The Girl in Black (Rewriting)

Chapter, 49

'You can't do this.' He whispered.

'I can. I have to.' I said.

He smirked. 'Do you really?'

My voice got lost. I looked at my doll which was totally destroyed now. Her hair were burnt and her eyes and face was scribbled on. Her one hand hung loosely and her one leg was no where to be seen. And all of my toys that meant so much to me shared the same condition as my doll. Tears welled up in my eyes and soon started rolling down my cheeks but he either didn't notice or didn't care.

Why did I have to do this? I asked myself. I was cruel to do but thinking of the loss, I slapped him across the cheek too hard. The deed I knew I'd regret later but it felt right at that moment.

I snapped my eyes open and  sat up. That didn't help so I dropped my legs off the bed and stood up. It still didn't help so I started pacing around. It was still useless. And so my breathing started becoming shallow. My mind dissolving into the whirls of worries. I held my head and started breathing loudly. But it only weighed my chest more.

The dark seemed too dangerous as if it'll swallow me at once. I closed my eyes. I needed to breathe. I needed it.

'Jewel?' Leo called me and I looked at him. He was up from his sleep and had propped himself up to his elbows.

'Leo... help...I ...can't...' But I didn't need to finish my sentence as he rushed up from the bed and ran towards the window and threw it open. He ran back to me, picked me up in bridal style and helped me sit gently on the window sill.

'Hey listen, it's gonna be okay.' He said as I placed my hand on my chest. 'Breathe. Just... breathe.' He rubbed his thumb on the back of my hand for soothing.

I looked at the moon. How perfect of a circle did it seem? How it managed to shine in the darkest of times? I asked myself just to relax my breathing and it did. Second after second. The dance of wind on my face as it swayed into the illuminated world though still full of dark helped me. The rays of light that journeyed through the longest of time to reach me, the tingling sensation of Leo's touch , the calmness and sense of soothe of nature relaxed me and soon I was breathing normally.

'I'm sorry I didn't mean to wake you up.' I said but Leo raised his head up to protest but I carried on. 'It's just the fear of tomorrow. I feel like I'm so wrong for the duty. I feel like I'll lose that our plan won't work that maybe the map, Stella provided could be a total fraud and we built our whole plan on that particular map. What if she was trapping us? What if it all fires back? What if we lose?' I poured him all the questions that had captured my mind since we finished our work and decided to get some sleep but I really didn't feel like it.

'Ok remind me of all the options we had?' Leo answered in a question.

'I don't know.' I said quietly.

'Yeah. You don't know. So do we.' Leo said. 'You can't know the future. It's always changing. No matter how many infinite stones you wear or how many times you're predicted. It'll change every day, every second. All we can do is to plan with the given circumstances guessing the coming situations. That's all we can do.'

'What about Stella?' I asked him.

He looked at me and stared at me for a while before speaking. 'It takes too much guilt to take your enemy to hospital and save her friends and make them aware of her enemy's condition despite the fact that they could hate you and even throw you out.'

I nodded. He didn't knew about the little quest I gave Stella and she passed. None of them knew it.  And yet I held my doubts against her. I knew it was wrong but in this world where cheating and deceiving is a common practice, trusting on the other hand has become quite a difficult task.