Counterpoint

by Dex

I thought that pain was something completely familiar to me, like a counterpart to my soul. Lost in the levels of itself, comfortable in the well known and remembered swirls of it. I've lived with pain for so long that I never thought it could affect me again.

I was wrong.

A new level, one that cuts into my soul like a hungry blade, has opened itself for me; enveloping and yielding. It's a tentative exploration, like two new bedmates, groping in the darkness for the warmth of each other. It's like being cast into a bare room, shrouded in night. It's like being blind.

Ever since the sharp tugs of the doctor sewing shut my eyes, I have lived with that. The dull ache in the hollows where they used scalpels of sharpened ruby-quartz to cut away my sight, and take out my cursed vision. It was for the best, they told me. The brain damage had prevented me from ever controlling it; no form of block would be completely effective, no one would be safe around me if I refused. I had almost believed it myself when I went under the knife.

Do I miss that sight? Of what I can remember, I've not had much to see. The ground hurtling up at me, filtered through the baby fine blond hairs of my brother. The peeling grey walls of the bunkroom at the orphanage. The sneers on the faces of the other children as they taunted and beat me up. The sad and uninterested looks from those coming to look at children, and seeing me. I do not miss my sight in the way most people think.

I would have liked to have seen her smile.

I can feel it, when she does so. Not often, but sometimes. The beautiful mask of her face softens for a brief second, and she becomes ethereal. Her face; I know it better then my own, seeing it's contours and lines with my hands. I'm patient, and have committed every expression to memory. I know her in sadness, and in terror, and in hatred. Why have I never known it in love? She once told me that she didn't think she could love, that the pain was too deep. She feared to trust, but more so, feared being trusted. Always another face to distance herself from, and another personality to hide behind. That face, with a grace and beauty meant for the halls of elegance and power, was set on a young woman who typed reports and dodged passes for a midtown brokerage.

Not the kind of person to be found with a blind man who answers phones at a crisis centre. Not one who can only afford a tiny apartment, so small that you have to go outside to change your mind. Emma said that once, part in jest, part in bitterness. It had been a step up from the streets. Away from the begging and the stealing and the filth. Emma couldn't use her own powers to help us, the nature of her abilities so twisted by abuse that her mental commands were like forcing a rape on a helpless person. And, well, a blind man without much of an education doesn't go far in this world.

Why do I love her, and why am I leaving?

Because I have delusions of nobility. Emma needs someone who can help her open up, and push past the anger and self-loathing. Not an emotional cripple who has nothing to offer and nothing to advance towards. No, she needs more than me.

I hate her for that.

I hate myself for it more.

I can feel the slight movement as she breathes; hear the clicking of her beads like cannonshots in my ears. I think she might care.

"Where will you go?"

"Do you care?" I need to make this hurt. I need to make the pain enough to blot out her smell, and her voice, and everything that she means to me.

"No. When have I ever cared?" I think I can hear the edge of a sob, ruthlessly killed.

"There were times," I say finally, not recognizing my own voice. "when I thought you did."

More words of anger, of hatred. I close myself off, burning away my emotions. She's killing me, and maybe saving me. I never know which. The wind is cold on my face, sharp and biting. My mind is screaming to me, sobbing and begging me to go back to her. To try and save both of us.

But our world is not for the both of us. In fact, I can't be sure it is even for me. I want her to live, and to find herself. And I want her to cling to me and be buried intertwined. I want our souls to burn together in whatever hell we find for each other.

I wish they hadn't of taken my eyes.

Because today, I wish I could cry.

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