+ Fallacy, a 100themes Challenge +
Sarehptar
Theme: 5, Seeking Solace
Characters: Kharl, Garfakcy
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Need to Know Info: None; Unwritten Cloaks scene...
Title Provider: Eternal Snow (Changin' My Life)
Like Snow, Quietly, it Continues to Pile Up...
He looks at me with eyes that are jaded, in more ways than one. The delicate green, that darkens as it spreads toward the whites of his eyes and lightens just enough as it reaches for his pupils, makes his whole gaze stand out stunningly, and accusingly. I wonder if he is not seeing through me, like I am some sort of living mirror. Today he is quiet, subdued in a way that does not suit him, and it frightens me. Garfakcy is not a child—but for this moment, he seems so much like one, small and lost. He looks deeper into me, and though his eyes are clouded with long-standing hatred, there is a different light violently trying to break through.
"Why?" He asks me, and his voice wavers between tragic and furious. "It's not right." His comically fragile hands open and close like the wings of butterflies, tentatively rolling the remnants of the strawberries over and over as if that will shine away the pestilence. I can only nod. "I worked more on these than anything else." Strawberries are Garfakcy's favorite fruit, one of the sweets he refuses to pass up on summer days like these. "Nothing else spoiled." He stares at the blackening fruit as if they will call an answer up to him.
"The things you love most," the bitterness in my own voice strikes me as cruel, "are the first things to fail you." For a long time, he does not answer, and the look in his eyes says he knows, understands the truth, but will not accept it.
"It's not right," he repeats, but somehow, his voice has something so much more serious in it this time. He looks off through the garden, kicking the stone bench we're awkwardly perched on with a disinterested foot. "It's not right." And it's no longer about the fruit, is it? His eyes that were alive with sadness have darkened into something deeper and suddenly he's not a child holding his failed flowers anymore—he's himself, wise to pain, to failure and to betrayal. I want to sooth his injured pride, sooth the injuries inside him that I can't see and never will be able too. I want to comfort him, but I know I can't, that I will never find the right words.
"It always hurts," he murmurs and I listen without turning to look at him because if I don't look, I won't feel the pain he is describing. I won't. "So why do we bother loving things at all?"
I sit silently as the sun sets, without an answer.
Note: Random Irony gets a cookie for guessing the crack side-pairing! (It was weird, wasn't it?) It's okay, I promise I will (might) never do it again!
Note: Leeayre gets a cookie (and a ridiculously long reply) for pointing out my grammar mistakes. (Ahh, shot through the heart.)