Chapter 5
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Ad lucem – (Towards the light)
I can smell it even though I can’t yet see it; sometimes I am grateful for the darkness. They’ve burnt him again, I’ve seen it before but it’s something you could never get used to. His body is completely raw and the burnt skin still radiates such heat. I can just about make out his face as it contorts in agony as his body fights to heal. I want to hold him but I know I’ll have to wait.
Unlike some I’ve never deluded myself into seeing him as invincible, it makes me sick that so many associate the fact that he heals as meaning he feels no pain, maybe at least some would alter their view if they could see him now. I can tell he’s getting weaker by the day but it’s his mind that’s weakening quicker than his body even though his body is healing for two.
I know when he does it, even if I’m not always completely ‘with it’ when he does. He keeps hold of me, never letting go, waiting for the small window of opportunity when my skin comes to life enough to take from him, when it lets him give me enough to survive. I’m weak even with his help and he gets angry and frustrated when that window just doesn’t open. I on the other hand am grateful when it doesn’t. I learnt to control my skin about a year ago and if the drugs wear off enough and I’m awake enough I can stop him sometimes. I just wish I could stop it all the time. My heads so messed up though, half the time I can’t tell whether it’s on or off even when I feel like I should be able to. I thought the drugs just made us weak and suppressed our mutations somehow, and they do but when I begin to feel the drugs wear off its not automatic what situation I’m in, whether my skin is safe or not. It seems to wake up with a mind of its own and I wish it would clue me in.
He is struggling enough with his own body let alone helping mine. We’ve talked, shouted and I’ve even screamed at him to stop, he just said flat out that he couldn’t. We had the same conversation over and over until one day it just stopped. He knows that I don’t want to hurt him but I had to accept that he was going to keep on doing it no matter what. He had to, there was no choice, he loved me. And I knew that, his thoughts were always full of love when I’d wake up with fading bruises and a stronger Logan in my head but he said it out loud that day as if it explained everything, and I suddenly realized that it did because I love him too and I would do exactly the same if I could. God I wish I could. He doesn’t realize I don’t think, that it’s me who stops it sometimes, he has to do what he has to do and I have to do what I have to do. I guess love works both ways.
It’s not the healing or the over use of it that’s killing him quickest though, I can feel his self loathing and guilt at his perceived failure and its eating away at him.
“So sorry”
“Nothing for you to ever be sorry for Logan”
“Should have protected you from this..........should have been stronger..........better..........should have..........”
“Stop. Please just fuckin’ stop this. I love you *you know that* but just for reference I do, with everything in me *I love you*. You didn’t ask me to go, you never do, you stay away from me trying to do what you seem to think is the right thing. You think by staying away you’re giving me a life, what you think will be a better life, one that doesn’t include you. But a life without you means no happiness, no love. A lifetime of nothing.
I followed you, it’s my fault we’re here, do you hear me? My fault. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have been caught, you wouldn’t have been tortured, you wouldn’t be in pain and you wouldn’t have to watch the same happen to me and I know that’s what kills you more than anything because it’s the same for me – seeing you hurt is far worse than anything they could ever do to me. All this time I’m watching you die, not because of them but because you blame yourself. I need it to stop Logan and I need it to stop now. We’re here and there’s nothing either of us can do to change it. All we can do is survive, and I need you to make it through this, I need to know that you’ll be ok, If it’s selfish of me I don’t care, I need to know that you’ll survive.
I would rather be here *with* you than anywhere else *without* you. Do you understand that? ”
His body even now hours later is still trying desperately to recover but we got a lot of things ironed out today. Top of the facts learned and accepted are that it isn’t just love, it runs so much deeper for both of us, we have a need for each other, one that neither of us want to or would be able to sever, along with that love and need comes a gut wrenching fear of loosing it and a monumental fear of not wanting to live without it. We also decided that ‘life’s too short’, well Logan of all people came up with that one, said he heard it somewhere once but never took much notice of what it meant. He gets it now and doesn’t want to waste a minute more of being alive but not living. I couldn’t have agreed more. It seems that knowing your life could expire in the near future, or more to the point the life of the one you love, is a real eye opener.
Of all the places to have an epiphany we had ours in a dark cold cell. I really don’t care, I’m just glad we did.
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