Algernon Black

(Chapter 121) The Quiet of Darkness

"I don't want your pity," She murmured, because of all the things she'd been subjected to, being pitied was close to the worst.

"Then what do you want!"

Lucy bit her cheeks. She couldn't speak freely her wants, because that revealed more vulnerability than she was ready to admit to anyone, especially herself. She stared back into Algernon's eyes with steel resolution, not rising to a response in words but her eyes speaking plain her refusal to answer.

Algernon's anger wasn't lessening but his hopes were collapsing at her silence. Because with the silence, his mind flooded with all the responses she could say that would destroy him, so instead of facing any of those, he guarded himself, as he always did, by drawing first blood. "You really believe you're strong, don't you? Because you let people hurt you and you do nothing." He said, pushing forward and driving her back against the castle's walls. "Whatever you think that is, it isn't strength. It's the excuse you hide behind because you don't have the courage or power to stand up for yourself."

Lucy's eye squinted as Algernon's grip on her waist squeezed strong enough to leave the tracing of his hands on her skin. "You're wrong." She denied, with as much strength she could get out through the pain.

"Am I?" Algernon asked, tightening his fist on her waist to see Lucy grimace from it. He could see he was hurting her, but as always, he couldn't stop himself, because, at his core that was his nature, a fighter, a killer, a demon-like the ones his mind created and the monsters around him shaped him to be. "So, is this you being brave then?" He grumbled, enraged by his inability to escape their influence on him. "Standing here trembling in fear instead of trying to fight against me? Or is this you knowing that you'd be too weak to stop me, so you don't even try?"

His grip crushed Lucy's rib but she couldn't feel the pain on her body anymore, only the one in her heart. "You're cruel."

Algernon released what nearly sounded like a laugh. "You have no idea how right you are." He thought back to his past, to Lucy's past soaked in blood because of him. That past she was so far from being the cause of, but the one to suffer the most from it. It was unfair, and it made Algernon angry that she didn't save herself from this cruel world, that she didn't run as far away from him and the other monsters here that had been tormenting her all her life. "And that's why you need to leave."

Lucy's stomach coiled. She hated when he said that, hated when any of them said it. More than any insult, more than any wound, the rejection was the worst of all.

"No," Lucy muttered, her voice brittle as she forced it not to break.

Algernon rose in malice as she refused to heed his every warning.

"Leave."

"No," Lucy said with more resolution, even though hearing it was killing her.

"Leave!" Algernon insisted, trying to be as harsh as he could, to stop himself from begging her to stay.

"No!"

"Why!" Algernon asked, his fist slamming into the wall. Lucy glared back at him and Algernon recalled what she had told him months ago. Pain isn't the reason you leave, it's the reason you stay. He'd been fighting against those words for months, for the hope it brought him, and for the despair that awaited her for living by them. "Why stay when all that's here for you is pain!"

"Because it's better than being alone!" Lucy replied, finally exploding with the truth as Algernon flinched back from the sudden
ferocity to her voice.

"no," Lucy cried under her breath as she felt tears breaching. When her true fear, the one she had been harboring inside for months, finally tore from her lips, the tears broke through with them. A consequence of trying to be too strong for too long.

As soon as Algernon saw her eyes swell with water, all malice deserted him. He couldn't even breathe as he watched Lucy aggressively wipe away tears before they had the chance to fall.

"I know I'm not strong, I'm not trying to pretend I am by not giving up," Lucy muttered through the feeling of her heart caving in. "But I'm not trying to be strong so I can stop all this pain, I'm trying to be strong enough to survive it." She looked down at her feet so she could voice her fears that made her more vulnerable than anything to the one person who had consistently hurt her the most.

"It hurts to be constantly treated like I'm lower than dirt, to take scars on my body, and even worse when they stay in my heart, but I wake up every day relieved to see the same faces and know that they see me because at least hate is proof that I exist in some small part of this world. At least it's not as painful as living and meaning nothing." Lucy wiped tears away as her voice cracked, cursing herself for it.

"That's all I was for all my life, meaningless." She said, reflecting on her endless travels with Jared. "At most maybe a second of a passing memory in a stranger's mind, but meaningless to everyone in the world besides my brother. And if I lost him I would have no one. The world would go on and I would be completely alone."

Algernon watched Lucy's slightly trembling lip that she tried so hard to keep steady, and felt his own heart quaking.

"That's why I'm not afraid of you, or pain, or hate, I'm afraid that one day that will stop. Everything will stop, and I'll be left alone."

She tried to collect herself, to suck back in all the fears she had been tearing her heart to hoard inside, but it was too late now.

"I don't put up with the pain because I want to come off strong, I put up with it because I'm terrified of being alone. And it's because I'm so afraid that I can endure it, no matter how bad it gets," Lucy said, her voice raspy and unsteady with the weight of those fears deeper than she yet fully understood. "because pain can't hurt me like it hurts to mean nothing."

Algernon could feel how hard it was for her to admit what she had. Hear how painful it was to open that scar to him. He looked down at her eyes filled with water to mirror everything in her sights, and had to avert his gaze because he'd never hated seeing anything more than his own reflection in her tear-soaked irises.

"I-I was only trying too-" Algernon started to say before barring himself. He wasn't as strong as her to spill the secrets of his heart or the ones that might forever drive her's away.

"Trying to what?" Lucy asked in a soft plea, as the slightest sliver of hope crept into her. She clung to it like it was a life preserver and she was drowning in the ocean, thinking that perhaps this sea of suffering had a point or limit, and maybe this all wasn't going to just end with her being alone again.

Algernon remained utterly still as if every part of him seized closed and prevented him from speaking, having no idea how to explain himself in a way that would make her tears stop, without giving away more than was safe for her to know.

After the silence had spoken for far too long and Algernon had made his resolve to speak, his dark eyes turned back to Lucy's, and his mouth couldn't form any words.

Lucy was stunned by how much emotion suddenly showed on Algernon's face even when his lips gave away nothing.

And she lingered for his answer, needing him to answer, but every second of silenced hope that passed made her heart crumple into the truth she had already accepted. That there was no reason for them to reject her, but that they always would. With no good explanation, she would always be left wondering if she could have done more, or if there was something inherently and deeply wrong with her that everyone could see but she could never fix. And because of that she would always be meaningless to this world, never truly accepted, never a place to belong or people that would care for her.

Looking into Algernon's eyes Lucy stared into that truth and the black abyss of them. A void, a darkness that didn't speak, didn't care, and existed only as it was, an endless nothing. There was no comfort or acceptance to be found there and she had to finally stop holding onto the hope that there ever would be.

Lucy slowly started to break from the positions they had cemented themselves in, feeling a thousand times heavier as she walked away with no urgency because she knew Algernon wouldn't stop her. And he didn't.

Algernon stayed fixed, facing the wall. Of all the horrors he created in his mind, nothing haunted him more than the image of Lucy's gray eyes filled with tears pleading for him to end her pain, while he was still too weak to do so.