The Discarded

Alone Chapter 14 - 1

Saturday March 21st 2015

Cesare was deep in his plans when Elizabeth opened the door behind him. There were a lot of ways to kill bugs, but none of them scaled to the queens level. Any poison strong enough to affect them would kill half the student body, and Cesare didn't think that was the show everyone was looking for.

She came up behind him, looking over his shoulder as he hunched over the stone table with a battered spiral notebook. The plan was barely more concrete than a shadow at midnight. Quietly watching him work, she was intensely interested in this private part of Cesare.

"You're worried." The statement was barely louder than a breath.

Absently, he answered the unspoken question. "In the other fights I had things to work from. I knew what the creatures were and could guess at their motivations. I don't know what these things will do. Any plan I make has to take that into account. They're something even the Grand Master of the Order of the Dragon's wary of, and their coming to kill us. Yeah, I'm worried."

Unsure what to do, she gave the only answer she could. "You'll find a way. You always do."

Cesare ran his hands through his hair in weary frustration. "Until I don't." The muffled words came out as a curse. "This isn't a fight; it'll be a bloodbath with no place between. Either we win or we all die. The girls know they can't win in a straight fight with the queens. Alexandra, a killer that's never blinked at a fight in her life's, depending on me to give her an unstoppable edge. Anastasia's good, but she's not ready to fight something that's trained since it was born to kill. These aren't fighters, they're predators looking for a meal."

Elizabeth's hand gripped his shoulder, the comfort hurting more than any punch ever had. It was so much easier to be unwanted. At least when you were frozen inside nothing hurt. "Are you more afraid of dying or failing?"

Cesare looked at the paper for a long minute, lost in himself. "I should have died on the street. Hunger, cold, or old men looking for a young fuck. I didn't keep going because I thought it would get better, it never does. But because I didn't know how to quit. When I came here, I found life could be about something, that you could live your life for someone." Elizabeth's hand clenched onto his shoulder, painfully tight.

"You could live for yourself," Elizabeth said, the words soft with sorrow.

Picking up the pen, he started drawing again. "You can only live for the things you love." Elizabeth's breath caught on her low hurt sound, not for herself, but for him. For a broken child, maimed beyond saving, crippled into a caricature of a man.

The gods know he'd tried to love himself, and he'd keep trying. But that said it all. You don't try to love; you either do or don't, anything in between is lip service to get through the day. Some days, some moments, he believed, but the truth was so much more real than any lie. Lies need constant care, the truth thrived with cancerous growth on it own. He'd probably never love himself; his worth was in what he could do for others.

Her hand ran down his hair. She cared for him, even if it wasn't the kind he wished for. As much as he thrilled at her touch, it hurt, made him hope for things that could never be. And when he faced that reality, he could only find fault with himself. If he was better looking instead of this ugly misshapen thing, if he'd been born smarter or stronger ... so many things he wasn't and would never be.

She watched him work, fingers running through his hair. There was no way to heal the brokenness in him, any more than he could heal her scars. It was a hard thing to realize you were broken, and harder still to face the fact you couldn't be fixed. Sometimes all you could do for someone was be there, some orphaned days it was enough.