I Do

It started with a kiss, just like the best hate stories do. A kiss between a boy and a girl, lovers who thought that, together, they could conquer anything. 

It ended with a kiss, poison on a woman’s lips. A kiss between a man who thought he could walk away, and a lover who would never let him. Love wins every time, after all, and theirs was a love that could conquer anything, even life. 

She had the antidote, she could have saved herself after watching the surprise on his face when his throat started to fill with bile and his heart started to beat at an unnatural rate. She considered it for a moment. She could have reached into her pocket and pulled out the vial of green liquid that would be her salvation; but she didn’t. She’d have to live a lifetime of heartbreak; she’d have to live with what she’d done and with the loneliness that followed. What waited for her here? A life sentence without him? Decades until they could be together again? Was living worth the price she’d pay? 

Her heartbeat matched his for the first time since she’d last laid in his arms staring into his eyes like they were the only two people in the universe. They felt the same fear, the first time they’d felt the same since the last time he’d told her he loved her. They were taking the same path for the first time since they’d decided to walk down the same aisle. As her throat filled with acid, as her heart began to fail, she couldn’t bring herself to swallow the antidote. It was too perfect. It was too much like how it used to be: two people who felt the same, who thought the same, who would end up in the same place. 

I hope they bury us together, she thought as they both fell to the ground, their bodies twisted and spasming unnaturally as vomit and foam leaked from their open mouths. She knew his heart was beginning to slow, because she could feel her own begin to pump slower and slower- until the pulses felt like being rocked to sleep. There was fear in his eyes, and there was fear in her chest. There was betrayal in his thoughts, and there was betrayal in her past. They were one in these last precious moments. 

He couldn’t look away from her face even if he tried; she knew because her muscles had locked and she couldn’t move any part of her body. The last thing either of them would see was each other. Good, she thought, because if she was being honest, she never stopped loving him. And deep in his heart, she knew he never stopped loving her either. Whatever he was leaving behind paled in comparison to what they could have had together, and maybe in eternity, in whatever came after, they could have another chance. If Heaven was real, it would be him and her in bed together at the end of the longest of days. If reincarnation was real, it would end with them finding each other again in the next life; and the one after that, and the one after that. If Hell was real, it would be the two of them chained in the same cell, just out of reach from one another. 

He had never looked more beautiful, she decided, because he had never been more hers. Spittle flew out of his mouth as he began choking, tears streaming down his face pleading with his eyes at her to save them both. But it was too late for that. Besides, how could she take this away from them? Lovers seek to meet their end together, facing the reaper with eyes glued to the other’s begging for even a few more moments before the unknown. 

She couldn’t rob them of a perfect end. 

Her own tears leaked from her eyes, unbidden, but welcomed like honored guests. After all, lovers cried together. Lovers shared each other’s pain and grief. She mourned the life she was leaving because he was mourning his own. They mourned together, like lovers should. She choked, like she would have choked up reciting her wedding vows to him before an altar, but was this so different? Both weddings and sacrifices were held at altars. There was no blood to be found at the scene of their demise, but it was sacred all the same. A vow no mortal or god could undo, the linking of souls through an act of devotion and the promise of an eternity bound to each other. Sealed with a kiss. 

With the last ounce of his strength, he reached for her, and with the last ounce of hers, she reached back. Fingers brushed together, but lacked the will to entwine. That was alright. When the bodies were found, it wouldn’t matter if their hands were interlocked, only that they were almost touching. There was something even more beautifully tragic about hands reaching for each other, never to fully connect. 

They would call her cowardly when the toxicology reports came back after their autopsies. They would say she took the easy way out, running away from prosecution rather than facing a life sentence. Maybe that was true, she’d rather spend an eternity with her soulmate in death than a day behind bars for an act of love a judge could never understand. She wasn’t a coward, though- she faced Death with a smile on her cold lips, greeting him as the officiant declaring her bound to the man facing her for eternity. She and her lover were not close enough to kiss, but their bile and saliva intermingled between them, joining them as closely as two people inches apart could be. 

Light faded from his eyes, he jerked towards her one last time with a shudder and a moan. This was their marriage bed. What intimacy is greater than the moment a soul leaves a body? Passion can be repeated, it can be seen by many others, shared over and over. But death? Only once can someone share that moment- and his was shared with her. She felt the fingers of the reaper in her gut, chilled and steady. Life was the starting line, this was the finish. She saw him smiling just beyond the end, beckoning her towards him with every promise he’d ever made her between them. She took another step though her body never moved, and with the last ounce of humanity left inside her, she whispered, 

“I do.”