface allows her see herself. What happened to her? So many cuts… but she never bleeds. What happened to the blood? Without it how can she be her? They share blood. No. Wait. She is wrong there. Again. She doesn't have his.
Yet.
The glass shatters with her frustration. Only after does she realize that it was her that broke it.
What happened here? Why isn't he back? He hasn't left, has he?
Sure enough, he walks through the pipes below her, up through the hole in the basement to his bedroom, up the ladder, into the kitchen. He can hear her pacing, smell her … that intoxicating scent marred only by her fear. She still bleeds?
He had told himself he would never come back here. Not after the last time. He wanted to give up and escape… hatch some new plan and return maybe then. But only then. Only when he could do something. If he can't do good he might as well revert to the ways of old.
No. Of course. His plan had failed. She caught him again without knowing it. She felt something. It was revolutionary… he had to be there, in case she felt more. He had to experience this.
Fear is something isn't it? Something to live for…
As she paces she wonders the same thing. For months it was nothing. Cold doesn't count as a feeling. It makes you numb. "Numbness is the lack of feeling." she reasons with herself. Even the heat of her womb no longer is felt. Something as basic and human as that. She no longer bled… what was she? What had she become? But now! Now she was afraid… fearful. But why? What threatened her? … What was there to threaten?
It gave her something though.
It gave him something.
Its what brought them together again. They needed one another. But only when they couldn't have each other. That makes it too easy, it makes it nothing. The feelings are lessened then.
No problem there.
He used to pace. He is cold. He is dead but… is more alive than her.
Why did they need each other? Thoughts at the same time… this they knew. She knew he was close. He smells of leather, she senses his magnetism. The overtones of mystery with him, ones that rival only her own. She can't sense those though. She can't realize this. Her own mystery?
Her friends tell her how much she hides. She doesn't hide, but lives in the dark. Not her fault. They wouldn't want to know anyway…
He understands. He has been dead.
Cold.
Sitting down on the cold slab she shivers. It isn't enough she is cold on the inside… its cold here. His lifeless touch is warmer.
She remembers those hands….
She looks at her own. Stained with ink from her recently rekindled love of the written word. "He was a poet before wasn't he," she asks herself, making a mental note. Reaching in her bag she pulls out a small journal and an ancient pen. A forgotten gift from an old friend. He left it on her pillow. That was his too. A long time ago…
Dipping the pen into the well she begins…
His ears perk up at the scratching of a quill on paper. He smells the rawhide. Smiling he lies back down on the velvet pillows of his bed. Sips his drink. Listens. She has picked up his passion has she?
Walking over to the mahogany secretary, he opens the glass doors, flash backs of the previous night hit him hard… "Is this the only glass left?" … Shaking himself out of his reverie he reaches for a hidden box and makes his way back to the bed, though he rarely sleeps here.
She sits on his real bed unknowingly. Many nights he lie there stiffly on the cold unclothed stone, in quite the same state. He doesn't feel it so what does it matter? Waiting for her…
She doesn't know what she is writing. It doesn't really matter. It all pours out here. Maybe she has been hiding…
From?
Accidentally she spills the ink on the stone staining the pristine white surface of the stone. Transfixed, she watches it gracefully swirl down the side, a small river to the floor.
She walks to the kitchen. His kitchen. "Why does he need a kitchen?" She finds the paper towels. "Why does he need paper towels?" She cleans up the drips as much as she can, leaving a marbled stain on the tombs surface.
She never really thought about it that way. This place, it is a tomb. Funny. It's where she feels alive.
Not finding what she wants she walks out into the balmy spring night, though pulls her jacket tighter around her. Leaving her journal forgotten on his bed. The pen now on his pillow. Unconscious of the significance.