HIATUS

please stay forever, i say to the things i know. don’t go.                                                                          don’t grow.

please stay forever, i say to the things i know. don’t go.                                                                          don’t grow.

Leslie Parry, Church of Marvels

            “ Aside from feeling a little like death? Sure. ”

           “Feeling like death does not usually constitute to being fine.”

        it’s rare, she thinks, to meet someone who seems kind. perhaps what he’s done is so little, something anyone might do, or with ulterior motives…but it seems genuine. she’s not the best at telling, of course — she trusts everyone, she believes in the goodness of people even when they seem surrounded in shadow — but she’d like to think that she’s right.  ❝ do you have any? children. ❞

           “i, uh—” here’s where he wishes that lies came easier to him than they do, that he wasn’t such an honest man so obviously faltering at the questions that’d only raise more should he answer them truthfully ( loss weighs more when it cannot be shared, when he’s bound to live through this life alone ). “no, i— i don’t.”

There’s a moment where he looks like he isn’t going to do anything. He looks as if he’s about to let it go, completely and utterly, and just go off to do his own thing. But that would be so very unlikely. So he goes in for the headbutt. Obviously. 

“I would—” Pause. Moment to recollect his thoughts from the radiating thrum of pain. “—I would not recommend that.”

she does not speak. she is standing on his doorstop. it has been two years. the sky has just cleared up from rain.

( he will still need to appease the situation that started this. )

       ❝ shit, okay, i was just talking about—you know what, never mind. what did you say that you did? ❞

           “i never said. but for what it’s worth i’m— an antiques collector.”

     “ HUBRIS, or pride. pick ONE. or both. ”

           “neither. i believe you conceited enough to think your opinion holds weight.”

“mazes”

Vasiliy actually gives him a few moments to think about it, but then he gets impatient, gets ready to start moving. Killing is what he does and, if he has to do it now, then he will. Twice, a hundred times, it doesn’t make much of a difference to him.

           “My mind isn’t going to change.”

                     ‘ I will take you down too if I have to. ’

           But then again, the guy’s already proven himself to be on that side of the line, hasn’t he? Such a cautioning will probably only be met with hostility and the same persistence that’s landed them exactly here; in hindsight there’s little point to him wasting his breath, for him trying to be nice to a guy who so obviously won’t think twice about putting the knife in his back.

          ❝ apologies. where did you get lost? ❞

           “—fairly early on.”

she goes for a very long time, until she is no longer indulging her anger, and she does not return.

people have been missing for longer, the holes they left larger- he does, did not, not mourn her vacancy in the same way he does theirs ( but her gone still sat like the lack of spring with him, return a thing waited for with anticipation ).

     It takes a minute; her smile nearly goes unchecked ( as it is, she can hardly manage to keep it tucked over teeth ). “Well… it’s not beeping at you. It’s just beeping. I have a message.”

           Well, doesn’t he feel every bit the incompetent fool that he is. Should’ve bit his tongue, recognised the persistent beeps as little more than an annoyance. “—Oh.”