The Magnetism of Being Fractured

by poeticsinema

You don't see Alejandro live his life. You can't tell apart the ruse between the human and the wolf. But beneath it all - the violence, his rage, and his vengeance, there are parts from his past that still resides within him. In the privacy of his own company, there are parts that he allows himself to recognise.

2. Beneath the stoicism

He doesn't wake from a cold sweat this morning. There is no urgency of his heart pounding through his chest. No cracking of phantom gun shots, like fireworks, in his head. Instead he wakes to the breeze from a window he'd left ajar. How bold, he scoffs at himself, to think that you are invincible now.

He strolls over to the window, eyes streaming over the old city. He in the early figures escaping their nests and into watering holes, running, cycling - living. He can't help but find the tranquility of it all just a little jarring. It almost seems as if the underbelly isn't churning. As if he wasn't an agent from the sewers where chaos brews.

Not anymore.

He pulls the window shut. The apartment becomes claustrophobic. The silence that pierces through these empty passages, the very halls he calls home, becomes deafening. Ghosts dislike the silence. It is like an acid - eats away at you.

The last of his coffee grounds had been used on Graver. Matt doesn't drink from the mug he offered, he remembers. No, Matt was too cautious for that. Matt was cautious enough to have had stuck a sticky note alerting Alejandro of his arrival. Don't fucking shoot me. Matt has a sense of humour he enjoyed.

His coffee grounds hadn't been replenished since - like most things in this empty apartment. He reminds himself to do it - has been reminding himself for months now.

Alejandro does not have a favourite meal. But he ends up with a cinnamon roll. The sugar sticks to his teeth. In the same seat with a view of the street becoming busy from the morning.

Running, cycling, living.

Running, cycling, living.

Running, cycling, living.

He has wondered often about Kate. The coffee that pools within his cup is black, no sugar. He plays with the gold band around his finger. He wonders if she still smokes Indian Creek, if she still smokes at all. He wonders if her routine had been turned on its head. Just like her morality.

Funny. There had never been guilt over the countless he has strapped to a seat, stripped off their dignity. No guilt over broken bones, fractured skulls, lacerated lungs. The difference is that they deserved what was coming for them, he convinces himself, Kate did not.

He wonders if her eyes - cold, magnetic, gray - still possess the same fright for the wolf that has ceased to exist. The crystals that brim, the very ones he wipes away with his gun cocked beneath her chin as he coaxes her arm down, will they still be warm.

Sign it.

She is no longer his to wonder about.

A little more stupid, a little more scared

Every minute, more unprepared

He drags his chair back. Steps out onto the pavement. Clicks his plastic lighter to warm his worn out soul. Inhales.

There are eyes on him.

He glances back up towards the bakery.