@hellweep / Mike confessed: "When I realized what happened— what I did, I tried to find you. I tried everything, but I couldn't reach you. I thought you didn't want me to find you, I thought— worse. I gave up on everything, but I never stopped thinking about you. I never stopped loving you, not for one instant. I didn't want to come here, I just wanted to be closer to you. And maybe help them find you. I love you, I'll always love you, I could never love anyone else like I love you."
Some keening must be done for the revenants as well. Miriam sits with Mike in her arms, bundled like a bag of bones, knees knocking into ribs and collarbones. His face appears to her like the opposite of a death mask. Skeletal with neglect, his pretty eyes dusty and jittery, and yet the sun soaked his skin in vibrant colors. He ought to be bleached by so much light, have it show that something's been drained from him. But the heat glows on his cheeks, on the bridge of his nose. A fever sent from heaven, painted on his face like a garish mask.
He has been muttering and mumbling for some time, distracted and disoriented by the lights. She knows, she knows. The angels crowd outside the shack, pressing their faces through cracks in the boards. A stray ray of sunlight slits his throat where he lies and the sight of it has been making her cry for what feels like hours. The water is bad, she's been trying to tell him, but it is all the water they have. So they've drunken it down, gluttonous with thirst, until it spilled down their chins like blood.
So there has been a great whimpering and weeping in the shack and its secondhand shadows. But it is cool here, and Mike can rest. Could. He keeps clinging to her, reaching for her cheek, her eyes, as if to make sure she's not an invention of the heat. And he says such things to her.
She hiccups a sob when he speaks, when he promises, he tried to get back to her. Her heart has been degloved a hundred times over. She's not sure how much more she can take before inevitable arrest.
"You did?" Miriam keeps trying to brush his hair from his face, to see him better. But there is no hair. They cut it off, she remembers again and again. She is still not seeing him clearly enough. "I thought— You were gone so far so quickly, I thought you never want to see me again." Saying it out loud, even after all these years, it still rends her in two. Her voice strangles itself to death before these words, suicide its last show of defiance.
"I love you. Always, I— Mike, I've done so many awful things. To- To people. To me." She's all but in hysterics, but his stroking hands never waver, brushing tears from her cheeks like a small animal would lick salt off a stone. "I've gotten so ugly, Mike. I don't know what happened. I love you more than anything, I always have. I was so stupid. I was scared. I don't know why I did that, why I couldn't just—" She breaks off into another wail. He is draping his bruised arms around her, and it is another thorn in her side how thin they are. A great shuddering and heaving. He loved her this whole time, while she was wallowing in filth. She will never get it back.
"I deserve to be here, Mike. I'm as awful as they are. Worse. But you don't. Never. I'll find a way to get you out, I promise."
