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He can't sleep. He won't sleep.
Hershel lies flat on his back, boring his eyes through the murky textures of his dimly lit ceiling. The light source barely refracting from the orange streetlights outside his house. He hasn't left this room in days. It's suffocating.
He keeps his vision on this only patch of light, letting his stare become painful in this sea of ink and faint gold swirls. He can't anymore, straining his eyes to up, right above, his head only causes more visual ache.
He's frightened of what may lay in the dark, the true darkness. the darkness that writhes in visions of past memories. the darkness that's unforgiving and brutally truthful of one's psyche, the psyche only they themselves can perceive.
He braves it. He lets his eyes flick down to the darkness, unable to close due to sheer lack of fatigue. It's comforting for a while, a true sea of nothingness, swimming in blissful ignorance. Then the writhing starts. convulsing, tensing, heaving. The shapes that first form are only splotches, ribbons, stars. stars that soon contort into something familiar. too familiar.
A face writhes in the darkness, not in pain, just trying to make its memory known. a painful memory. the last smile he saw before entering that cavern. That wretched cavern, grand as a cathedral, unforgiving as God himself.
That face still gleams at him even when he wrenches his eyes shut, fireworks sparking from his pressure stressed eyelids. They blur his face, obscuring features, yet he remains recognisable ; a ghost haunting this room. haunting his living narrative like some cheap plot device.
if only his face could form in the light ; if only his face could be seen again in the light. him turning back to check Hershel's behind him, the orange swirls of foggy streetlights basking him in warmth of the cold summer nights. the warmth he yearns for, to hold, grasp, internalise once more. The warmth that can only encapsulate the truest love he's ever felt. the truest love he can ever feel that can never be uttered or shared.
He starts to cry. tossing and turning to obscure his vision with claustrophobic darkness. fabric restricting his breathing, hot breath only warming him further , dazed like he was in that wretched ruin. Hershel remembers he lied next to him just a week prior to that trip. hands gesticulating as he lied on his back, enthusiasm the only thing that can ever show in his voice.
It's only sonnets. cursed sonnets of ruminating for the past.
Tears stream down his face silently, the ache of his face and rapidness of his breathing causes him to pass out.
The streetlight still gleaming through the window as a reminder of the lost.