He hadn't expected the nightmares. He wasn't quite sure what he had expected, but not the guilt and the pain and the nightmares that plagued him even when he was awake. Blood and tears and angels pinned to white tiled floors. Voices that screamed and begged and pleaded, and the silence that was even worse because it reminded him of his own emptiness.

She came to see him sometimes. She never said anything, but he could feel her presence, standing right behind him, so close, yet never touching.

beneath (you are)
her

He wasn't quite sure what he had expected, but it wasn't the guilt and the voices and the nightmares.

A clean slate, perhaps, waking up as someone else, a different man, someone who wouldn't-

But he was still the same, it was all still the same

(except the pain and the voices)

only broken into pieces.

And he was afraid Terrified by the thought that perhaps the whole soul thing was just one big joke played by the universe at his expense, that there was no difference, soul or no soul, and he was just as worthless to her now as he had been before.

(a monster)

She never stayed long, and he never found enough courage to turn to look her in the eyes, never found the words to ask her not to go.

Without making a sound she left him, faded into the darkness as if she'd never even been there, and he was alone again, only the Atlantic waves whispering to him as they caressed the hull of the ship.