The Trapeze Swinger

3.7

"Nice work, love. You really -"

"Shut the fuck up," I snapped, cutting Murdoc off so viciously that he looked visibly taken aback.

For a moment there was only the sound of the lift rumbling upwards combined with the blood roaring in my ears, the vital liquid boiling cold until I was sure I was somehow dying a little more with every heartbeat. Staring blankly at the closed lift doors, I felt frozen in time and space, as if the world had ended outside and I had been trapped forever within that dirty and graffitied elevator box.

There's nothing left; there's nothing left for me now.

I wondered what he was thinking of down there in the deep dark of his mind, left alone in that room. A dejected figure standing slumped in front of the closed doors, a mask staring up at him from the floor and only the hollow mechanical clanks from the lift shaft to keep him company. Would he remember running soaking wet through the sunlight with me, out across the gold-lit grass of the fairgrounds, and would he stand with the memory fading in the fluorescent light just as I did now?

Don't forget me, don't forget please please please Stu I don't want to be your ghost.

My hands were twisting viciously in the material of my t-shirt, fisted over my heart as I tried to breathe past the swollen thickness of my throat. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Murdoc downing his bourbon in large gulps and I started to choke on the panic rising up hard and fast through all the worthless parts of me.

I love him and it's not enough and I can't take it, I can't fucking take it someone make it stop make it stop make it stop --

"I can't breathe," I whispered, lips wet with the tears that streamed endlessly down my cheeks.

I don't want this version of events to be my life, I want everyone back or not at all but I can't do this I'm too small and weak and nothing I'm nothing—

With a noise of alarm the green-skinned man went to catch me as I swayed, but I wrenched myself away from his grip, falling to my knees as my legs gave out beneath me. Coughing against the bile crawling acrid up my throat, I wheezed for air, fingers still clawing at my heart as if I could somehow tear it from my chest.

Here's to drug addicts and cowards and angels and thieves and here's to the sentry who stands guard over them all yet can't even fucking breathe. Where's your brother, Sloane McLeod? Where's your lover, Sloane McLeod? No one is here to save you this time it's just you walking into that terrible darkness alone without a single other soul to bring you light - is that what you wanted? What did you want?

"Sloane, love."

The elevator arrived at the study, opening it's clunking doors to reveal the same sunlit room I had been in so recently, everything unchanged except for me as I felt Murdoc's hand close vicelike around mine.

"Stand up."

A thief, a thief.

I looked up, feeling his palm burning into my skin and the searing heat spreading like fire down the length of my arm as we watched each other's faces; mine coated in tears, his set grim and mirthless. The wrong hand, the wrong touch, I was sure he knew it as he helped me to stand shakily, guiding me over to the high-backed armchair that sat awaiting me behind his desk.
                   I sunk down into it, still gripping tightly to him until he had to gently pry my fingers loose. I watched his green skin disappearing from mine, remembering how 2D's hands had felt pressed between my thighs in a sudden dizzying flash.

How did it happen that the only way I learnt to love was like it's gonna be the end of me; there's no before and after, just slowly falling into light until it starts to burn and I get left begging for a god I don't believe in to crawl into existence and tell me if it was worth it.