I remember the smell of lemons and the sound of rain.
Soft stitches and straw hair without a bloodstain.
Good times passed off as old, forgotten things.
No longer shiny and new and tied up in strings.
But that's where we started, not where we ended.
Before the arrows of slaughter our lives we defended.
And all it came down to was one final noise.
The softest of sounds from a small, dying boy.
There wasn't a clear moment. Not before, and not for long, long after. But it no longer mattered. Whether his grip had been tight or grown lose through the painstaking minutes, whether his eyes were narrowed and blurred by tears or squeezed shut in aching prayer, American Elm had slipped through his fingers with eyes wide open.
The canon ringing through the glade was no different than the twenty-six that came before it. It shook the stone ceiling no harder, rumbled no lower. Grass trembled around Upton's form, the entire cavern echoing back the sound to a single pair of deaf ears. They were not focused on the crashing boom but on the cold body in his grasp, head pressed down in vain against soft, chapped lips that Upton could only imagine tasted like sap from a maple tree, sticky and sweet. But with every ebbing second of the echo dying away, reality sunk into pale, snow white flesh. They probably tasted of nothing more than bitter, coughed up blood. He'd never know, though, for Upton had missed his chance.
An odd taste between regret and relief settled on his tongue instead. The longer he leaned down, the more Upton was sure of it. American's parted lips no longer breathed out or in. There was no wheeze of air, neither delicate nor labored and irregular as it had become in the last few moments. Every one of which must have been agony that Upton had ignored, drunk on the lasting strands of hope he had clung to like a life raft beneath the dark, suffocating stone above. Now, they slipped away. Old and forgotten the second they had been proven wrong - Upton lost his grip on the only thing keeping him alive.
His knees, still tucked beneath him to keep Meric's head up, collapsed. His body fell onto the stone floor covered by a thick blanket of green. One of the first instances of green he had seen since he had died the first time, trapped in a rickety, dark house with black oil clinging to his skin and seeping in beneath his ribs, filling his body up with a tar that weighed down and froze his purpling skin.
It didn't feel different now, dying again. His features remained blank, aching for an emotion as his chin tilted toward a thin slit of sunlight. For a warm, blisteringly painful smile that came when American had held his hand for the first time, whispering ever encouragement under the sun. For a hot, streaky mess of tears to mold his face in horror until he couldn't see the damage had been reeked, the damage he had caused. For something bitterly cold and mangled in rage, like when he had shoved Aspen with every ounce of strength left in his limbs. But with each thought, the emotions passed away until all that was left was an ache. An empty, open ache for something more. More than being left alone again, more than the endless darkness.
And in his moment of need came no stranger, no savior of blinding light to hold his hands and raise him to his feet. There was nothing but a familiar security. To Upton, it was closer to his heart than hope, older than love, stronger than lasting bonds. It smothered the ache as a wet rag over dying embers, hiding the flickering flames searching for more and settling for less - settling for nothing.
Numbness spread as blood did. Dark, sticky, and suffocating, it started from the seed in Upton's chest that no longer beat. Where a garden once had flourished and been ravaged by fire and death and loneliness, where a single flower had curled up around his ribs and bloomed for the first spark of daylight it had seen in years, was slowly overwhelmed. It worked its way out after, tendrils of black calm seeping through blood and sliding around limbs. Gripping snow skin and pulling it down until it was a blanket of warmth Upton's body was basking in.
