happy birthday pashchan! part two.
“I should have liked to see you before you became improbable.”
He cannot understand her, and he thinks that might be for the best. Better for his soul, for the part of him that burns out more furiously each instant she's around. She's dangerous to the touch. She's dangerous to hold in mind. And sometimes he's surprised the world hasn't fallen inward, the way she shakes apart what ought to be.
But she wasn't always this.
She must have begun somewhere. Been something less callous and less changeable. And there are times he thinks he sees something akin to compassion in her eyes, or at least a desire to have and be had, a wishing and a need to be held close. The woman who was hasn't gone entirely. She's just been... Diminished. Changed.
Whatever she was has been razored down to fragments. If her heart had once known kindness, she is now a flickering of warmth wrapped 'round with jagged steel, all scorched in a harsher fire. The signs are everywhere evident. In the customary cruelty of her eyes. The pitiless hunger lacing her voice's edge. The way even her briefest grasp feels like iron, without mercy and without release. She is final, in a way. She is destruction more than life. She makes a hell of beauty.
But what did she want to be.
And does she dream of it still, does she remember what it was like to stand in solid form, what it meant to live without this distant knowing and darkness that drives her, does she regret what has become?
He oughtn't to think about any of this; already he's wondering too far. With Isolde, all conclusions threaten danger. Thoughts like this can break the world down. Thoughts like this can threaten to turn his mind. So silence. So he urges his mind into quiet. Never mind. Never mind.
But she must have. Must have been something.
From time to time when he's with her, he quiets and draws her closer, offers an embrace more of compassion than desire or terror. He doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know whether she understands. He thinks she intends to destroy him, thinks he's been destructing all along. But while he's here, he can offer this. If only for a moment, he can hold her.
She must have been something. Once.