"What are you afraid of?" He had asked her as they lay there, under a bay window that showed a velvet black sky, sprinkled with sparkling diamonds. After a few minutes, a hand reached out and took his. He looked down at the soft hand, paper white with rivulets of sapphire under the skin. It had never occurred to him just how much he loved her hands until now.
"Would you like the truth? Or will a lie suffice?" A dulcet voice whispered. She had still not turned to look at him, but her hand in his remained strong.
"The truth." He always asked her for the truth. He didn't want rubies of falsehood, of lies, to ruin what they had taken so long to build. He understood them to be a diamond, and the truth to be their diamond cutter, pulling away pretenses that shouldn't exist. And so, her voice lifted slowly.
"I'm afraid of the door when it shuts out the light. I'm afraid of the jolt my heart makes every time you look at me. I'm afraid of the park bench where my mother and I used to sit and don't anymore. I'm afraid of the emerald on my mother's wedding ring. I'm afraid of breaking an already broken heart. I'm afraid of drowning in a river where no one else has drowned before."
He looked up at the stars, and for a moment, forgot her hand was still in his locked, interlaced. His face was schooled to nothingness. Just because he always wanted the truth, didn't mean it wasn't brutal enough to hurt him. He didn't know how to take away any of her fears.
"Now. Ask me what I fear the most in the world."
The soft words were so sudden, and his thoughts so concentrated, that he almost didn't hear them at all. A silent prayer was offered to the glowing, pearl like shine of the moon and then, he asked, "What do you fear the most in the world?"
"Losing you before I have to." In a missing heartbeat, she had shaped the words so beautifully. Finally, he looked to her and saw what he had been avoiding. The hospital bed that was holding them both, her fading opal eyes, her pale lips that had once been ruby red. But most poignant of them all, the paper white hand that was holding his so firmly.
But then... it quivered...
She was going...
She was going...
She was gone.
And all that was left was a silent velvet night, a new diamond in the sky, and a broken question hidden carefully behind vowels in the voice of a boy that had been trying to be so strong. Only...there was no one left to be strong for.
"Then why are you running away?"
// an
My heart breaks always for those who lose their other halves...For they are like a single diamond that has been broken apart.
Tonight there will be a new diamond in the sky.
