Home isn't a place. It's a feeling. The words lapped over in my mind and had done for days. It was a persistent thought that haunted my mind as my body lay cold and stiff. Guilt trickled through every cell in my body, only adding to the distress that suffocated my senses as my lungs struggled for a graspable breath of air. I'd spent the majority of my time in hiding longing to return home, to find the release that I was certain would arise when the unmade beds and the caption-less photos brought every memory in my bones tumbling back. But that never happened. Instead I was consumed with an iciness, a silhouette of what I felt deep inside my heart. The feeling tormented my mind, worsening the remorse that sent my fingertips craving for touch, because only now had I realised that home had always been with me.
Home had always been his existence in its entirety. His touch. His smell. His voice. His presence alone gave me that feeling. The feeling that nothing else matters in the world, not when he's watching you from the corner of the room, a child-like smirk adorning his face.
Despite the fact that Legrenzi had been flung ten foot under in an undeserving grave thousands of miles from where I was, the nightmares had worsened with each day that had passed. Though it wasn't the scenes of gunfire that sent my body into a frenzied state, those images were long gone. Instead I was greeted with the loving memories of his tender face, enriched with life, allowing my soul to thrive from the complexity his charisma. That was all until I woke up to find the other side of the bed iced with a void that my heart had mimicked since the day he had been wrongly taken from the world.
But the ache I felt at seeing his face in my memories could not be compared to the agony my organs strained to work under. With that sole feeling being categorised under one simple word- guilt. It was the guilt I felt for wasting the last few weeks we had together. The guilt I felt for putting his heart under pure torture. The guilt I felt for walking away from his tear drained face. But most importantly it was the guilt I felt for having not told the only person I had ever truly loved how I felt.
Nothing made the tears fall more than the realisation that the safeguard to my heart had fallen in silence, merely seconds away from the safety net of words meeting his ears as he fell limply to his death.
The End.
