Finding Contentus

Chapter 35: The R&R Tale (4)

The tale and song of Ramsis had finally ended. So why did it nonsensically keep on playing like a broken record to a sickening degree that made Renero's head ring non stop by its merciless and unforgiving assault?

The answer is simple.

The fact that time does not heal all wounds. The fact that it only stretches them with permanent scars that remain forever. The fact that the pain may subside overtime, only to resurface and hurt more at any given time.

Time that is told through scars such as the ones that could never be fully amended on the bodies of Renero and Ramsis. Scars they had to live with for the rest of their lives. Ramsis still had his eyes closed shut, letting his tears flow down and drop to the floor like a running tap that could never close.

Though that was a far cry from the dripping sweat that fell like rain from his face, all due to Renero's nauseating heat that made both men severely lightheaded and drained of blood.

Everything hurt, everything throbbed, everything stung, everything ached. Everything, even trembling hurt with the vibration of bursting pain that could rupture arteries to cause internal bleeding. As if Renero wasn't already bleeding enough inside.

He was breathing so heavily with closed eyes that one would think he would pass out or die by the second with how emotionally exhausted he felt. He was rapidly losing heat, blood and oxygen akin to anemia, while gaining cold, weakness and fatigue as though suffering from hypothyroidism.

"I know... I have no real right to present my sorrows as solely exclusive given all that I have done to countless other families and all I could not do to save them or to save you... but I truly believed that I was finally making a choice that I thought to be the right one. A just and merciful one."

"The happiness of my family meant the whole world to me. If I left you there in that place... they would never be happy again. Kamilah wouldn't have been able to live with herself. That's why I did what I did. A man will do anything for his family after all..."

Ramsis's brows furrowed with the same agony that accompanied his lonely voice of loss.

"So why is it, that when I finally do the right thing, it feels so wrong?"

If there was ever a scene of helpless vulnerability that tried its hardest to make sense of things, it would be the gauntly drooping closed eyed expressions from Renero and Ramsis that were begging for the pang nightmares to be shut away from them forever.

The darkness stayed with them as their only refuge in an immersive pit of engulfment, with no way out to leave and no way up to try and escape. The chains kept them imprisoned in damnation, with no sign of salvation anywhere. The only possible deliverance, being that of—

No. Still, Renero refused to submit when he had already submitted to remembering everything in vivid detail.

Still he refused to accept the being that Ramsis had learned to accept. Death was not an option. Death was not his salvation. Death was not his lifeline. Death was only the end. Death was only more darkness. Death was the easy way out.

The really "easy" way out, and if there was anything life had always taught Renero about living, it was that he had learned to take the "hard" way in everything.

That is why he and his race were, are, and will always be so strong. Their absolute determination to keep on living with loss when the world wanted them dead. And now that they were dead, one would think it would just be better to join them all in peace.

However—

I cannot stay here. Renero couldn't join them in peace when he hadn't done all he could to warrant such an unattainable peace with his unresolved sins. I will not stay here.