Ruin Maketh Me

94 - Wavering resolve

     Warning: Suicide (And no, don't worry none of the male leads 'die')
     I stumble back, all ground and solid anchoring breaking away into the abyss opening from the Pit, out, out, out, out, swallowing me. Whole. This isn't happening. This can't be, no. But tell me, someone tell me, who is that man walking towards me? Who is that man, stepping forwards, eyes locked onto mine, eyes glowing phantom blue even though they're really red, hair shining platinum even though it's a black deeper than lightlessness.
     I don't think I understand.
     No.
     The walls waver, shake, turn on their head and back again, but these things, the hybrid Jacques Julius doesn't disappear like all my other illusions, disillusions that fizzle away into nothingness.
     "Kitten, don't be scared." IT coos, voice gooey and sticky with something unfamiliar.
     No. I jerk backwards, eyes fixed straight. This thing that acts so like Jacques, can't be Jacques. He wouldn't have spoken to me like that. The same words, yes, he would've used them, but he'd never have used that tone, like he's atoning to a broken child. He'd never let his voice fill with regret, he didn't understand it, even when he took me in, he still didn't comprehend the desire to look back.
    He's changed. The Pit bubbles around me. Of course he's changed when you left him to die in a hospital suite, never to see you, never to hear you, never to taste you, never to feel you. You always thought he was the one keeping you like a rag doll, but truth is, you were the one dragging him to and fro and throwing him away like a rag doll. Or do you deny it? Do you deny designing the trap, watching him crash, leaving him paralysed, throwing him away?
     My chest heaves, white walls and people and everything blurring into one singular colour - the Pit. Deny it, deny it, deny it—
     I deny it.
     I fucking deny it!
     I had no choice, it wasn't my fault.
    Choices? Its laugh devours me, You keep going on and on about being helpless. But when were you really helpless? Had you been kinder, where would you be now? You're guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. You loved him, but you killed him, and you regretted it every single day afterwards. You thought stepping in front of a car would earn you redemption, or did you really think there was a child who needed saving? You know the truth.
The Pit surges, squirms and EVOLVES. It grows eyes, a hundred pairs, thousands, dark, black, bottomless and pitiless. They blink open in unison, You killed yourself. After damning Jacques, after damning Dan, after damning your mother. Tell me, if you were going to DIE in the first place, why did you have to kill them too? Again and again and again, are you going to do this again? Are you going to kill Ralphus and Eirwen and Sol too?
    I stagger away, away, but it's everywhere. Everywhere. The walls, the floors; my heart has broken, and now, there's nothing to stop it seeping out and staining it all.
     No, I shake my head slowly, hands twitching. There had been a child. I had saved someone!
     —Dark, the night had been an unlit beast, gifted illumination only through taillights of blood red. It had been raining, wetness had dripped through my collar, drenched the shirt until it stuck to my skin. I had stared at the scars pressing into fitful existence through the translucent white. What had I been thinking? What? I don't know, something that made me want to light a cigarette and stuff it down my throat. So, I lit the cigarette, and it had sparkled like a heavenly creature with wings, an angel, and when my glance flickered up, there was a child in the middle of the road. His black hair was plastered to his pale face, and his black, black eyes were both dead and alive, and they had screamed of something that alarmed me, deeply. I remember the clang of my lighter on the floor.
     I ran.
     The dark was expanding into white, he was going to be hit by a car. I had to save him. I had to save him. I had to sa—
     Was there really a child?
     "I don't think that kid even existed."
     Was there really a child?
     "I think it was just me, my mind and all the things I hated about the world."
     Was there really a child?
     "I tried to save myself, redeem the things I've done but I died instead."
     —Dark, the night had been an unlit beast, gifted illumination only through taillights of blood red. It had been raining, wetness had dripped through my collar, drenched the shirt until it stuck to my skin. I had stared at the scars pressing into fitful existence through the translucent white. And I hated the rain, and I hated the wet tarmac, and I hated the trickle of water down my neck, and I hated my hair sticking to my forehead, and I hated the expensive shirt I was wearing, and I hated the money I used to buy it, and I hated the ugliness of the scars, and I hated my body, and I hated myself. So, I lit the cigarette, and it had sparkled like a heavenly creature with wings, an angel, but I hated it. I hated the rub of paper against my skin, and I hated the not short, not long length, and I hated the taste, and I hated the sensation of wet paper on my lips, and I hated the smell.
     And it didn't make me feel better. I remember the clang of my lighter on the floor.
    So, I started walking to nowhere. Forwards, forwards, forwards, forwards. The dark was expanding into white, a halo, a real angel, a real creature from heaven, and I dropped the cigarette, and I opened my arms. I had to save myself. I had to save myself. I had to sa—
     NO!
     NO!
     NO!
     —ynder! Look at me, please."
    Warmth tugs me away from the pull of the Pit, but It doesn't fight like usual, the eyes bend, the mouth smiles, and it tugs slipperily away, tendrils of black stroking the strands of my hair like Ralph would.     
     Silver, purple and gold burst into my sight.
     The hybrid Jacques still advances, and there's an expression on his face I've never seen.
     "Cynder!" He calls.
     Not kitten. Not a kitten anymore, not me.
     A laugh, hysterical and full of irony bursts into air, but it doesn't belong to me. My head turns slowly towards the sound, away from Ralph and Eirwen and Sol, and red on red shoots through the space, an all-consuming fire.
     "What, do you two really know each other, from your previous world?" Leonard laughs.
     Something tightens around my arm, "There's no way Cynder would be associated with an Otherworlder."  All burnt butter.
My eyes glance down, Ralphus's fingers are burning white, and there's already a reddening purple patch spreading slowly from below his hand, like blood.
     Jacques ignores him, eyes shifting fixedly between Ralphus, Eirwen, Sol and me.
     "Cynder."
     It grows dangerous.
     I stare numbly at him. What'd I do before, when he spoke like that? I laughed at him and drank all his wine as he locked the door and plundered me, over and over. And still, like that, had I really loved him? I didn't care, not really. Not enough for anything.
But then, for whom did I die for?
I didn't want to die, not really.
     Sound rings in and out of my ear, dead, dullened, soulless things that mean nothing.
     Static, the rush of wind, a deep tolling, once, twice, thrice,
    Do you recognise this man? Is he an acquaintance from your last life? Tell me, Cynder! Ralphus, he, he's—
"You seek freedom, and yet you always find yourself entangled deeper. You try to save yourself, and yet you always find yourself even more injured. This time, you don't have to try so hard. Don't you think there'll be the freedom you seek in death?"
    Who is the one who speaks the truth?
Enough. Everything's so conflicted. I don't want to do this.
"Enough."
"What's enough, Cynder?" Jacques's voice wavers.
My tongue speaks for itself, "Why are you here?"
The phantom blue hallucination fizzles, "I came here like you did."
"Why are you here?"
"To find you."
    "Why are you here?"
    Fizzle, fizzle, burn burn, "You know the reason."
"To ruin my life again?"
Drop.
"Ruin your life?" Jacques's eyes flash, and his fist crashes into the wall besides us, crumbling plaster and stone, "You ruined my life! I had everything, everything! And you came, and it all went to shit. And then you died, I—
"And now, do you finally regret it?" Everything monotone.
His face changes, and, if it wasn't now, I would've laughed.
"Do you regret it?" I stare at the floor, then at the ceiling, "Come on, tell me. Do you regret it?"
"Cynder, I think that's enough." Sol's voice floats into my ears.
"Stay out of it!" Jacques burns, finally, burns, "You didn't owe me anything Cynder, not before, not the food, the clothes, the money, none of that. But this time, you can't escape your atonement, for all those days I spent staring at the ceiling, staring at the walls, waiting for you to come! You owe me that!"
"By staying by your side?"
"Yes," He says lower than a whisper, "By staying by my side, every day, every year, until the day I kill you, that's the only way you can atone."
The laugh doesn't seem to be able to come out, not anymore.
"You'll never kill me."
"You'll never kill me, Jacques."
—no."
But it's not Jacques who says that.
"No."
My shoulders stiffen.
"No."
This strangely familiar voice doesn't belong here.
"NO."
I turn slowly, and a shiver courses through the entirety of my gut.
"Cynder isn't an Otherworlder." Ralph laughs, shoulders shaking, arms wrapped around himself, "There's no way he's one, you're lying." He turns on me, brilliant eyes covered by his fallen fringe, "You're just confused, he's manipulating you, don't you see?"
His words punch me in the stomach, and all air bursts from my chest like I'm a balloon.
"Lying?" Jacques's eyes zeroes in on Ralph slowly, pupils slitting into serpentine lines, "We lived together for five years as lovers. Where do you think his surname Delclard came from? I gave him my mother's name."
My fingers tighten, and my eyes tremble to Ralph. He stands still. Very still. So still, it's as if he was genuinely made of stone and quartz, a lifeless thing that can be reduced to ashes and dust in mere seconds.
     ...Not lovers...
Another hand interlocks with mine, "I'm here."
Eirwen, I mouth his name, but no sound comes out. My eyes can't seem to draw away from Ralph. I can't run away. I can't leave this place. I need to hear what he says. Surely, he'll accept it? Kind, gentle, supportive, knightly Ralph will accept me, he's accepted me already. This is nothing. A speck of sand to the vast, toiling ocean.
"Don't think of taking him away. He was mine before, in our previous lives, and he'll be mine now, in this life."
Ralph's mouth opens and closes with no sound coming out, and finally he turns creakily, a broken mannequin, towards Sol and Eirwen, "You knew? Did you all know?"
Stop.
"Them?" A harsh, brash, mocking laugh grates clearly from Leonard's mouth, "Even I knew!"
Stop.
Steps thunder towards us, and in the far distance, a speck of blue and a speck of pink crash towards this ellipsis, "What's going on here?"
Stop.
A smile of vengeance rips across the Fox's lips, "You know Cynder's an Otherworlder too?"
Stop.
Hoplin lips bite close immediately, and their eyes shoot towards me, but the sudden slowing of their feet, and the agitated perseverance crumpling their dainty features give everything away, starker than words can ever be.
"Stop!"
There's a jolt, a shudder, a silence, and Ralph's knees shake, and he falls to the floor, and along with him, my heart falls too.
"This can't be right." He says shakily, lips spasming upwards, "I don't understand at all. There's no way I'd love an Otherworlder." He stretches towards me, grabs the corner of my shirt, clenches it in his hand, "Cynder, tell me it's not true."

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AN: Despite the content, I was actually really satisfied writing this chapter, I felt as if all the hidden threads I buried before makes sense now (Yeah, I didn't know how it'd turn out either), so right now, I'm really happy! Though, I'm not looking forward to writing the next chapters... too much heartbreak ooomph.