Soteria

CHAPTER 27:

It was like a hole had been punctured through her chest, leaving her bleeding, with nothing left but emptiness filling the rupture. Her tears had finished, yet the sorrow and guilt remained, her throat feeling heavy and constricted, the lump never attempting to heal but only growing larger and laboured.

It hurt her. It hurt her that she had actually thought that Tom would change despite him admitting that he loves her. He didn't love her.

If he loved her... he would get rid of those dark objects. If he loved her, he wouldn't be scared of death. If he loved her, he would have no hesitation and would harbour a tiny sentiment of hope to live... with her— for her because she would be there to reassure him and be evidence that death is not the end. That they would be together in this life and the hereafter. But he clearly didn't have that faith in her or in the so-called love that he had for her.

He didn't love her.

He wasn't willing to sacrifice the thing he loved most for her just like she had done for him. He wasn't willing to let go of the thing that he loved most that would evidently destroy him to the core, leaving him a cold-hearted monstrous being. That he would be her nightmare and would purloin many things from her that she considered to be cardinal. Her life.

He didn't love her.

Her stomach churned. Her body felt numb and frail, like broken glass being stepped on repeatedly. She was the glass where Ivy felt transparent and fragmented, the pieces scattering all over the ground, broken and penetrable where one would be unable to glue the broken pieces back together. Her heart. 

Her soul.

They had been wrong—no, she had been wrong. She felt like a fool, allowing herself to succumb to Tom, to release her inner desires for him, to allow him to penetrate through her mind and discover her deepest, gravest of secrets, only for him to do anything but ultimately betray her in the end. He desired her in a way that was not one of love but of carnage. 

But hearing those words elude from his mouth, reaching the tunnels of her ears where it echoed continuously, even presently throughout her body, making her shudder, was a miracle. It was miraculous. It was confusing. It made her wonder if he truly did love her in a way that was not carnivorous and rapacious where she was meaningless. 

But she must've meant something to Tom for him to express those words. The very words he despised, the word that was supposedly his birth, and the desire of the word that he confided in to destroy, which he evidently did strive to do and succeeded he did.

Witnessing him looking so blurred, confused, and helpless for her made something within Ivy's chest shift a little. It was as if she was the essence of his need to live, but she wasn't the essence of his need to die and live on freely where his and her soul would intertwine and linger on and on and on... into the unknown. 

Yes, she was being selfish, but she had every right to.

Leaving him stranded under the sorrowful tears of the rain with her last words echoing throughout the silent four walls made her wonder if he would take a leap and provide her with what she and her loved ones are dying for. 

She had said she forgave him and that Ivy truly did because what was the use of containing a grudge when it wasn't entirely his fault for causing so much pain and if he hadn't even begun his corrupted rampage as of yet?

Hearing her say that she forgave him would only make him feel a sense of ease, hurt, and realise that this was the end. That she had given up with him, with herself, and the promise she had effortlessly sought to uphold with dignity and righteousness, only for it to tumble down and rot in the end. The end. This was the end. For her.