Surrender

Life is quick to pull away a try, ripping it back by its arm, not even eyeing you as it tugs. You must snatch it, quick, as soon as it announces itself. And here it was, today. Walking down the hall of plain, pale government regulation, inhaling the muted bleach under humming fluorescents, surrounded in beige and white.

Here it was, that try that will begin and end a life simultaneously.

Leading? Following? It isn’t a matter at this moment. The only thing that matters is that their clammy palms are pressed loosely, no definitive grasp, no intentional braided fingers and shoulder swing. Neither party is certain of this decision, its aftermath, life if it weren’t taken at all…but they still showed, they’re still in stride, they’re ready.

She signs paperwork while he hovers nearby. She speaks with professionals while he only nods whenever acknowledged. She’s dressed for the moment; he’s done his best to meet it himself. The wooden door swings open, her name is called, she stands anxiously reciting inside the reasons she’s decided to do this.

To change her life. To save her life. To be with him.

There’s a fairytale in this, how their forks met when neither needed to be raised, only a back just as damp in exhaustion to lean against, to catch their breath. How he became a painfully bright ray of light, bleaching everything else, so all that was seen was stained from the burn on their retinas. Maybe that’s why specific signals and warnings were missed, half her sight is blown out by that fantasy, by a hope that the dull, monochromatic shades of reality will line up with it.

The world is complicated but not in a tangle of black wires way, more a tangle of flowers and vines. You can’t always tell which thorny strand carries the fullest, most colorful bloom but you know the blooms exist, someplace in the cluster. And maybe, this brave reach will pull back something beautiful. Something worth it all.

And there will never be a world more worthy of living in than one colored with the aura of another.

And thus, Ray accepts the ring and Aura accepts the IV.