INTO THE ETHEREAL

She told me she was leaving me and began to walk away. She said I never should have come here. I stood looking, unbroken, focused, understanding. At the door, she stopped and turned back. I heard her voice even before she spoke, a gossamer glaze of brokenness.

"You never should have come here..." she said again. This time, there was a red heat in the whiff of air she blew from her mouth. Her voice broke beneath her angry face that shone with a colourless curtain of tears.

I stood, looking at her in the eyes, disallowing myself even a drop of hurt, daring her to believe what she said. She raised her eyes and plunged their gaze into mine. I saw then that she knew; she knew I cared - would always care.

I sighed and took calm steps towards her. She did not move away. I knew she wouldn't. My hands found her shoulders, gripped them firmly, and felt her shiver in response. Her eyes were staring at the floor, as though they were searching for something important. I raised her chin. She didn't struggle. Our chests were close, explosively close, almost as if our hearts touched each other. I could hear her heartbeat, struggling against a need and a want, struggling to believe what it told itself, knowing it never would.

"Jane." I said calmly. She winced. I knew she hated it - the serenity in my eyes, the unforced steadiness of my arms as it touched her, as it steadied her. I knew she hated it, yet loved me for it. I didn't know how to be something else.

"Jane" I said again. "You remember that night, at Forks plane..." I paused as I saw her eyes brighten with the flash of a treasured memory. My voice lowered as I continued.. "With the fountain waters crashing behind us; You remember what you said to me when I told you I didn't want to love you?"

I saw the words in her eyes. She did not speak.

"Hmm?" I hummed to urge her. She closed her eyes. The memory of that night was too sensual; the night we had our first kiss.

"You -- you said.." Her voice quaked and trailed off. She took in deep draughts of air. I watched her bust swell with the empty filling of oxygen, then watched as they deflated slowly. She spoke softly.

"I said you didn't have a choice."

"Yes Jane" I affirmed. "You know too well I don't have a choice. I will always love you Jane".

She snapped:

" Fuck you!! Fuck you Jeff!! How can you be so cold about this. I'm leaving you, Jeff, and I mean it!! "

"Do you really want to leave me, Jane" I asked, a little shaken by the raw certainty in her eyes. She would leave me. She would break me if she did.

"No... But I will if that's the only way to punish you..."

I sighed.

"For what".

She closed her eyes again.

"For loving me too much. I don't deserve you, Jeff." There was a painful apology in her voice, in the way her cheeks flattened in resignation, in the way her lips refused to return to themselves as if protesting her last defamation...

But I understood. Sometimes, I wondered why I could not stop loving her. She was right. I didn't have a choice. For here we were, in the middle of life and death. Why hadn't I just remained in the world, bent over her beaten body that was fast losing its life force. Why had I not just remained in the ambulance, praying, hoping, wishing her heartbeat will resurrect with the mighty charge that was plunged into it. Why had I not thought of anything else, other than to go with her; to hold her through to the afterlife, and if there was none, to hold her hand as we ended, and passed into nothingness. Yes, I was calm because I knew she knew.

"Tell me Jane, what if it was me strapped to that stretcher" I said, pointing to her lifeless body in the world we'd just left, "my heart cold, my breath still, my eyes, blank and vacant....would you have left me, Jane? Could you have left me, Jane?"

She let a tear roll down her cheek.

"Yes. That's what I thought Jane. You'd end it; right there and then. They'd never understand but you'll do it; with a disastrous precision. There would be no second thoughts - not when you knew there was not a drop of hope left, not when you knew you would have to sleep and wake the next morning without my arms by your side, not when the memories of my body, as of yours now, possesses your thoughts; of my body broken and scarred, discoloured, scratched, hurt, smashed to lifelessness by something as worthless as a car. No Jane. You would not be able to bear it for as long as I did. I watched the fear steal your soul Jane. I watched your hands quiver in mine. I watched your throat struggle to catch breath. No Jane. There will never be a torture greater than that..."

She looked up at me. Deep into my eyes came a look devoid of everything - even emptiness. Only love remained.

"I would never be able to make it without you Jeff. I would have roamed that world Jeff. I would never have passed on in peace Jeff. I could not have." Her words were not a statement of pledge, or promise, or even fact. They were simply the statement of truth.

"I know." I said...

Her hands slipped into mine and formed a dovetail; a declaration; that we could never let us go, beyond life, beyond the afterlife, beyond the life after.

Together we watched the paramedics hustle over our bodies in blind, vain haste. They rushed to her, pushing her chest in deeper and deeper, willing it to swell with life. They rushed to me, clogging my chest with articles of cloth, pushing them into the ugly gash I created in the centre of it, willing the blood to stop, willing life return to my body.

We sighed together and laughed.

"Tell them to stop Jeff" she said. "We're where we should be.."

"They won't. They must do this: not for us, but for themselves."

She nodded. I turned squarely and faced her. My face lowered, hers rose slightly to meet mine. Our lips caught themselves in a tender, intimate kiss. Her lips trembled beneath my steady ones, almost as if the fire in mine burned her. She too understood that mine was steady and sure, and that her love was the source of that certainty..

We turned to take one last look at them; at our dead bodies. We faded into the ethereal...

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