hellfire, the burn of desire. / perdita.
Jun 2, 2020 5:52:24 GMT -5
Post by ✨ zozo. on Jun 2, 2020 5:52:24 GMT -5
content warning: mentions of self-harm
"I have to go."
Some time after Perdita had left with his chest ripped open and his beating heart in her hands, Audrey had knocked on his door.
Things had gotten a little better after his sister had arrived. Fourteen, she'd found him and the cottage he had built for a girl who didn't love him a wreck. When Perdita had disappeared over the hill he'd exploded, waking up with bleeding wrists and bruised knuckles, a black hole in his memory that had torn through his home and sucked what was left of him out of existence.
Audrey hadn't said anything. She'd simply bandaged his wounds, washed the blood down the sink, cleaned up the aftermath of his wrath and put him to bed. A kiss on the forehead, like he had done the night her brother had left, and when he woke the next day he'd hugged Audrey tight and built his sister her own bed.
Audrey knew how to take care of him when he could not. When he was better he tried to take care of her too, but she was as stubborn as her brother. Weeks passed and they'd found their rhythm, sharing chores and cooking each-other meals. He walked her to school and she attended his graduation, whooping and cheering when he walked across the stage and received his helmet. When the Keepers asked for first, second, third district preference he listed Four for each and every one. When they'd asked for a reason why, he'd written her name down twice.
Paused. Hesitated.
Scratched out a 'P' and wrote 'Audrey' a third time.
What a gift his sister was. She hadn't arrived with much so he spent his first paycheck on brand new clothes, bedding, built her a desk and a bedside table and painted them white. Audrey had insisted he not spoil her like their parents had tried to - he understood the desire to leave that life at their doorstep. But Brentley could never quite thank her enough for what she had done for him, how she had saved him without even trying. All she had done was knock on his door. Exist. And it was everything he needed.
The cavern in his chest never quite healed, still raw and exposed and gruesome. But Audrey sealed his bones, tied his muscles back together, gave him purpose and reason. To be better, for her. To be better, for each-other. They promised each-other that much.
He signed her legal guardian papers the day he turned nineteen and they ate cake for the first time in forever.________________
All this time away from her, and she'd thought he was getting better. So sure of it. Brentley smiled. Tended to their little garden. Painted the roof. Let his sister redecorate, threw all the things that left traces of her into a garbage bag.
He was starting to heal, starting to live, starting to find meaning without her.
When Perdita Leto stepped onto the stage, Audrey Gray said nothing.
What she thought, however, was nearly unspeakable.________________
He has nothing to say to her. Nothing else left that matters.
She didn't deserve any more of him.
But god, he still loves her. And he could not help himself. She had someone else now, some preppy boy with collared shirts and parents that loved him, probably loved her. That didn't matter. It never had. He, Roland, he had never mattered. Quietly, he thinks Perdita knows this.
Brentley had known the second he laid eyes on her that he would follow her to her death, his own, worse. And he knows it now, the way every bit of him aches with regret and hurt and self-hatred he should not feel but does anyway.
They walk down the hall in silence, the Leto family long gone, toward the train station transportation.
Had he been a year younger he would have thrown his hand up to go into hell with her without a second thought - and it's this thought, that perhaps she had been waiting all long for him to age out in order to finally shatter his heart, that makes him almost buckle over with pain.
Instead he stops, and sucks in a sharp breath between his teeth, and stares at the wall.
"You know I can't figure out for the life of me why you'd do this?"
Brentley cannot bear to look at her. He's speaking to her, every single world, but he does not dare let temptation consume him entirely.
"I've been standing here for almost two hours racking my brain - and nothing. Nothing at all. Except for the fact that you're hellbent on destroying what's left of me-"
He almost gasps as he breathes in - there it goes, his avalanche. Trembling underneath his skin, threatening to bury them both in this empty wooden hall. So he stops that thought, sucks it back into his mouth, licks his lips and shakes his head.
"Had I known..." his voice trails, full of what if's and maybe's and the stories she told him, the tales he'd convinced himself were true.
I love you.
She loves you.
You love me.
"Had I known you'd do this, I wouldn't have bothered at all."
With you.
With me.
With us.
It sounded more convincing in his head.but i'm under your spell'cause when you call my heart starts to rolli always want moreit's my heaven, my hell
