Original snippy

[Sivart Reborn 7]

The characters have names... I just never worked them into this. Heh, but with two characters this is easy enough.

 

I re-worked this several times and took several points from a friend of mine about the end of it, which she was rather dissatisfied with at first. So, I hope it's good now.

 

***

 

"What are you doing here?" he asked her, face more annoyed than anything else. She found it amusing, he was still hiding behind a mask. A mask she'd long since broken through. He clenched his hands just enough to make her grin widen just to noticable size, "Well? Answer me."

 

"Would we really have run away if that hadn't happened?" she asked suddenly, his question brushed aside. A question she really didn't need the answer to. "If you hadn't left me to die there, alone, bleeding? Would you really have taken us away somewhere?" She came closer, deeper into the room he had dubbed his own. She hadn't been there in a long time it seemed, but it was not really long enough for her. It never would be. He'd betrayed her, after all.

 

His eyes narrowed and he backed away from her, despite all the fancy power he had from his studies, he was afraid of a simple woman. He was still such a foolish man, and that's all she needed him to be right now. A fool. But he'd always been something of one, hadn't he? Or perhaps it had been her. He looked at her with a conviction of self that spoke volumes from such a liar, "Yes, I would have wanted to."

 

She cocked her head arrogantly, questioningly, and came closer to him still. "Oh, really?" she was unconvinced, not that it mattered, "You weren't lying to me then?" she accused him of what he openly admitted to, to talk. But part of her did crave a bit of certainty about it. He nodded slowly, backing up until he hit a wall. Two walls even, stone and spirit.

 

He was up against her wall, pinned by the truisms he'd been avoiding for the longest time. The little things he'd ignored to make it all easier for him, convinced that she was indeed, dead. She came even closer to him, until she passed the lines of decency. She leaned up against him and looked him in the eyes, "Why did you do that then?" Her eyes were merely determined, his submissive.

 

"I," he paused for a long moment. A long moment, and gave her one look that said much more than she wanted him too. "I had thought.... I couldn't have done any differently." then he quickly shut his eyes and shook his head. Like a child. Such a fool. Yet, once, he had been her fool. She had loved him, before, and he loved her. But it was over now. It was more than over, it was more than anything she or he could say or do about it.

 

"You won't answer me then?" she hadn't meant to ask this question. There was an unwelcome plead in her voice and unexpected intensity in her eyes. She felt lumps form in her throat for the barest moment, before swallowing them and recompsing herself. "You won't tell me what happened two years ago that made you leave me?"

 

"No," he answered her, the same quiver and the same trembling eyes that she'd seen in herself mirrored in him now; they both were pitiful displays pain and longing. "I can't."

 

"For once you don't have any answer for a question then?" she ran her hand across his cheek, a gesture long since abandoned, "You're not half the man you were back then. What happened to you?" He stayed much as the same as ever, though. He didn't reply to this or respond to her touch. But there was a tension. She knew this was her chance to solve everything.

 

"We can still do it you know," she leaned onto him, and he wrapped his arms around her. It was so familiar, comfortable, and missed. She felt almost safe again; and he was backed into a corner, with nothing to do now. Everything hung on that moment, while everything stopped for it too: the cool air stilled, the musty odor of the tower forgotten, the familiar sound of the clocks stopped, and she knew they'd both forgotten everything that had happened then. She smiled sweetly up at him and kissed his lips. The heat they'd forgotten, the sweet surrender came like light to a dark place. For a moment, she loved him all over again, and he loved her. For that single moment, everything was right again. They drew each other into a closer and tighter embrace and then the moment ended as soon as it began.

 

"We'll be together, sweet," she smiled as she watched his face change. So many feelings washed over her as his face relaxed and a small gasp of pain escaped his lips, his eyes glazed over, and she let his dead weight slide to the floor.

 

She plucked the knife she'd so simply planted through his back out slowly, savoring the moment. Odd, how easy that was. He had trusted her, of all the stupid things he could have possibly done. She felt satisfied with herself, she'd finally repaid him for something. She'd lived two years with a broken heart; he only had to endure two seconds with only a hole in his. As she left she noticed a crumpled piece of paper on his bed. Some greater curiousity forced her to look at it, and what she saw mostly bored her.

 

It was his dull spill of 'passion' and 'calculated risks.' In other words, how he thought too much for his own good. On paper even his flighty hand seemed to ramble like a over-confident student boasting of his achievements in the classroom, but she felt compelled to read the script. However, the end of it contained the answer he wouldn't say:

 

I loved you then. My leaving you behind was not my intention, but it happened. Circumstance dictates outcome. I regret it dearly, and my belief that you were indeed dead did nothing to ease the emotional anguish. But if I were faced with the situation and the choices again, my move would not have been different. I, in layperson's terms, had to.

 

As she read further, her veins suddenly filled with ice and she contemptfully scowled at his corpse. It was so like him to show the answer now that it was irrelevant. The whole time it seemed almost too perfect, too easy, and now she saw why. Death was a means of escape for many, or a way of expression. She'd been played for a pawn again, the damn fool was truly pathetic.

 

You ask me 'why' for everything, the answer is simple: Because I can.

 

He knew.

[jan 14]

*chucks a biscuit at Travis*

 

Nice one! I knew there'd be a twisty thing at the end, but was hooked anyway!