How Cold is Your Heart without Me?

                                    

                                          
He still didn't like it here, months away from what he cherished dearly from the bite of a cold bullet. He couldn't blame Gears, he didn't have it in his heart to. The older man was only following the orders of his flesh and blood. He would have done the same. But the empty house full of silent not existent memories yet to be build and the forms of shadows brought from the shapes of the people he wanted to hold was driving him mad.
                          
Blank photo frames laid cold and empty beside a camera he didn't want to pick up just yet, the photos there still painfully fresh to him. Kondraki's fingers danced once, twice, holding onto the bearings of his sanity with the memories of the faint calls and tones of his family still warm.
                          
Kondraki stood, hands clasped to his sides tenderly as he stared at the camera, feet moving mechanically on their own until he was a good ways away, only an arm's stretch from the camera when he felt the air change, becoming heavy and gray in a hue he found the utmost familiar, a pained hole in his heart digging its way through.
                          
The feel of skin giving away to a touch of cold metal the camera bore, the steady rise of goosebumps and a twinge of anxious twitching of fingers against a collarbone. Kondraki lips parted once, minimal anger and despair from the gape in his chest diminished by the feel of Clef’s surprisingly soft hair brushing against his arm in quick succession.
                          
“What are you doing?” aggression did not slip off of his tongue like it usually did, he wanted to ask more, wanted to scream and cry and beg for a reason why, his tone was soft, dripping with comfort from the feel of Clef’s hand against his own, the other’s slightly more slender fingers rubbing the wedding ring on Kondraki’s finger that matched his own. A wedding day distant and past but still fresh in his mind, with the smell of melting snow and give of lips against another's as the final mark of being there to death do you part, like the day Draven was born only minutes after he was years prior.
                          
Clef’s motion, raising his head from the warmth his breath made against the other’s collarbone, raised the hair’s on the other’s neck, he never looked at him in the eye, even when they were alive he never did unless he wanted to say something and wanted to be heard, wanted to be understood that he was telling the truth. Kondraki feared each motion, the awaited look of cold pale lips and and empty flooded multicolor eyes that used to hold Kondraki’s world in them. 
                          
But his face was warm, a soft flush against his cheeks and the tears against lashes that fluttered by distant multicolored eyes, brows furrowed ever so slightly in that look of confusion and sadness, like the nights Clef would wake up from nightmares that would strip him of his pride and think that he was alone again because he couldn't comprehend the feel of his and their children's arms around him, Kondraki has grown to fear even more than the pale faceless glazed off expression that haunted his nightmares.
                          
His lips parted once, twice, a shaky breath begging for air, exhale, a clasp of hands still calloused from days of working and soft from nights of gentle reprieve against his shoulders. To ground himself, Kondraki remembered, to ground himself from the distortionate memories brought forth from the past he never dared asked about, a past he knew still haunted Clef like a dark cloud on a sunny day.
                          
“I like to think of you as strong and tall, as strong and living as you used to be during that first day when you put down the bottle and swore to quit when I told you of our impending parenthood, in a dark shirt and khaki pants, Sam Brown belt and all, and standing there and laughing down at me but not at me, in glee and happiness at the way you bent your head back and wheezed loud enough to choke in the tears of your happiness. You seek adventure some other place, somewhere even better than here I know…. I know that you are round about me, I believe; I hear you laughing as you used to do, yet loving all the things I think of you; and knowing you are happy somewhere far off away from this Hell, should I grieve?” Clef's voice was painfully soft and distant, curled around in impending doom of a solidified panic that put a rock in his gut. A sound he recognized in their son's voice when it was late and there was still no news of James's whereabouts, how he sobbed against Clef's chest and held onto his hand as it sounded like the world crashed around him. He felt too disgustingly greedy at the ability to not feel that agony at all.
                          
“I know…. You follow and are watchful where I go; how should you leave me, having loved me so, but I know I cannot place this pain on anyone other than me. I remember how we walked along the caged area that held that red lake, you and I, beside the sluggish-moving, still canal that was lucky to be free from our influence. It seemed impossible that you should die, you were like an immortal god to me; I think of you the same and always shall.” A touch, a brush against his shoulders and it was gentle and ghostly, he could feel the distortion contorting the empty chasm of the room, things unsightly and wrong bringing to life from Clef's untouched nightmares and the small blooms of sunflowers around their feet that mimicked the sunny days they got to be together.
                          
“We thought of many things and spoke of few, and life lay all uncertainty before, the judgement we faced and the children we bore no matter what others said, how we loved them and loved each other more than life itself. And now I walk alone through the hallways and think of you, and wonder what new kingdoms you explore because I know, my King, that you deserve them all.” A tremble under his fingers and the room's darkened lights bloomed. The first light of a sun just bright enough to remind him of those bright summer days where he held Clef in his arms and watched their children play together under the clouds. Song birds and sunflowers encompassed those days gently in his memory.
                          
“Over the railway line, across the grass, while up above your wings are spread, flying, ever flying overhead, here in my dreams still I see your khaki figure pass, and when I leave the meadow we took our children to, I feel as though I should almost wait, that you should open first the wooden gate when I see you soon.” The place where Clef's body indented into his frame from years of nights pressed together in sleepy songs emptied in a flush of air, Kondraki's breath quickened in pace, the room once open in a field of sunflowers and birds returned as empty and cold as it was before.
                          
((gosh dont you love it when you're dead and your hubby has an out of body experience and just tells you sporadically to hopefully be there when he offs himself?? Cause you know I do!))