A Waiting Game With Sanity

Walking up to him was intimidating.
Like he was deep inside the walls of a castle, surrounded by armed guards and I was walking up completely empty handed.  I had nothing to offer him but empathy.  We were the same, but I had no idea how to get him to understand.  He didn't realize I had a castle of my own a few hills over.  A castle I rarely ventured from.  I know why he loved it there.  Felling safe, protected, and home after such a devastating blow was crucial.
He was like stone, impossibly hardened to the songs of the world.  To the idea of trying again.  Cold and rough and heavy.  His presence like a darkening cloud that seemed harder to escape from as time went on.  Warning after warning passed through my mind, shouting at me to give up and walk away.
But there I was.  Bearing my soul, begging for him to give it a shot.  Praying that he'd come outside, given failure would mean a volley of arrows through my already mangled heart.
I wonder if this is how the prince felt, calling out to Rapunzel.  No, this was worse.  At least she was willing. 
He couldn't see that he'd trapped himself.  That he was in need of rescuing.  That he needed help.
I didn't know at first either.  It felt better than anything in the world to lock the door and never look back.  But time turned into an unbearable sentence that I couldn't make myself serve.  Sooner or later, he'd feel the pressure too.
Only, when he started looking out the window for a savior, he'd find one.  Unlike the dismay I felt when I realized I'd have to rescue myself, he would feel relief.
As imposing as his walls were, as fiercely as he was guarding himself, I wouldn't give up.  I couldn't.  I couldn't watch someone struggle the way I did, drowning in silence, choking on self-pity, slowly fading out of reality until there was merely a ghost and no longer a person inside.
I was terrified.  Scared of rejection, of failure, of him.  So scared of him.  But I stayed.  Playing a waiting game with his sanity and praying for a victory.