Work Text:
His dreams are always muted blue.
Somehow, he can’t bring himself to regret it.
He met her where the seas crashed into stone, the grief of a thousand lovers rubbing raw against the walls of humanity.
It was there, in the hour before cock-crow, that he fell in love. Then, he would have said, “this is the moment I first loved.” He would have said, “this is the moment my blind eyes first saw.”
He would have been wrong.
In memories tainted by the milky white of childhood and the sweet smell of chocolate, a girl sits surrounded by bright, twinkling moons, rippling in the twilight water.
She smiles at him, just like the stars, as mellow and soft as the hands that touched him then.
Hello, love, her lips seem to say. Have you been waiting long?
Later, he will sob into his pillow with the force of a million regrets, and he will throw himself into his work in a vain attempt to just keep her there with him, to never let her fade away.
But now is not that time.
Now is a time of wild laughter and carefree smiles, of mindless touches and intimate thoughts.
They rent an apartment by the sea.
Every day at dawn, she sits at the edge of the world, watching the sun spill over the horizon, liquid gold inking the water the colour of happiness.
More often than not, he’s out there with her, wrapping a promise of lovewarmthsafetyforever around her shoulders.
They leave together, as quietly as they came.
She likes pancakes. Pancakes with melted butter on top.
(Of course, he makes them every day.)
He watches her leave, watches her hair flowing down her back, watches the half-moons in her ears dangle down down down.
Every day, he watches.
When he works, it is with a sense of casualness, of fondness and tenderness, of domesticity and affection and kindness.
He paints the flowers in her hair, the glimmer in her half-moons, the seas ebbing and flowing in between her toes, behind her heels, dripping from her fingers.
His care is coloured in sunflowers, his devotion in daffodils; his reverence in chrysanthemums and his passion in cornflowers.
Not weeks later, he learns.
Bliss is a privilege, rudely robbed too early.
“-drowned, we think. we’re doing our best to-”
“-know it’s hard, but-”
“-will be okay-”
the weeks following her — slip by like how she slipped through his fingers. she’s — and he can’t stop thinking about her and the fact that she’s — and he’ll never get to hold her kiss her hug her promise her his life again because she’s —
gone.
But no, he can’t believe that. He won’t. She can’t be.
He still needs her.
His paintings have gone dark, now, leeched of the life given to him so readily, so freely.
He clutches at the fading vestiges of her memories with the desolation of a dying man; revels in the ghost of her touch with the exuberance of love.
People say that when someone leaves, you start to forget how they looked, how they sounded, how they felt. She does not fade, so much as blur; characters in her one-woman story staining each other sunsets of sepia.
After all, how could she wither when her edges were still so sharp?
He doesn’t sleep. He can’t. Every time he blinks, her lips, stretched into a wide, unapologetic smile, flicker across the back of his eyelids like an old movie, colours distorted by the incessant passage of time.
He pushes agony headfirst into a barrel of his regrets.
One night, he stumbles into his room, frantic with fear and grief and sorrow, breath stinking of the depths of his despair. Blindly, a brush is lifted, a canvas picked, paint gliding in rough, jagged lines across the wide expanse of white.
He paints his anguish in broad strokes of navy; his heartache in dots of midnight. He spills his misery in splashes of sapphire, and drowns his repentance in splatters of indigo.
When he finishes, hands heavy, he’s left empty, chest throbbing with a phantom pain that will not cease.
Chased to very edges of desperation as he was, it came as no surprise that he all but snatched up the offer he was given.
After all, it would not do to steal a dragon’s treasure. For he would walk through fire, drown in the oceans, blind himself on the bushels of thorns, just to take back what is his. He would surrender his life, give his soul, even hunt down Death, all for his love.
But I will see her again. She will be here with me?
The woman nods, the gentleness in her eyes battling with the hardened scars she wears proudly on her face.
It will not be easy. You will never see life in the same light again.
I don’t care. He had pleaded. I just want her back. Please.
Remember this. A month, a year, a decade from now, remember this. Your choices define who you are. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
Thus, it is with singleminded intensity and disjointed calm that he readies his workstation; pencils, paintbrushes, water; muse living in his head.
He first paints a portrait of his love, so that he will be able to see her even in his waking dreams.
Then, he pours all of his fervent admiration into his greatest composition.
Day and night, he labours; brush after brush, stroke after stroke.
Tireless.
Weeks later, maybe months, (perhaps even years), he finally rests.
He stares at his love.
Closes his eyes.
Sleeps.
He traces a hand across her marbled cheek, savouring the feeling of a familiar jaw, the sweet curve of her ear, the tangled curls spilling across her shoulders.
He shakes as he presses his forehead to hers, watching her lifeless eyes.
Love is his most jealously guarded secret, his North Star in the vast, unfathomable sky.
Love no longer lives. The flowers are wilted, the ethereal spark gone, the seas quiet and still.
Tears fall.
She does not wake.
Maybe stories of long-haired princesses and charming thieves only belong there, in lands far, far away. Maybe they can only live (survive) in the pages of a storybook.
He crashes into the doorframe, barely collapsing onto the floor before he’s shakingscreamingcryingsobbing, wishing that she would come back, knowing that his wish is futile because Death takes no prisoners.
He trembles apart right there, a mess of tangled limbs, silent, inhuman howls clawing their way out of his throat.
His dreams are always muted blue.
(Years later, no one notices when a man goes missing. No one notices the grim smile of blood slashed across his throat. No one notices that his paintings are all that is left of their love.
No one notices when the lovers, born and bred of the sea, are reclaimed as Her children.
It didn’t matter, really. He had already become a ghost a long, long time ago.)