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“Take your potion.”
They taste vile. Like ash and dust. Dead flowers.
You don’t want them. For a moment, you hesitate.
You don’t like the potions. They make you dizzy, faint. But you are sick, you need them to survive.
According to him, that is. You don’t remember.
You don’t remember being sick, or being admitted to Mungo’s.
You don’t remember the healers prescribing the potions, or what they are supposed to do.
You remember him, though, clutching your hands and crying. Begging you to stay, not to leave him.
You remember loving him.
You must have loved him enough to fight, to drink the potions, bear the pain.
He promised it would get easier, over time.
You think he lied.
Or perhaps you can’t see the truth. Perhaps he wasn’t talking about you. Perhaps he was talking about your treatment. You don’t know details, you just drink the potions he gives you.
Usually.
Why do you do that? Because you love him? That’s pathetic. You barely see him anymore, can’t remember the last time you saw him laugh — who exactly is it you love?
(He had a beautiful laugh, you think.)
Do you drink them because he loves you? Please, that’s delusional. He might have loved you, once upon a time, before you were sick. Now you exist only in this bed, a pale echo of a former life. It’s not you he loves.
You promised him you wouldn’t leave him, one starless night, but you think perhaps you did. Or did he leave you?
You don’t know, and you don’t dare asking him.
Perhaps you both left, and there is no one there to love or be loved.
Isn’t that a dreadfully lonely thought?
You don’t like this, the doubts and questions, the fading light of a star that might be long dead calling to you, beckoning you closer, closer.
You are scared to go. There is nowhere it could lead you, endless circles down and down and down.
You don’t want to drink the potions. They are sharp, biting in your lungs and cutting your heart.
You don’t want to hurt anymore.
“Please, for me?” He cradles your face, begs you. Despair in his every gesture.
You don’t want him to hurt, either. You drink the potion.
(You like to think he smiled, then, but you were already fading out.)