Aiden

I am a child again, being lifted out of darkness. My mother would carry me from the living room to the bedroom because I was afraid of that long, dark hallway that separated the two. I would clench my eyes shut until she told me it was safe again.

I hear the sounds of death ringing through me like church bells during midday service, the wounded snarls of wicked creatures. But the chest I am pressed up against is warm, and the heart that beats beneath my ear is calm and steady. If this is death then I have nothing more to fear.

“Aiden,” Alex’s voice says with strained urgency. “Keep your eyes closed. No matter what you hear, or what you feel, don’t open them, not until I tell you to. Ok?”

I press my face into his chest and nod, prepare myself for that long, dark hallway.

The feeling of water begins to creep up my back. I do not thrash or panic, but I do clutch tighter onto the shirt of my savior. It tickles the nape of my neck and I hold my breath instinctively before I am submerged in it.

I would be free floating in this darkness if not for the tether of Alex’s heartbeat, however imagined it may be. It feels as though I have reentered the womb, a waiting room between lives, between deaths.

“Aiden, is that you?” The sound of Silva’s voice makes my heart lurch in my chest. But I do not open my eyes, I will not until Alex tells me to.

“It’s ok now, sweetheart,” she says. Even behind my clutched eyelids, tears still gather at my lashline. It’s not her, I remind myself. Not yet.

“Open your eyes, my love,” she tells me. I don’t. I can’t. I promised.

“Open your eyes!”

Her voice is distorted, comes out as more of a snarl than a loving whisper. I shudder, curling tighter into myself.

“I do not forgive you.” It is no longer Silva talking to me. It is Mizuki. “My death is on your hands, Brooks.”

“No,” I whisper. “It’s not real.”

“It’s your fault I am dead.”

“Mom?”

No, it’s not her. It’s not her or Silva or Mizuki. It’s not real.

The water comes to take me again, but this time it is cold. I tilt my head up and, through my eyelids, see light.

And the light becomes me when I break through the surface, tearing through the womb. Through lives. Through deaths.

I feel the wind prick against my arms and face and know I have made it past the dark hall, and into my bedroom.

“You’re safe,” Alex tells me. “You can open your eyes now.”

I wait for a moment, wait for the shiver to wash through my bones, to convince me that I have made it. And because I know that when I open my eyes, he won’t be there. I will be alone again.

“Don’t leave,” I whisper, knowing I cannot stop him.

“I’m not going anywhere.” It almost sounds real. I almost believe him.

The brightness of the world around me is blinding. From being in that dark pit so long to a world of light and color… I feel like a newborn.

The green of the trees around me bring tears to my eyes. The sky overhead is blue and cloudy, the muddied rocks beneath my feet feel solid and sturdy. There are birds chirping above me. I am not dead.

I know this with certainty because, standing across from me is the most beautiful man I have ever seen, hair slicked to his face with water, a shiver in his blueish lips. And his stormy gray eyes are staring at me with an intensity my imagination could never conjure, not with such astute accuracy.

I open my mouth to speak, but the only noise I make is a sharp sob.

He wraps himself in my arms that are already waiting for him.

“Alex,” I cry, burying my nose into his chest. He smells of lavender and fir and sweetness. This is real.

“I’m here,” he says, his own voice thin and wavering. We are clinging to each other so tight that it’s hard to breathe. I should be beyond angry with Alex right now, for risking his life yet again to save me. But, the truth is, I am not. I’m so selfishly relieved.

We do not tell each other not to save the other again. Love is abdication. Love is surrender. It would be futile to tell or think otherwise. Instead I say, “I love you,” and he says, “Forever,” and we are forgiven.

More than pain, more than love. Heaven must envy the way that we burn.

***

I do not acknowledge his tears. He does not acknowledge mine.

But they are there, a rawness that has been carried over from the other side. I don’t know what kind of hell he has fought through to find me, but I do know that it was just that. Hell.

He takes my hand, leads us out of the dark of that forest. We don’t let go. That’s how I notice his hesitancy after walking up the porch steps to his childhood house. His hand falls limp in mine, tugging away, trying to preserve some distance despite the intention of entering.

And I know then that this was a part of his hell. He must have relived it, the loss of his siblings, his parents. The loss of a childhood gone far too quickly. I can see it flash across his face in brief strikes, something I am so unused to seeing on him that I am washed in it too. Fear.

I want to grab him by the shoulders and steer him away from this place and its ghosts that still have their claws buried deep into him. But he crosses into the threshold before I can make a move. And his hand slips from mine.

The walls of this house still have stains we couldn’t wash away last winter. Brownish oxidized bloody prints smeared onto the plaster.

I am afraid of this silence, knowing there may be nothing I can fill it with that could chase away these ghosts, or the slight tremble I find in his hands. He is the boy on the bench again, begging not for strength but for weakness. For soft and pliable innocence.

He has been running from these memories for so long. I don’t know what it must be like to finally confront them, only that I am in awe of his ability to do so.

It means he is safe enough with me not to hide himself, not this time.

When he turns I expect anger on his face, rightful anger. But he is crying, and all the breath is kicked from my lungs. I run to him, to wrap him in my arms, to rock him back and forth. He is racked by sobs, reduced to heartbreak in my hands. And I don’t know what to do.

“I miss her,” he cries softly into my shoulder. I am crying too, crying because he was just a boy, because he had to suffer so much. He’s still suffering.

“Mom, and Neriah,” he gasps. “Sometimes- sometimes even him.”

“Who he was supposed to be,” I whisper back. I think of Lowell, of Nadia. I long for a life where things were simpler. Where we could have all been happy. All of us.

Leaning back on the balls of my feet, I cup the underside of Alex’s jaw with my palms, and he presses our foreheads together. His teary eyes are crystalline lakes in autumn nights, dark and fathomless and beautiful.

“You don’t deserve the pain you have suffered,” I say. I think I am speaking to both of us when I do.

His tears multiply, the fracture in his armor splits all the way down, cracking open like the hull of a mustard seed. And at the very center of it all is a stuffed white rabbit–an eye popped off, a leg stitched haphazardly back on, fur matted and pouch half-stuffed–glowing softly in the darkness. And I realize I did not lose anything at all when I rescued him. I didn’t lose a coin, or a part of my soul, or his gifts to me. It’s all right here, in my arms. It’s all returned to me, in softness, in innocence, in love.

“You’ve been staring at me like that all night,” he says much later in the evening. We’ve both since gotten our bearings a bit more. He’s fed me canned peaches in a sugary syrup and boiled drinking water for the both of us. He has been so gentle with me. Even now, as he insisted on washing off my wounds under the tap in the bathroom sink. It isn’t necessary, but I don’t bother to tell him that.

His concentrated face is framed in candlelight, his working hands bathed in shadow. His tenderness is nearly enough to make me start crying again.

“Like what?” I hum, mapping every single one of his features with my eyes. Searing it into my brain.

“Like that,” he chuckles, eyes flitting to my face for long enough to make a point.

“You’re nice to look at,” I tease, though we both know it’s much more than that. My blood stains the water pink, and I am remembering how desperate I was, slamming that slab of concrete onto the library floor. The sound of running water trickles through the bathroom walls. The coldness of it has helped numb the pain, just a bit.

“You saved me,” I say. Alex looks up, piecing together the look on my face.

“We saved each other.”

I shake my head. “That’s not what I-”

“I know,” he says softly. But I need to say it anyway.

“You died.” My words scratch my throat on the way out. “Protecting me.” I don’t know how to put into words the way I am feeling right now, but I need him to understand it.

“You gave up everything to wake Joan, for my forgiveness. And then you… you gave up everything again-”

“-For my forgiveness.”

I still do not know the words I need to say, just that I need to say them.

“Don’t be so hasty with your sacrifice. That is what I want to tell you,” I say.

“It was not haste that drove either of those decisions,” he says with an astounding confidence.

“That is what scares me.”

I turn the sink spigot off and dry my hands on the hem of my shirt before stripping myself of it. I reach over, turning the faucet handle in the bathtub. I hold a hand out to heat it, and steam rushes around us quickly, a dense cloud that warms me from the inside.

And then I tug at Alex’s shirt, working the fabric slowly over his head.

“You’re more than a votive. Don’t give your life ever again, not for anyone. That’s what I want to tell you, knowing it would be cruel of me,” Alex says.

“That is not your decision.”

“No,” he mutters. “And that is what scares me.”

I take his hand in mine when we’ve fully stripped, leading him naked to the water. It is my turn to wash him.

Kneeling in the tub, I sprinkle hot water over his head, then over each of his wounds. We bathe each other until the water is pink and soapy and our skin is clear.

Alex fastens the red ruby necklace he was safekeeping around my neck. It is warm from his body heat, and warmer when he presses his lips around it, between my collarbones. Our soul split between us.

He guides my chin up towards heaven and kisses me.

***