CEM MIB ~Secrets & Lies

Tears & Mirrors

He found his love standing in front of the mirror with her hands resting on the marble countertop, supporting her weight her hair down, loose on her back. Her eyes, which had been closed slowly opened. Their green irises were clouded and distant as her pupils narrowed in the light and she focused on the reflection she found in the mirror. That reflection was somehow less than who they were, somehow a shadow of the lovers they had once been, incomplete and unbalanced.

His heart sank. He felt his knees weaken and his heart dropped to the floor as he stared through the mirror and into those flooded sweet green eyes. Her tears raining down her cheeks stole the words from his lips and the beat from his heart. He was paralyzed, pain gripping his soul and ripping it apart. He stood, wanting to go to her, take her in his arms and kiss away her tears, yet he was unable to move forward into the room lost in a myriad of emotions that terrified him. Through the mirror, she turned her eyes to his.

"I can't with you, the baby, the overzealous touchy-feely fans, and friends alike, the women that are just friends to you, but always wanted more from you, the time apart." His world spun out of control and his life passed before his eyes as a grief so dark and complete that it blotted out the sun consumed him. His very being threatened to shatter and tear into a million pieces, his heart contracted in his chest and held. He opened his mouth to speak but the words he desperately wanted and needed to say were gone, stricken from him by the overwhelming sense that his life was over. He choked on his emotions, gagged over the pain filling his chest and wished death would take him from the world.

She stood, staring into the mirror and watched as the first of his tears worked their way from his eyes, and poised briefly on his lashes before leaping and tumbling from their precarious perch only to fall to their deaths upon his bearded cheeks. Time slowed to a stumbling crumbling crawling halt and collapsed in upon itself as those tears fell, stretching mere seconds into a life time of misery and anguish. Nothing hurt more than watching Pain work it's corrupted and polluted way through the purity of his heart and into the serenity of his beautiful eyes.

Pain wrapped her soul in the purest of agony and darkness, crushing her heart with despair, holding her hostage in its filthy grasp and weighing her down. Her heart beat out of rhythm and time. Her breath fell short of filling her lungs. Her world just collapsed and caved in around her aching heart, went crashing down in a fiery blaze of useless pride and foolish jealousy. What had she just said to him? She choked on her breath fought and struggled for air like a suffocating animal. Her tears fell freely from her eyes and ran carelessly down her rosy cheeks. She pulled her eyes from Avi's reflection and let them fall upon his tear streaked face.

He felt powerless, lost and confused. All thought flew from his mind, all of his own hurt from his heart. His pain and misery were cast aside the moment her pain filled eyes landed on his. They were dead and set on the choice she had made without him, full of every emotion he felt and so much more. Her lip began to quiver as large tears burdened with the weight of her choice fell from those eyes. Eyes that he wanted to stare into for the rest of his days, that he would never stare into again. Her body trembled. His heart shattered. She looked at him with hollow haunted eyes filled with both resolve and more agony than he ever wanted to see in them.

Avi watched the love of his life weaken, break and crumble while standing in the doorway of the hotel bathroom. Though his heart broke cleanly in his chest the edges were jagged and sharp, cutting him from deep within his soul leaving him lonely and frightened to the point of destitution. He felt empty and directionless, like a tumbleweed blown by the wind. The moment her eyes, brown with anguish and sadness met his, the whole of the world ceased to exist. It stopped turning. His heart stopped beating and his blood turned cold. All the air was sucked from his chest as despair descended upon him mercilessly destroying and crushing what was left of his heart. Yet, his own fear and anguish were undone in the face of the unimaginable torment so very clear in her eyes. It set him free to move into the room and to her.

His feet moved before his numb and broken mind did. He stepped to Rayne slipping into her shape as if they were two pieces cut from the same stone. She fit to him easily, her body folding into his. One hand went to her face, the other to her back. His forehead pressed to hers, his nose rested beside hers nudging her gently and catching her tears on its tip. He breathed softly against her skin as he struggled for breath. His whiskers tickled her lips and pulled at the strings of desire for him that would always run through her. But none of that mattered, none of it at all.

Through the heart-shattering pain and sense of loss greater than all that she had already known, she had made the choice, said the words she never wanted to say, words she would forever regret. Her hands went to his sturdy shoulders, holding his body from hers and stopping their connection to each other from forming. His heart turned and fell. She turned her face up, tears tracing down her cheeks and tenderly brushed his lips with hers. Slowly, with the patience of goodbye, she captured his lower lip between hers and held very still. Her agony folded in and threatened to consume her as his wrapped itself around her and froze her in place.

Their world stood still then shattered into the afternoon. His tears fell heavy from his eyes and mingled with hers upon their cheeks. Nothing. Nothing in all the world could have prepared him for the debilitating pain he felt entangle his soul. Nothing could have prepared him for her loss. He felt her let him go. The wave of anguish crushed him beneath its horrible weight. He wanted to crush her to him, pull her into that final kiss that they shared and hold onto them both for all of eternity. He knew it would do them no good. He felt her torment as deeply and keenly as he felt his own carving out his soul and leaving him lifeless and adrift. He could not describe it if he tried, nor did he want to. In his heart, he searched for the words to make her stay, stumbled, fumbled, begged and pleaded his way through apology after apology all to no avail. He knew, knew it with all that he used to be, that she would leave. He hoped the day he would have to learn to live again would never come, hoped and prayed every day that he would never spend another day without her love to hold him true.

Standing there, her lips gently holding his, the day had come. Her hands slipped down his arm to his hand the other up to his face. She made no move to deepen their kiss and no move to change it other than to let him go. He whimpered as their lips parted for the last time and she closed the door that they had held open for each other for the past several years. He felt it slam on his heart. He poured every shred of his heart and soul into the only whisper that he could form,

"Please." Her hand slipped from his face as her fingers trailed to his fingers tips and she moved silently past him, out the door and out of his life.