Falling In Love With Slender Man

Chapter 28

--CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT--

The cool, frigid air blew across Ash’s face, throwing his air into his eyes and obscuring his facial features. He glanced into the window that had warm light pouring out of it. He couldn’t see much more than that there was a figure curled up on the bed.

            He raised a large, pale hand and knocked quietly. The figure stirred slightly, but only enough to shift from her back and onto her side. Her eyes were open, bright and luminous. She stared questioningly at the window, but did not move to look out it.

            He took a deep breath and knocked again. This time the little Sage gently shrugged the thick blankets off herself and stood up. She was wearing nothing more than a thin cotton tank top and a pair of underpants. Ash couldn’t help but think how utterly breath taking she looked.

She squinted those green eyes at the window pain, trying to detect what had caused the noise. He knew well that he blended in with the dark and shadows too much though, and that she could not see him.

            She heaved the fragile glass up and peered outside. She looked from the right and then to the left, and then her eyes came at last to rest on Ash.

            Her face seemed to harden into an unreadable mask. No emotion was shown through her eyes, and the only expression of distress was the taunt set of her thin shoulders.

            “What are you doing here?” she whispered in a monotone voice.

            Ash just stared, taking in the beauty he had gone so long with out seeing. He noticed that she had a certain flush to her pale cheeks, making the smattering of freckles stand out tremendously. She looked different… changed… he just couldn’t place it.

            “Will you come outside?” he eventually asked after he noticed her irritated expression.

            She glanced back at the bed, but he couldn’t tell what it was she was looking at. It looked like she was contemplating her answer, looked like the word “no” was forming softly on her lips, but then, at the last moment, a soft, “Yes,” was all she murmured.

            She shut the window with a soft thud, and then walked over to perhaps put on some clothing.

            He seemed to have waited out there for half a century, but eventually she emerged, wearing a blue silk top and comfortable looking black jeans with holes in the knees. She had stuck her feet into a pair of slipper-like boots.

            She crossed her slim, freckled arms over her chest as she walked over to meet him. “Talk,” she said in a slightly angry tone, though he couldn’t exactly tell.

            “About what?” he whispered.

            She stared at him for only a heartbeat, and then flickered her eyes up at the treetops. “About why you’re here. About what you want. About why you did all this. Tell me. Before I kill you,” she said in a murderous tone, her ominous green eyes coming again to rest on his face.

            He sighed sadly, then tried to look her in the eye, but she only flicked them back up to the trees. “I came here to talk to you. I needed to see you.”

            Her arms tightened around her chest, causing the fabric of her shirt to wrinkle. “I don’t believe you,” she whispered through cracked, pink lips.

            “I know,” Ash said. “How could you believe me? I messed things up to such a degree I wouldn’t blame you if you walked back inside and told all those lethal Hunter’s I was here.” He seemed to think about his words. “And I would let them take me. I would let them kill me.”

            She glanced back at him in surprise. “Oh really?”

            He nodded. “So tell me,” she went on in a tone that was much too calm. It frightened him more than her fury. “Why would he keep me around, grow a romance, after you killed my god damn family?”

            “Sage,” he said, and his voice broke on that single syllable. “I can never apologize enough for what I did. But you have to trust me when I say I’m a changed man now.”

            A smirk grew faintly on her face, full of barely contained malice. “You’re right. You could never apologize enough.”

            He grimaced slightly at the amount of hurt and anger in her simple words. She was like a tortured soul. Nothing like the girl he had known. Nothing like the carefree little dove he had fallen in love with. He only had himself to blame for that.

            “I got my memories back,” she said bluntly.

            He looked up at her, and saw the pain the flickered there. He couldn’t even bring himself to say anything in response.

            “I suppose you took them from me, right? And after I left your clutches, they came back?” she guessed.

            He just shook his head furiously, sleek, silky strips of black hair falling into his face. He didn’t even bother to brush it aside.

            “You know what I remember the most?” she asked. When he didn’t respond she went on. “I remember you killing my brother. I remember telling him to go up to the cemetery to wait for me, because I wanted to help so stupid woman I barely knew. I thought it would be safer for him where there wasn’t any of that damned hell fire. But it wasn’t. I actually sent him to his death. I watched you snap his neck. I heard you laughing in my head. I recall every word you spoke to me then, and I remember you chasing after me when I tried to go to him, and how my leg snapped like a twig.”

            He felt as though he wanted to cry. He thought he might even, because he too recalled those events with perfect clarity.

            “So why is it,” she asked quietly, almost to herself, “that I can’t stop thinking about you?”

            “Probably because I killed your family,” he said grimly. He could feel her grimace at his words. But what did he have to lose?

            But she shook her head. “Not that. I think about the time I spent with you. Talking. Dancing. Kissing. I can’t see how that same man is capable of killing an entire town. I just don’t understand,” she said in such a sad, miserable voice. “I want to believe so badly that it wasn’t you. That it couldn’t possibly be you. But how can I deny the facts?”

            “What are you saying?” he inquired quietly, matching her sad tone.

            And that’s when she first met his eyes. They looked so powerful, like the green was shining with authority rather than anger. “I’m saying,” she said very carefully, “that I’m hopelessly in love with the man who killed the only other people I ever loved.”

            And that’s when Ash charged towards her and picked her up off the soggy ground. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, and to his utter shock she enfolded her slim legs around his torso. She was breathing heavily, as was he.

            Then he pressed his mouth so roughly against hers that it surprised them both. It held all the hunger, anger, passion, love, regret, sympathy, and hatred that they had both felt so entirely over their time apart.

What neither of them knew though was that a very angry Estrella was watching from the other corner of the house, in coverage of deep shadows, contemplating her next move….