Androphobia

xxi. mea culpa

Ordinary Life - The Weeknd

A/N: if i see any thea slander in this chapter, i'm revoking your rights. this is a girl with androphobia seeing murder for the first time!!

THEA'S POV:

Death had never been a prominent figure in my life.

He was quiet, his cold lips sewn together by the final word of his subjects. In fact, in my eighteen years of living, I'd hardly noticed his presence at all. He was a mere ripple, a shift in the air when I walked into a hospital; a harsh whisper when I passed the crumbling gravestones at a cemetery; a brush along the nape of my neck when I heard of a girl's father passing in an accident just two blocks away from school. My family members having been kept safe from his wrath, thoughts of Death didn't possess me often nor worry me in my state of blissful ignorance.

What I didn't expect was to find him standing in front of me on a Sunday morning, a stain against the warm, pulsing sun.

My ears rang as I stared up at him.

At the knife in his hand.

At the blood smeared across his still, tattooed fingers.

A warmth spread over my lungs and tunnelled through my ears, blocking out his voice as he spoke to me, said words I didn't wish to hear. But it didn't block out the feeling of his hands as he knelt down in front of me, knife somewhere in the leaves, and cradled my face. They were cold. I didn't recognise them. They were someone else's. A man wearing Synn's face, his sharp, chiselled cheekbones and his swimming blue eyes knelt before me, but I didn't recognise him.

My gaze floated from the figure in front and switched to the body behind him. To the blood spilling lavishly from his neck and painting the leaves and twigs with messy fingers. I never thought it would be so... red. For it to be so vivid. A liquor of life emptying from the man's mouth as he lay dying. Was it supposed to be so red, so energetic as it flowed through the leaves towards me? Was there supposed to be so much of it?

No, of course not.

It wasn't supposed to be like that.

It wasn't supposed to taste like that.

"He's... dead."

The words glided from my tongue with no meaning behind them.

"He's dead," I whispered and stared at my world holding me tight, his strong fingers grasped around my jacket. "He's dead. You killed him."

Silence swallowed the forest whole but even then it was hungry. It came for Synn's throat, rendering him speechless for the first time I had seen him. Even though he could be quiet, his eyes were always speaking: murmuring words of comfort or a whisper of cold, flaming anger. But, for the first time in my life, Synn was silent. His eyes said nothing. He simply stared with a blue, empty gaze, emptier than the glassy marbles in the face behind him.

"You... killed him."

My vision blurred and I shook my head. A tear trickled down my cheek. I licked it away and shook my head again, blinking widely at the mess around us.

"You killed him," I whispered hoarsely. "You killed him. You killed him. You killed him."

The tears continued to fall. My face grew so wet, I became unsure of what was blood and what was water. Whatever was in my mouth all tasted the same and I swallowed it, my chest and throat throbbing from the effort. An aching pain speared through me in that moment and I physically reeled, clutching my chest. I hopelessly grasped in search of what was wounding me. There was nothing. An excruciating band of agony was ripping my body apart but there was nothing.