Closed Breathless Divinity

[Carter Kaster]

Continued from this thread ~​

Carter was struggling, that much was clear from the get go. Everywhere he turned all he could see was Kiera. The fogginess of his brain did little to alleviate the anxiety he now felt and the hesitation to go anywhere with Natalie. He trusted her, for whatever reason, and there was just an undeniable goodness in her that made Carter feel safe. It wasn’t the kind of safety one applied to the physical sense, but the kind of safety that cane from the knowledge that someone could know your darkest secrets and not try to use them against you. It was not a feeling he’d been presented with in a long time. Dalton, whom he would have normally attributed such a feeling to, had up and left him a couple of years ago, his new wife and he travelling the globe and doing who knew what. Carter couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d seen his pseudo brother and it hurt him quite a bit. He was a stranger here, as much as he’d tried to fight against that fact and it was only worse after he’d lost Kiera, because those closest to him, Kiera’s family had abandoned him and even Kiera’s father, whom Carter had relied on maybe a little too much, was about ready to toss him away. It was a fact Carter had known for sometime, but been powerless to change. He was a stranger to these people, he had no roots here anymore, taking Kingsley and Kamryn with him back home like he’d wanted to do in the beginning was the best option, only now it was too late. “Natalie,” she was leading him to her place, which was strange as Carter didn’t think he’d ever been here before. He and Natalie has never really been close, he liked her well enough and they got along as well as two people who didn’t know much about each other could, but that was it. And yet here she was trying her damndest to help him. Carter didn’t know how to deal with it. ​

She led him into the kitchen, he was mostly walking himself, but leaned on a wall or a table or a chair as they went, just making sure he didn’t accidentally take something out as he was walking. The photos along her wall were expected, he turned away from any of Kiera though because they were still painful. Lyra didn’t understand, how could she? She loved her mother of course, but she didn’t have to look at her face every time she looked at Carter, all she saw was a broken man who didn’t know how to let go. And as much as he wished it wasn’t true, the dark hole called to him and he was powerless to break the spell. There was something else in the pictures too, but he was too bleary to really see it. He blinked and crouched a bit to look at the photo, a girl in the was familiar somehow, not Kiera, she wasn’t in this one, but there was something that was tugging at his mind from nearly thirty years ago. Carter stood up and continued to follow her then, straight into the kitchen. It was all so, not what he was used to. Though there seemed to be a lot of physical similarities between his late wife and Natalie, that was where the similarities ended it seemed because though it wasn’t anything specific, he just knew that this wasn’t the kind of aesthetic Kiera would’ve liked. He had no preference for one or any other and with his head pounding as it was - he really needed that drink - he could hardly remember what he was supposed to be remembering and so resolved to lay his face uncomfortably on the closest thing he could find, a counter. He didn’t want to deal with this right now. He just needed a drink, or sleep, or both preferably. He was supposed to go to work tomorrow, or today, or maybe yesterday, but he really didn’t feel like going right now, maybe not ever again. He couldn’t see much point to anything at all right now, beyond his headache.​