[ It's fucking nuclear, when he finds it. (And there's a good joke, right?)
Augustine has stolen thought from him, not emotion, but there is very little distinction between them now: even from such distance, the eruption is wordless with pain. The cacophony of grief obliterates all space in the back of Augustine's mind, raging hot and panicked and hurt, hurt beyond belief. The voice in Augustine's head laughs like screaming, then chokes itself out. It's like a supernova: bright and hot and then collapsed to cold, to tight stillness, to blank nothing.
He thinks: ]
That's not the right name. [ It's worse if it is, worse if it isn't. How many times can he lose the same man? How many times at once? He could— ] fucking kill you, Christ alive [ —because then it'd be him, at least, it'd be by his hand, not— ] not them, not where I can't follow, she can't have you [ —but she already does, and John has nothing and no one— ] because you all think I'm still capable of learning a lesson [ —as though Purgatory still applies to him, as though it's not— ] too fucking late, it's always been too late, it's been too late since the start [ —and he's so tired, he's so— ] fucking tired. Why do you have to lay this at my feet? What am I supposed to do with it?
[ It dies down into a hush of distance, a numb quiet. Somewhere, God sits on a bed with his face in his hands and thinks the words that feel like the clench before a dry-heave: ]
no subject
Augustine has stolen thought from him, not emotion, but there is very little distinction between them now: even from such distance, the eruption is wordless with pain. The cacophony of grief obliterates all space in the back of Augustine's mind, raging hot and panicked and hurt, hurt beyond belief. The voice in Augustine's head laughs like screaming, then chokes itself out. It's like a supernova: bright and hot and then collapsed to cold, to tight stillness, to blank nothing.
He thinks: ]
That's not the right name. [ It's worse if it is, worse if it isn't. How many times can he lose the same man? How many times at once? He could— ] fucking kill you, Christ alive [ —because then it'd be him, at least, it'd be by his hand, not— ] not them, not where I can't follow, she can't have you [ —but she already does, and John has nothing and no one— ] because you all think I'm still capable of learning a lesson [ —as though Purgatory still applies to him, as though it's not— ] too fucking late, it's always been too late, it's been too late since the start [ —and he's so tired, he's so— ] fucking tired. Why do you have to lay this at my feet? What am I supposed to do with it?
[ It dies down into a hush of distance, a numb quiet. Somewhere, God sits on a bed with his face in his hands and thinks the words that feel like the clench before a dry-heave: ]
I still love you.