The Time It Takes To Fall

Unlovable

USA, 2019 A.D.

Cinder didn't know where she was running off to— all she knew was that she had to get away; for if she couldn't get away, she knew that she would self-destruct. She couldn't stand another second with that fiend of a woman that had raised her.

She rushed past medical personnels dressed in white lab coats and blue scrubs and around hospital beds filled with the sick and dying. The memories of her last visit to a hospital filled her mind and tortured her. The agony that had filled her heart as the doctors had told her that her sister was dead—dead before Cinder even arrived. She had run then too.

Finally she reached the staircase, pushing past the white exit door and into the all-concrete room where the entire world turned dark and gray. She raced down the staircase— feet echoing loudly upon the ground though she could barely hear the noise over her own breathing. Actually, she didn't notice much aside from that fact that her lungs were no longer catching air.

Reaching the bottom of a flight of stairs, Cinder collapsed to the ground and held her head in her hands. There didn't seem to be enough air in the room as she sat there gasping violently upon the ground. Tears stung her eyes and her lungs burned to be filled. She wondered if she was dying— if this would be her end.

A hand touched Cinder's back and pulled her close. In her panicked state she couldn't see or hear the person— couldn't even smell them— but she knew it was Kai. The way he pulled her gently into his arms as she tried in vain to catch just a breath of air into her lungs. He whispered words of comfort to her— words that she couldn't make out— but they made her feel more at ease.

Her body melted into his, as if she were a rag doll released from the hands of a child. His words suddenly changed from mumbling to actual sentences strung together, and Cinder felt immediate comfort within them. She buried her head in his chest and let out a sob. She clutched at his shirt with shaking hands as if he were the last person on the earth— and to her, he was.

Kai didn't tell her that it would be alright, or that she was fine. He simply whispered "I am here," and "I have you." And then his voice would slip into a language that she couldn't understand as he sang a melody that sounded vaguely familiar— a lullaby. But no one had ever sang to Cinder before, not even when she was a baby.

Eventually her breathing slowed along with her tears, leaving her head throbbing and her eyes dry as sawdust. Her entire body ached with that sort of hollow emptiness one feels after suffering a massive panic attack— that effort of trying to breathe and bring back whatever normal was supposed to feel like; that feeling of dying, and wishing that you would, and then having to come back to being alive.

"She is nothing but a wretched, sad woman, Cinder," Kai whispered into her hair. Her body rested halfway in his lap and her face still lay buried in the crook of his neck. She hadn't been held so dearly by anyone since her sister's death. Only Iko had given her any form of affection since her sister's death, and even then it was... different— almost as if Iko didn't know how to hug and love someone the way they ought to be. She was more mechanical in the way she loved others, doing everything the right way, but without the same emotions.

Cinder swallowed, feeling another tear slip out from her eye and fall onto Kai's sweatshirt. "But she's my mother," Cinder mumbled, nuzzling her face farther into Kai's neck. "She raised me. She's supposed to love me but..." she choked on the words, feeling them catch like sticky honey within her throat. "Why doesn't she love me? Am I that unlovable?"

Kai's body flinched at her words and he pulled away from Cinder. He kept his hands on either of her shoulders, holding her far enough away from him so that he could look into her eyes. "Unlovable?" Kai asked, his Adam's apple bobbing with the single word. "You think that you are unlovable?"