weight of living | cilla + sol

It wasn’t that she was afraid of being a coward, cowards were everywhere, and at some point in everyone’s life you ended up being one. It was the fact that she chose to be a coward because of such a stupid reason. If she were fighting for her life she would not back down, there would be ne fear in her movements, just certainty and grace. Fighting was so much simpler, there was nothing to be afraid of because you had to trust in your own skills and when you did that nothing could stop you. But this? You couldn’t trust in someone else to give you what you needed, they could snatch it away in a split second, leaving your gaping wounds to fester and rot. It was what it felt like, loving her mother, like a blade was pressed against your stomach and as soon as you lost it she’d tear you open, and you’d have to scream for her help and love to stop the bleeding, because your hands were bound behind your back and you could not move. She’d manipulated her children so much that the thought of not having her love was like dying. It was any wonder Cilla despised love.

When it came to losing her mother’s love – a mother she often despised, she broke. Was it because she needed it? Cilla had always believed that love was the worst thing of all and she detested it as much as she never tried to feel it, but her mother had dug herself into her skin and turned her into this idolizing idiot that couldn’t survive without her praise and love. So in turn when that attention, when those needs were threatened she broke.

You often had no choice in the matter and in the end being a coward was all you had left. It was the fact that she felt so numb to it all, the fact that her heart tightened and her chest ached at the thought of being treated the way her brother did, so she did not even hesitate to act as selfish as she had. And then after all of it, she’d feel the pain, she’d not look at her brother for a week, she’d not speak to him until he dove into her skin and dragged her out of it all. Then it was harder, because she had to look him in the eye and tell him she had tried, even though he knew the answer his eyes would get hopefully, even though he knew that you had shut yourself complete off he’d still think ‘maybe she had said yes’, but she hadn’t.

Cilla would then have to watch as her brother rumpled all over again, their exchange a silent one, but his sobs weren’t. He was bleeding, he was losing his fight to that wound, there was rot and an infection and sooner or later it was going to kill him. The worst part was the fact that her brother knew how to fix it, he knew how to make it all better, but his body wouldn’t let him, his mind was so broken that without the friend he’d created he’d probably go even more insane and then mother would never accept him back. She’d disown him and father would through him out of this house without a second glance.

She didn’t know where she was going, these halls were all unfamiliar, she climbed down a flight of stars, jogged up a ramp, she turned left and right and left two more times. There were tears and she fought back a sob, pressing her hands to her lips to silence any sound that might escape. When she couldn’t hold it back anymore she ran into a room, spinning and slamming the door shut. A lock was attached and she didn’t hesitate to lock herself in, knowing it was only a matter of time before father was they’re looking for her. Maybe he’d hit her, she wasn’t sure, but she knew she was scared.

She knew hiding would make it worse in the end, her father would just get angrier and the chance that he might hit her would become greater. Mother didn’t like him hitting her, but she never complained. She seemed to agree that discipline was best taught through pain.

Pressing her forehead against the wood she tried her best to stop the sobs, she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and cupped her hands even more tightly over her mouth. Her shoulders shook, and she wasn’t sure how long she stood there, silently fighting the ache in her chest. It was the oddest of sounds that brought her back to the real world. It was a low rumble – well she wasn’t even sure if she could describe it as such it sounded like –

He was there, she had turned, a hand sliding from her mouth, the other hovering just under her chin – a chin that had slipped open as she stared in shock at the boy – whose name she didn’t even know. Cilla didn’t even attempt to wipe the tears away, her face was going to be red no matter what she did, her eyes were going to be puffy for a few minutes and she was under no illusion that this guy was stupid. It was obvious she had been crying. Ripred’s sake why was she thinking about this? She hadn’t even begun to question why the boy was sitting in this room, at a hospital.

”Hi…” She began, a lame attempt at conversation. She stared at him, his hair was whiter then it had been last time, she was sure it wasn’t real, who even had white hair? Old people? Well he wasn’t old enough to have natural white hair so it had to be fake. ”Come here often?” She asks, the smallest of grins slipping onto her face. He still had those same dead eyes, that same face that looked as though it had seen a lot of pain. Her gaze moved to his hands, and she wondered if they had healed yet.

”I’m Cilla, by the way.” Not that it mattered at all.

She felt like he was the one that need the comforting, not her. There was this glow in his eyes that made her own heart ache for him. They seemed devoid of life, as though there had once been something so strong and beautiful in them and then all at once it had been snatched away. He didn’t seem like the kind of boy that had always been like this; he must have been someone else once, before, a brother, a son, and a partner. She’d been someone different long before her mother had become ill, the person she had been then – strong, in dependent, unbreakable – was gone now, faded to ashes as her mother had burned her down and away.

Once she had been strong-willed enough to stand up against her mother, she had been smart enough to evade her fathers hands, but now it seemed that it had all been beaten out of her until she was this wrecked mess of a girl. Wiping the tears away in one quick movement she looked at the boy once more, staring at him. There was this defeated set to his shoulders, each of his movements seemed robotic, as though they had been programmed in and he could do nothing, but follow them.

It was hardly surprising in the least when she received no response to, in turn, to the things she had said. She could remember their fight as if it had happened yesterday, there had been something important about it, something so beautiful about the way he moved that she could remember it as clearly as if it were happening right now. Although she had not believed the boy would take her up on her offer to talk, or just well train with her if that was what he wanted. She had simply made the offer, knowing that she’d probably like the same done for her, simply because it showed that someone did care and that was all she wanted. It was why she let her mother walk all over her, it was why she didn’t stand and fight and it was why she didn’t cry out when her father hit her. All of that were the few signs that she got that they cared about her at all.

Then he opens his mouth and she leans forwards waiting to hear what he has to say. And it is if as though he knows what he wants to say, but he simply can’t. Cilla isn’t disappointed when he closes his mouth; in fact it makes her feel determined in some way to hear his voice. She wants to know what he sounds like, what his name is and she is ever so curious.

He looks downwards and her eyes follow his gaze. Her grin broadens as she sees the crisp white uniform, and the clear apron with an assortment of tools. It was unusual for her to miss such important details, but she had been completely and utterly focused on this boy’s face, rather then what he was wearing. He was just far too interesting for Cilla to resist. She liked what she didn’t know and she yearned to learn things that seemed to be a challenge and this boy looked like a challenge – he was certainly a challenge in a fight, and the prospect of fighting him again seemed irresistible

”Oh, so you work at the morgue,” she said, she peered curiously at the room around her. She had never met anyone who had worked in a morgue before. She was curious as to what they did. There were all sorts of things in here, it sounded like a rather interesting place to work. She had no fear of the dead, although she feared the dying, particularly her mother. But those that were already dead could not hurt you, and people who had no ability to hurt others seemed like good people to hang out with.

The chair that she was offered was exactly the same as his own; they clashed with the uniform and the sterile whiteness of the room. It was curiosity that got her to head towards the seat offered. It seemed everything was white – including the boys hair, the only thing that wasn’t white about him was the darkness that seemed to pulse within him. As she moved to sit beside him she liked to think she was a splash of colour amongst it all, brown hair, pink dress, just a little bit more colour.

”I think working here would be pretty cool.” She smiles softly at him, although he probably can’t see it, he is looking down once more. Staring into space, lost in a void of time and pain. She doesn't like seeing anyone like that, it reminds her of her brother hen he pleads and begs, when he hears the answer. He gets quiet and it gets scary because he'll sit in one spot for house, not moving, not doing anything. He won't talk or listen, he's just like a lifeless doll. This boy is like that as well. Her smile falters, ”I mean that because dead things don’t talk, and they can’t hurt you anymore.” Although the scars and marks they leave burn far more brightly. When her mother dies it’ll hurt, and Cilla will probably hurt more then when her mother was alive, because those scars will go deeper and deeper, she’ll rip herself apart with guilt and self-loathing, because in the end she won’t be able to please her mother, she won’t be able to fulfill her dying wish.

It was curiosity and need that had her ask, ”so, are there any dead bodies that I could look at?” She isn’t quiet sure why she is asking that. But she needs a distraction and a one-sided conversation isn’t all that distracting. Besides, maybe if she gets him up and moving he’ll reveal some more about himself. There are secrets to be found in the simplest of things.

He moves off the chair after having gazed at his fingers and she is curious as to why he gazed at them with an almost absent-minded intensity – as though he knew what he was seeing, but at the same time he didn’t. There was a light in his gaze, but also nothing, there was just this blackness— before slipping and moving away and towards a set of draws. She remembered when they had fought the way his body had ignited with passion and concentration, it was such a vast contrast to what she saw now. She liked that look, though, it reminded her of a dream, where you’d sit there and gaze at what was around you, but you’d never really notice it and then in one moment of knowing suddenly everything around you would brighten and you could see it all. There was no longer fog shrouding your vision, but instead clear and unobstructed clarity.

Those moments of purity were slipping away from her; she found that she only felt them in the most dire of situations, when she was moving through the house trying to avoid her dad, or when she was in the training centre hands wrapped around a weapon. Other then moments of energy, moments that sent her heart racing a million miles per hour she was a lifeless doll, she saw but she did not see.

So it was odd that the two times she had met this boy she had seen the world around her, she had observed with clearness and precision. The world had blurred itself out, sounds had not disappeared, instead it all seemed to increase and her heart fluttered in her chest, a caged bird beating against her ribs begging to be set free. There was something endlessly intriguing about the way he moved, about the way he looked and acted. He seemed devoid of life, but at times like when they had fought the world seemed to sped up and his life was something more then a pain filled terror (well, that was how she viewed it, he clearly was in pain and she simply assumed that anyone in any amount of pain wanted to escape it). There was just something about those robotic movements that caught her attention, there was a story beneath it all, there was a terrible tale to be told and this boy was awfully bad at hiding it.

He was like a broken doll, seems spilling from the edges for the world to see, whereas she, on the other hand was a china doll. She kept everything inside her the picture of perfection, but if you looked close enough you could see the cracks, but you only saw them for a fraction of a second before she stuck some plaster on it and mended it as best as she could. He was all open pain and hard edges, he was clearly broken and she highly doubted any short amount of time would mend it. But unlike him she was fragile you didn’t have to pull her apart bit by bit to break her all you had to do was drop her and she’d shatter and she was creeping closer and closer to the edge of the shelf. It wouldn’t be long before her father simply swept her away and she was flying through the air and falling to pieces on the ground.

She followed him, slipping off of the stool to stand by his side as the draw was pulled out. Her eyes briefly glanced in his direction, some part of her had thought that perhaps this would bring some spark of life to his otherwise emotionless face, but she saw nothing. So she quickly turned her attention to what was in front of her and she gasped. Before her lay a little boy, half a leg missing, and three holes in his stomach. After her initial shock she saw more of the story in front of her and her stomach twisted and her heart thrummed painfully in her chest. Bruises lined his skin, cuts and graze told a story she knew to well. It was the bruises beneath his eyes and the split lip that reminded her the most of what she had ran away from not ten minutes ago. Without thinking she took a step backwards, hand moving to her own face, feeling the sting and the burn of her father’s hit, knowing that the bruise on that boy’s face was an echo of what she also received. She felt the pain of a split lip, of the bitter taste of blood, of running and crying and begging her father to stop.

She felt his hands on her throat, the tightening, the way she struggled for air, the way his fingers left perfect impressions on her skin as they bruised the following day. She felt the boy’s fear, knowing all to well what he must have gone through. Was she going to end up like that one day? She tore her eyes away from his lifeless body, bile rising up in the back of her throat, she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, heart an echo of her terror. Her veins felt like lead, and even though they felt so heavy she could feel her body shaking. Hands clenched tightly by her sides, heart racing and breathing shallow and fear, oh so much fear as she fought back the images of her father.

Swallowing stiffly she turned away from the body, forcing her body to take in more oxygen, forcing her hands to move, forcing her body to react. For a moment she was lost in her memories and then there was reality and then there was remembering what she had ran from. Father would hurt her tonight, she knew it, and mother was no longer home to provide any form of protection whatsoever.

I mean that because dead things don’t talk, and they can’t hurt you anymore.

Liar.

Liar, liar, liar.

When mother died the scars on her body would be ripped apart and father would be there and he would be sad and angry and he’d have no one stopping him from hurting her. Mother wouldn’t be able to tell him that was enough. In fact he’d have free reign to do as he pleased, he’d be able to force his will upon them and hurt them and humiliate them and do whatever he wanted to get what they both had wanted. He’d have no reason to stop at sleeping her, that hadn’t gotten him much, he’d be able to torture Cilla to try and get results. ”Oh Ripred. Oh ripred.” Panic flooded her veins and suddenly breathing was impossible and she was choking on her own air.

And he’d have mother’s memories and wishes and he’d hurt her and yell at her and he’d scream at her brother. Then he’d hurt them some more and she couldn’t see an end, she couldn’t see any reason for him to let them go and be by themselves, she couldn’t see her father walking away and forgetting. When her mother died she was going to hurt even more and she was going to be thrown to the sharks. She pictured her mother lying on that draw, she pictured her father, she saw his looks and she saw the anger and the rage and the need to make his dead wife happy.

She saw his hands and she saw her blood.

She wanted to throw up.

Her legs buckled and she slid to the floor, trying her best to force air into her lungs and send those stars away from her blackening vision. Then all at once the air slipped through and into her lungs and she was a broken china doll once more, staring at the ground as though the world no longer interested her.

Amazingly it took only a short amount of time for Cilla Rowe to become aware of his presence on the ground beside her. It was surprise that stole her attention and tugged her away from the dark thoughts that had resided in her mind, which had dragged her down and onto the ground.it, generally, become an intense battle of her willpower, of her ability to pull herself out of the pain and move forwards. The struggle took time, it depended on her parents, it depended on her brother, it depended on herself. And putting all those factors together she generally suffered in her thoughts, thinking about it all, trying to find a solution that did not exist. Although times like this were rare she tried her best to fight them off before they came, she fought with smiles and vibrant grins, she fought with laughs and childish teases. She fought them away by pretending they did not exist in the first place, but this time she was someone she did not know and she didn’t know how to fix it.

Normally it required a little bit more effort, but the fact that this boy had even wasted a glance on her surprised her, especially seeing as all his looks had been devoid of all emotion. He was an empty doll, with nothing inside as though his movement were already recorded and he was simply meant to play them out as people wished. For a brief moment Cilla couldn’t remember why she had decided to sit on the floor, or why she was staring at the tiles, or why there was this boy beside her. But that was all she needed to grasp some resemblance of normality, a rope to begin the climb upwards. She became very aware of his presence, though, of the way he moved, of the fact that he seemed to have to think every single one of his movements through.

She became aware of the fact that the last time they had been this close his hands had been tight on that staff, the pressure of the weapon digging into her throat. He could have killed her, but she had spun around in, as much as it hurt, and he had moved away. Now this time he did not move away, instead he moved forwards and he stretched his arms out. Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes widened as his arms moved around her and he hugged her.

It was stiff, it was wrong and it felt incredibly weird, he felt out of place as though he actually didn’t know how to hug someone, but Cilla couldn’t say anything, hell she could hardly tell that the hug was weird, she couldn’t remember the last time someone had hugged her. Her father’s embraces were stinging slaps across the face, her brother’s were sharp words telling her to leave him alone and her mother’s were daggers dipped in poison. No, this was something entirely different, this was what she had felt as a little child nestled in her mother’s arms before she turned into a snake. This was the thing she missed, the attention she sought. This was a hug.

And with his embrace there was a sound, a sort of soft sound and she assumed it was supposed to be soothing, and she felt its touch, and her heart beat steadied and her breathing eased. Closing her eyes for a brief moment she simply breathed in the situation, his arms that were warm – so warm in contrast to the layers of dead around them, so strong compared to the fragile decaying bodies and so different to the last time they had had been near her. They weren’t fighting this time, there wasn’t tension and power and adrenaline, there was her on the ground a mess, and him on his knees with his arms around her.

”I’m okay.” She mumbled, she knew that all of this was probably something he wouldn’t normally do, hell the entire motion of comforting someone was probably something he hadn’t thought about since whatever happened to him. She was gathering that something bad must had happened, he wasn’t some immobile animal, he understood human emotions, he understood that she was upset, that she distant and dead, he knew that hugging was comforting, so he must have been something or someone before this. He was human, after all. She disentangled herself from his arms, offering him a smile, some of her previous colour shining in her eyes once more.

”Sometimes you’ve just got to force yourself to be happy.” She said, her eyes remained on him, staring at his crisp uniform, staring at the boy before her. She wish she could put a name to that face of his, but aside from that sound he had made he had spoken nothing, his actions spoke as much as the emptiness that was his voice. Gathering herself she stood, dress falling around her legs with the movement, swaying to the momentum. Her hair framed her face as she tilted it forwards to look at him once more.

This time her smile wasn’t forced happiness, it was genuine, it was real. ”Here, let me help you up.” She said, stretching out one slender arm and offering him an open hand. Callouses lined the skin, each and every one of them a mark of her hard work, each and every one of them a mark of her weapon of choice, from the one that sat on her fingers to her palm, from the ones that showed where the drawstring sat to where her dual katana kissed her skin. They were like his hands, in a sense, built from hard work, pain and suffering. But Cilla was sure that they were also completely different.

They were two entirely different people, after all. Two different people fighting two different wars.

He’s an odd one, she decides as she continues to watch him.

And this notion doesn’t really slip into her mind as an idea of him until now. Not before when he was fighting her, not when he was sitting on the ground, not when he slapped a band-aid on her arm. Not from the moment she realised he simply didn’t want to speak, but when he grabbed her hand and pulled himself up it was like he tried to take her advice. It was like for a moment he put everything he had into trying to be happy. She saw it from the way his hands clenched, from the way this energy just seemed to roll off of him. It was nice to see, because it made Cilla realise that beneath it all, beneath this sad exterior was a lively person, was someone with soul and life and a will to live.

It was just hidden behind a wall.

It was when he failed to look up and offer her a smile that she decided that, yes; he was pretty damn weird even by her standards. Surely his family must be completely different to hers then? Someone like him couldn’t be the product of abuse, so she was curious to know more about him, but his muteness was going to make it difficult no matter what – that being the least of her worries, his totally inability to respond to the world was a little bit more problematic.

But these thoughts were hesitant, she could hardly talk, she herself was exceptionally weird. Hadn’t she been the one to charge in with a staff – a weapon she was hardly familiar with – and strike at him? Hadn’t she been the one to run in here break down and ask to see dead bodies? She could hardly talk, but he had done none of those things, instead he had remained as this impassive thing, coming to life for a few moments before retreating back into his shell.

The fight and the energy slipped away as quickly as it had come and she saw the tension leave his shoulders and his gaze remained on the tiles before him. It was glued to a fixed spot and for a moment she wondered what on Earth he must be seeing. He was looking at something she could not see, he was in some memory she did not know and she was unwilling to break it. She knew what it was like to suffer from things like this; she knew what it was like to see things you didn’t like. So she knew that those eyes were watching something horrible, something that was probably the cause of everything that he had become.

Cilla stared at him for only a moment longer, a delicate smile, hinting at a knowing look crossed her features. He would not see that smile; in fact he would not notice her as she left. But she knew that it was time she left, she had stayed to long. And even though the idea of going outside and back out there scared her she couldn’t hide down here forever. The longer she remained hidden away the angrier her father would get, therefore the crueller he would be. So it was both fear and acceptance that drove her to step forwards, and gently touch his shoulder, like some sentimental farewell. It was fear that made her turn and slip out of the room, shutting the door softly behind her.

It was fear that had her moving, because oddly enough running was far scarier then facing her father’s wrath. He’d find her if she ran, he always did and she was scared of what he’d do if she waited any longer. So in the end she returned back to the person she always was: a coward. This way the pain would be less and maybe tomorrow night she’d be able to sleep, she doubted she’d get any tonight. But that was the way it went and she was in no position to try and run away from it or change it, she didn’t have the strength to fight him or the will to even try.

She was a scared little girl trying to fight a war she had no hope of winning and behind her was a boy fighting and looking just as much the loser as she did. Two peas in the same pod and yet she was turning her back on him, and she hated her reasoning for it, she hated the fact that part of her truly believed that this was what would help him and the other part of her new it was because she couldn’t bare to stand the consequences of waiting any longer.

Her father would strike her again and again and he’d beat her and she’d have this guilt gnawing at her stomach, but it wouldn’t be as bad as if she’d chosen to stay.

Oh Cilla, you’re just a coward, aren’t you?