There’s a firm tension in his shoulders as he walks towards the bathroom, gaze downturned to the floor. The heaving of his chest fills the grieving silence, the lack of sound unsettling him to his core.
The image is still fresh in his mind, of hands covered in blood and heart hammering in his ears. The scene of her pale, lifeless eyes staring up into his with hope and love permanently burned behind his eyelids. With every blink came another wave crashing against him, filling his lungs to the point of a terrible ache.
Pressing his hands against the edges of the sink, he balances himself. His breath didn’t seem to catch up with the fact that he was trying to calm himself down, continuing to refuse to come to him the way it should.
Squeezing his eyes closed, a wet trail of tears running down his face, he clutched the edge of the sink in his hands. As his knuckles turned white and sobs racked the walls of the bathroom, the squeezing of his insides urged him to collapse then and there. His knees shook beneath him, his forearms and hands the only thing keeping him up as he leaned on the sink like a drunkard.
Then there was the light tapping from the mirror. And with a reluctant, shameful lift of his head, he met the eyes of his reflection.
An identical look-alike stared right back at him, but he knew it was anything but him. Stood up straight with bloodshot eyes, puffy and red from a wound newly inflicted on their psyche, was the man of the mirror. And, yet, even with the pain of her death enveloping them both, the man of the mirror smiled.
The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes pulled up ever so slightly, his lips upturned in a kind smile. There was the fact that his shoulders were free of tension, hands resting lightly against the sink. His hair swooped back away from his face, as though he wasn’t ashamed of the display of pain present in his eyes. Oh, his eyes, they were so deep with a kind of softness that he couldn’t allow himself to feel.
Pulling one hand away from the sink, knuckles still white from the grip he had held onto the surface beforehand. Pressing his palm against the mirror, he looked only a moment longer in the eyes of the man in the mirror before the sobs came back, forcing their way out of his throat. He expected to be laughed at, berated, not because it was what the man of the mirror usually did, but because of illogical fear.
Yet, as the smile of the reflection pulled up further and a gentle hand raised to meet his own on the other side of the glass, the walls came crashing down. Leaning forward, head pressed against the cold surface of the mirror, he screamed in agony.
The screams shook the core of the reflection, but the man in the mirror just continued to smile and watch, murmuring sweet, sweet words of nothing. His eyes glanced at the wedding band on their left, ring fingers every so often, and he did allow himself the pleasure of crying too as he recalled what they lost.
But still, he’ll smile for the other. It was all they had left, after all.