Days passed in slightly less of a stunned blur, though they didn't offer me the solace of any further messages or calls from Chrollo. June turned into July, and July first became the second, and then third—one full month had passed of being without my only one. It was hell, to say the least, but I would be foolish to deny the pinpricks of light which pierced through that suffocating blackness, almost stifled and yet refusing to be put out. There weren't many of them, but there were a few. There wasn't enough to truly take much of my attention away from the fact that he was gone.
Most of my days were spent sketching, or dragging on hopelessly while Kurapika made every desperate effort to distract me from what he didn't realize plagued me. Of course, now that Feeler Inversion was completed, I didn't have the excuse of exercising my aura until I was mentally and physically exhausted enough to go back to sleep. I still exercised it, though—partly because I didn't want it to slip through my fingers, or for that mind barrier to be built up again and force me to start from square one, but partly because I wanted something to distract myself, something to take my thoughts away from the present.
Sketching could only do so much for me. I wasn't very good at it. Or, at least, my drawings never compared to Chrollo's eloquent artistry. I could tell, several times, that Kurapika was mildly curious about what was inside my sketchbook, but I'd refused to show him. He'd respected my wishes, though I wondered what might happen if he were to see the countless anatomy studies Chrollo had done of my body, and the final piece of me sleeping, unclothed, on my side.
I often stared at that picture, remembering the first moments I'd found it, the day when my lover was to return from the Republic of Padokea after leaving for a week and a half. The memory of his beautiful reasoning and poetic explanation of his feelings and inner communications often echoed through my mind, as well as what had followed that evening, empty words spoken to a flushed atmosphere, and then the passion of his dark irises locked on mine and the persistence of his alluring form pressed against me as my lips could release the sound of only his name. Many times, I would zone out while sketching, and tune in to Kurapika calling for me to ask me a question or checking up on me to see if I'd eaten anything—I typically forgot to eat, and he'd recognized that numb pattern from me.
But as numb as I certainly was, I noticed, in Kurapika, a return of much of his own intensity, that heaviness having settled back down over him and becoming tangible in his presence. He still tried, though. And it hurt the most to see him trying so desperately to uplift me while his own mental health deteriorated, crumbling at the foundation and leaving him a blank slate, unfeeling, suspended. I wished he wouldn't try so hard, but perhaps it was one of his last means of finding contentment, satisfaction—I felt guilty either way, because no matter the valor in his efforts, I held no energy to respond to any of them. They were wasted on me, and watching them fall to waste was perhaps my greatest source of pain. Of course, he knew nothing of the reason why I couldn't afford him a response.
I almost wanted to find a way to keep him enamored with me, to keep him trying, to selfishly string him along, but even that, I could not actively contribute to. Inevitably, I did so without even bothering to pay attention, but manipulation had not yet consciously played a part in my endeavor to keep him invested enough to stay in York New. It almost felt as though I were sitting by and watching him gradually fall apart, but he was too stubborn to admit or see, himself, that his passion was diminishing.
Even so, through all of that confusion and emotional conflict I'd sensed from him, seen from him, he managed to find an infinitesimally brighter exterior when we spoke, when we engaged in simple things like making coffee together. I could still see it in his weighing eyes, the way they lifted just barely when we made eye contact, when I answered one of his trivial, always trying questions. It pricked my heart, and terrified me at the same time.
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Lucilfer (ChrolloxReader)
Fanfiction*ChrolloxFemReader* (Y/n) is a powerful exorcist, running from a fate bestowed upon her since childhood. She isn't looking for anything besides a way out, even if death becomes the answer. She comes into contact with Chrollo Lucilfer, a man who's N...
