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There are days, days where she finds him in grief and not love.
Those days when the skies are grayer than usual, stained with the ink of branches that reach for him like claws in his haze. Those days, when he looks up from the glass in his right hand and the knife in his left, he finds her leaning against the wall near the window, her cheeks stained with tears. Her hands shake as she raises them to wipe away at her cheeks, fingertips coming back stained red with the blood that lingers in his name.
“Why?” She asked, her voice quiet, a whisper in the wind, as she refused still to look at him. “Why did you paint your poster with my blood? What have I ever done to deserve this?”
The glass shatters on the floor under the table as he falls to his knees, crawling back to her, right where he belongs. He desperately buries his face into her stomach, the denim of her worn overalls saturated with the scent of smoke and roses.
“I did not-” he whispered, looking up at her, his heart thumping away life into this mirage of her, the only way she'll live. “I didn't mean to. I-I didn't. I only ever wanted to do right by you. I swear. I swear. I beg of you. Don't-Don't leave me please. My darling. Haunt me, if I killed you. Haunt me, if it lets me keep you.”
Her eyes, meadow green, hued grey by the storm clouds outside and the death that will always cling to her, refused to meet his. But her fingers found his hair, running through the locks like silk on water, her eyes trained outside at the branches that stretched into the sky like claws seeking absolution still, claws seeking him.
“Silly goose,” she whispered in return, running her fingers across the beard he had yet to shave. “How will I haunt you? When I'm cursed to love you? Even in death?”
That word, cursed, had followed his footsteps since he dared his heart to think beyond the cage he was born into. Dared to take his fingertips dipped in blood to a canvas. But where the world saw a graffiti of freedom, he only saw her face, hiding behind the bars of the cage that he was trapped in for this eternity. He pushed his face into her stomach again, the dust and rot and death and cloying scent roses perfuming his lungs, breathing the misery in as greedily as he could.
“Don't leave.” He whispered again for good measure, breaking his heart and hers. “Don't leave me bound to life. Haunt me till eternity.”
“You know I will,” was all she said, her eyes finally meeting his, blood staining her neck and her clothes and the grotesque imagery of death still clinging to her. “You created me. You know you will keep me, right here. And I'll stay. I'll stay.”
Then her legs gave out, and the dream crumbled, all in one breath.
Clarity found him, as did consciousness. He raised himself on his elbows, the dust from the carpet rising in a puff of smoke, disintegrating the last of her form. The clock read ten in the morning and a broken vase of roses lay only a few feet away from him, the card wishing him his forty first, the lamp overhead leaving the beams of sun rays dancing across the word as thunder echoed in the world beyond the window.
Sun rays that still shone, over another reaping, fighting through another impending storm.