I didn't know why I started cooking.
The motions felt foreign and detached, like someone else was controlling my hands. My mind was foggy, but as I sliced the vegetables, stirred the pot, grounded myself in the dull work-it was something. Anything.
It took my mind off things. At least that's what I thought.
The irony.
The only sound in the kitchen apart from the faint bubbling of the soup I didn't care about was my steady breathing. My hands were stable, and my thoughts were numb.
Three days.
I hadn't seen him in three days and four nights.
Too many hours. I stopped counting. I stopped caring.
The knife glided through the carrot. Like time was crawling. A breath in. A breath out. Life held no meaning.
The soup was pointless. This cooking was pointless. A distraction I didn't want. But this fucking silence? It was louder. It screamed. He wasn't here. And I couldn't feel. Numbness. Cold. Hollow. Like a fucking void.
I wondered what it would be like to disappear. To sink into the floor. To melt into the darkness. To not exist. No sound. No feeling. No me.
Would anyone notice? Would he? Or would I just become another ghost in the walls, another silence in the room?
The spoon scraped the bottom of the pot. The noise grated and I flinched. My body remembered something I didn't want it to.
What was it to laugh? A laugh without warmth. A smile that cut. A man I let ruin me.
I set the spoon down and stared. At the soup. At my hands. At nothing.
I thought about the knife. Not in a way I should. The shine of it. The way it felt balanced in my grip. Sharp things have purpose. I didn't.
The soup bubbled. Like it was alive. Unlike me. I let it burn. What's one more thing ruined?
I gripped the counter and didn't care if my knuckles turned white. My chest tightened. It was hard to breathe.
I had learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.
You never drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there. And I was drowning to the bottom. Slowly. And it was too late when I realised that.
The air felt too copious. The silence was too loud. The soup was too alive.
The fucking noise wouldn't stop. Bubbling. Bubbling. Bubbling.
Stop it.
It didn't.
I screamed.
It ripped out of me like a thing caged too long. Raw, deep, animal. Before I knew, I grabbed the pot and hurled it across the kitchen.
Metal met tile with a deafening clang. The soup splattered like blood, hot and scalding against my legs, my feet. The pain registered somewhere far away. Distant. Meaningless. Nothing compared to my chest.
It didn't matter. None of it mattered.
I stayed there, my breaths stuttering out in jagged, uneven bursts that felt more like sobs. Or laughs. Maybe both.
See, how easy it was to destroy something.
Pulling at my hair like it would rip the chaos from my skull. The tears burned, but the laugh burned worse. Ugly. Hollow. Wrecked.
And then I screamed again. Louder. Like it could fill the void.
I dropped to my knees, fists clenched, nails biting into my palms until they left crescents in my skin.
The kitchen spun and everything around. I pressed my forehead to the cold floor, shaking, heaving, and emptying myself.
Then I felt it.
Him.
The air shifted and the quiet footsteps fell upon my ears.
My heart pounded loudly as I dropped my hands and lifted my head, and there he was. Standing in the doorway like a ghost conjured from my torment. Like shark lured by scent of blood. Sea hurdling with shift of the moon.
Dark clothes. Cane in one hand. The other holding his shades. And blood.
It stained his pristine white shirt, streaked across his fingers, too fresh to ignore.
My throat dried. I swallowed hard, avoiding his pale eyes.
Shame crept in, unwelcomed and suffocating, but I forced myself to move. I wiped my face with trembling hands, smearing tears and brokenness into something that looked like composure.
The pot lay there, dented, soup pooling around it. Still bubbling and I clenched my hands. I crawled toward it, ignoring the pain in my legs, the sting of burns I deserved. Every ounce of pain I deserved.
"Leave it," He commanded in low voice.
I didn't listen. Couldn't.
The world narrowed to the mess on the floor. Picking up pieces felt easier than facing him.
But then his hands were on me. I flinched. My breathing worsened as I looked at him with blurry eyes yet he looked just like the man I feared. Pale eyes narrowed and brows scrunched like he couldn't understand. Just the way he looked at me that day. The warmth of his touch clashed with the cold in my chest.
I wobbled on my legs when he lifted me effortlessly in his burly arms. I didn't fight.
Fighting hurt too much.
And surrender didn't.
His arms were strong, muscular, but I refused to meet his gaze. I stared at the blood on his shirt instead, its stark contrast against the white fabric like a wound exposed. It wasn't his, I knew.
"Eyes, ptichka," he muttered.
I didn't.
But his grip tightened, grounding me in a way I didn't want. And when he carried me out of the kitchen, away from the wreckage, I let him. Cause he was not only my chaos, but the only thing that could calm it. He was right.
He was the hell I feared, yet salvation I wanted. Just because I knew I could never stop him from destroying me.
Because I couldn't fix myself. And maybe, just maybe, neither could he.