Once In A Blue Moon

22 Dangerous

Through her, in a rush of musk and saffron, beauty falls into disarray.

— Ibn Al-Arabi

☾

Sorrow is one thing when you carry it in your heart, but when your eyes carry it too, maybe it's because the grief is too much to carry. Maybe the eyes wear it like a jewelry around the neck, an accessory that cannot be overlooked. Pain cannot be just dismissed after all.

Sorrow shades her eyes glossy, but the betrayal he reads there color them hard, darker than the actual soft brown of her irises to that of the wrath of a blinded sky. He can hear her rejection without her saying a word. He has broken her heart.

"Banafsha."

He says her name in a longing that makes the air around them buzz. Her name is eccentric for his tongue, the weight of it crushing it. He tries to home it in his speech.

"There's so much to say, still I'm dumbfounded in front of you." He raises his other hand to her face too, holding her face in both of his hands now. "There always had been so much to tell you, but I would go tongue-tied whenever I'd see you."

She doesn't move, staring at him wordlessly, as if any instant he would disappear for she cannot believe the reality of the situation. Is it too bitter for her to swallow? Mikael searches her eyes for something other than the apparent torment of his revelation.

"Ask me why I did it, Banafsha," he pleads in a whisper, his hands falling from her face to her shoulders, holding her close to himself.

Slowly, she reaches out to touch his face, her fingers grazing his skin down his eyebrow to the tip of his nose, then falling to his lips in a feather caresses. Her nearness is maddening, dangerous, intoxicating. Her fingers burn him wherever they touch.

"Aurang." She smiles, then chuckles feebly, and her tears begin to fall. "So my worry was legit. I was afraid you could turn out to be like the rest of them, a cheating man, and I decided to run away from you. But how long could I keep running from my fate?" Her hand drops to his chest and she gently pushes him away, but he doesn't let go. "Karma had to pay me back for my deeds, nah?"

"No--"

"Shush." She presses her palm to his mouth. "I know I told you I would listen to you, but please don't break me all at once."

He feels his chest being torn apart and his heart ripped out. He feels the weight of her agony like a mountain upon himself.

"I had every reason to believe you were the man I married," she tells him. "And despite my brain warning me, I chose to be irrational for you, and held onto that one reason to believe you're not: when I called you Aurang that night and you pretended to be not. You pretended to be Mikael for me."

"I chose to be Mikael for you, Banafsha. I'm that man for you."

"But that man broke my heart." She lightly hits him on the chest, sniffing and trying to blink back tears. "You broke my heart." She struggles with him to free herself but he tugs her into his arms. She looks at him in despair. "Is this what heartache feels like, Mikael? As if I'm suspended somewhere between life and death."

He resists his own tears, muttering helplessly, "I can never even imagine of hurting you, doctor."

"But you have."

"That was never my intention."

"Intentions don't save trust, actions do."

"Hear me out, please." He releases her and she's quick to put distance between them, shaking her head in disappointment-- seemingly both in him and in herself. Banafsha walks away from him and goes to lean against the handrail. He joins her too.