My Persona, Haizek and her beloved Azzy are fictional characters of my own.
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The sound of booted feet alerted her to the realm’s nightly visitor. She would not believe that he was here for any other reason other than to commune with the silence of this world. He always came upon the sight of her sitting with her back to him, her knees pulled close to her body as she stared at some point into the darkness. The man would sit beside her, and do nothing else. Say nothing else.
Night in and night out, she never failed to return that same favour. Would tonight pass in that same silence like the many others that have come and gone?
“You never say anything.” His voice pierced the silence surrounding them, answering that question she asked herself not a moment ago. She did not turn her sullen gaze at him, but remained fixated on that same spot beyond. She said nothing, nothing at all even after he had spoken.
He let out a breath, turning away from her. Perhaps he’d expected too much of her to answer right away. She took time, time that he was patient enough to give, but time that the world she lived in could not spare her. He knew her thoughts, had an inkling at least of what always ran through her mind. And the emotions... Oh Heavens, the heavy burdens she cast on herself.
He blinked in surprise when he felt her place a hand on his, a gentle grip that turned firm as he felt a slight tremor run through her body.
"Azzy," He turned to look at her with a curious expression, "Why do good dreams always flee before the morning comes around?"
The man tilted his head, his face going expressionless as he spoke, "Why ask me that, Haizek?"
She let the tears trickle down her face, unbidden and free because it gave her a sense of release.
"I... I don't know." Haizek laughed, though it was strained and filled with veiled sadness. “There’s so many things that I don’t know. It’s... it’s supposed to be alright. But not knowing the answer to this particular question... I don’t...” She hiccupped, furiously wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. But the tears continued to fall, and so were the emotions she kept bottled up for so long.
"I don't want you to leave, Azzy..." Her voice came out soft and pleading. "I... I'm alone. I feel so alone." He felt her emotions leaking through the glass wall she placed around her heart and soul. It made him dizzy, made his chest heavy with the sensation of all the sorrow and frustration that flowed from her.
Why did she have to make herself feel all this pain? She was strong, she was defiant. But when she fell, she would always fall hard and broken to the ground. She would pick herself up after each fall, scrapped and bruised but she always told him, herself, that it would mend with time.
Mend, Azzy thought, but never fully repair.
He gently stroked her hair, resting his cheek against hers. Azzy spoke not a word. How could he offer any comforting words to her when all that he would be able to say would only be the words that she desired to hear and not what she needed to hear? This was the flaw of a being such as he.
He gripped her tighter, pulling her close towards him. Warmth radiated from his body, and yet she did not feel it because it was her own warmth. He never once had anything that was originally his. Azzy had hoped perhaps that he had been an original, once in the ancient past, and that shred of hope was what kept him just a little different from all the others.
He was a poor substitute as a friend, that he knew. But she was all that he had, just as now she thought she had nothing to properly cherish and call her own.
Poor child. He chided her in his thoughts. You long for so much, and yet you refuse to break out of this shell. Refuse to let us go and thrive in the world you live. Why is it? What has the world shown you that you cannot stand it for long?
Even as his body began to fade with the coming daylight, he still held her in his embrace. It mattered not that there was little that she could feel from his touch. What mattered was that he could give her some sense of comfort, that there was someone who was at her side.
“I love you Azzy.”
Deluded. Confused. Trapped. He gripped her tighter, wishing and hoping in vain of a miracle that simply cannot be.
“I love you so much, Azzy.”
... Because in the end, he was merely a part of herself that reached out. Just like Azriel, just like everyone else who lived and breathed because of her. He could only watch, only give an appropriate response and action. And never... and never something that a real person would do.
“I wish you were real, Azzy.” She whispered, burying her face in his shoulder. “I really wish you were real.” Azrael had no answer to that, but she needed none. Never expected one in the first place.
"Tonight again, beloved. Tonight." His voice whispered soothingly in her ear. She lifted her eyes, watching the sun rise ever so slowly into the waking sky.
Haizek gently pushed herself away from him, wiping away the remainder of her tears. She stared at the coming daylight, her face falling into a mask of apathy.
"I wish morning didn't come so soon..."
And the young woman greeted the morning in the way she had always done it.
Alone.
END ENTRY.
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