He's tearing at the seams, has been for a while now, til all that's holding his heart together is one, small thread, and even that is fraying at the ends, thread by thread by thread.

And every cruel word is a slowly sharpening blade.

So when his lifeline finally snaps and he falls, down, down, down, into the endless dark, he doesn't scream. He doesn't cry. But he could try. Oh, he could, but the sound would just be ripped from his throat and thrown silently into the wind, tears lost, useless. 

Disposed without a second thought. Just like him. He knows, because he's done this before in his dreams-no, his nightmares. Over and over and over again. So down he spirals in deadly silence. 

He turns tired eyes skyward, and laughs bitterly, the sound hollow in his chest, choking on it til it's nothing but a strangled sob. No use looking up to the stars now, they've sputtered out, one by one, until he's left all alone. But that's okay, he's used to it. And so he closes his eyes.

                                                              ***

He may not have screamed. But she did. She screamed and screamed until her throat was raw and she could scream no more, but that was a lie. Because in her head it went on and on and on. She went to blink away the tears, to no avail. They would not stop, and came gushing in such volume she felt as if she were to drown. 

But no matter. She was already drowning in her screams, in her mind, telling her to stop, to shut her dirty mouth and hug the broken boy within the silent, suffering husk of a man that stood before her. And yet, and yet she stood there and laughed, a tinkling sound like glass, soft and sharp and painful. Like a slowly sharpening blade. 

She had laughed at him today again. And, that had been it, hadn't it? At last, it hit her, what she had done, what it was doing to him, and she had run to find the thread of love to stitch him up again too late, far too late and he was there and he was falling and-

Stop. Deep breaths. And she was breathing in, but it was not air her lungs were filling up with, but grief, remorse, regret. The overpowering guilt weighing down her very soul to the point it was a wonder she was standing at all. She choked on her sobs, rife with self loathing.

And then she heard it, amidst her sorry, worthless self and the eerie silence: a laugh so choked with tears it may as well have been a sob, sharp and jagged and final. And so she tears her gaze away and turns tear stained eyes to the sky, the endless expanse of black glittering harshly with stars. She is alone with the stars, glinting bright and unforgiving. And so she closes her eyes and lets the tears fall freely.

Because sometimes it is just as hard to be the one left standing as it is to be the one broken. Because she broke him and now she’s broken too, shattered glass on a bed of snow.