:"Are you there for me, or for her?" Payton, or Eliac?
She stared at me with a furious expression; I could picture smoke rising from her ears. "Do you really need to ask that?"
And I believed it.
Today....
I gave my reasons for not wanting to take her to a Revel. I explained, over and over and over again--it was dangerous. They could use her to harm me, and therefore my people, and I cannot allow my people to be harmed; she was selfish to even ask. I didn't even expect her to pass the Test; sometimes I even wonder if she would have had Dyrim not thrown it to give me a smile, make my eyes blue again.
I told her it was my escape from when the thing she couldn't help--not loving me, because really, who would? Who honestly does? I've heard a thousand 'no's' and no 'yes's from the world--and it was what I needed.
She said, "Take me once and I won't do this anymore. Take me once and I will stop." Steam from the butt of her cigarette, the gold-brown eyes sincere."I... I understand the need for an escape. I won't intrude."
I fucking love you. Damn it, damn it, punch me in the face, I love you.
"Why do you even want to keep Courtship?"
"Because I do."
"Why?"
"Because I do!"
"You shouldn't want it," I said to her, anger budding in my heart and committing suicide when it realized who it was directed to; I calm myself, picture a beach with sand and warm sun, "I refuse hundreds of suits a day, you have no reason to keep it! The danger is passed."
"Yeah, well, they weren't me."
"'Having it will hurt me."
"Even for one day? Even for just the Revel?" I nod. The words offer themselves to my throat: Giving me what you don't want will let me remember it and enact it. If we are Courtship at the Roses, I can kiss you, laugh with you, touch ten fingers to your face. I can lay my head upon your shoulder for no other reason than weariness. I can talk to you like I do now, truly, in front of the people that honorate me. Katie, it'd make me so happy. I think I'd die from it--and just because you felt like it? I know you don't actually want any of that. Ryan made perfectly clear that you will never want me, never want anything but the Roses--
I began to snarl in my most Eliac fashion instead, to silence that line of poisonous thinking, and stop, trying to turn it into a cough. She noticed, raising an eyebrow at me with that expression I love so much.
And damn it, I love her. I love her.
After successfully dodging what had happened to my ear---teeth from a Courier of the Stone Court, ordered by my Mother and Father so they can control me at some point in the future, and I didn't really have a choice the night that Hannah had come--I looked her straight in the eye.
Yes, I greeted sunlight in the eye, trying to keep my hands from shaking.
"You know me better than anyone else," I said, my voice raw, disbelieving; "I've gone to greater lengths to protect you than I have anyone else."
She nods, annoyed with a huge grin. "Yup."
I looked at her. Tears threaten my eyes. "And it isn't enough?" No response.
I walk back towards the house, stopping sobs rattling my chest. "It's never enough," I say as I walk for the door.
That's how I feel.
That's the other pattern with my "students". They forget me. I... I am just Payton. Even with being let go from Ryan recently, even from healing, that is still all I am. That is all I ever will be; a little Eliac, but mostly? Mostly just myself.
And it isn't enough. I gave you every inch of me and now you want more, because I'm not enough.
Maybe if I were enough, things would be different. The choice I want to make would be possible.
But it isn't.
It isn't, and you don't love me. Ryan told me that and I didn't believe it....
But he was right.
Maybe he was right about everything.....
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