We stand there, side by side, hand in hand. Neither of us says anything, my mind completely blank as I'm assuming is his. It's a strange feeling, a feeling we shouldn't have to have and yet it's there, it's prominent and it's not going away.
We've chosen an ancient tree, one of those trees that never really dies, that stands tall against everything that fights it; one that is so different from me. I feel like the little bit of wind I can feel on my skin will blow me away any minute and I feel like the leaves it whirls up are going to bury me underneath them.
Raph is clasping my hand with a desperation that almost makes me want to cry. He doesn't move or speak, but his pain is obvious. In fact, my own knees are barely holding me upright at this point. Pain is a funny thing. It cripples you in the most cruel way, breaking you bit by bit from the inside, but leaves you looking perfectly fine on the outside.
The grass is quite high here, and slightly damp from the cold and rainy night, the morning dew still desperately clinging to it. My legs are wet right up to the middle of my thighs, but I barely notice. No one really comes here, an undisturbed place, quiet and serene; perfect.
Eventually, Raph lets go of my hand, takes a single step forward and kneels down. It almost looks like he's falling, and maybe he actually is, because now he's shoulder deep in the grass, head low and hands bunched into the fabric of his trousers. With every gentle gust of wind I can see more dark spots and lines appear on his shirt where the grass touched it. With every touch, he flinches a tiny bit, as if it shocks him. The damp on his clothes slowly claims more of his trousers the longer he sits there, the dark swallowing up their original colour, and I'm strangely fascinated by the process that happens fast enough for me to see a progression, but slow enough for me to not notice its ascension. His fingers relax and grip his trousers in a maddening slow speed and I wonder if it helps keep the feelings at bay, if it helps to feel your cold, wet fingers hurting while they move and your fingertips burning as you dig them into the fabric repeatedly.
His eyes are trained on the little mound at the base of the tree, where the earth is a touch fresher than anything else - even though it had rained - and where it isn't quite as flat and as perfect as everywhere around it; the place where we, just a few minutes ago, piled the earth just high enough for us to know its location.
I am still about five steps away from it, Raph four and a half, and somehow it's hard to get closer. It's hard to be in that space, and even at five steps away, I feel like running. Because the further I am from that little mound on the floor, the further I am from my pain. I know, logically, that pain doesn't work that way, especially not with this, but I can't help but feel that way. And I know Raph feels the same by how his leg keep twitching and his shoulders are far from relaxed.
He sits there for a while, while I stand next to him, half a step behind, unsure of whether I'm staring at Raph or at the little mound of soil in front of that strong tree. I look down at my hands, wet and dirty from when we moved the ground earlier, dirt still under my finger nails from when we dug and on my palms from when we moved everything back.
Eventually, he stands up. He moves towards the little lump with slow, small steps, only to kneel back down right in front of it and reach out. He stops right before he can touch, hovers as if torn. His hand is barely any distance from the soil, yet it isn't touching, and when his fingers curl to touch his palm and make a fist, I know they never will. He gets to his feet quickly and just stands there. His face is tilted towards the sky, almost as if waiting for something to happen. But there is no illumination by thunder, no hole in the clouds to let through a tiny speck of sunlight, no rain to touch his face, it simply stays grey. The aftermath of the rain we just missed, the same aftermath that has been in the sky since we decided to come here. Yet he stays, as if waiting, doesn't move and the moisture from the grass drips down his arms where it's the strongest and glues his clothes to his body everywhere else and he looks drowned. He looks helpless and small and I close my eyes. It's hard to watch him, who I care about so much more than anything else in life, suffer like that. And yet he's the one who's taken these steps forward, who has said goodbye properly, and I'm the one who is still unable to move, who still feels that the only direction I can move to is backwards, away from it and I know I'm the coward, yet seeing him still hurts. And so my eyes stay closed, my brows furrowed and my mouth set in a thin line.
I don't hear Raph move, but I feel his hands on my cheeks. I feel every single droplet of water he brings with him, even the once smashed between our skin, I feel the cold his fingers and palm bring to my face, even though it was already cold before and I feel simply him, right in front of me. And so I open my eyes, meeting his immediately, as if he was waiting for me to look at him. There's no smile on his face, but neither is there pain and it takes me a second to realise what it is I am seeing.
It's the same that I saw in his eyes that day in the gym, that night when we got MacDonalds and the repeat of that years later, the same as when we said our human vows, the same as when finally completed the mating and the same I see every time he looks at me. He loves me and somehow, somehow the conscious part of my brain forgot that for a while.
He pulls my face slightly and moves towards me the same amount and then our lips find each other. For a moment I don't move and it feels so foreign, like something entirely new, while being so comforting at the same time. I exhale. I exhale for the first time in what feels like forever. My shoulders slump and my arms relax and I allow myself to relish in my mate. We kiss slowly, with no urgency and with no demand, it is simply a communication between the two of us, a way for us to say what we cannot with words and it grounds me.
When he pulls away it is to smile at me and this time, I smile back. He releases my face and grabs one of my hands with his own before pulling me away.
"Come" he says, as if to make sure I am truly following him. He doesn't look back and neither do I, but I feel the pain increasing the further we move away. I was wrong, it doesn't make it better, instead it makes it worse. But still, his hands pulling me along keeps me going and maybe steadily walking away from it, remembering it for what it was, will eventually dull the pain.
I don't know where he is leading me until I pick up a familiar, yet new smell. I don't question him, nor do I let on that I've realised, but my rational side tells me it's a good thing.
It's nowhere near close to the pack house, instead it's further in the woods, where the trees are quite dense and there's little space to walk. A lot of it is climbing over stray roots and finding ways to pass all of the trees growing so close to each other.
He's not facing us when Raph and I get there and of course hasn't heard or smelled us yet either; of course he wouldn't.
Raph stops here, just watching him for a while, his hand still safely in mine. I can feel a slight shake to it, but again I don't say anything. I'm simply there.
Eventually he snaps a twig taking a step and I know he did it on purpose. Sam snaps his head around and drops whatever he's holding. His mouth opens slightly, as if to say something, but nothing escapes him. One of his hands is on a tree next to him, probably to keep him steady on the slightly sloping ground. His hand is shaking too. Almost immediately he takes a couple of steps forward, only to abruptly stop. His eyes move to his shoes and the hand that is on the tree forms a tiny little fist.
I know he's waiting for Raph to give him some kind of sign, to let him come closer, but Raph isn't reacting either. When nothing happens, Sam's head slowly lifts and he briefly looks at me from under the hair that is falling into his eyes, but I struggle to do anything myself. This child means so much and yet we neglected him for too long. He's grown so much, even just since the last time he snuck over the border.
I watch his face, note how his childish features have become slightly more defined and how his hair is longer now - as if he never cut it since. His shoes are dirty, as if he's been outside all day and I wonder what he was doing. Whatever it was that he dropped lies behind him on the floor now and as I try to glance at it, he must have remembered it as well, because immediatly he turns around, graps what I can now see is a sketchbook and tries in vain to dust it off. It's wet, some of the pages compeltely soaked through and I feel sorry for him. He seems panicked for a second, but then simply exhales, closes his eyes and then lets the arm holding his sketchbook drop to his side. He still isn't looking at Raph, keeping his eyes downcast again and then he turns around. For a heartbeat I fear he is going to walk away, but then he simply sits back down to where he was before, on a little rain jacket I haven't previously noticed, flips to a new, clean and not quite as soaked page in his sketchbook and begins to move his hand over the sheet with a pencil he gathered from his pocket. I watch his hand move, fluidly and beautiful and it makes a feeling appear in my chest that I haven't ever felt before. Pride.
I look over to Raph, who clearly whispered in my head, but he isn't looking at me. His is solely focused on Sam, who seems to be in his own worlds now, on his slightly hunched form partway hidden by the same tree he used for balance earlier, and he takes the same hesitant steps I have seen him take just a few hours or so before. When he reaches the tree, his hand goes where Sam's was before and after a few minutes he lowers himself to the ground. He doesn't talk, and Sam doesn't even flinch or stop for even a second, they simply sit there, Sam drawing and Raph watching.
And I stand, still those five steps away, watching them with the same feeling of pride, not wanting to intrude but also not being able to simply leave them.
And my eyes are firmly trained on their silhouettes in the light of the dying day, sitting side by side as if I'd never ripped them apart.