when I first saw you, I knew that you had a flame in your heart (closed)

[thenobledie]

Who: Belzac, thenobledie
When: March 6th
Where: the Church
Format: prose
What: Shirley finds Belzac('s shadow). Heartbreak ensues.
Warnings: Hideous prose. lmao, no. n/a

Comments

[scorchedshadow]

The echoes. They are loud in his ears, as if the sound had been missing before, long before, too long before.

How long has it been?

A while. Too long. Years, months, weeks, days. Millennia. Time doesn't matter here, not when it comes to comrades, to enemies, to anyone. But that is not something he will sit and think about. That is simply not his way of thinking. No matter how long it has been, her voice is there, her steps, those that he remembers so vividly, as if he had never been taken from this world, that world, their world.

Where he would have smiled kindly on her, spoken her name politely, but not without a sense of camaraderie, hints of affection so subtle he sometimes feared it would not get through, he instead looks upon her, expression empty compared those from a time past. His eyes watch her closely, his ears are listening carefully.

"It is hard to tell," he replies, false warmth swaddling each word. "How long has it been?

[thenobledie]

She pauses; he isn't the man she once knew, and it's almost startling. But then, she isn't the woman he once knew, either, is she?

"Too long." Shirley sits near him, her ankles, crossed and her hands, in her lap. The heavy fabric of her cloak seems overwhelming, then, on her small frame. Somehow, the long sleeves don't hide her hands, though. "Sometimes, I tell others I've lost count," she confesses. "It's easier."

Unlike Belzac, she mirrors what they use to be, but the distance between their bodies is significant. She doesn't look at him (not shamefully but regrettably, none the less), and the warmth in her voice is nostalgic. She would feign interest in the Church's architecture, but he would know better.

[scorchedshadow]

"Easier," he repeats.

Easier is a word for it. To remember the time that has past, the things that were lost, could have been lost are sometimes too much for anyone to bear and even he... he is no different. And she, she is not as she was back then. Perhaps it is more than he could expect. That life he would do anything to protect and now. Now he looks upon her and sees something else. Something that he would rather the distance be there. She is not the woman he would die for, the woman he did die for.

"The easier path is not one we should consider taking," he tells her, ignoring the nostalgia. There is no place for it. Not in this place. "Is that how you have lived, since that day?"

[thenobledie]

"It has been neither easy nor hard," and it's the truth. When the living seek her out, she may say what is easier when it suits her, but it's not her day to day. Her day to day is numb. Her 'life,' if one could call it that, is nothingness interrupted by the occasional call of fate or duty or something of that sort. "Because there is nothing left to live. We simply exist now." Finally, Shirley looks at him.

[scorchedshadow]

"You are wrong," he states coolly. There is more than mere 'existence' here. Perhaps the duties have changed, but there is nothing else. Her words don't instill sadness within him, resignation that there is nothing to live for that compares to what they had before here, but instead leaves a bitter one on his tongue. He lives with meaning, chooses that above all else. And she, he'd thought, had lived this way as well. All of them.

Or perhaps he was fooled. Living gives meaning. Dying has meaning. Existing, accepting 'simply' existing, that takes away all meaning. "I live beyond mere existence. All of us did."

He meets her gaze with a level one of his own. "You have discarded life and meaning so you don't have to look back."

[thenobledie]

Part of Shirley feels he is right, but for the most part, she feels indifferent. If he feels that way, she cannot take it from him; it could be a better way to 'live,' even. She may have tried once, but the decades dragged into centuries... Time stopped having meaning. Then, everything stopped having a true meaning to her. Shirley doesn't know how to capture meaning in this existence anymore, but does she even care to now?

She looks away again. "How long have you been dead before the Door summoned you?" Rather, how aware of his death was he before? The Belzac she left is trapped in a tower, not even aware they are both dead. Is this the same spirit she has visited?