Without You ✔️ (completed)

XXIV. bestfriend: دوست

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She was curled up on the floor. Her words exhausted her. Her body became limp as if that night had come alive on her body again. Then she stared at him. She could barely tell if he was breathing. He was on his knees, frozen against the door, his head bent into his hands. She had spilled each and every horror of that night, he had stayed on his knees on the cold floor, listening to her, absorbing the pain within him. Finally, he looked up.

She'd seen that uncannily cold and still look before. That night when she had looked into the mirror for the first time in her own eyes. Her eyes had matched the coldness of steel under the snow. He held that reflection today.

She prayed and pleaded to God for mercy on him. She yearned for him to scream, yell, cry... anything, but the silence stretched like a scorching desert between them.

He stumbled over to her, yet his movements held ominous restraint, a threat to his own sanity. He placed his shivering hand on top of her hands first as if making sure his touch was safe for her. Her hands tightened around his if she let him go, he'd disappear into the dead of night. He pulled her on his lap, wounding his arm tight around her, sealing her in his safety. He buried his face in her hair, as though inhaling her strength to stay alive.

"Cry," that's all he had whispered and she whimpered into his arms. Her hands fisted in his black shirt.

Her tears weren't hollow this time. No, this time they held eleven years of stabbing pain she hid in her heart. The first cry was still emotionally diffident.

"Cry."

He held her face into his hands. The next sound leaving her body was a scream. A scream that should've left her eleven years ago. The one that should've shaken the foundations of the graveyard where her soul was ripped out of her body and buried into the ground alive. The next one unleased a decade of suffering. She convulsed in agony in his arms, he held her.

"Why me?" Her voice was raspy, broken. "Why me Zach? I've never even hurt a soul in my life. Why was I thrown into this torture? I never complained when Abbas overdosed, Father took Asfi Lala from us, I never complained to Allah when Mama died in our arms. I never asked Allah why Kabir felt suffocated by his guilt for no reason, that he was being trained to be a monster. But why did this happen to me?"

Her head fell back in his arms as if finally surrendering to her fate.

"I didn't deserve this. Why did he do this to me? He took everything from me. My life, my dreams, my dignity... everything. I was supposed to liver happily ever after with you, have kids... a lot of them." For so long she had been furnaced in this trauma, now it bled from her body, tear by tear. "I can't even bear the thought of a baby without my stomach churning with acid, reminding me of the one I aborted."

She hardly could breathe between the sobs, her chest heaving for air.

"I shouldn't have fought that night, let him suffocate me. Dying once would have been better than dying every day, dying a humiliating death when I feel his touch on me, I see the blood on my hands, feel it dripping down my body when I wake up drenched in sweat. I killed you. I hurt you, over and over. I should've been dead long ago. You would've survived." She frantically wiped his silent tears that had soaked his stubble. "This right here." She put her hand on his chest, his heart was beating so hard she was surprised it didn't burst and bled on her hand. "This is strong. You're so strong. You would've survived and found the love somewhere whose soul and honor weren't in shreds."

He held her closer, letting her hurl out whatever she was holding. If she had screamed her pain years ago, maybe her damage wouldn't have been this vast and destructive.