‼️TW: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS MEMORIES OF PHYSICAL/SEXUAL ABUSE‼️
He knows.
My heart dropped. Fear enveloped every cell in my body, but in an odd contrast to the prior moments, my trembling subsided. It faded into a misty, outward calm, emanating the assumption of remaining unfazed, but I felt anything but such an assumption. An ominous prickle traveled down from the crown of my head to the back of my neck, flickering lower in a series of goosebumps from my spine to my knees, and then to my ankles. My skin seemed to be suddenly bombarded by a blistering cold, though it was warm and humid in reality out on that balcony, and any process of thought or response was locked away to a hidden place in my mind.
How is it possible? How could he have found out?
All of my worst expectations, the ones I had used to comfort myself, along with the preconceived notion that none of them could ever possibly come to pass, were staring directly into my eyes, forcing me to wake up and face what I'd tried to run away from—I certainly wanted to run away. I wanted to do what I'd always done in times of trouble or terror, what never really helped me, but what I'd learned might take me to a better place in the pits of my soul. I wanted to curl up in a ball like the foolish coward I was, and ignore every mocking expression fate sent my way. I wanted to forget that I'd ever found out anything past the facade of Kassidy.
Because Chrollo would forgive me then, wouldn't he? If it wasn't my fault, since I'd never been told what the chain user looked like in physical appearance, if I'd been deceived by my lover's enemy in a valiant effort to get closer him, I would simply be a naive dreamer with a bleeding heart towards those in pain. I wouldn't have known any better—the chain user is one of many secrets, after all. Perhaps he would believe me if I told him nothing different than what I'd been telling him for months now.
"I will only ask you this once."
The ringing bell of finality, of almost nauseating silk dripping from those words, left me ultimately petrified. He was looking for my denial. He knew exactly who Kassidy was, and he was waiting for me to speak one single sentence of rebuttal, to lie to him just once. It would be enough for him—my deceit would be enough for him to come to the conclusion, despite months of my own honest professions of love, that he had been tricked. Chrollo was used to trusting no one but himself, and the ambiguous path of fate, anyway.
But then he trusted you. And you've torn that trust to shreds.
How could I retrain the perception learned by a lifetime of lonesomeness, when even I, myself, knew how rigid that lonesomeness could make one's heart? Devastation after devastation had struck that unknowing child who still lived in a frightened cage deep inside his soul, and I had become only another among the lineup of many. Even now, I could see the desperate attempt to shroud that devastation with suspicion, with detachment, with an unbiased questionnaire which searched for my blunder, but it still lingered underneath. I saw the strain it pulled from him to rebuild what he'd let down around me, and I saw that frightened child hiding in plain sight from the cruelty before him. But this time, it was I who had dealt such a ruthless blow; this time, it was I who had hurt him in his most vulnerable state.
But how...?
I found no urge to speak. I could only stare into those deadened amber-gray irises, picking for my own answer. No sound escaped my lips, but tears still slipped from my eyes, noiselessly weeping for the damage I'd done, the one safety that I had destroyed, the second heart that I had broken within the timespan of a single day. But this heart was the one which held my own, the one which continued to visibly yearn for my own, and that one fact made things so much worse.
There was a part of him who wanted to believe that I didn't know what he was talking about, what he referenced so coldly, but that part was weak and faint in stature—I could see as much, too, in his eyes. He knew better than to become an optimist, even for me, for the very binder of his darkened soul. He had reverted to every characteristic he'd come to know as Chrollo Lucilfer, and my lover was buried beneath it.
Hence why he's dressed in such a way.
My own soul crumbled, breaking down into trillions of sorrowful pieces. Every step I'd made with him towards moving on from the demons of my childhood, shattered; every encouraging word he'd spoken to me, every coaxing touch and gentle reminder that I was not who I had been convinced I was, a worthless object of pleasure meant for the whims of others, all of it was tarnished now, blotted and ruined. I felt nothing like the strong individual he'd helped me become, and it was no one's fault but my own.
I can't lie to you.
But it wasn't supposed to happen this way. He wasn't supposed to hear from anyone else's mouth the treacherous secret that I kept. What had happened to all of those nights of reassurance? What had happened to the promises of forgiveness? What had happened to the knowledge he held of my anxieties, and the promise to handle them with care?
If it had been you who'd told him, maybe it wouldn't be this way. But he knows now, and there's nothing you can do to change that.
He knows that you've been friends with the chain user since the first time he'd asked you who Kassidy was.
He knows you've comforted the chain user and called him and sent him meaningless "good morning" messages.
He knows you've spent a month and a half living at the chain user's apartment while he was away, trusting you. He was trusting you.
He'd always trusted me so willingly despite his own inner tendencies towards possession. He'd put away every vice in his heart just to allow mine a soft place to fall. All of that, and I was the one who stood with a dagger to his back.
My hand slowly withdrew from his face, the face which had become so expressionless and unfeeling, and yet it spoke of every burden in the world. I faltered back a single step, my mouth parting and my breaths coming in quiet, muted gasps, while a plagued acceptance dawned in his hazy gaze, as if he had just now decided there was no doubt in his assumption. I watched as he suffocated the disbelief threatening to cloud his demeanor, covering it with something too patient. It terrified me. Everything I'd ever feared he would become, everything I'd convinced myself he would never resort to, not with me, was revealing itself before my eyes.
There was a resilience, a contempt, in my mind for it, however, though perhaps it was my own last attempt at scrambling for a guard, for a way to shroud his view of the trillions of pieces my soul had broken down to—he'd always been able to see directly into my soul. But this resilience became spite, and that spite was formed out of irrationality, hatred for Kurapika, hatred for what Kurapika had done to the only place that offered me safety. I didn't want to give his name the satisfaction of being spoken into words.
I tried to swallow down the strangling lump in my throat, but I couldn't. My features twisted mutedly with the repressed sobs as I held a foreign gaze, and I was only able to pull one name to my lips in an ignorant hope of bringing life back to the inhumanly still figure before me.
"Chrollo-"
"Do. Not. Ignore. My question." His voice was low, and monotone, and he spoke every word separate, yet there was still that off-putting edge of velvet—my breathing hitched and further shallowed at the sound. "I will not repeat myself, (Y/n). Answer me."
There it was, the anger that I'd dreaded. It gashed my resilience. My teeth clenched together painfully, and I begged the building cries to subside, to at least allow me to respond coherently.
This is what you wanted, right? You'll have nothing else to hide.
But not like this. There was so much misunderstanding now; so much had been muddled and damaged beyond repair. He was assuming the worst, but what could I say to change that? As paralyzed as I had become by his bone-chilling aura, the ghostly pale of his complexion, the blackening of his irises branding straight through me, I knew that he was hurt. I had hurt him.
Use Feeler Inversion. Project it now. Don't allow him to torture himself this way any longer.
I couldn't. I was frozen. I was waiting to see in him, in my lover, what I had been haunted by my entire life. I was so close to slipping away from the present—my heart was racing, thudding obnoxiously in my ears, and my vision had blurred around the corners; my inhales were nothing but stifled, sharp gasps, and uncontrollable trembles had returned to my limbs. But this time, the one I had learned to turn to when memories consumed me was the one who sparked those memories to begin with.
No. No, it can't happen this way.
I regarded him with the wary tendency of a caged animal, but I didn't want to. Perhaps such was why the tears continued to fall. I didn't want to see him this way, but I had no choice—not a flicker of empathy, or any feeling at all, shone in his gaze.
"Kurapika," I choked out, forcing words through a gritted jaw, still striving against the rising whimpers. "Kassidy... is—the chain user."
I waited for a reaction—inwardly, I cowered away from that reaction. I waited for seconds, and then minutes, for a violent outburst, for yelling, and even, in reflex, for degrading insults to be hurled my way, but all that continued to happen was the death of his stare, wide and unforgiving. And perhaps this was worse. The calm of his reaction was what elicited the tingling fright crawling over every inch of my skin, and it was entirely unfamiliar, strange, otherworldly. I'd never known a fear like this before in my life.
I'm not afraid of you. You won't hurt me. You can't hurt me.
But those thoughts were only desperate tries to convince myself against what I foresaw, what I predicted, what I'd known would happen as an engrained punishment after messing up so badly. Still, I thought them. I wanted to believe them, yet I was once again reminded of how fragile a system of new belief is when compared to what is drilled into the brain of a helpless child. And such was exactly what I felt like in that moment.
A helpless child—vulnerable, exposed, weak. You've ruined everything, (Y/n).
Chrollo didn't move. His eyes regarded me loftily, and I felt small under their scald—I hated them, and I feared them. They weren't the eyes of my lover.
"You knew," he whispered plaintively—had the circumstances been any different, and had I not been the subject of such consuming emotion pulsing from his aura, I might've read something like pain in that voice. "You knew, and yet you chose to stay with him. You begged me to stay with him."
I winced at the blade of his tone.
"You could've said no," I hissed shakily, slipping into a high-pitched whine.
I knew it was unfair of me to say something so unrealistic—I wouldn't have let him say no. But I knew my own intentions. I had to stay with Kurapika; I had to protect Chrollo.
You would be dead, or severely impaired, had I not done this. My mind huddled away from the thought.
But it seemed that he, too, could see the lie in my words, and not just from my own perspective. A flicker of defense glimmered in his shadowed gaze, and his jaw drew infinitesimally more taut, but apart from those minor changes, his expression remained void.
"That isn't true," he uttered, and he advanced with a slow step, and then another.
We were a single breath apart once more—I struggled to maintain airflow, and I worked to heave enough will into my muscles to remain standing, to keep from stumbling away, to keep from hiding like the helpless little child I was. The terror in my composure was poorly shrouded, however; I knew he could perceive it, and until right then, he'd made no outward signs that would lead me to believe he even cared. But as he held my teary stare, his facade seemed to soften, if only just the most minuscule amount. His irises flitted lower, suddenly examining my features in a gentle way, an appalled reverence shining within them, as if he had realized that my fear had been sparked by him—that lonesome flash of agony made itself apparent again, and I was able to remember, for just a second, that he was not the demon I fought against.
"I couldn't force you to stay," Chrollo breathed faintly, his brows twitching downwards, nearly unnoticeably. "I wouldn't force you into anything, my (Y/n). You aren't mine to control—you are free from control, and from abuse, from manipulation. I don't want to control you..."
His words caught in the back of his throat. A stronger well of liquid poured silently from my eyes, and my abdomen contracted with the will of those quiet sobs. How I yearned to be surrounded by his arms again, to forget that any of this had ever come to pass, and how I yearned to hear him say that I was forgiven, that he understood.
It seemed, as he lifted his palms to my cheeks and carefully stroked away the dampness from the swollen skin beneath my eyes, that he might've, or that, at least, he wanted to. A shuddered sigh escaped his lips—I thought I saw them tremble through my glazed vision. When I looked back into his eyes, he'd leaned closer, his forehead brushing against my forehead, and his nose grazing mine. I shivered, daring to lift my own hands again and resting them unsteadily at his exposed collar bones, slipping my fingers around the back of his neck just to keep him in place for a moment longer.
"I don't want to control you," he repeated into my mouth, hushed and broken. "I love you, (Y/n)." An afflicted pause followed as his lips parted over mine yet another time, and my sore eyelids fluttered closed—we didn't connect. "But I can't force you to love me."
And he was gone. I exhaled sharply, shocked and stabbed by the loss of his touch, by the misconception haunting his last words. It rattled me to my core, and I gazed, dumbfounded, at the stone of the balcony floor, gradually curling my fingers into loose fists over the place where my heart had been ruthlessly ripped from my chest.
He doesn't believe that I love him.
He had been deceived by the treachery of his own mind, and in such deceit, he had succumbed to his misery. He would rather believe that I didn't love him and avoid the pain of what he perceived to be false hope over believing my spoken word, my infinite professions.
The material nature of my own heightened emotions clouded any logical thought concerning Feeler Inversion or a full divulge of the truth, and I stammered back to life, turning jaggedly in the direction he'd left. I dragged breath into my lungs, releasing it in a series of solemn, muted cries, and clambered off of the balcony, back through the french doors and into the room that I'd come to know safety within—our bedroom, dimly lit by the bedside lamp.
Chrollo was standing next to our bed, unmoving. His back was to me as he faced the sheets that we'd slept in together, the blankets he'd held me under, the place where we'd made perfect love countless times. I stopped, resisting the build of a painfully frozen lump in my throat, searching for the words to say, for anything to say. But everything was stuck in a ball of horror deep inside my stomach, twisting and churning and waiting to implode upon itself. I wished I could hear his thoughts, and I wished I knew what the difference was which caused the swift shift back into his icy, stagnant cold.
"How long have you known?"
The question was spoken so airily that, at first, I could hardly decipher what he was asking. He didn't move away from the bed as he spoke, though, and I knew that his eyes remained fixed on those sheets, on those blankets. Memories reverberated in an anguished contrast to the present within his almost echoed tone. I could do nothing but tell him the truth.
"Since your first trip to the Republic of Padokea. H-he told me when I visited his apartment."
His shoulders visibly stiffened, and I wondered sullenly if his hands were clenched into fists inside the pockets of his coat.
"So, he did lie to you," he rumbled—another rise of quiet fury tainted his words, still deceitfully sweet. "He told you his name was Kassidy, and formed a friendship with you in an attempt to try to get closer to me."
If only things had stayed so simple.
Of course, that had been true to begin with. Kurapika's motives, at the time, had been purely driven by his rage, his vengeance, and he was willing to do anything to achieve it. He was even willing to manipulate me into thinking we were friends—I remembered the moment of confusion I felt when he'd asked me, after I'd thought I'd already clarified, if we were to be friends. Perhaps his conscience had kicked in after seeing me in such a vulnerable state at that museum; perhaps then was when he had begun to feel a connection to me. Either way, things were not so simple now, and they never would be. His feelings for me were too real.
But as much as I hated those feelings, they were a large part of the reason why I was able to protect Chrollo. Why couldn't he see my intention? Why did he let himself be torn apart by his own conclusions? And why could I not break free of the cage his fury inflicted upon me to show him how wrong he was? Above all, I certainly felt the true and utter meaning of the word worthless.
I said nothing to refute his statement. Silence hung around us, threatening to explode beneath the surface; tears rolled from my eyes. Everything was slipping away.
Finally, he turned from the bed. I flinched, sniffling and rubbing already-drenched fingers over my cheeks, grasping for the confidence to hold his glare as he placed one foot agonizingly in front of the other, gracefully, tauntingly striding closer. I strived to steel my exterior, leveling my gaze with his, and I noticed something inside it that hadn't been present before—a misty glaze tinted the amber-gray of his irises, and glossy orange hues reflected off of the surface of his eyes.
"But I expected as much from him," he stated emotionlessly, his steps becoming ever slower. "Or, perhaps I should've. I should've expected that I couldn't hide you forever; I should've expected that the chain user would be on the hunt for other powerful Nen users, and that it was strange for you to make such a close friend in such a short amount of time."
When he was only inches away again, he waited, tilting his head in a contemplative way—I observed each and every one of his movements, suspended in my trembling fear, but I didn't miss the saddened narrow of his glassy eyes, those ever-pondering, melancholy eyes of ten thousand lifetimes.
"In a way, I..." Chrollo trailed away, his voice becoming a hitched breath. "I did expect it from the chain user. You were lied to, my love—he never wanted your friendship; he only wanted the possibilities of your Nen. He is formidable enough to be deft in the ways of sensing powerful users; he must've assumed you might somehow lead to me. And how could you have known? You weren't aware of his physical appearance."
Goosebumps created a trail where his fingertips grazed my jawline, that unsettling gentleness infecting his demeanor. The way he spoke frightened me, but it hurt me all the same. There was a tremor in his voice, be it soft and uneven, but it sounded as if he were hoping against his own conclusions, as if he were praying that they weren't correct. Panic built in my mind as I stuttered internally for a way to cut him off, to stop him from these new conclusions that I could see him drawing.
Say something. Do something.
"You have such a genuine, naive heart," he murmured, glancing down to the clothes of his that I still wore. "But the danger with such genuineness is that it is often recognized and swayed against its wishes. It is nothing to do with your strengths, (Y/n)—the chain user preyed upon your weaknesses, and earned your pity, did he not? And after earning that pity, after stealing your sympathy and capturing your friendship, then he decided to tell you the truth."
My jaw tightened, and I furrowed my brows, reaching up to wrap a careful hand around his wrist and pushing away from him.
I don't want to speak to you like this. I'm sorry.
"Don't condescend to me," I snapped roughly. "You don't know anything about what really happened." I whipped my head around and willingly shot daggers through the glare I sent in his direction. "You're acting like a fool right now, Chrollo."
I'm sorry.
It was what I really wanted to say. I wanted to fall to my knees and plead for forgiveness. It was all I'd ever done, and all I'd ever known how to do. But maybe my pride was finally standing up for me, or maybe I was remembering something Machi had once told me about standing my ground when I knew I was on the correct ground to stand. I wondered briefly if he'd ever been called a fool before, and winced at my own insult.
He didn't respond immediately, and he didn't move closer to me again. I allowed my shoulders to relax warily, my chest rising and falling unstably with each sniffled breath, and I rolled my head back around to my front, pinching the bridge of my nose with shaky fingers and wishing away the desolation, the conflict, of the present.
I didn't hear him when he ghosted to my side, no nearer than an arm's length away, but I felt his longing stare, the desperation in that stare, and the anger in that stare—his anger set off hundreds of alarms in my mind.
"I expected these things from the chain user," he echoed again, a hoarse whisper. "But I certainly didn't expect them from you—binder of Lucifer, how deceitful you've become. You've secured my soul while hunting for the affections of someone else, and you've held up your end of this facade well. It's why you kept his identity a secret, is it not?." A hard, humorless chuckle escaped his lips. "I commend you, love. Not even I can pretend the belonging of my soul to what fate wills it, let alone maintain such pretenses. Are you satisfied to know that the soul you've shattered still lies in your palms?"
The usually sure, usually steady monotone of his voice cracked, revealing how broken I'd truly left him—if I could hear even the smallest slip from someone so prone to emotionlessness, how much stronger would that brokenness be felt by that one?
Shattered.
And yet, here he stands, never retracting his admission that you have every piece.
His words were so far from the truth, but I knew that he didn't speak them lightly. He believed every sentence that poured from his mouth, as if they were coming directly from the split in his blackened heart. And there was no verbal way to describe the ease with which it clawed at the very essence of my being.
You don't really believe that. It isn't true. It can't be true.
I stood still, though I felt as if I were falling, an albatross hanging loosely in wind, allowing the currents of that wind to toss it around uselessly, because the flight of its wings had ceased to exist. I didn't want to listen to anymore. I didn't want to feel my heart break by the consequences of my own actions anymore than it already had.
But he didn't stop. His cruel words continued, though even I knew that they weren't intended to hurt me more than they were an outward lash of the pain he felt, the pain I'd inflicted.
"Would you like to know the most tragic aspect of betrayal?" Chrollo didn't seem to be hiding the roughened edge to his voice now, and I didn't dare to look into his eyes for fear of what I might see. "The most tragic aspect of betrayal is that it never comes from the enemy."
Betrayal.
The worst sin to be committed in his eyes—betrayal. And I had become the betrayer.
What have I done?
A bizarre image flickered within the confines of my mind at that moment, and it was of me lying awake in our bed, my haven, with my arms wrapped around his peacefully slumbering form, tenderly holding his head to my chest. My fingers ran gently through his hair as I murmured in the dead of night, a night rare enough to host his unconsciousness, how dearly I loved him, how closely I treasured his beautifully melancholy soul, the lengths I would go to in order to protect his soul from harm, to assure his wary mind that I would always stay faithful to him, that he needn't worry for the path of fate or where it would take me, because I would always remain at his side.
That night had been less than two months in the past, before he'd left, so why did it feel so torturously far away? How could so much have changed? What was he told of Kurapika that would lead him to believe such ludicrous, tormented lies? But I suppose it was enough that he'd found out from someone apart from me. There was nothing more that needed to be said.
The frantic energy of my cries subsided; the panic in my mind ebbed. What was left behind consisted of unfiltered sadness, loss, the frustration of what should have been simply a misunderstanding.
Glistening tears dropped from my eyes and spattered on the carpet below me. I peered through my dampened lashes at the agony fully present in his expression, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my own arms around him. I wanted to comfort him.
"Perhaps I am a fool," he rasped huskily. "But I'm not so foolish as to misinterpret the look in his eyes when they met yours, because I know that sensation exactly the same."
A chord struck in my thoughts. My swollen lips parted as his words brought back a flurry of memories regarding the fateful night of that forced kiss, the way Kurapika had touched me while I was intoxicated and unable to push him away, as well as that next morning when my hazy mind had thought I was once again reunited with my lover, while I only laid pressed against the body of the one I wished death upon. I swallowed, a visible effort, and stared with wide eyes at the floor, wishing to vanquish that wretched memory from my mind.
Chrollo is the only one who's never taken advantage of me, and the only one who's protected me in my weakness.
Perhaps Kurapika did love me, but not in the way Chrollo loved me. It wasn't selfless, or at least, it didn't strive to be selfless. But what had he seen? What could he have possibly seen?
"Do you honestly think that I carry affection for him?" I asked through my tears. "Do you?"
"I don't want you to," he growled under his breath. "Why would you? Has he won you over with the tragedy of his past? Have I become nothing but a heartless murderer to you, (Y/n)?"
My arms dropped to my sides. I choked back the sobs once again and stepped heavily towards him—nothing about his exterior shifted when I pointed a finger to his chest and spoke my next words in a whimpered scowl.
"You slaughtered his family. Why would you?" The sound of my voice rose to a high-pitched holler. "Did you expect me not to find sympathy for another individual who's life was ripped from them as a helpless child?! Of course I have sympathy for him, Chrollo. He was twelve years old when he watched you gouge out the eyes of everyone he knew and loved. He was thirteen years old when he buried the bodies of his mother, and his father, and his friends. Did you think it was easy for me to keep this a secret? Of course I wanted to protect him, because I know how it feels to not have a soul in the world who cares about your freedom."
Again, I waited for a reaction. I waited for him to yell back; I waited to cower in fear. As confident as I sounded, my stomach still flipped and turned in an unsteady mix of apprehension and terror.
But I was not given what I expected. His facade was wounded by the blow of my words even further, and the glassiness in his eyes seemed to well, a strange contrast to the emptiness of his features. I'd never before felt the amount of emotion I could feel from him in that moment, however.
The purple shadowing his alabaster complexion seemed to deepen, and suddenly, he appeared exhausted, tired and worn. I was struck with a second urge to hold him, to release my guard and tell him my words weren't true, but I didn't listen to that urge. My hand slowly fell from his chest, and I stood straighter, biting back another round of tears. I didn't want to look into those eyes any longer; I didn't want to do this anymore. And so, I turned away from him; I strode ruggedly towards the door, with only the manic intent to leave.
"Why should I care for what a pretentious product of society feels?" Chrollo inquired weakly, and it was worded as an authentic question, as if he were really looking for an answer. I paused rigidly at the threshold, one palm against the open door. "Has your soul drifted so far away that you no longer have the will to empathize with me, (Y/n)? The chain user has those memories to look back upon; I have none, and to this day, my life remains a blur before my eyes. Who am I, (Y/n)? Because I have always assumed that I am nothing." His breathing was labored, and unsteady, and I could feel the work it took for him to continue. "But we were supposed to be nothing together, and it was supposed to set us apart from everything else."
The walls he'd structured were crumbling, but it was not one's fault over the other. Both of us were to blame. My blunder had been the catalyst, but his assumptions had led to this point.
It was supposed to set us apart from everything else.
Absolute belonging—that's what we are, right? That's what we will always be. So why does it feel like this is the end?
Why could I not bring the right words to my tongue? Why was I so frozen and worthless? And why was my first course of action to run away from conflict when it arose?
"I saw you with him," he whispered. "I left last night for York New. All I wanted was to be in your arms again, little angel; all I wanted was to find my security and steadiness again, pressed to your heart. I needed you, and I so anticipated seeing your beautiful face at the sight of my early arrival. I swore to myself that I would never leave you again. But I saw you with him at that coffee shop, and I recognized the way he looked at you—you spent a month and a half in his apartment, subject to that gaze. And you were always so hesitant to speak of him...
"I'd thought, before, that I felt nothing for him. But I was wrong—I despise the chain user. I hate him for being what I couldn't be, and for causing so much conflict in your soul that you would hide from me, that you would lie to me. I wanted to kill him. I could've killed him, if I'd have stayed, but I didn't. It wouldn't change the choice you've made; it wouldn't change the lies I've been led to believe. You've betrayed me, (Y/n)."
His words were sharp silver blades. I winced as if I'd just been stabbed.
Of course he'd seen us. There would be no other explanation for the conclusions he'd drawn, and those conclusions were so set in stone that I feared I would never, ever be able to dismantle them. There was no turning back from this point. What I'd tried to keep between my fingers had finally, ultimately slipped away.
I couldn't tell anymore if Chrollo was inadvertently searching for my dispute, for my will to fight back, but either way, I didn't have it. I didn't want to fight; I didn't want to watch as our love burned by the fire of a million flames. And I didn't turn to face him even one more time before my feet were carrying me away from our bedroom.
Stop running. You can't leave. You have to go back.
But I didn't want to. I was so tired, so hurt, so twisted by the morality of his love, and by the morality of Kurapika's love. And although I knew that Chrollo's perception of my mistake was entirely incorrect, I still wanted to run away. I wanted to run away from this confusion, this blinding pain, if only for a little while; I wanted to leave behind the enchanting image I'd seen in my mind of his return as a stark comparison to what it had become. Both of us were making mistakes now, but neither of us seemed willing to fix them. A self fulfilling prophecy, indeed.
Tracks of liquid spilled down my cheeks and jaw and tickled the skin of my throat underneath the rising fabric of the black turtleneck I wore, but I made no attempt to wipe them away. I wasn't bothering to see where I was going, or think about where I would go, when I plunged down the stairs and into the darkness of the reverberating foyer. My footsteps bounced and echoed around the large room, and I heard nothing else beside that sound apart from silence—thick, stifling silence, the kind that no one should have to endure.
His calm had never ceased. It had cracked, but it had never fully dropped. He'd remained as outwardly unfeeling as when we'd started. And perhaps that was what ultimately broke my heart.
Once I'd reached the ground level, I raced for the front door, fumbling blindly by the key rack for the lights and flipping on whatever it was that I found. Illumination flooded my glossy eyes, and I blinked furiously, sniffling and heaving for futile breaths as I scrambled for the keys to the Jeep.
What am I doing? Why am I leaving?
I hardly paused to focus, but even if I would've tried, I wouldn't have been able to pinpoint one emotion. I'd never felt such indescribable agony before, and for a fleeting second, I thought it might be more than just mental, soulful wounds.
"Aw, is she gonna try to run away?"
Cruel voices mocking me as I struggled on my knees to crawl in any direction but towards them.
"Come back here, you pesky little shit."
Slap. Thud. I fell smack against the concrete floor as a rough hand made stunned contact with the back of my head. My mind swam and spun with a combination of drugs and physical pain derived from beatings and cuts.
But I would keep trying to run. If I could outlive the beatings, I would never have to feel my autonomy being taken away from me again. I would never again be controlled and at the whims of the vile lusts of the repulsive men around me. Cuts and beatings were more tolerable.
"Does she thinks she's getting anywhere?" Taunting laughter filled my ringing ears. "Worthless little bitch. You'll never be anything but a worthless little bitch."
My own audible cries sounded in a rolling echo around me, and I felt the distortion of my features as I stood, shuddering violently, by door to my home. The keys jingled metallically in my hands as they shook. I had reached my own limit. I couldn't take anymore.
Worthless bitch.
Slave. Slut.
Whore.
Fucktoy. Wench.
"No one will ever want you."
My jaw popped and slid as I opened my mouth in a noiseless scream. I hated so much about the world, but perhaps what I hated most was myself.
A hand laid on my shoulder, and then another on my other shoulder, and then I was being turned around. I didn't fight it; I only watched through furrowed brows and a pounding head and glazed eyes as Chrollo gripped my arms and then my wrists and fell to his knees before me.
"Please don't leave me," he gasped hoarsely—there were tears, so many tears, streaking from his wide, terrified gaze, glinting amber and pleading adoration creating a sickening sob in his voice. "I love you more than my own life, (Y/n). Why don't you love me?"
I stared in horror down at the crumbling man who'd resorted in begging on his knees for me to love him, the man I already loved, my Lucifer who gripped my soul tighter than fate, itself. Glimmering liquid traced down the sides of his face, a final testament that I hadn't thought I would ever see from someone so cold to the world, and yet I adored and protected that coldness. The build of everything around me, everything within me, bursted at the seams, and I couldn't withhold my emotions for a second more. Aura spilled from the darkest facets of my heart and latched to the outpouring of his soul as I involuntarily released everything and anything I'd ever felt in the course of my lifetime.
Silence. But different, somehow. I could still hear my pulse roaring in my ears, but I could hear a second pulse, as well, a foreign pulse, yet familiar. I'd laid against that pulse night after night, and dreamt of its warmth when it wasn't there to lull me to sleep. Now, it was playing in my body the same way my own would, but it wasn't mine. I was hearing Chrollo's heartbeat as it relived and thrashed under the weight of my emotions.
Feeler Inversion enveloped his form and suffocated his own energy, leaving behind nothing else but what I forced him to feel. His grasp on my wrists loosened, and his wide eyes stretched wider, falling away from contact with mine and reaching the floor—pain, wincing, agonizing pain, glittered in those eyes. And then, hatred, vengeful, tireless hatred, and beside that, loneliness, hopeless loneliness, because no one had ever come to save me. Exhilarating fear, and freedom, and confusion, and giving up—the desolation of giving up had been something I'd nearly forgotten about. Everything, repeating in his eyes, replaying in his expression.
He's feeling everything I've ever felt, I realized in distress—the visible representation was almost enough for me to wish to wrench my aura away, to free him of the shackles of my mind, but I couldn't. It seemed to have a will of its own, and it scathed his will in the process.
I stumbled back again, nearly running into the door and barely catching myself. But there was hope in his petrified irises now, and amusement, and trust. After those came the lightening, stunning sensation of love, but the fear that it welcomed at not being professed, and finally, the relief that came with our mutual connection. Lust and desire, and fear again, and sympathy—that sympathy marked the beginning of my truth, the genuine reveal of what I'd hidden from him. And he was forced to understand, to experience, the love I held for him every day of my betrayal as it unfolded, the conflict I endured, the self hatred I trekked under, and the harrowing journey of revealing as much to the one I never wanted to disappoint.
Everything. He's felt everything.
Tears disintegrated into his skin, drying over the cloudy shrouds beneath his beautiful gaze as he sat back on his heels, shocked into utter wordlessness. My teeth gritted together—he looked to his hands, and then to mine, and then into my eyes. Eventually, after an infinity of minutes, my energy released him, and my eyelids drooped heavily—I'd expended as much effort in making him feel as he had in feeling.
I tripped over my feet, bracing myself against the handle, and wrenched the door open, exhaling roughly. Sorrow—there was sorrow in Chrollo's ethereally amber-gray irises now. They seemed to have aged perhaps a thousand more years than usual. But he never uttered out a single sentence as I gripped tighter to the keys; he only marveled enchantingly, his porcelain chest heaving for even airflow, his perfect lips parting, speechless.
"I love you," I whimpered quietly. "I've always been yours, Chrollo."
The door slammed. I left him, alone, reeling in the wake of emotional destruction, and drove away to god-knows-where.