White Roses - ReVamped

Chapter Thirty-Five: Heavy Crown

"Did what bother me?" Erasmus asked before dunking his head in the water. He came back up after a long moment. I wondered if he was trying to show off. When I was a little girl, I would've gawked at him and asked how he did that. He'd smile then. He would've reached out for me and ruffled my hair and tell me that it was because he was a faerie and that made him stronger than me.

But don't worry, I'll protect you.

Now I felt like he might rip me apart if he could.

"Having a stupid human girl fall in love with you?" I asked. It was true.

Erasmus turned his back to me. "I was...I was trying to have you trust me as a child. You were terrified if I remember correctly." 

Of course he was remembering correctly. How could I not be terrified? 

"That isn't really answering the question." I said and sat on the edge of the tube. My knees poked out a bit and I looked down at the bruises on them. They were a dark purple green and I imagined them as rotting roses, but they only looked bad. They didn't hurt as much.

"I wanted you to trust me and I wanted you to come to me when you grew up," he said and then looked back at me. "Why didn't you? Most humans would have." Oh so now he was blaming me.

"I created a life for myself," I said.

Erasmus waited.

I had Lowell. He held my hand when I cried at thirteen when Erasmus left. I picked up a camera. For some reason, translating what I saw and put it in a photo saved me a lot. Mom stopped shoving pills into my mouth. I knew how to fake it for her and pretend. I had Drake.

"Humans are amazingly a lot more complicated than you thought."

"That is not answering my question." He parroted back at me.

I smiled at him as his eyes met mine. I focused on a muscular shoulder. That was a shoulder I used to rest my head on when I was upset or tired. I remember closing my eyes before feeling the weight of his head on mine after pressing a kiss to the crown of my head. I remember how warm that felt.

"What do you want to know?" I asked as he turned around and rested his chin on his forearms. The veins bulged out against the skin and I remember being a hormonal teenager staring at them like I am now, but not feeling the same surge of lust and curiosity about his body.

"What was this amazingly complicated life?"

"Really?" I asked as he nodded.

"Most humans would've gone searching for me as soon as they could." I was starting to think he was a bit insulted by this.

"You were really relying on that, weren't you?"

"As you said, you were in love with me." He seemed so confident in this statement. I wondered if it did bug him just a little to make a kid fall in love with him, but I guess he underestimated how quickly humans moved on. I wondered if faeries changed much at all. I mean, they lived forever. It could make them stuck in their ways. Maybe when I was younger or maybe I was in a different time, I would've run after him.

"I picked up a camera." I wasn't going to launch into a lecture about what human companionship can do for the mental well being. I wasn't sure someone like Erasmus could really understand that. "It was a good way to show what I was seeing in my head. I got lucky and people happened to like it."