Still My Bleeding Heart

I looked up into his eyes, and I saw him recoil. Whether it was with fear or loathing, I'm not sure, but it was a definite flinch. As a flash of light illuminated the sky around us, I saw myself in his eyes, and I saw why he baulked. Blood-soaked and filthy, my eyes were too bright, feverish and wild, my hair singed and caked with drying blood, and my lips cracked and split. And to think, I was once beautiful. I coughed out a croaky laugh. Me, beautiful. Even if I did somehow manage to survive this, I would never be beautiful again. I had seen too much; my mind was scarred just like the broken and beaten body that I was now trapped in. I could feel in my chest that something wasn't right. My breathing felt odd, painful and wet.

"Fate does call," I whispered to him, as he held my head in his lap, "and the sickness falls. The lights of life dim down." I could see him shaking his head silently, tears streaking pale, glistening trails down his filthy cheeks.

"I'll die like a soldier in your arms, my will enduring till the pain is gone." I continued. I needed him to know, "I will be brave so you can be strong."

"How could this be?" he wept. With every sob, he racked my body with pain.

"Who am I to challenge God in the ways of the world?" Even through blinding blood-red agony, I could still be as cynical and twisted as I always was. This seemed to help, seeing me back to my old caustic self, be it only for a snatched moment.

Then something shot through me. I don't know if it came from inside me, or if another piece

"In the name of love," I cried, "still my bleeding heart!" I could see him shaking his head.

"For the love of God, still my bleeding heart!" I cried again, muscles twisting and spasming as they contorted into knots of pure burning pain. I think he was paralysed by grief, already having accepted my demise before it had even come to pass. I saw his mouth working wordlessly, trying to form a sentence, something to comfort me maybe.

"The courage in your voice is... is like the burning of the sun," he said, stroking my head with a smooth, soft hand. So unlike my own - calloused, defiled and now rendered useless.

"But like the breath of an angel," I whispered, half to myself. I would soon be like an angel, but whether I got to heaven or not was another matter entirely. Most people feel more pure and good when they are with the one they love, the other half of their soul. Not me. I always felt dirty, tainted, always trying to live up to his golden boy standards. Always second best, never good enough. Of course, he never said any of that to me; he loved me...he loves me just as I am.

Every breath was fire; every word was soaked in blood. It was so painful it was almost ecstasy. Every nerve was alive, and every brain cell was blazing. My senses were keen and razor sharp; I could feel every single jagged edge of rock sticking into my lacerated, bloody back, I could feel every hair shifting on my head in the biting cold breeze, so at odds with the waves of fire rippling through my body. My stomach churned, and I could sense that I was slowly losing the feeling in my bare feet, now just bloody, twisted lumps of charred meat.

He could barely bear to look at me, to see what I had become. For him. I took his place in the front line; I fought in his stead. I just hope he will be able to forgive himself, in time. I can see him torturing himself every day, perhaps for the rest of his life, because by all rights it should be him lying here, broken and defeated, straining for breath and kept alive by lack of movement alone. I'm not saying that I don't deserve to die - I've done too many things to be seen as innocent - but here isn't my place.

The pool of blood growing inside me began to seep out through my nose and the corner of my mouth. As it trickled slowly down my chin, he let out an inhuman wail of grief, shuddering and clawing at his own face. It wrenched my heart to see him like this, but instead of crying I began to laugh. My eyes were wild and rolling, searching for the stars of heaven to grasp them and pull them down, to use them in place of the leaking heart that was slowly failing me. I should have been terrified. I should have been distraught, inconsolable. Instead, I was laughing. I felt absolutely terrific. It was like life and death were melding together in a haze of blissful agony.

I didn't want to die; I still had too much to do, too much to say, and all the rest of the clichés that are usually attached to this sort of situation. I could see him falling to his knees besideme, crying and shouting.

"Why? Why this innocent young boy must suffer so helplessly?"

It is neither my place nor my time, but what is done is done, and there is nothing can change that. As something exploded in the distance, the world seemed to go quiet, and all I could hear was my breathing and his muffled sobs. As the pain seized me again, I called out,

"In the name of love, still my bleeding heart!" He wouldn't.

"For the love of God still my bleeding heart!" He couldn't.

~*~

In the end, I didn't. As the spray from the inky water crashed upon the rocks, it brought with it a piece of shrapnel, falling from the heavens and burying itself with a soft thud deep in his useless heart. His body folded towards the wound, and slapped back onto the damp, freezing rocks. His eyes began to glaze over, and his words filled the air as he looked into his destiny.

He died like a soldier in his lover's arms, brave as a hero in a blood-red war, and his final words as he reached for the stars:

"In the name of love, still my bleeding heart...Be well my love...still my bleeding heart..."

I didn't. I couldn't. Instead, a falling star from heaven took him from me, and left me with a broken shell to hold while the morning broke slowly, the horizon turning grey. It started to rain.