immortal

[attr="class","yuan"]Isaiah lies back and looks out of the window. There was silence, a clear air of solidarity. The space between them was growing smaller and smaller and he was aware of the confines of the car. Through all of it he let her speak, not even nodding. Listening to every word and peeling back the subtext. The more she spoke, the more she trusted him. The more the balance of her opinion tipped.
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There was pain, too. Knowing what it was like to fall, over and over, thinking each rise would be it, the true calling. Then something fell from the sky, igniting everything that had been built and burning it down once more. Despite taking and stealing from others, always feeling like the victim of some cosmic joke in which the punchline was the suffering.
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Isaiah had given up attempting to get back on his feet. Third time was the unluckiest charm. Gotten up after running away, gotten up after falling into debt, gotten up after getting whisked away all those months ago. He'd felt like he owned the world. In three distinct ticks, that reality had been burned up in failure and guilt.
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Waking up from a coma he had decided that he was too tired. Months later, it still felt like he hadn't recovered. Getting up in the morning was too hard. Eating made him feel sick. Every night he had nightmares that he would be found by his family – they would see what he had become and abandon him. Going to Shenhua was born out of necessity. But he found no joy in it. He found no joy in much, and was glad he had burned his stash. If it had still existed, he would have not.
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And this moment would never have happened.
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She was looking at him – her eyes tracing his shape of his profile. For that moment, he knew what she was thinking.
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He couldn't find the words to respond. So he reached out and took her hand into his. He squeezed, soft and reassuring, turning his head to look at her, observing the fragility she exposed. Every line on her face was carved from a deep rooted sense of inadequacy, and he hurt with her. He understood what it felt like to never be good enough. His own features softened.
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“It's okay,” he whispered to her, stroking his thumb across her knuckles.
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Standing up again with all the forces of the world bringing down their fury onto those that deserved it most. Alone it was insurmountable. Together, there was a chance. Maybe that was where they were going wrong.
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“Neither am I.”