Just a Touch
They all think I feel nothing.
It makes sense, in a way. A girl who can’t touch shouldn’t feel. That would make it all much easier.
I could have chosen that path. I could have burned it all out of me, locked it away and never looked at it again. I chose differently.
I used to hope. That’s the only thing that changed.
One little thing done differently, and I’d have died years ago. If I’d gotten in a different semi, hitched a different ride, if I hadn’t followed him out of that bar, if I’d chosen South instead of North—I’d never have met him, and when they blew that machine apart I’d have finished dying then, and it would have been better for everyone that way. I’d have died young, but I’d have died whole, and no one else would have gotten hurt.
This way—it’s just taking so long. Too long.
I know he’s out there. I think about him, every single night, and wonder where he is, what he does every day, who he sees and what he eats, when he goes to sleep and who he fucks, what he does to fill up the time.
He has all the time there is, I think. Maybe I do too.
I hope not.
Maybe someday, I’ll find an answer. Not for my skin—I’ve given up on that. It’s been ten years, and not the least sign of any kind of control for that has ever even whispered to me. My skin is like another being, my personal prison, desperate for more victims, and it only gets angrier and angrier when I deny it its nourishment. That kind of answer, I did give up on. If I let myself hold onto that kind of hope, I couldn’t keep the promise I made. And I have to.
The answer I wish I had is why it had to be at all. That’s an even more hopeless question to ask, but at least it’s not just mine. Other people ask that too. Babies are born with cancer sometimes, and there’s no reason why. Sometimes it just happens. And some people find an answer, just for themselves. God’s will, some cosmic equation—whatever works for them.
I haven’t found any.
It wasn’t fair that this happened to me. I never wanted to be different, not this way. I wanted to be special, maybe. I wanted to discover myself, to know myself, to see everything in the world. I can do that now, but I can only look. Not touch.
It isn’t much of a bargain.
And I can’t end it. I wanted to ask him to let me, the last time. I wanted to ask him to understand, to promise that if I found some way of defeating myself, to let me go. But I couldn’t. I saw in those eyes that can barely stand to look at me any more just how much he needs for me to be here, just how much he wants to believe that there’s still something left for me in this world.
All he ever wanted was to make me happy. I can’t give him that, but I can let him believe it’s possible. Just not if he’s here, watching me.
So I made him leave. I gave him the one promise that would bind him to that, and I won’t break it. I knew when I said it that he’d accept, but that little girl inside of me still cried when he left.
He knows that. He knows what it did to me to make him go, but it would be worse if he stayed. Because I couldn’t not touch him, if he were here. And I know I can’t do that ever again, because my skin wants him more than anyone else, all the strength and power that belongs to him—the richest, headiest mixture it’s ever known. It wants it all. The next time, it would take everything.
And I’d be left with the knowledge that I’d taken everything from him, his soul and his life and every chance for any kind of peace, and I would go insane. And I can’t do that. They couldn’t stop me, not quickly enough to keep me from destroying more than just the two of us, and I can’t let anyone else get hurt. It’s bad enough that it isn’t just me.
Just…why did it have to be him too? I can’t answer that. But god, it isn’t fair. If I could change one thing, it would be that. If I could go back, I’d leave that bar, walk out into the winter night and let the cold take me. I’d make sure he never even saw the little girl with hopeful, trusting eyes that would get inside his heart, and let him go to find his own answers, or not. He shouldn’t have had to watch her die, trying to make me live.
Someday it’ll be over. Maybe even someday soon. Who knows what’s out there, what we’ll be called on to deal with tomorrow or the next day or the next? All I’m doing is waiting.
I should choose not to feel. I should choose not to let my thoughts go to him, to focus on what is here and now, to rip that dream out of myself as thoroughly as I tore away the idea that I could ever tame my skin. I should. But I don’t.
That’s the only life that’s left to me now, and if I have to keep moving and breathing, at least I want that much. I love him, and that’s the only thing that makes me more than just a shell. I won’t give that up. I’ll die untouched, but I won’t die having denied that I loved.
I won’t die without having felt everything I can.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Rogue's voice. Let's make it stronger: ANGST.