Love Potion

The Last Person to Turn to

I stand still as I'm before him. Blood, tears and trauma stain me and my ratten fighting clothes. I feel exposed and ugly and dirty. There are tears in my eyes.

Killian invited me in at once. When he closes the black door, it dissipates into the wall.

I shiver in the room. It's just as when I first came here, when I first arrived. Grand, and dark, and cold: like him. I can't believe I'm here, again. I can't believe he, my enemy, is the one I turn to in my time of grief.

Killian doesn't seem that way as he watches we now. With such heart-breaking tenderness, yet intensity. As I stand lamely in his room.

But he stared at me, and there was a white gleam behind his eyes.

And he knew. He knew. And I knew he knew.

His eyes expanded. There was a seething fury in them like nothing I'd ever seen or achieved in him before. The fire spread over every bit of his face, curling his brow and lip and nose and setting a livid crease above it. "Majestio-" he began, through teeth bared like a beast, and he rushed towards me.

"No-!" I cry, and tears fill me again, and he embraces me, his arms around my back, his chin on my shoulder. I gasp and cry silently into his chest. He is warm and he smells the same before as in my bottlamor. As I wet his shirt with tears, I hold it tightly in my fist.

"Majestio tried to-"

"Please, don't say it."

"I'll frinxing kill him. I'm going to-"

"No, you're not," I weep. "You can't. You're the one that will fall. You know it." He breathes shudderingly against me. His hold on me is so tight, that I might crumble if he clasps me any less. "I already tore his face beyond compare, anyway."

He suddenly breaks from me, and holds me firmly by my arms, staring. I'm sure he's seen the whole scene. I choke at the thought of it, the thought of him knowing, this dirty thing that has happened to me, me at my ultimate, ugliest low. He's seen it. I sob and cry and fold onto the floor, but he catches me and takes me to his bed instead. He sits beside me there, on the thick purple duvet. My hands are fisted around the fabric again. I stare at my lap but all I can think about is Majestio's hands, which have been there.

He looks at my head and at my arms. His eyes are hooded and his hair is ruffed. He inhales, and exhales. "I'm sorry," he says. His voice comes gruffly. "Please, don't - don't-" He inhales again. "Just- are you okay?" he breathes a plead.

"Now- why- would you ask that?" I whimper.

He stares at the floor. I've never seen a man of so many senses. His eyes are so bagged and dark; they turn on me intensely. "I won't do anything you don't want me to." He only breathes it, but it still wins over the incredible quietude of his room. "I just, I- thank you for coming to me. First. I'll do anything for you. Do you want tea?"

I glance up at him. I nod, mutely. He stands, but his eyes don't break from me.

"You won't- you won't leave, will you?" he whispers. "I'll be back soon. Please stay in my bed. Don't go."

He looks at me a second more, opens his mouth, but doesn't speak. His last words waver, heard but silent, in the air. And then he flexes his hands, clenches them, and leaves. I watch his back until it disappears behind the door, and then some more.

Then I look back at myself. I dully notice the claws and scales still haunting my hands. My head has an unnatural emptiness to it; any thought that enters would be poison, and so no thoughts enter at all.

I stand from the bed, and roam to the tall black mirror that stands in the corner of the room (there's so much silence, I hear the shuff of the carpet underneath my feet) and I gaze at the girl it reflects. Her face is bleak and flawed, and her hair unbrushed. Two horns curl from her scalp. Her eyes, they are somehow violet-blue, though there's no life or light to them. Two fangs peek from under her top lip to pierce the bottom. Her neck is tainted with scales, as are her arms, and each of her fingers end in long, protruding, death-black claws. And they are bespattered with blood.