My fingers twitch against the smooth wall I’m clutching for support, my eyes fixing on the movement intently as I struggle to concentrate, my vision blurred around the edges and warped as if looking through a stream of water.

It’s then that I realise, it is water. My eyes are streaming, stinging from the suddenness of this onslaught of tears. The sensation of warm tears dripping down my frigid cheeks awakens me some, though with the heaviness of my limbs I feel as though I’ve been suspended in water. Warm, comforting and surrounding me with the promise of peace should I succumb to it. A womb.

And the one thing standing between me and this peace? That would be the man I’m currently staring down, who’s outline I can barely make out through the tears welling on my lash line before tumbling down my cheeks in tandem with the broken sobs racketing out of my body.

Was that sound me? That broken, feral, near animalistic groan of pain shook me to my core when the realisation dawned that I had made such a sound. To add injury to the revelation, James looks as though I’ve taken out his guts and crushed them beneath the weight of a fridge, those depthless grey eyes wide with unprecedented horror as he fell to his knees, a roar of refusal ricocheting off the walls and surrounding the space around us.

Those grey eyes…the moment I saw them I knew life as I knew it had ended.

It had been a cold night in February, and as was the norm for myself, I had been wandering along the pier, doing my usual lap of the promenade I live in walking distance to. It had become a crutch after Kiera’s sudden death, my beloved twin ripped away from me so abruptly that the scars it left on my heart drove me to that beach every single night, each night ending with me trudging home and feeling unsuccessful. My cowardice in my heart ran so deep I couldn’t fulfill my wish at that time; to simply pass on to that mystery place my sister now was.

It tortured me, the ghostly presence of her that haunted my life and followed me as a shadow. The smell of her perfume in the breeze, the patched together vase she had broken when we were children, the singe in the floorboard of the hallway she had caused playing with candles as a teen. She was everywhere and nowhere, her absence made all the more keen by the fact. I could never escape her, the promise we made to always remain together. And yet that promise, and my attempt to fulfill it to the ultimate level, was what brought me to the tortured creature kneeling before me.

“You did this”

The words that escape my lips ring hollow, cold even. I almost don’t recognise my own ragged voice, as though I’ve been screaming for hours. Perhaps I have. It feels as though it could’ve been an eternity since I heard those words that broke me down to my very soul; though I’m sure only moments have passed.

I look down, my eyelids growing heavier still as I do so, to the puddle of blood on the floor by my feet. Raising my hands to my face, I wipe the tears dampening my cheeks and clear my throat, trying to rid my voice of its hoarseness. James stares at me in absolute disbelief, his eyes shot wide and those damned grey orbs staring right into my very soul, as they always have.

It takes a moment to realise why he seems so horror struck.

The warm trickle down my face is confirmation enough, especially when considering the vermillion liquid staining my fingers.

It isn’t tears falling from my eyes, but blood.

“I am so sorry-“ James rasped, his voice quiet and shame filled. I can see in those eyes, the lines of his face I have spent countless hours of the night committing to memory; I can see he’s being sincere. Even if everything to this point has been a lie, I know he’s apologetic. I can feel it in how tightly he takes my fingers to grip them in his own, bringing them to his pale lips. I can feel it in the shaky breath against my fingers.

I know he is sorry.

And I can’t possibly forgive him. At least, not in the assumed little time I have left.