Knowing Me, Knowing You | (S/P)

Prologue

"You're okay." I affirm to my own reflection on the mirror. What were his last words? I feel dread grip me at once. Panic. I can't remember. Was he scared? Did he think of me? What was the last that thing he felt? What were his last words? How could I not know that? How could I not know?

"What's going on in there?" He asks me, his fingertips brushing the side of my arm. There is my mind, and nothing frightens me as much as the thought of getting lost in it.

I don't answer straight away. Nothing. I wish there was nothing. I wish there was a little less. I turn around, dragging my fingertips down his chest, inch by inch, his breath warm and gentle against my neck.

"Worry," I finally whisper. "Fear." It seems that he was expecting that, but it still looks to me that my answer makes his stomach sink, his heart plummet, his eyes burn.

"Of what?"

This time the answer comes swiftly. "Of always feeling like this."

"I'd like to help," he murmurs. "How can I help?"

"This helps." I assure him.

"You won't feel like this forever." His words are hardly above a whisper, his arms snaking around my waist, his lips pressing tenderly to my hair. "I promise."

I want to feel something at that. Hope, maybe. After all, it's been more than a few months –after all, it's not as dark as it was before.

But I feel no trace of it. A relieved sigh does not leave my lips. The stirrings of hope don't make my heart flutter. I don't feel anything except that all-pervasive heavy weight. And that is made up of a lot of things —struggle, fear, regret, sadness — but neither of them are hope. Hope is reserved for those who believe in some sort of goodness, a major force, some balance in the universe, and I'm not sure I believe in any of that anymore.

If I want to get past this, I have to lean on something real.

And my anger is real. It is a living, dark thing perched on me, clamping me down.

"No, I won't live like this forever."

The corners of his lips start rising upward, but when he realizes that I'm not agreeing with him, his grip around me tightens, and I, too, am seized at one by terror. Count your heartbeats Mason, mom used to tell him. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten...