Who will be my hero? [Esme+Simon]

I’m not really sure how much time has passed since that small moment of paradise I shared with Simon. Nothing like that has come since and I’ve found himself holding onto those few hours with every essence of my being. But now, as the days pass by I’m finding it more and more difficult to conjure up a picture of his smile as he swims in that water, or as he pulls me in. I still remember every promise he made to me. Because without those promises I wonder if he’d have already left. It’s hardly easy and simple to say that we have a functioning relationship, but I don’t mind. We’re both broken, but this is real life and what I have with him is real.

I miss being by his side though; I still spend every night in the orchid, sitting beneath the branches of a tree, watching as the cool breeze allows the leave to move. In between the cracks, where the moonlight seeps through you can still see the stars. I’ve made a game from it, counting them all, as many as I can before the leaves cover them up as another strong gust of wind stirs them. Sometimes I wish I could be as brave as I once was, I wish that I could run to him, and grab him and drag him out with me. I want to lay my head on his lap and point to each star and tell him a story. I want to tell him that the one that looks like a cat is called socks, or that the three together is a heart. I want to tell him that somehow, amongst the shattered ruins of this miserable life we leave he’s made it into something good.

I want to tell him I love him.

Tonight the halls are eerily quiet. Your breath comes out white, and for people like me who don’t wear shoes your skin burns when you touch the concrete ground. Even in this weather I still refuse to wear shoes, they’re too constricting, I cannot feel the earth and this world. Papa always said that the best heroes listened to the world around them. But my need for this is a little less simple; there is something about feeling the world with your feet, knowing that the grass on your skin is just as alive as you are. It’s rejuvenating; it feels as though you can place your heart and soul into the world around you. It’s trust.

The air builds around me as I breathe in, the sting of the frost biting into my exposed skin. The rotten old wardrobe in the corner of my room contains few clothing items. You had no choice but to wear what you were given when you lived here. Besides, the few times I’ve had money I’ve preferred the company of books. Although I’ll never read one as much as I read that old tattered thing that sits under my pillow, hidden away so that no one can see it. The one with the bloodstains on the cover and on the pages of the first few chapters, where it has become so old that it has stared to flake off. No I can never stop reading those tales. They’re the only things that keep me from forgetting my parent’s faces, from forgetting those few happy years I had with them.

It never lets me forget that I killed that man.

Crash.

The sound echoes in the stillness of the orphanage. I freeze, alarm prickling at my skin, as my eyes widen with shock. The sounds rings again, and I creep forwards, listening as items fall and clatter to the ground. I’ve heard this tune so many times, I’ve broken it a number of times as well, as this raging warpath tore into my life. When I had stopped Simon from breaking things, when I had stopped myself from doing just the same. I hold my breath as I round the corner, the warm light from a room lighting up the cold corridor. Slowly I creep forwards, halting as someone begins to speak.

Slowly a small grin slips onto my face and my pace quickens as I peer around the corner of the door and into the room to see Simon sitting amongst the chaos. Of course. Of course, he was always surrounded by broken things, and mess. Perhaps that was why I was by his side, another broken thing. As his voice dies down I realise I know what book he is reading from. At first I’m hesitant to disturb him, sucking in a shaky breath I stay by the doorway, keeping myself wrapped in the darkness.

“To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night.” I speak softly, hands wound tightly in front of me. Staring downwards and at the ground seems like the best option at this moment. I’m hidden behind the wall beside the door, my gaze moves upwards towards the roof and I slip to the ground, leaning back against the cold concrete. The light from the room dances beside me, a welcoming, warming glow, but I draw my legs up, making sure that I do not touch it’s warmth.

”It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.” The words echo in the darkness. I don’t know why I don’t go in that room, I don’t know why I hide here, keeping this wall between us. I love him. Maybe I don’t want him to see that.

"Once upon a time there was a monster," he murmurs.

He doesn't pretend to recognise my voice, in fact he doesn't greet me. He simply begins speaking after a long, silent pause, my words having fractured what little peace remained between us. I instantly know who he is talking about, I can recall the thousand times he has called himself a monster, from the night where glass split the skin beneath my feet as I chased him. I can remember my blood and the look in his eyes, and the way he had been ever so adamant about his dark and dangerous heart. He kept telling me and reminding himself that he was a monster that at any point in time he could snap like a rope slowly, but surely fraying.

I still don't believe him. There isn't a thread tied around my wounded heart that believes that who he is is evil. That the fact that we have both killed doesn't make him anymore villainous then I. I've killed, cold blooded murder. I see the stains on my hands more then I see the clean skin. No matter how many times I wish them it remains, an echo of the aftermath of the disaster I had created. Drawing my legs upwards I rest my chin on my hands, the coldness of the icy floor has begun to seep into each of my limbs and I can feel its numbing touch. Oh how I used to adore that wholesome feeling as I lay beneath the stars the coldness of the dirty ground sucking me in. It was just one other excuse to run away, to the world where I could not feel anything, but see everything at once.

Fractured light split the sky, a glimpse here and there of a world I wanted to be apart of and it was terribly beautiful how I was so called and numb, when right there was everything I had ever dreamed of. It was similar to this situation now. I was numb to it all and around that corner, in the light was everything I could have ever dreamed of. broken, brittle and ever so fragile but everything I wanted. There was a home waiting there for me, but just as breath seems to falter so does my heart. I'm scared, I'm scared to plunge myself entirely into it and give him my entire heart, even though I know I want to. Nothing good has ever come from my love.

"He lived in solitude in attempt to be valiant; he didn't want to scare or hurt anyone."

It's the same old song, but for a moment all I can see is myself. I was doing exactly just that, tearing myself away from the light and hiding within the comfort of the darkness because I thought I was a monster, because I thought that giving it my all to the person I loved was too much. Because I thought that giving away my heart was going to hurt him, that it was going to scare him. Perhaps it was not only Simon who had been avoiding me, perhaps I had been doing it as well. I can count, one two, three, four, five, each finger flashing in the darkness as I draw them upwards and extend my hand in front of me. One, two, three, four, five. I wriggle my fingers, that was the amount of nights I had walked down the empty halls of this orphanage and out into the garden. That was how many nights I had sat amongst the trees and allowed the darkness to seep into my veins as I watched the night pass. I hadn't gone looking for him.

Not even tonight had I set out along the path to find him, I'd simply ended up here.

"Within the monster's grasp, the flower withered and turned to nothing more than dust."

The words plucked at my heart, like an awkward rhythm on a guitar, like someone with unsteady hands trying to get the hang of a tune that shouldn't even be looking at. I felt out of it, as though this story was something that he and I shared, as though, in his case, I was the flower and he was the monster and he had decided to act upon his feelings and there I was dying under his touch. Did he think me frail? Did he think me so completely and utterly broken that I would die if I stayed with him? I was broken and damaged but I was not beaten. Why did he think so little of me? Why did he make this into a battle of his emotions and not think for a second how I felt?

I hear him shift, the rustle of his clothes on concrete as he moves and my chest tightens. Drawing myself in tighter I wrap my hands around my knees, wandering if he will come out here. But the rustling stops, and the ache in my heart eases, yet somehow the knot in my stomach does not wind and I look downwards, at the ground, disappointment making me bite my lip. "He died mourning the flower." He spoke the last line softly, as though defeated, as though some part of him was a child with a balloon and he had decided to let it go and was now watching as it drifted away. I stand up, a scowl tugging at my features. My toes dance at the edge of the darkness, the light a mere step away.

Facing the light I hold my hands by my sides, clenching my fists tightly. My shoulders hunch over as I glare the the wall past the light, still unwilling to step inside. "And when the monster died, it was that part of himself that fell. The monster inside of him was wiped away by his tears of loss, and it was he who survived. He was no longer a monster, having felt such loss and grief. His sense pain took away that part of him he had believed to be evil and he was healed once more." My breath billows before me, my hands slowly unclenching, as my breathing evened out. Why did he have to be a monster? Monster's didn't feel loss and pain and grief and sadness. But he did.

"As time passed the flower came about once more, as brilliant and beautiful as ever, because even when a flower dies it will live once more. A flower is strong, easily breakable and fragile, but strong, cut one flower down and as long as it has the love it needs another will grow back." Yes. No matter how many times you cut me down, Simon, I'll stand up again. You aren't the first person to knock me to the ground and you won't be the last, but papa and mama were fighters, and so was I. If I am that flower you so dearly mourned then you should know I am stronger then that. Just as I know that you are not a monster, not entirely, at least.