TW: Suicidal attempts/thoughts.
Pari's Pov:
I needed to find Leo.
"Where is Leo?" I demanded.
Charles looked around the room expectantly, then froze.
"He was just here-" He trailed of, looking towards Vivian.
I snapped my head to Vivian expecting and answer for Leo's location. She looked just as lost as Charles.
"He was just here, but he must have slipped out when-"
I scoffed. "Are you being serious right now?"
They hung their heads low, knowing that they should have done a better job.
"You are meant to be his elite force and you DO NOT even know where he is?" I raised my voice this day was just getting better and better.
I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. I sighed inwardly as a little bit of peace made its way into my mind.
"Paris, they have been busy with helping Aria, im sure they were very pre occupied and worried, so just leave it." she slowly explained.
I gritted my teeth at that, as much as i hate to argue with her i had to say it.
"It is their job!" I frustratedly said.
"Yes, but they had another job to do." She simply said.
I took a long deep breath as I swallowed what I was about to say because I had made myself a promise.
I had promised myself to never shout at Calithea. Ad i wasn't going to break it over a stupid argument. I needed to control this temper and not let it get the better of me.
"Maybe he's in his office." she suggested, sending that i was on the verge of loosing it.
I glanced at her. Grateful.
She knew that there was a chance that he wasn't in his office but she knew that i needed to get out there quickly and to calm myself down.
I nodded.
"Thanks." I muttered as I left.
Trailing down the hallway and figuring out just where the hell Leo could be i thought back to a day similar to this very one.
Two years ago, the year that everything fell apart.
But also the year that if perhaps I hadn't been quick enough we may have lost more than what we did.
I made my way down the stairs and swiftly towards Leo's study that as i could see from the crack below the door was not in use.
Still there could be a chance he had fallen asleep in the room.
So that was why I opened it.
"Leo?" I called.
There was no reply and the room was rather dark, but i stepped in, leaving the door slightly open so the amber light of the foyer could still creep into the room.
I turned and then I saw him.
He hadn't seemed to hear me calling his name or let alone coming into the room, he instead looked blankly at his hand.
Sitting on the desk chair, his face was empty. He was looking down at his hand and when I followed his eyeline i saw what he was looking at.
My blood ran cold.
His fingers traced slowly the barrel of the gun, while the other hand gripped the trigger so harshly that I was scared he was going to shoot himself anytime.
I didn't think. I just ran.
I ran towards him and ripped the gun out of his hand. Leo jolted out of his trance and looked up at me, his grey eyes wide and his breathing increased as he panicked at my action.
"W-wha-" He started.
"Just what the hell do you think your doing." I clenched my jaw in such intense anger that I don't even know how i could contain it.
"What - what do you mean?" He slurred.
That was when I could smell it.
The alcohol that was just filling the air between us. Leo hadn't touched alcohol in 2 years. I knew that for a fact.
I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and almost punched him in the face but refrained myself.
"What. were. you. doing?" I seethed.
"Nothing." He shot back immediately.
I shoved him back onto the chair but his drunken state he wobbled of off it and fell straight onto the floor.
"Your pathetic." I spat.
My fury was building up as I saw him flailing around on the floor.
But then he stopped.
He stopped trying to get up and gave up. Instead he looked up at me.
His eyes were blood shot.
And now there were tears dripping out of them.
"I can't do this." He whispered. "All of this. Not again."
I shook my head. "You can."
"No. I don't want to. Please Paris. Help me." He begged. "Just give me the gun. I can't do this anymore. Please. Please Paris."
I had to look away from him. Here he was begging me to help him. To give him the gun and let him end his life.
"Stop it." I yelled. "Stop it Leo. I will never let you do it."
"Just let me go." He pleaded. Tears forming and falling rapidly.
I looked at him. There on the floor, his heart scattered around him in bits and fragments that he no longer had the strength to pick up and piece together again.
His face was wracked with pain etched onto every single line of his face.
He might as well have stabbed himself, the way he was drowning in a non-existent battle between nothing and everything.
If it were possible i would have said that Leo Santiago was drowning in his own blood, that while no one else but him could see it, he was smeared with the blood of his mother, brother and now the woman that he loved the most in the world.
And he was drowning in it.
I reached down, if he could not piece together his heart. I would.
If he was drowning then i'd just have to help him breath.
I'd collect every piece back and if I had to i'd superglue it all back together, just like I had two years ago, just like I had always done for him.
I'd hold an oxygen cannister for when he could not breath.
Anyway i could find, I would.
Yet the one thing about superglue and oxygen cannisters is they eventually run out.
The super glue will fade as more cracks appear and the oxygen cannister at some point will run out.
There is only so much those around someone can do.
It is the fault of humans for their own hubristic values of thinking they are able to fix someone that needs a infinite store of something they can never provide.
If Leo doesn't heal himself, then he will always drown, crack, and eventually break so much that it wouldn't just be his heart that i'd have to superglue back.
I reached forward to Leo and pulled him into my arms.
I guess I am one of those hubristic human beings.
Hugging him so hard that he forgets his own drowning.
He clutched at my shirt and his sobs echoed the room. He no longer pleaded, he no longer begged. He just sobbed.
"I know." I murmured. "I know."
When in reality I didn't know anything.
When in reality I was just a selfish little bastard for not giving him the gun.
I guess between the both of us we both know who the pathetic one truly is.
....