When he was met with silence, he propped his head in hand and turned to face her.
“Why do you look at them, Lytta?”
“Because,” she whispered hoarsely. “They’refree.”
She closed her eyes again, her throat working to dam the flood of tears.
“You fit a piece of my soul so perfectly, Brooks, that sometimes I’m scared to take my place in yours.” She looked vulnerable. Scared, even. “Like maybe I should take the coward’s way out and stay here forever. With you, like this.”
“You don’t have to be scared, Lyt,” he said, reaching out to brush a finger against her cheek. “Whatever this is, it doesn’t have to be your downfall. I will hold you up.” And he meant it.
A friend.
She had been a friend to him, and he was determined to return her goodness.
Her smile was sad as she looked into his eyes, almost apologetic.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“When I need to remember who I am, who I truly am, I come and talk to the stars. They remind me that though I am grounded here, in what I am, there lives a possibility to be more than that. To be more than rage and madness. I could be at peace, just like them. Looking at the stars is like looking through a mirror and seeing the person you expect yourself to be, but never being able to reach through and grasp them. You are the darkness holding me captive and the downfall I fear. You are my place among the stars, Brooks.”
Her words scared him. It sounded like a letter patients left behind before swallowing a bottle of stolen pills. Their friendship had only just begun to bloom. He wouldn’t see it smothered now. Not when he had just started to care.
“How often do you come up here, Lytta?”
“Only as often as I need to remember my purpose.”
Was she planning to hurt herself?
“Your purpose is to live, Lytta. Always.”
She stayed quiet after that, leaving him restless in his own mind. Her tears had stopped falling and, for the moment, she seemed to be reveling in the peace she worked so hard to find.
Brooks broke the silence first hoping his small confession would keep her with him.
“I know our situation isn’t ideal, but friendship could make this place easier to handle. I feel like I’ve known you forever, Lyt, and I don’t want to go back to isolating myself out of fear and ignorance.”
“You have no idea,” she huffed. “I’ve been ignoring my fate, putting off my place in this giant scheme,” she said, turning her face to his.
“I don’t understand.” His confusion was palpable. What did she mean running from him? She had been the one to find him. To talk to him.
“It’s hard to accept our responsibility, our fates, when life has been nothing but madness and brutality. Torture. Pain. It’s unfair. But there comes a time when we have to face it head on, and I’m tired, Brooks. So, so tired.”
A pained, stubborn calm fell over her features, like she had come to some sort of important conclusion or settled on a decision.
“What do you mean?”
A small bit of urgency laced her voice as she spoke, “What do you remember about your life before?”
Brooks, caught off guard, stumbled to answer, “I– nothing. I don’t remember anything. Lytta, what’s going on?”
“This isn’t real, Brooks,” she whispered, glancing to the stars and over her shoulders in paranoia. Her somber attitude turned to raging anxiety at the drop of a hat.
Insanity.
“Lytta what are you talking–”
“It isn’treal,“ she emphasized, the madness sparking, turning the cocoa in her iris to ocher. “This place, the people, you, it isn’t real.” Lytta gripped his arms roughly, pulling him closer and urging him to focus. “This is all a dream, Brooks. You are so much more than this and you can stop it. The hurt, the fear, the downfall. You can stop all of it, you just have to wake up.”
