Zemira

"Yes, I gave the orders."

With those words, the foundation of my trust built with Leo crumbled.

I wasn't sure if I heard it right the first time but when he repeated it again and again, I knew the truth. I lost Tag to a bad decision. One wrong order had the power to seal my fate. To lock me into an infinite loop of suffering.

"Zemira, listen to me." Leo took a step ahead.

His eyes brimmed with a hazed screen of sadness but it didn't affect me. Since his confession, I felt paralyzed. 

Since I realized Tag's killer touched me, kissed me, every cell in my body holding up my existence tried to burn itself off.

I sought help from the destroyer of my world to help build my business.

When he floated his arm up to hold me, I scrambled back. "I don't want to listen to anything anymore. I'm leaving."

I didn't know where I was escaping but the urgency to avoid inhaling the same air and sharing a common ground with Leo surmounted. His admission replayed in my ears. He killed my Tag. The quake from his acceptance held the power to cause a rippling effect on my chest. The love of my life was gone a long time ago. What remained of my sanity dripped off my fingertips today.

As I rushed to alert the elevator, Leo grabbed me. He clutched my shoulder blades, pinning me against a wall. Storm-filled eyes stared at me. Unlike all other times, the light in them camouflaged with something unreadable.

"You're not going anywhere till we sort this out, Zem."

"Don't you dare call me that," I roared, attempting once more to toss his hovering body aside, to jerk away from his grip. But like a wounded animal at the mercy of its predator, I remained trapped.

"I know you are hurting, Zemira. When I came to know about Tag, I should have told you. Dammit, I swear, I didn't want to keep you in the dark. I wanted to tell you everything about him."

Turning my head to the side, I looked away. His eyes swirled with tints of truth but I was unwilling to verify if he was indeed saying the same. 

I wanted to vent, cry and toss things around. I never found closure. I never got to blame anyone for taking Tag away from me except the universe, which never reciprocated.

Today I got the chance; handed the man responsible for taking Tag away.

"You killed him and there's nothing you can do about it. You can't bring him back," I said.

My eyes warmed up, clawing out the image of the Leo from my memory. Stale air entered my heaving chest. Dizziness set in. 

I held Leo for support while my boneless legs dragged me down. The ache rafting from the pits of my stomach imprisoned every inch of me in its hold, squeezing my breath away, substituting it with rocks.

"I can't bring him back, Zem." Leo turned to me with emotionless eyes and a straight face. Redness crept over his earlier pale skin - the color, tainted with guilt. "But I can bring you back."

The moment Leonardo's grip loosened, I pounced at the opportunity, shoving his body to a side and hammering the elevator button with my knuckles. Metal doors dragged open.

Ching.

"I lost someone too, Zemira. I suffered just like you." With pleading words, Leo stood at the entrance of the elevator, holding its sides while I stayed in, waiting for him to let go.

"It's different for you and me. I lost someone because he was taken away. Not because we broke up like you. Not because she or whoever it was, didn't feel the same way for you. I wasn't given a choice, Leo. You took my choice away. You took my man away."

I was heaving for air, aiming the shrapnel of my words where I wanted it to land: his heart.

Removing himself from the doorway, Leo stepped back. "My life ceased to exist the day she was taken away too."

The elevator doors chimed again, closing up. Between us stood a metal door that could be opened with the mere press of a button. Yet, the distance we held between our hearts, of untold secrets and unspoken pain was vast. 

It remained wide open and ever-growing.

I sat in the elevator, my forehead resting on the cold metal wall. The air conditioning hummed to banish the silence, yet failed to muffle the roaring questions. 

What should I do now? Where should I go?

The problem with the truth was it might not always set you free. At times it would capture you as a hostage and extort your peace and happiness. Robbed of everything, I sat in contemplation of Leo's words.

He could bring me back. Or was that another lie?

My need to gain answers, to bury Tag in the sea of pain so that I could step into the land of the living had me press the door open. 

My steps resonated in the post-war apartment. My pulse rang in my ears but it was the warmth in my eyes, having cried for so long, that matched the temperature of the surrounding. 

I walked through the hall, navigating through the air that lingered with hate and resentment.

I saw Leo sitting on the edge of his bed, staring hard at the floor. Upon my approach, he looked up with fiery eyes, tears hanging from the outer rims of his waterline like raindrops over the blade of grass, ready to let go. 

He wiped them away with the backside of his sleeve and cleared his throat, straightening. His pain was written in bold across his face. He didn't bother masking it up.

When he tried walking away, I grabbed his hand, shirt and whatever else I could to arrest his steps.

"Tell me," I said, my prayer for solace meeting his senses. And he knew what I wanted to hear.

Nodded sideways, he tried to unclasp my hand. I dropped his wrist, letting him free. His swollen eyelids managed to take a peek at me. 

"There's nothing to tell." His hoarse voice answered. "I lost the love of my life, just like you."

Pain, in the purest form, was stronger than cocaine and more lethal than cyanide. I consumed it every day since Tag's demise. In a parallel life, so did Leo.

"You said you can save me." My voice wobbled and my aching chest heaved with compromised structural integrity. I lent my hand, hoping to be uprooted from my stagnant state. "Then save me, tell me to move on. Tell me, what happened to Tag because I still don't know."

The burden of his words bent my knees. I was freefalling before being held up. I didn't require a reality check to see who secured me. 

Placing me on the side of the bed, Leo knelt, cupping my face. He took a long deep breath, closing his eyes. As they reopened, the portal view of the void inside his chest cleared.

"I was the commander and we got intel about an enemy raid on our secured parameter. Our orders were to secure it at night but..." Like last time, Leonardo peered at a distance as if he was searching for words. Words to fill the gore details he suffered. "The lands... houses... had IEDs, we weren't aware."

He drew a painfully wheezed breath, sliding his hands off my face and grabbing my palms. In the hot, humid weather, his hands were frigid. "I got shot on my leg in a crossfire. So Tag, he... he took command while I covered for him. He stepped on..."

And the rest couldn't escape. The rest was fused at the entrance of his lips. But I knew, my heart knew and my tears knew which fell freely.

The world would never know the plight of a soldier or his sufferings. We got away with a salute while they suffer. One such did near me. One such cut opened his heart and cried dried tears for he used it all up over the course of his suffering.

"Leo," I held his face.

His warm cheeks, labored breath and the redness reflecting in his eyes sang his condition. Sorrow traveling beneath layers of his skin, jabbing into his flesh and bones had him dry heave. 

Like many others, Leo too carried the burden of the past. The losses he suffered were braided into every inch of his muscles and nerves, scratching into his soul at the silence of the night.

"It was not your fault, Leo. You're not responsible for anyone's..."

Death. It was such an easy word to say for a person unknown to you. But when used for someone you love, someone you dreamt of spending your life with, someone you imagined growing old with, that same word would jolt your core. It would grab the insides of your throat, playing you like a slave.

For the last two years, I was a victim of that word and its darkness. I hid away from the beam of acceptance, whenever it shone. Leo's confession filled me with the light of understanding.

"You're not responsible for anyone's death, Leo," I said, kneeling in front of him. "Neither Tag's nor anyone else's. You were doing your duty and so were they. All I have is the utmost respect for what you did for us. For serving the country."

Dipping his head into my lap, he sobbed, gargled words and then sobbed again. The man in front of me wasn't the funny guy Leo or the media mogul's son. It was Sergeant Brenton, the commander who lugged around the dead weight of his command.

Pent up sadness and pain flowed from his eyes like tears and mouth as words. He kept apologizing but it wasn't for me. Leo was begging for forgiveness from the fallen, the martyrs. Those who now held a place in his memory.

"I hope...you can...forgive too..." His wheezed words broke my spine. My body nestled him, my arms stroked his back.

For a long time, I held a grudge against the universe to justify my pain. The boiling hurt or the silent suffering was my only way of keeping Tag alive. I believed if I moved on, his memories would run dry.

I was proved wrong today. Tag wasn't just a memory or a painful past. He remained imbibed in each cell of my existence. 

Till the day I would survive, Tag would too. It took a broken man to reflect upon me, the truth about letting go.

"I don't have to forgive you, Leo but you've to forgive yourself for-"

Leo drew me closer, his warmth thawing our frozen hearts. 

For long, Leonardo Brenton was buried under the avalanche of suffering only to be excavated today. The mask of pretense he held up split wide open for me to see the real him. Unlike other times, he didn't camouflage his vulnerability either.

Leonardo Brenton was many things to many people; a funny man, first-born Brenton heir and even a war hero. 

Underneath all those personalities that masked his form, he embodied one more only for me. The form of my saviour.

~

No words...