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Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
The ghost of daybreak crawls through the expanse of glass, hollow moonlight spilling through the window. The clutches of woolen cloth envelop stiff joints and sore, taut muscle, clinging flush to flimsy cotton over torso, pelvis and plains of bare limb. She awakens from the pull of slumber— silently, seamlessly, the intangible hilt of mithril dug into the callouses of her palms, even hours after rest.
Aphmau rises, blanket pooling over the askew sliver of pointed hip bones like water, a shiver rippling through her spine at the thin coat of miniature tundra. She swings her legs over the edge of her bed, cool wood frame gingerly leaning into her scarred calves.
"Who is it?" She calls, voice crackling with prickly layers of disuse. She doesn't know who she expects to open the door— Alina, for a maternal cradle to wash away the bleary images of sordid fire and shadow, Lilith by her side, startled by the broken cries of her sister, Katelyn or Garroth, whom only sought solace from their harrowing duties as guards, or even Levin, as seldom as he was, for the sole sake of visitation— but this wasn't one of them.
Spruce creaks open, squealing against long, oaken planks, aged scratches and footprints spread, and reveals the motionless form of someone stranded a long, long time ago.
Pitch-black layers of loose mussed hair dip below the line of his scalp, reaching past the base of his skull and spooling over his nape. Dark, open leather jacket, gloves smoothly bleeding into their cuffs, ripped worn fabric falling over his legs and disappearing into the gap between bone and large, tall boots, hood slung above his back.
"May I come in?"
Aaron waits patiently by the doorway, the sound of him still ragged, still deep, even throughout the wide stretch of time since his last words. Her stomach roils, saliva amassing in her mouth; a warning.
"You may," she impulsively replies, barbed wires firmly coiling around each of her lungs.
Aphmau watches as he mechanically shuffles towards her seat on the cliff of her mattress, watches as he pushes the silk of violet quilt away. It weakly dips under the new weight on its surface. Weakly.
His nude chest is still as he breathes in, his lack of a need for air stopping her own intake all together.
She frowns. Hesitance closely threads into her voice, almost no sound breaching open flesh. "You're not really here, are you?"
"Did you want me to be?"
She doesn't answer— can't answer. He doesn't push for one.
"Dwelling upon your own grievances is detrimental to your mental state," he says, like it was obvious. She thinks it used to be. "You need to move on."
"To move on would mean letting it go," her voice pathetically cracks, the inchoate ache of her cinched brows growing, "and I don't think I'm ready to do that."
A chuckle breezes past Aaron's lips, short and sharp, as it always was. She wilts as its familiarity eases something locked away, spread across her veins, her body, with the naive hope of making it easier to think about. "I thought moving on was making peace with what had happened?"
"Partly," she corrects him. "Moving on is half of it."
The other half is forgiving yourself for living after it happened, Aphmau wants to say. It was hard to learn. I can't bear that yet.
He doesn't comment about the other part of the process, and it stings a little. She's never blamed him for being so laconic, but the cajole of the idea to start is overwhelming to her sleep-addled mind.
"You ever regret me?" He asks finally, slicing through tense silence. What's left of his infamous facetious bite silently drifts from the depths of his throat.
She turns to him. His eyes— bottomless pits of empty jet, color unconventionally skeletal, sheen marked with a disgusting tinge of rot— carve into her own like scalds, burning hot and painfully alien in her mind. The grasp he has on her knee isn't tentative like any touch used to be, gloved palm pressed to saw-edged skin, naked, riddled with goosebumps. It doesn't really feel like anything at all.
I think I'm forgetting you.
She tightens her jaw, grinding it, biting down on her tongue hard. That was his trademark in the midst of conversation, a deer within the veil of thick forest before an archer, a scarlet savior— fabric, metaphorical curtains over a stage, dressing his panic— saving him the trouble, each and every time without fail. She doesn't remember when she started doing it.
It's going to hurt, Katelyn had said to her, a low murmur against the shell of her ear under the cloak of dusk. It was a crushing weight sprawled over her heart, disguised as a gaping, vacant casket. It's going to hurt a lot.
"I don't know, Aaron," she admits faintly, deliberate hands clenching serrated fingers over her larynx, molten organs spilling through the gaps. "I don't know."