Prayer

My absence makes them weary.

---

"God," he breathed.
His hands--they shook, jerking so violently that he could not fold them right. He clamped them to his breast, weeping and shaking and holding the fragments of his fragile, broken heart together, thump thump thumping shards of glass through his veins. With bruising force, he clutched the red jewel closer, yanking it into his chest as if the broken heart inside could somehow absorb it, and be soothed.
"God," he said, again, "God, please, please..."
The man sat there for hours in the dusty, sky-lit church, watching the stained glass of the angel under the solid cross change and glow and fade. He watched as little bits of dust were shot through with light, as if the angels that people spoke of were there, listening to his grief. He sat and wept and prayed and trembled until time blurred into lethargic counts of his staccato breath, and all he could do was continue on.
"Give her back to me," he begged the cross. "Give... give her back to me. God. I-I... I can't..."
I can't live without her.
God.
Please.
Please.
And his prayers fell silent, to deaf ears. Who would he kid? There was no God for him. He could not dream, nor could he fancy. He was not one who could reach the omnipotent being; his voice was not one that could travel that far.
His prayer--his strangled prayer, the one he knew that could never fly, even if his voice could carry, repeated over and over without relent.
So he climbed, suddenly, with bitter conviction; he sat on the altar of the cross, head buried in his arms. His clothing--her clothing, really, for he wore her cape to torture himself with her lingering smell--draped over the sides, touching the ground, and he watched his shadow with nothing but hollowness. He clutched the red jewel in his hand, strangling the blood out of the useless limb, the only reminder left that she had been there, whole, breathing, loving, real, living, real--
For him, time slowed; the seconds drooped into minutes, into hours. Perhaps he sat there for days, uttering a useless prayer in the back of his mind, back against the cross that wouldn't bend for him. He prayed and prayed, remembering some sort of logic long ago: someone said praying could help anyone heal.
Could he heal?
And when he next lifted his head, there was no longer any tears. Nothing but a swooping, echoing empty, nothing, nothing.
There was nothing but empty, nothing but empty.
(And his eyes--they grew cold. They grew bright and lifeless and lucid, his consciousness slipping, searching, wanting. Those eyes, normally warm pebbles of thought that echoed what he mused, they grew as cold as the earth that had its arms around her--)
His voice couldn't travel that far.
Could it?
"God," he whispered.

---

Where are you?
Her stranged voice was trying to answer, thinking, numbing, cold. She couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't move, but some part of her yearned to go to it, that strange calling that tugged her towards a familiar light.
And then he found her; he looked at her.
The darkness around them cleared.
His breath, his movements, his voice, his smell--all of it, achingly familiar. He reached out for her, naked and trembling and larger than her but weaker still, and she still couldn't move.
Where...
He ran his lips over her forehead, tightly, uncontrollably shaking as he sought her. Suddenly, then, she reached for him, taking his fragile frame into her arms. He was going to break, and she knew it, and the thought terrified her.
I...
Then his lips moved to her eyes--a familiar notion, from long ago. From when they were younger, happier, when the darkness was only in the shadows of his eyes and not under them, when she could smile up at the sky and rub the scars on her wrists.
She let his lips rest there, and she felt the tears well up in the corners of her vision.
Love...
And then, his feverish fingers tangled in her hair, in her jaws. He was pulling at her, and she was unable to move. Both were locked in a desperate, tearing battle, wanting and hoping and needing all at once like some orchestral conundrum. She brought him closer, limbs moving slow like she was submerged in molasses.
Their lips did not crash; they hesitated, touching, tasting, not sure of what was real and what was not. And then they melded into one, a soft mold and their bodies aligned, as if all the stars in the world sighed and pushed them together.
... You...
"Lay," she mumbled, mouth against his. They drew from each other's warmth, the closeness that they always shared. She began to cry. Why was it like he was bidding her farewell?
The words--three words, three little words--were on their lips, and they tasted it on each other's tongues.
"Colleen," he told her through strained breathing and clutching her so closely that she thought her ribs would shatter, "Live. You must live. Promise me."