SOMEONE ALWAYS has to leave first.
Whether it's through a breakup or death, through separations happy and healthy even if they do cause pain at first. Sometimes it happens naturally, when the one you love slips from living to the afterlife, and there's simply nothing else to do other than plead: Please hold onto them as tenderly as I did. Please love them.
But nothing is saccharine and nothing is safe or holy when it comes to death's bleak hands. Death takes and takes. Death rips and steals. Death leaves nothing but bittersweet memories behind. However, death keeps the ones you love forever as they were, even when you are unable.
Jude Lawson constantly felt as if he travelled hand in hand with death, which was honestly rather uncomfortable. He'd much rather disregard how the looming shadows of death stalked him like a curse, in favour of holding the person that he adored the most for as long as possible. Even if he knew that one day something would come to separate them. Love is; stifling, even though, like everything else good in the world, will ultimately end.
And it did.
And in turn, Jude Lawson's world blew to smithereens.
Jude Lawson loved Lydia Saunders. So much so he'd snatch her from the cruel hand of death. He'd ignite buildings and forests, bring the thunderous sky down on any soul who even dared to take her from him even a millisecond sooner than what was fated. For a man in love is dangerous, and Jude Lawson was already dangerous enough.
It had to be in a faraway land where they'd met for the first time. He believed that to be true. She, Lydia Saunders, was too perfect. Beautiful. Pure from her heart to her soul. They met just after his parents passed and he was still seemingly malnourished - scrawny with too many dreams, but too little money to pursue them. Lydia had been lonely, most of her childhood friends moved out of their town, with not even a soul to help her navigate life after her adolescence.
They were 'perfectly wrong' for each other. She'd confessed jokingly four summers later, but Jude Lawson hadn't taken it as a joke. He believed they were perfect. Their family accepted them. However, the law disagreed.
If only he'd been there when those missiles hit her.
Arm.
Stomach.
Neck.
He couldn't imagine how it felt.
Lydia Saunders could though, in such a vile neighbourhood, she'd always imagined it.
Just not as soon as it did.
Jude's world fell apart that day. He couldn't pretend. As far as he was concerned, he was numbed. If he hadn't been so sure Lydia would despise him for losing himself without her, he'd of drowned himself already.
Even just the thought of her put the taste of copper and lead in his mouth.
And, frankly, there was only so much orange juice a man could try to chug down to wash the taste out.
No, no, Judah! Listen to me! Listen to me! I'm going to be fine - I'm going to be- I'm going to be okay! Somebody's calling 91- Nope. No. Jude already had enough nights waking up screaming, the voicemail scarring his mind whilst he cried with no sound. The never ending feeling of hopelessness, the pain in his chest flaring bright and hot, even as all he can hear is his wailing of panicking sirens. He had enough nights. Enough mornings. Enough days. Without the added trauma, thank you very much.
What really pissed him off though - what really ground his gears?
He wasn't even fucking mad.
But he should've been.
He should be so vexed about being left alone. He should've wanted to tear through the city, piece by piece, just to find the person that did it.
He should've.
But he wasn't.
And, because his emotions were a grizzly, goddamn mess on the best of days, he'd of just ruined everything little he'd gotten back. That's what pissed him off.
Because, as much as he tried to understand, he couldn't.
J, I'm so scared.
Nothing could've prepared him for the fifteen excruciating minutes he spent on that phone. He should've done something, but he was scared.
For the first time in forever... he was actually scared.
So, yeah, he'd been pissed for a long time now.
Patient deceased.
Jude's brain couldn't even get grips of the weakness in his Lydia's voice, even after the call suddenly cut.
Lydia was gone.
And his heart went with her.
Jude was so extremely numb.
And for weeks he was nothing. A failing body, passing by every belonging of hers in a dwindling orbit, but never quite colliding with the truth of her nothingness.
And by that point... he wasn't even mad anymore.
He knew he didn't have the years, yet (and that was still terrifying for Jude to think of), to understand the loneliness that was seeming to be his forthcoming. Not by a long shot.
Jude and Lydia? It was borrowed time.
Yet, it was the greatest time of his life.
The hollow in his chest, some nights, seemed to expand remembering those years before his parents death. Those months before his Lydia Saunders.
And in that there was an uneasiness, in knowing himself before the trauma. In knowing how happy he really was before the darkness came bouldering in.
And it seemed darker now that the only person who understood, probably better than he did, in her own way, was now gone.
So yeah. Jude didn't understand.
Even when the constant reminder of her still sunk like a blazing fire in his bones - pain flaring from his sternum uncomfortably hot and bright... Jude still knew he should be mad.
But it took months to admit he never really was.
