The pain went on for an eternity in that forest -with some pauses in between. They rested whenever they found a cave. Though Ben didn't explain, Osamu knew that the man didn't give two shits about himself, only that Temius' mother needed rest.
His mother woke during one rest -weakly grasping onto his tunic, her eyes pale and desperate.
"Temius. I-I love you. Please. I love you." She shook, racked with sobs.
She was delirious.
But it didn't make him feel better. He'd never felt more phony than now, when he sat beside a mother that called him her own -it was all fake.
"It's okay. It's okay." He patted his mother on the head with his small hands.
"Why, why-" she sobbed, "Why have you never called me 'mother'? Not once." She wept into his tunic. "Why? Why- why won't you? Did I raise you to be this cold?" She cried.
Osamu felt shame burning in his neck. Made worse by the fact that Ben was staring at him with those eyes that seemed so timeless.
"It's okay. It's okay." He stammered. He didn't what else to say. He just couldn't bring himself to lie to the woman -though he had already lied to her for four years by default omission.
If only. If only he could just tell her that he wasn't even her child. But that'd probably break the woman -and- to be honest, he was too much of a coward to bring himself to tell the truth. The full truth.
That he was Osamu Murakami, someone who stole her son's identity. A thief and a faker. A real piece of shit.
The pain in his heart he couldn't discern anymore between the injury and the woman's plea. He felt like it could be torn apart between the two pains about now.
Ben rose and walked over to check the woman's pendant. Osamu could see even for himself that the pendant was barely glowing anymore.
"Swap."
Osamu gave Ben his barely glowing pendant, and swapped on the basically dark one.
His mother laid in the hospital ward. She looked so pale and fragil, like a cracked glass holding bloodred wine.
The wine must not spill.
It must not.
It was like looking at a withered leaf on a wintered tree. So white the branch -so desperate the leaf to cling on to that aspen brace.
Love makes the basis of tragedy and pain -the core human. As without ugliness so goes beauty -without love there is nothing. The clinging of the mother to the child -the dancing mother and the dancing child.
So beautiful a pirouette.
His mother could barely breathe -her sickness overcoming every pore of her body.
"Osamu." She said.
The only word. There was nothing left. Nothing left to say -nothing she was able to say.
Osamu needed her to say more -but it was futile effort -throwing fire to the gale.
Such a hole.
But he cannot fill.
His father had ushered him out of the ward -saying that his mother needed to rest.
His father was stoic as ever -a stone statue unmoved by neither the feats of Hercules nor the rage of Thor.
So still.
The face.
Was there a crack?
They left the cave in the morn -heading for god knows where.
Fuck.
The wound hurted more now -more than ever. It was as if a fire had been emblazoned onto his very soul, much less his heart.
He didn't know what he should feel.
He didn't know what he was feeling.
But now Temius' mother was dying, strapped to the man's back like an animal brought to the slaughterhouse. So beautiful in her ghostliness, like some nascent apparition ready to take off at the finger's moment.
So much like his own mother.
He couldn't care less about the pain now -it had become a part of him.
Rended into him.
Into his self.
-------------------------------------
After four days of running, Ben had reached a proper road. Like, not some invisible path through overgrown bramble and thicket. It was an actual, actual dirt path, carved through to woods to reach somewhere.
The scenery remained unchanged: high treetops blocked most of the sunlight -a dark, dark green denoting some sort of dying.
The bark of the wood melded into the brown of the dirt, and he couldn't really tell tree from land from his shouldered perspective.
Following the road, they soon reached wooden walls tied together with twine about twice the height of a man. It was town, sitting on the edge where the forest canopy cleared, and sunlight streaked down in shafts blowing through the thick grey clouds.
They had reached the town of Ured, and smoke rose slow from beyond the walls.
Fuck finally. Some proper medication.
Maybe they had hope just yet.
Maybe.