Insurgence [h.s]

eighteen

Alouette narrows her eyes. "Should I?"

Harry chuckles and looks away. She's so dramatic, so intense—through her, life moves in black and white. He's either a liar or her father a bastard, he supposes—she's always had issues with grasping the infinite shades of grey that make up the world. It's likely why she took it so badly when he took the Revolution down—she liked him, maybe even loved him, and so decided he should be pure, like an angel, because how else could she rationalise liking him? If she truly saw him for who he was, how could she excuse herself for falling for him all the same? And, certainly, she'd say he's wrong. She'd say she knew every step of the way, and that may be true, but there's a difference between knowing and understanding, and while she knows what he's like, he's not sure she's ever understood it, not truly.

Her feelings are careless, her world is too sharp. She lives between extremes, balancing on those edges like a tightrope walker, never knowing when she'll fall to her death. He's either evil or at the luminous centre of her existence. Is there someplace for him to exist in the middle, away from her light, with just his feet dipped in shadow? He wonders. He should like it there, away from her stifling expectations and her desperate need to be on the good side. Would she be able to go on if she knew the truth—if she knew sometimes bad people have good reasons for their actions and some princes are hiding the sharpest teeth?

I don't think anybody is inherently evil, she told him once, yet she doesn't act like it. How many things did she have to dismiss just to justify her position at his side to herself? She doesn't think anybody is inherently evil, yet she does believe herself to be on the good side—no matter what she does. It stands to reason that if she believes extreme good exists, then the existence of extreme evil should follow, for one cannot exist without the other. He's personally never been one for extremes. His world stands in the middle, because things in real life hardly are one thing or the other. Some of his actions aren't commendable, and that is true. But some of hers aren't either. He's never thought her perfect, not once, though he knows she's certainly better than him. Better in a supposed scale between good and evil, that is. One could argue excessive niceness can be dangerous when it isn't shared by the ones around. Her naïvety will be the end of her—not because she doesn't know how the world works, but because she refuses to understand it. In her world of black and white, she ends up missing the point a good half of the time.

And so, how could he tell her about her father—the very person she's put at the lightest extreme of her goodness scale? He'll only push her away. She doesn't want to hear the truth, because it's something she will not like. She's not used to the type of decisions a leader, like him, like her father, like Larson, has to make. She doesn't know that being in a position of extreme power means your moral record isn't clean. How could you have got there and survived otherwise?

Alouette scoffs and crosses her legs. "I'm waiting."

He's been silent for too long. So eager she is to have her world unmade.

Harry looks at the window, and the white barrier stares back at him. He can't remember the last time he had the windows blocked—he doesn't know if he ever has, in truth. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like the darkness, the absence of his city. He's lived alongside Northfair all his life. It's the only witness of his cruelty, his restlessness, his desperation. He doesn't quite know what to do, now. He supposes it should be oddly poetic that such a strike has come against his being on the same day the windows were blocked out. He's withering, so dependent he is on Northfair's light. That should be right. As he was made for the only objective to rule it, having him perish alongside it is rightful retribution.

He can't take his eyes away from the closed window. It's already the fourth time his gaze drifts to it during this conversation—as if he somehow expects to find the light of his city just beyond it.