26. Give me this one win
26
Give me this one win
Exton
Cold. Freezing cold. It’s in my every pore and vessel, seeping through every crack and filling me until I can no longer take a breath or move.
I was just warm and happy. I was alive and now I’m not. I’m cold and tired.
It’s paralyzing me, trying to pull me down farther and farther into its lair.
All I see is inky blue darkness and glistening ice.
It’s everywhere, it’s surrounding me, swallowing me and lulling me to stop fighting, to rest, to spot pushing. Maybe I should. Maybe I’m done playing someone I’m not. Maybe this is for the best. Maybe this is the price I pay for the guilt I carry.
But then the most gut-wrenching sound pierces through the depth of freezing heaven, clearing the pretty frost and exposing the hell it really is.
Because she’s not here.
She’s not by my side, holding my hand, warming my soul and keeping it calm. She’s not here and the waves are storming up.
Electra…My Electra…I can’t leave her. I can’t…I can’t.
“EXTON!” I hear the barely audible cry, but it rings loud and clear in my soul, and I push, I fight the icicle links already chaining me to the bottom, tugging on me. I rip my hands up but it’s hard. It’s so damn hard, my lungs are burning, there’s not an ounce of breath left in them, but I push until I see light and a small hand reaching for me.
Is this a dream?
Did I already die?
Mom?
“EXTON! Please, please, please!” The voice above is muffled over the ice as it pleads. “Don’t leave me, you bastard! Please! Take my hand, I’m begging you! Take my hand or I’m jumping in.”
Electra! My mind is foggy, but all I can hear is her jumping into this freezing hell and my body bursts out in flames.
My fingers barely grasp the tiny ones reaching for me, but I hear her gasp above. “Yes! Please, God, please!” She’s crying. The other half of my soul is crying, and it’s the most maddening sound. Unhinged. Pleading with that higher power as if it must help her and maybe it does or maybe it’s that piece of her soul that I’ve kept holding onto inside mine all this time that fights to get back to her, but I push again, grasping her freezing hand and feel it tug on me.
Was she always this strong? My little star is fighting for me, and I gather the remains of my power, pushing one last time as my head breaks through the water and I gasp and spout the water clogging my lungs.
“Exton.” She’s crying, the sound even more gut-wrenching than what it seemed under that water.
I want to reassure her, tell her I’m all right. Joke that she won’t get rid of me that easily, but I can’t stop coughing and shaking, I can’t get a single sound out, and once again I feel her small hands on me, her body becoming one with the crunching ice around us as she pulls on my coat, dragging me against the ragged, broken ice.
Electra pulls so hard, I hear the coat ripping against it while she’s silently pleading with me, God and the damn ice. She pleads with it as if it’s her best friend. As if they are one.
“Come on, damn it, give me this one win. Let me have it this once, and then I’m yours.” Her tears are falling in rivers as she whispers into the frost. “Don’t take him from me, please. Don’t take him.” She chants almost absentmindedly, reverently. Lost in her own world of loss and pain.
I pull my hands out, grabbing onto the shaky ice and drag myself alongside her.
Electra’s cry hitches with relief but the tears don’t cease as she helps me to climb all the way out. My extremities are frozen solid, I can barely move and for one second. One long, agonizing moment I feel what she feels. I live a second of her life when there is nothing below your waist and the fear that grips me is strong enough to shake off whatever frost bite is covering me. It’s enough to turn and heave as I cough out the remains of lake water. It’s enough to realize that I can’t even grasp how strong she really is.
Electra is next to me, her forehead touches the ice, legs bent underneath her shaking body. Her dark hair is free of the knit hat and splayed all over the spilled water as her fingers grip it, dig into it, like she’s praying. Or sealing the deal she made.
My mind must finally set back to homeostasis because I realize she’s here. She’s in front of the open gap in the ice and not some ten feet away from where her bedazzled wheelchair is standing as a lone soldier.
“Electra.” My voice is barely a rasp. It’s gravely and scratchy but those two rimmed-red, blue pools full of tears fly up at the sound, and with another heavy, broken cry she falls over my chest. Her small body shaking with all the emotion suffocating her.
“Y-you walked…s-star…you walked,” I manage to get out and break out in a coughing fit again, my weight moving the shaky ice underneath us and we both hear that sickening crunch.
“We need to get off the ice. Exton, get off the ice.” Electra is gripping my jacket, fear coursing her eyes. “She won’t be able to hold us much longer.”
“Who? Who won’t be able?”
“Mom.”
Electra
I got up and I ran.
I didn’t know I could. Didn’t consider if it was possible because all I knew was I needed to get to him.
But if I’d fall and crumble to that ice when I tried, I’d crawl. I would claw my way to him through blood and bones, to that hole that sucked him in.
The fear that ripped through me had nothing on seeing Erik lying unconscious after my fall, where I wanted to get to him to make sure he was all right. Here, today, losing Exton for those crippling seconds, I knew I’d follow him into that hole. I knew without a doubt in my mind that I’d follow my other half of the soul because life otherwise was impossible.
Instead, I ran, and he came back to me.
Erik’s love broke me.
Exton’s saved me.
Shakily and slowly, we crawl and roll over the ice to get away from the weak point Exton managed to fall through while he slowly regains some feeling in his hands and legs and his breathing evens out.
We are almost at the edge when Exton drops to ice again and that irrational fear grips me again.
My gaze tracks over him, lying on that ice and all I can think about is how close I came to losing him. How I would never be able to hold him, to kiss him, to tell him what he means to me. To feel with him. How I’d die right alongside him after he just gave me my life back.
How I’d die with denial of who he is for me.
A new, fresh wave of tears flows down my face as I break apart at his side, my shoulders shaking with grief I’ve lived through for one deadly moment before I felt his fingers graze mine.
He made me alive, and he almost took it all away again.
“Electra, shhh, it’s okay. We are okay.” His cold hand grazes against the tears on my cheek and I swat it away. And then, I swat at his chest. Punching him and slapping his wet, ripped apart jacket.
“Angry elf!” he rasps out with a cough, trying to roll away from me, but I swing my leg over him, crawling over his body, covering it with mine and kiss him. I kiss him anywhere my lips land. His mouth, cheek, nose, jaw, eyes, the crease on his forehead…everywhere.
“I hate you,” I cry into his lips, grasping his jaw harder. “I hate you so much for doing this to me. For making me feel alive. For pulling me out of that darkness. For making me love you!” I scream through the last part, my forehead on his. “Damn it.” I punch his chest, beating my fists against it as tears flow down freely and my whole body is shaking with the remnants of that life-crippling fear. “I hate you, Exton! I hate you because I love you and you just went under the ice and I th-thought… I-I th-thought…” I can’t get the words past my lips, I just keep sobbing and he wraps his arms around me, crushing me into his drenched, ice-cold body and all I can do is grasp onto him stronger, ignoring the wet clothes, the still cracking ice underneath us, ignoring it all.
“Say that again,” he whispers as I land one last half-hearted punch on his chest, feeling his cold lips on my temple. “Say it again. I’m begging you. Say it.”
“I h-hate you.”
“I love you too, Electra. God, do I love you, my angry, fierce elf.”
“You almost died, you asshole!”
“And you walked.”
“I swear to God, if you ever try dying on me again, I’ll follow you right into that world and haunt you. I’ll make your life a living hell there. I’ll even grab my favorite wooden spatula with me to poke you.”
“Never.” Exton grabs my face in both his hands, pulling my lips to his in a crushing kiss. “Never say that again, cause if you dare follow me, I’ll over-haunt you and I’ll make it worse. You know I’m competitive like that.” I choke on a pained laugh just before my lip trembles and I shake again.
“You almost died,” I whisper, and Exton tucks my face into the crook of his neck. The warmth slowly returning to his body, and I greedily suck in his scent, filling my hollow lungs with it.
“I’m alive, and you walked, Electra. You walked!”
I must’ve been still riding the high of an adrenaline rush and fear because I lift my head and stare into his misty eyes trying to catch up to what I logically understand but my mind is only now catching up to.
“You. Got. Up,” Exton mouths, his eyes misty. This strong, arrogant, cocky lunatic of mine breaking down underneath me not because he nearly lost his life but because I took a step.
But I did. “Oh my God!” I exclaim, my eyes growing wide and I look down, terrified to try but still do.
I wiggle my toes inside my boots. And they move, the feeling strange and foreign but they moved. “OH MY GOD!” My scream echoes through the ice and woods around us.
“You walked.” He watches me with amazement.
I smile through tears. “No, baby. I ran.”