The Silence
By Lurisa
The silence amplifies everything. It makes the slightest, most insignificant sounds pound inside your ears as though they were part of a brass marching band on parade. The shifting of feet against the carpet. The soft breeze whistling through the screen. The dripping of a leaky faucet. All sounds that would go unnoticed if not for the silence.
Most people can't handle the silence. Most try to fill it with humming, music, talking. The silence is an awkward thing. It reveals to us things we would rather not know. The man to my right breathes much heavier than one would consider necessary. The woman to my left clicks her long, ruby fingernails on the end table beside the couch.
But the man across from me, a man only a few short months my senior, revels in it. The man and the woman don't dare speak lest they anger him by causing his loss of thought. I don't break his silence because I've no need to. The silence does not bother me.
It is on this man that I concentrate, trying to ignore the heavy breathing and the clicking nails. His gray eyes regard me, looking into mine—not searching for anything in particular, just browsing. Fine strands of pale blond hair fall across his angular face. Some reach the tip of his straight nose. Some make it to the upper part of his thin lips. In the light of the fire blazing in the hearth, strange shadows contort a visage I know to be aesthetic into something hideous and grotesque.
That fire is the sole light source in the room. It casts only a small orb of light but it is enough to encircle us in its warm glow. Bright flames of orange and red and yellow lick at the logs, the sides of the hearth.
Rain lashes against the windowpanes some distance behind me. Though I can't see them, I can picture the large drops racing down the smooth, cool surface of the glass, refracting the light of the fire like millions of tiny crystals.
Somewhere in the large house, a clock chimes. The person to my right's breath quickens slightly. The woman with the ruby nails jumps. The man with the pale hair and I don't flinch; he only checks his watch and nods.
"Would you be so kind as to excuse the lady and I," he says, his voice quiet. But, for all that it is soft, it contains a power. His is but an order in the form of a request. One really has no choice but to obey him.
The heavy breather and the woman to my left get to their feet at once, happy to be free of the oppressing silence. Without a backward glance at the gray-eyed man and I, they quickly leave the room. What do they care now that they are free to speak and avoid the silence however possible?
The large doors close behind them, the simple sound of the latch slipping back into place ringing ominously in their wake.
A log pops, sending a shower of oranges sparks and gray smoke up the chimney.
"You know what I've done," he says matter-of-factly.
I nod, not looking away from him.
"And yet you do not fear me?" There is awe in his voice, as though he can't believe that I haven't run from him.
I shake my head. True, that which he has done is terrible and indeed I should have feared him. But that was war. We all did terrible things, things we are not proud of.
He stands, rising gracefully out of the big, winged chair in which he had been perched. He isn't a tall man but his lean body and dark clothes give the illusion that he towers over everything in the room, myself included. But I still did not fear him.
Taking my hands in his, he sits down on the edge of the coffee table before the couch. His long fingers wrap around mine, tightly at first as though he never wants to let go but then he seems to think better of it and loosens his grip before I can even react; they are so cold, his hands. For the first time all night, his face is not carefully guarded but reveals something else, something so wondrous that I lack the words to describe it.
His gray eyes bore into mine now, searching for what he had found while browsing there earlier. Past the strong façade I had labored so hard to erect. Beyond the Contempt, a feeling that those closest to me still thought I had for him. Squeezing between the Hurt and the Pain, things that he had had his own part to play in the making of.
On and on he goes until he finds that which I had buried deep within myself, only digging it up when I felt it was safe, when I felt that I could handle the repercussions of the memories it withdrew from dust filled corners. That he tugs loose and clings to, pulling it to the surface. The Love, my Love.
It is an emotion that is strong enough to survive the Pain and the Hurt. Powerful enough to battle the Contempt and win. Willful enough to lay a never-ending besiege against the wall inside me, the wall I built around it to keep it trapped, to weaken it.
"Will you ever forgive me?" A true request. Only for me would he not put the powerful undertones in his voice. Only for me would he truly ask.
I nod. Long before this day, long before the War had even ended, I had forgiven him. It had been a result of the Love I couldn't repress, the Love that would never weaken.
He bows his head, his hair falling in a gossamer curtain across his face, veiling it from me. The love he had pulled to the surface twists my heart at seeing him like this. It was as though he had believed that he had finally pushed me so far away that I would never come back. And that thought had hurt him, caused him so much pain and anguish over the two years of the War and these last few months after it that he had avoided me.
I push the hair back off his face and raise his chin. Looking him straight in the eyes, I breathe softly, "I'll never stop loving you."
He pulls me tightly into his arms, holding me as though he would lose me to some unknown force. This is all I've ever wanted: to be held in his arms and have no fear of who would walk through the door to tear us apart. It is so simple a thing and yet I haven't had it since the night I found that I loved him.
It had been a night like this—dark, rainy…silent. That's where we found common ground I think. We both reveled in the silence.
"I missed you so much," he whispers, his breath stirring my hair and tickling my ear.
I smile. This is how it is meant to be. I'm to be held forever in his arms with the fire warming us and the rain lashing against the windows. And the silence wrapping around us, cloaking us. I cherish the silence. It amplifies things, makes the quietest sounds pound within your ears. In the silence, I could hear our hearts, beating as one. Oh, how I cherish the silence.