The Keepers' Evil

Fifty-Eight: Words can be cruel

Song- Like to be you: Shawn Mendes

"Words can be cruel."

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Two weeks prior.

I had read somewhere once that one could drown days after they had inhaled the water. It had mentioned that sometimes it happened to children, that their lungs could just hold the water captive until it was too much, and then they would die.

Just like that.

My mind did the same, pretending that it could behave the same because I could do nothing to punish it for its trouble. It spun me through the cycles of drowning just the same as if I were physically underwater; I felt the panic as I realised that I couldn't pull myself out, I breathed in too fast and I felt the rush of ice through my throat, and then it was searingly hot and my pulse was too heavy and it yanked me straight to the bottom where I was to stay.

Where one would stay if they were not held by Sebastian.

When I spluttered awake for the third time that night and Sebastian was too soon ready to hush me and soothe my tears, I wondered if he had just stayed awake since the first time, and the second. Perhaps not all drowning people felt guilt over being rescued, but I did.

"I-I'm sorry, I'm sorry-" I knew that I was gasping for air, I could feel how the air collided with my throat to make it itch uncontrollably. The coldest of sweats leaked from my forehead to cause a shiver to my skin, and I only became aware of it as Sebastian bunched my limbs into him, and he was too warm to ignore the cold that battled him.

Only moments before, his dorm room had held the shades of green as shadowed fingers with pointed knife-point nails and the drapes over his bed had fluttered into figures of the night to snatch me away from him. But the moment that his touch had smoothed over my skin, when his eyes had hit mine, the green had nestled into a pretty gem of jade and the drapes had simply spun to silk in the small breeze from his open window.

"You're okay, love. What was it this time?" His words were delicately placed upon my skin, whispered as he buttered his fingertips over my palms. I watched him for a moment, as he traced the lines of my palm as though each held a channel directly to my heart that belonged to him. It felt that way, and I could feel the touch flooding it with blood that was pure and crafted from the way that he held me.

What was it this time was a question that I couldn't answer. It could have been anything, any number of traumatic troubles that we had faced, and my mind was too cruel to let me remember them. I supposed that it knew that if it did let me have the pain for myself, that Sebastian was its biggest threat, it knew that he would heal it and that scared it from my mind each time that I had woken that night.

Sebastian knew what the sound of silence told him amidst the quiet, so he didn't ask again, simply opting to press small kisses against my palm as if to love where the pain should have sat. If it had been there, it would have been far too simple to just have kissed the pain away.

"Shall I tell you what your future says?" His smirk told me all that it needed to of what sheer foolishness would come from his lips, but it also invited my own smile to be held by him as I was. The corners of my mouth tipped into a gentle reflection of his happiness, and if smiling as slowly as that caused his eyes to light in the way that they did, I thought to perhaps pay more attention to his eyes when my smile was wider, when I laughed even.