She’d known, had always known, couldn’t help but know, that wasn’t the end of it. Not for him; not for her. They’d been granted a reprieve, that was all. Unearned, undeserved, hellishly cruel in its coming, but reprieve. She wondered, in the darkest times of night when the world closes in (a hutch to trammel some wild thing in) (that quote had always been cuttingly cruel), she wondered, would they ever face it?
Or would it be just her, looking down the black pit of might-have-been?
Tony’s nightmares were wild, loud, jagged replays of helplessness and perceived failure. They exploded, like the bomb with his name that ripped into his heart.
Hers were subtler, filled with silence, or only the sound of her own voice, arguing with the shadows. They cut seamlessly, like flechettes parting skin with only the blood to show, painless.
When she woke, when the rage was no longer real and all the could-have-beens vanished under what had been, then the pain came.
You would have stopped him loving any but you
I don’t know why he loves you at all
could have been primary, but demanded only instead
rather die than see him with another
maybe you should be dead
give him up
You drove him away.