burns and bullets

prologue

Prologue

She hesitantly opened her eyes and she saw him, smiling. His hand caressed her cheek, his eyes free from the concern that had housed in them the past days.

‘I’m here to save you,’ he whispered, placing his lips on her forehead. ‘You’ve been very strong, sweetheart. Time to go home now.’

He wasn’t really there, though. She was sure of that. She had been here for so long—she could barely keep reality and hallucinations apart anymore—

—not without the help of her little trick. She would make him say the words he had said when he first saved her, just to make sure that it was a dream.

(She dreamt about him a lot)

It felt good to have him with her, even though he wasn’t.

Sometimes, he even smelled like him. Like autumn leaves on the forest floor—a masculine, musky scent with the slight hint of lime and freshness of a summer breeze in it that invaded her nostrils and made the pitiful condition she was in a little more bearable for just a matter of moments.

She was sure she was dying. He was more real than ever. He felt real, he smelled real, he seemed real—

—he wasn’t. He never was.

But if this was what dying was like, she would gladly do it.

Her voice was low and pained, throat soar, eyelids heavy. ‘I never said it back,’ she mumbled to him, resting her head against the wall she was chained to. She closed her eyes then, unwillingly—she wanted to see him, as if he would disappear if she didn’t look and maybe—

—maybe he would. He wasn’t real, after all.

She silently continued, fighting to keep her eyes open—

(she failed)

—‘I wanted to. I wanted to tell you, I swear, I promise. I told Stel, but I didn’t tell you and—’ Her voice was barely a whisper, a ghost of a sound carried on a gush of air. ‘I never got to tell you. You said it and I didn’t and now—’

Arms were wrapped around her and it hurt. It felt so real, so intensely real that she couldn’t even imagine they were just a mere product of her wicked mind. Something that kept her alive, that kept her hopes up.

The hope that someday it wouldn’t have to be a dream.

Was she dying?

She felt it slip away. She felt him slip away.

And wasn’t he the only thing that kept her alive? Wasn’t he that one thing that kept her here? She stayed alive for him, she survived for him. It was all because of him. All because she couldn’t leave him.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

She felt like crying, but didn’t have any tears. She didn’t have anything but the chains that bound her to the wall and the floor and a gaping hole where he once had housed in her heart.

She was empty.

It felt good to die in his arms, she thought. It felt good to be with him.

I love you, she tried to say. I will always love you.

She couldn’t. Her tongue refused to turn bubbles of air into tones, her throat refused to produce a sound. She wanted to tell him, when he said it. It seemed like a lifetime ago when she wanted to say she loved him like he loved her. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he had told her he loved her and she wanted to tell him the same but—

—but she couldn’t. She had slipped away and she had lost him.

And now she was here, wrists and feet chained, her body laying on the cold, moist stones in a cellar and she was unable to tell him. She was unable to tell him that what she felt. She had never told him and now he would never know that there was someone who loved him.

He was there with her, when she fell. She was already on the ground, she had been for a long time, but she felt like she was falling. She closed her eyes and greeted the darkness that engulfed her as she did so, never losing the feel of his arms around her. She didn’t want to lose him. She didn’t want to let him go. Not quite yet. She didn’t want to fall alone.

She clung to him so intensely she didn’t know where her body ended and his began. She kissed every spot she could reach, hoping that maybe he would hear what she was screaming in her head but unable to voice. That she loved him. That she didn’t want to leave him. That she didn’t want to fall.

(But fall she did.)

—

i apologise, i have a thing for prologues that do not make any sense. it will eventually though, if you read the story, all will be clear.