A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 184: Numb in the Heart

     Anastasia stood on my right, and Earl on my left. All eye level as I hovered up around their height, looking down at the poor soul hiking it to the front gate to leave for the day, cloak fluttering against an unforgiving wind that turned their faces red but I didn't register.

     "I don't know," Anastasia admitted, hand lifting to brush flakes of white down a window pane streaking with the condensation of her hot fingers. The woman was a walking furnace. "In my eyes, it was so unexpected, we didn't know how to react. If you'd...stayed, and we'd talked, I don't think things would be this way."

     "So it's my fault for leaving so quickly when you clearly pulled away and wanted to be nowhere near me-"

     "Firea, no," she turned to look at me, gripping the edge of the window sill suddenly beneath tight, red fingers. She swallowed hard while only seeing a curtain of my own red hair blocking the side of my face. Even though Thérèse had parted it, the curls had a mind of their own, and quickly went back into place after the wind startled them enough. "It's not your fault, none of it...it's just...we didn't know how to...even as, as spontaneous as these strange situations always are that appear around you, that...no, not 'that,' but-..."

     She didn't know what to say. I'd never practiced for the moment, having never imagined that it would occur. But she seemed to have, lips opening and closing, trying to put the script together that was failing her then.

     "You know we love you, Firea."

     Earl's voice made me drop my eyes on the window sill, leaving behind the struggling soul that finally gained leave of the gate, making his way slowly up the road to the unknown beyond.

     Leaving us all far behind, until next the world said to return.

     "I know."

     My head turned to the side, scarf still up to obscure the most of my face, but revealing one damaged eye and one bound. As much poise as he tried to have, I saw the shock inside as we met eyes for the first time in a very long time. In good lighting, with nothing to distract.

     I looked my father in the eye, and I stared. Tired, feeling the purple ring no doubt beneath it. Feeling the cuts on my face that'd yet to heal, and the small white scars on always-tanned skin that never would. Knowing he was seeing a glimpse of me that not many ever saw, those days. Not many more than Keir and Magaris, and sometimes Lucia.

     The raw version of me. Unfiltered, no magic, no glamor, no transformation. Just a single eye, but for some reason, it seemed to mean the world to him.

     His green irises leaked with stunned awe.

     "But I don't feel anything for you."

     My head turned forward again, looking back up to the sky. Seeing the clouds, gray and somber, but so calm, and thinking of the ones metaphorically on my heart at the moment.

     "Wait, no," I sought to correct myself, thinking. "As you may know, I was tortured a few days ago, and only just woke up today. Since I generally don't feel anything for a while afterwards, and it's easier to just react and pretend to your surroundings than to fake what you don't have, that's probably why I feel nothing when I look at you now. It's probably something like that, at least. Sometimes, I see you, and I really do miss you, but the fear of rejection and of being seen as I really am, beneath the magic, and being turned away from again, deter me from coming back. Because-"

      "No matter what," Mother answered, grasping my hands harder.

     "-because you said 'no matter what,' and then you didn't mean it. So why should I believe you again? You know what power you had over me. You know how much I loved you. I was basically obsessed with all of you people. I'd have done anything...so many things, if only to stay with you, to be loved by you. But after Kitri...after he reminded me that you can only trust someone else so much, before you have to place yourself first in a situation where no one will look out for you, when the one you trust is the one hurting you, I couldn't do it again. I was already trampled over for my entire life by..."