The Lovers

This is it. I did it for another online writing contest, the theme was to pic a tarot card from the major arcana. I obviously chose the lovers. -Sigh- writing contests I tend to do a a lot of those.

The Lovers

How long had they been running? Running from fear, from pain, from those who would hurt them if they could? She did not know, all she knew was that if they kept running they might never stop. And as she lay in his arms at night and slowly wept herself to fear filled sleep part of her longed to stop running, to save him from the agony of uncertainty, of never knowing what was around the next corner of what might happen if he left her side for more than a minute. But another more selfish part of her whispered to let it go on, forever to let them run and to live in fear, but also to live with those precious few moments of happiness they had, those few moments of joy and wonder when they made love and when he held her in his arms. It was a decision she knew she could not make every time she met Klaus’ eye’s and guilt overwhelmed her.

But she didn’t have to make that choice now, it had been made for her. It had been made in the most permanent way possible. Klaus’ body laying blood soaked in her arms as he slowly slipped away the stars going out behind his eyes one blinking light at a time, the blood stained mess of what could once have been a shirt laying in tatters around them, a large wickedly sharp and rather bloody knife laying a distance away in the corner of the bathroom. A single piece of pasteboard left by the killer floating across the floor on a bloody river, a last mocking taunt. Shuddering she picked up the blood stained card and stared down at it, etched crudely and covered in blood she could barely make out the words, They tore a bitter mock of a laugh from her throat as she bent over and wept, the card clutched in her hand against Klaus’ chest. The Lovers it read. She wept harder as she thought of it and pulled him closer soaking what was left of his shirt with her tears. He gripped at her feebly as his lasts breath came in short gasps of pain riddled air.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispered.

“Yes it is,” she wept bitterly.

“No Ninnete,” he was cut of by a fit of bloody coughs

Sepia hair hung in a curtain across a gentle heart shaped face. “Yes it is, if it had not been for me,” she broke off as painful wretched tears overwhelmed her again.

If it had not been for her they would not have had to run, Klaus would still be a free man, with a life, and a career, and maybe a chance at something better than what she had given him. What had she given him? A bitter life of debt and un-solicited crime. A crime that had led to her undoing as well as his. Forced into a world she had been born into. Before her Klaus had been free, before her he had been whole, before this all she had been nothing more than a dead end prostitute with no future and a past riddled with crime, money and heart ache. She had stolen his heart, and he, hers. Their was no way out after the first night and they had both know it. She could still remember it, remember it all. Every painful, sweet memory. Every wretched step they took closer to love. It wasn’t fair, to remember it all and still be trapped in this barren world devoid of love, and compassion. Holding the broken body of her dying lover in her arms while she was still whole on the outside, while she felt her heart shattering like a glass tower, tipping over, and breaking into a million different pieces lost among the wreckage of a broken soul. But still she could see it all in her minds eye, as clear as the moment it had happened.

Their first meeting, it had been in the snow bound city of Moscow. Him stumbling over her half conscious mostly frozen body in the snow. Lugging her dead weight up the twelve story’s of his apartment building. Nursing her back to health though he had little money, all the while having no clue who she was or where she came from. The slow bond of friendship that had eventually given way to love when he had welcomed her in his home long after she was recovered and should have been gone. The day he had turned to her from the window, golden hair a frizzy halo about his head, green, blue eyes dancing in merriment, and casually asked her when their wedding date would be. His tender embrace as he held her in the night, when anxiety and nightmares gave her fear and made her cry out. His steadfast refusal to give his love for her up even after she told him of her pockmarked past and the eventuality of her own kind coming to retrieve her. His willingness to not give her up, to run, and ‘save’ her when she had mortally wounded the man sent to retrieve her by her ‘pimp’. The way he had gently pulled the revolver from her shaking hands and stolidly told her to go pack the few items she owned and call ahead to the train station, and reserve two tickets for the 6:00 to Berlin. She remember every place they had gone to, every town, every city, all the places they had run to and from, to escape but it had not been enough. It would never be enough.

She bent her head into the crook of his neck and wept for it all, the card clutched between them. Wept for all the lost loves of the world. For all the hopelessness of a peaceful existence. For the loss of a feeling so sheer and pure it made her want to cry all over again. For the purity and prosperity they had never had together.

“Ninnete,” her head snapped up at the whisper of her name.

“Look out the window Ninnete.” She turned her head a gazed out the opaque pane catching a glimpse of what seemed to be falling stars.

She turned back to Klaus and tried to smile falteringly. His eyes closed and he smiled gently back at her his shallow breathes slowing.

“Make a wish Ninnete, just one,” he whispered.

“Ok,” she whispered.

Slowly she drew him up into a sitting position and held him to her, gently she opened his fingers and placed the card in his hand pressing her own against it and intertwining her fingers with his.

“I’m wishing,” she whispered.

“Good,” she felt him smile as the last breathe left his lips and he went limp in her arms.

She clutched his hand and the card harder as she prayed with all her might, wished with all her soul, and hoped with the little that was left of her tattered heart. A last tear slipped from her clenched eyes as she whispered two words into his ear.

The room lit with a sudden flash of pure light. Slowly a single piece of pasteboard floated through the air coming to land gently upon the tiled floor. It depicted two people, A woman with deep sepia hair and a gentle heart shaped face, and a man with frizzy golden hair that hid laughing eye’s of watery blue green, held in the gentlest of lovers embraces. A smile painted each face in the waning light of eternal afternoon. Never to be parted, or to come to sorrow. Above them flew cupid the god of love his own face painted in a mischievous grin.

“The Lovers.”