It takes so much bloody time for that entirely crushing overture to subside— or perhaps that's just the effect grief has, even in stitched-up memory: seconds turn to torturous minutes, ticking on in agonizing slow-motion. Each moment that passes is one where he waits (one gloved hand pressed across the back of her neck, fingers splayed beneath the base of her skull, keeping her close— shielded in some brittle sense of the word) for her to suddenly rally and rail against his presence, rejecting it like a fresh bout of nausea. Impulsively prone to spurn at all cost.
...but that moment never comes.
The silk of his shirt protests in her shivering grasp, threatening to tear at times. It cuts against his collar from tension— but in the end, the spirits' hollow efforts ebb at last, washing away piece by painful piece, until all that remains is the cold and the dark, and the both of them left standing within it, hollow corridors ringing with wailing wind.
Ash.
But no blood.
And he keeps her held a touch longer, still, though his grip eases slightly. Though his breathing is narrow and careful, as though trying to keep from displacing dust atop a well-shut tomb.
"...it's all right." Is the tentative murmur he manages, when his fingers have gone numb from the cold (and her own must be aching by now, given how fiercely she's clutched him).
no subject
It takes so much bloody time for that entirely crushing overture to subside— or perhaps that's just the effect grief has, even in stitched-up memory: seconds turn to torturous minutes, ticking on in agonizing slow-motion. Each moment that passes is one where he waits (one gloved hand pressed across the back of her neck, fingers splayed beneath the base of her skull, keeping her close— shielded in some brittle sense of the word) for her to suddenly rally and rail against his presence, rejecting it like a fresh bout of nausea. Impulsively prone to spurn at all cost.
...but that moment never comes.
The silk of his shirt protests in her shivering grasp, threatening to tear at times. It cuts against his collar from tension— but in the end, the spirits' hollow efforts ebb at last, washing away piece by painful piece, until all that remains is the cold and the dark, and the both of them left standing within it, hollow corridors ringing with wailing wind.
Ash.
But no blood.
And he keeps her held a touch longer, still, though his grip eases slightly. Though his breathing is narrow and careful, as though trying to keep from displacing dust atop a well-shut tomb.
"...it's all right." Is the tentative murmur he manages, when his fingers have gone numb from the cold (and her own must be aching by now, given how fiercely she's clutched him).