Pain.
A dull, all-consuming, marrow-deep kind of agony. A weight crushing my ribs, pressing down on my chest like a tombstone with my name carved into it. My body was screaming, burning, suffocating-but it wasn't real, was it? I was dead. I should be dead. I was dead.
My eyes ripped open, but the world was wrong. Blurred. A smear of light and shadows, like oil on water. Like blood on snow. My chest heaved. My breath came out jagged, a torn-up thing, ragged edges and no relief. The walls shifted. The ceiling pulsed. There was noise-distant, distorted, like voices underwater.
I tried to move. Regret followed instantly. Fuck. Pain lashed through my body so viciously, unrelentingly, and my stomach churned like I was still drowning like the ocean hadn't finished with me yet.
My heart slammed against my ribs. No, no, no, no.
"Ptichka," I rasped. Or maybe I just thought it. I wasn't sure if my lips even moved. "Where-"
Hands pressed against me. Soft and trembling. A blurry figure leaned over me, warm, soft, hauntingly familiar.
"Judas," a voice cracked. Choked. "Judas, look at me."
I knew that voice. I had known it since birth since the first time I ever cried.
I blinked hard. The world swam into something more solid. And suddenly, I wasn't in the ocean anymore. I wasn't in the cold, merciless void that had swallowed me whole.
I was in a bed. White sheets. Machines beeping. My mother's face hovering above mine, blurred by tears-hers and mine.
Mother.
Her hands shook as she touched my face, wiping away something warm, something wet. My tears? I didn't know I was crying. I didn't care.
"Where is she?" My voice was broken glass, strange to my own fucking ears. "Mama-where?"
My mother sobbed. She shook her head, her lips trembling too much to form words, and my stomach twisted into something cruel. I couldn't breathe.
No. Please, no.
She saw the hysteria clawing its way up my throat, the panic blooming in my eyes, and she rushed to stop it, to hold me down before I could tear myself apart.
"She's alive," she gasped out, the words breaking midair. "She survived, Judas. She's okay."
Everything inside me stopped.
I didn't hear the beeping machines or my own strangled breathing. I didn't feel the ice-cold sweat on my skin or the pain threatening to rip me apart.
I only felt the weight in my chest cracking, breaking open, flooding with something unrecognizable-relief, agony, something so unbearably vast it swallowed me whole.
I exhaled. A shaky, uneven, wrecked kind of exhale. My mother caught my face in her hands, her thumbs brushing away the fresh tears that wouldn't stop, even though I was biting down on my own lip hard enough to bleed.
I turned my head into her palm. And for the first time in twenty-nine years, I let myself be a son. A child.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, breaking down in ways no man would. "I'm so-sorry."
Her breath caught. Her grip on me tightened as if she could hold me together when I had spent a lifetime falling apart.
"For what?" she asked, voice trembling.
Everything.
For being born. For being this. For being the kind of son no mother deserved.
"For-" My throat closed. I swallowed back the lump that made my ribs hurt. "For everything. For being-what I am. For not being… enough. For being a disappointment. For-"
A sob broke free from her before I could complete it. My shoulders curled inward as she hugged me tightly. Her small body shivered in mine.
"For breaking my toys when I was four," I whispered feeling every ounce of wreckage. "For stealing money from your purse when I was eight. For lying about it." My chest heaved. "For skinning that bird alive when I was six-"
She let out a sharp cry and cupped my face. "No, don't…"
"I thought something was wrong with me," I choked out. "I thought-I was born wrong. Like God made a mistake. Like I was something broken and-and no one ever told me how to fix it."
Her lips parted, but no words came out.
And then-
Then she pulled me into her arms, cradling me like she used to when I was a boy, back when I could still pretend I was whole, back when she still believed I could be.
I let her.
For once, I let myself be held.
And maybe that was why my body shook. Maybe that was why I gasped against her shoulder, why my hands clutched at her shirt like a child, why I felt everything all at once.
"I regret it," I whispered against her. "I regret being born. I regret-I regret-"
Her fingers ran through my hair, soft and trembling. "No," she said. "No, Judas. Never say that. Never."
I squeezed my eyes shut. "I ruined everything."
She pulled back just enough to look at me, her hands still cupping my face. "You love her," she murmured. "That's not ruin, my son. That's proof."
I stared at her through blurred vision.
"Proof of what?"
She smiled, sad and small. "That you were never as broken as you believed."
The words lodged themselves into my throat, into my ribs, into the hollowed-out spaces inside me.
I wanted to believe her.
I needed to believe her.
But before I could even begin to, my mind drifted again. Back to her.
My little bird. My ptichka.
I turned my head toward the doorway, heart hammering and searching.
"Where is she?" I rasped. "I need to see her."
My mother nodded through her tears. She wiped my face one last time before pecking my forehead. "She's resting. Doctors said her body is weak but don't worry, we'll go and see her after-"
"No… right now."
Pain split through my body like a live wire, but I didn't give a fuck.
I yanked the IV from my arm. A strangled noise left my mother as I swung my legs over the side of the bed, but I ignored it. My body screamed in protest, a thousand different pains crashing into me at once, but I moved.
"Judas-wait! You need to rest!" But I was already on my feet.
Fucking mistake.
White-hot agony lanced up my leg. My knee nearly buckled, my breath hitched, but I caught myself. A curse hissed through my teeth as I stumbled forward, gripping the edge of the hospital bed so hard my knuckles turned white.
"Judas!" My mother's hands were on me, trying to steady me, but I shoved forward, my chest rising and falling in ragged bursts.
I didn't care.
I couldn't care.
The walls blurred. The fluorescent lighting overhead buzzed, too loud, too sharp, but it was all background noise. My heart pounded against my ribs, hammering out one singular thought.
Find her.
See her.
I limped down the hallway, ignoring the way my vision swam, ignoring the way my body fucking screamed at me to stop. Someone called after me. Someone grabbed my arm, but I wrenched free, swallowing down the bile clawing up my throat.
I didn't see the doctors.
I didn't see my father.
I didn't see her mother, her brother-nothing, nothing but the open door at the end of the hall.
And then-
Then I saw her.
The world stopped.
I didn't see anything else. Not Kyle sitting beside her, not Krystina standing in the corner with those fucking wide eyes, not the way my mother whispered my name behind me. Nothing else existed.
Just her.
My little bird. My ptichka.
She was awake. Sitting up, pale and delicate, wrapped in too many fucking wires, her wrist bandaged, her skin almost translucent under the shitty hospital lighting.
She was smiling at something Kyle had said.
Then she turned.
Then she saw me.
And I watched.
I watched as that smile faded, as it turned into shock-then something else, something softer, something that made my throat bubble up, made my ribs ache, made my fucking soul collapse inward.
Longing.
God-
She was looking at me like I was something holy.
Like I was something worth it.
Like I hadn't made her jump.
What was it she'd said before she let go?
I love you.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I sucked in a breath that barely made it past my throat.
Maybe I was still drowning. Maybe this was my hell. Maybe she was my hell.
And fuck, did I like getting burned.
She whispered something. My name, maybe.
I didn't know.
I didn't care.
I moved.
She was fragile, injured, barely able to sit up-but did I stop?
No.
No, I kept walking. Limping like a fucking pathetic man she had made me.
I kept moving toward her because I had to because if I didn't touch her, I'd fucking lose it.
Because if I didn't feel her if I didn't have proof, then I'd tear this whole fucking hospital apart until I woke up from whatever cruel dream this was.
And then I was there.
In front of her.
Close enough to feel the warmth of her skin, to see the way her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat.
My hand shook as I reached for her. Fuck. I was shaking. My fingers barely grazed her cheek, and still, she sucked in a breath, her whole body going still beneath my touch.
Soft. So fucking soft. Her skin was warm. No more cold. Like if I pressed too hard, she'd shatter right in front of me.
Her lips parted. A whisper of air fanned against my mouth. Fucking addictive.
Her breath hitched. A small, trembling sound escaped her lips. God. That sound. It fucking ruined me.
I dragged my fingers down, tracing the edge of her jaw. She was breathing too fast, her chest rising and falling like she didn't know what to do with herself. Like I was too much. Like she was feeling the same unbearable, all-consuming thing I was.
"You jumped after me, you idiot," she whispered, something wet slipping down her cheek.
A sound left me. Something raw, something broken.
And then-
I laughed.
I asking laughed, despite the pain, despite the agony, even though I'd sworn I'd never breathe again if she was gone.
I cupped her face with shaking fingers.
"Of course, I did." My voice was wrecked, hoarse, broken in ways I didn't know how to fix.
My thumb traced her cheek.
"Home is where you are, ptichka." My forehead pressed against hers. "Even if it's hell, I'll follow you there."
And I would.
Over and over again.
Because she was the only place I'd ever belonged.