Heart Smith, 1-hour-story

She steps into the rooftop, and he is crying like she has never wanted to know how to cry.
He cries and sobs and hiccups, and doesn’t breathe for a moment or two, when crying and sobbing and hiccupping are the only things he can do. He cries like she has never wanted to know how to cry, and the snow falls mockingly around them both, as if to remind him those tears will never be as beautiful as the flakes on his eyelashes. He seems to understand the message, and cries harder, curls further into his own body, clutching with trembling and freezing hands a chest that contains a heart that only knows how to hurt and bleed from open wounds. She would know, because as his mother pushed and he took his first breathe into this world, wailing just like now, tears and blood and pain and misery were the only things she had been given to build it.
Almost purple nails reach dig into dark fabric, and there they stay, like the eyes cubs they most probably turned into after so much time sitting in the dark- They dig into his coat, and there is nothing that could possibly make anyone believe he didn’t mean to tear it apart. There was nothing in his tears, face, or screams that could convince her his object wasn’t to tear his own chest open.
She would know, because she has seen it happen before.
“Don’t do that” She says, and the snowflakes stop falling, stop swirling, stop taunting. She shakes her head when he turns around, eyes wide and red and despaired, reaching out with trembling hands that at least now weren’t attempting any self-harm “That is mine. Mine to fix, mine to break, and mine to give”
“Take it out”
She shakes her head once more, but it doesn’t stop him. He walks closer and closer and closer, close enough for her to not deny the situation any longer. He walks close enough to see the bags under his eyes and the paleness of his cheeks that could have been due to the cold, but it wasn’t. He comes close enough to see those same tears and blood and pain and misery crated into a heart all those years ago, close enough to see the angry red radiating from what could only be described as a bleeding wound. She doesn’t wince, doesn’t cry, does not look away.
Instead, she wishes she could.
“Are you sure?”
He takes her palm with his still shaky hands, and presses it on the left side of his chest.
“Can’t you feel it?” It’s a whisper, but it echoes like a scream. The palm on top of hers is cold, and the forehead that bends forward and touches hers when another sob comes out of his lips, its freezing. It’s worse, probably, seeking comfort from something that will be never be able to give it, to seek warmth where there is nothing at all “It hurts, it hurts so much! I just want it to stop. Just make it stop! Can’t you feel it breaking?”
She can’t.
She can’t and it would make sense that he knows it. She knows he knows it, but she also knows he forgot it- She knows she forgot it, like he has forgotten every other thing about her, like he will forget when he steps out of reach and this whole thing is done and over with, even before the last tear dries.
“It’s also yours to take as well, isn’t it? Do it then” His forehead presses again against hers, and some few other tears roll down “Please, please take it out”
Her fingers curl in. And then her arm pulls out.
Just like that, there is no forehead against her own anymore. ‘Just like that’, he steps back and drops his arm and looks at nothing in particularly with eyes that are still red but already drying from any tear that could have ever rolled down on his freckles. She holds the piece of heart in her hand, cradles it against her chest and cherishes the warmth that comes out of it until, ‘just like that’, it goes to sleep.
“I can smother the edges, for next time, when the right person comes”
He fixes his coat, shakes his head, and walks past her.
“There won’t be a next time”
Sometimes, she wishes that was a true. But she has seen wars and applauded revolutions, she has played with hairless children and stood behind parents that shouldn’t be burring a coffin of such a small size, she has worn more colors than any rainbow, played with more flowers than any tree and collected more tears than any gentlemen’s handkerchief. She has seen birth, death, jealousy, destruction, and creation in equal parts; she has seen civilizations being build, she has seen countries being taken down, she has seen good and he has seen evil, and she has had to pretend she wasn’t the reason for them all- So she knows, as he walks away and the little piece in her hands grows cold, waiting for another to pick it up, waiting to be part of someone else, waiting to create or destroy another great thing, that there will be a next time. There is always a next time.