𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐎𝐌

73| S E T T A N T A-T R E

AKILA'S POV
[ one of my favorite ]

Nightmare. An evil spirit formerly thought to oppress people during sleep. A frightening dream that usually awakens the sleeper. Something such as an experience, situation, or object having the monstrous character of a nightmare or producing a feeling of anxiety or terror.

An unexpected nightmare, an nightmare so close, so thin to the line of being impossible, immortal and imaginary.

My lungs are crying out, my breath is struggling and my skin is burning, it's itching and pounding against my body, it's trapped, it's fighting to break free, to break free from the distress, the agony, to wake up, escape the depths of the nightmare, the depths of the unfeasible and run far away, run back in time where terror never existed, never dared to reach us, never got close enough, enough to pull me down on my knees, repeating his name uncomfortably, trembling from the inside out, begging for him to wake up, asking the sky and the universe to bring him back, to take me instead, to kill me instead, to give me his pain, to give him my strength and power, every drop of my blood if that's what it takes, if that's what will rewind time and resurrect him.

I never thought it would be him, I never thought it would be him before me. He always dreamed of a peaceful death, an ending where he sacrificed everything for the sake of those he loved the most, for the sake of loyalty and love.

I'm not focused enough, I'm not in the right mind to check if he's alive, if his heart is still pumping blood and keeping him alive just for a bit longer, just a few more minutes so I could save him, so I could speak to him and say many things, tell him for hours and hours while he listens with a smile on his face, with joyful eyes and warm heart.

I'm not strong for this, I'm not strong enough to check if he's breathing or if his lungs failed him, failed me and failed us. I don't have the courage, the bravery to admit it, to accept that the day has come, the day Alessandro dies and never comes back, never opens his eyes and looks at me like a star up in the distant dark sky, never stands and wraps his arms around me, never stares into my eyes with no shame, with no regret nor embarrassment to tell me how beautiful I am, how much I impress him, how much he admires me as a person and my work, how much his words will never be enough to tell me, to express what I mean to him.

He thought I don't understand, I don't get the feeling of your heart being overwhelmed, filled to the edge and it feels like exploding. I know how it feels, I know the pain, I feel the pain whenever I'm around him, whenever our fingers touch by accident, whenever he carries my hair gently, whenever his smile appears and dimples deepen. If he can't find the right words to form his love, I must be in a misery, in a dark hole with no words at all to tell him, to speak for my heart and confess, I must be a fool and maybe I am, I am a fool, I am a fool for him.

And I can't stand it. I can't let it slide through my veins and welcome this, welcome this faith because it wasn't supposed to be that way, it wasn't supposed to end like that, it's not supposed to end here, not now, not ever.

I run out of tears, tears run out of me, leaving me with a hole in my chest, a hole like his buried deep into his ribs, causing more blood to surround us, to show me more evidence that it's real, it's happening, it happened in front of me and I let it slip, I didn't do anything to stop it, to prevent it from occurring as I once promised to do, promised to do anything in my power, promised to protect him, promised my soul to him and here I lay, unable to take in reality and let it slap me in the face, too fragile and irresolute, too weakened and lost for him, for his health, his love, his life.

I would give him up, I would give myself up just for him to arise, to get knocked back into the world and move along, live again and forget about me, erase our memories and go back to the way it was, the way he was before I crashed in and changed so many things, things I may or may not shouldn't have changed, things I'm doubting when I've never doubted myself before.