Nothing's Conventional About Us

XIV ~ Amber

Is it the fire of the past
Or that of the present
Or that of the unforeseeable future
That burns me tonight?
I do not know or care,
Till I burn 
In only your arms. 

Amber

"Stealing me, for them, was possibly easier than even stealing a little bird out of its nest in its parents' absence. I am almost certain that one of my parents, or both, had a major role to play.", her voice sounded like amber that had hardened over the surface of some ancient tree against time's test, and had now lost its life but retained its glimmer. 

" 'Possibly'?", he scoffed, as rage continued to flow in his veins like blood. It had now become a part of his blood and his being and he had wordlessly accepted that new status. 

"Who are you thinking to defend, Princess?"

Even the thought of it sounded absurd in his own mind. No one but she herself had defended her when she desperately needed someone to fight for her. And now she was trying to defend one of those cursed culprits - or even accomplices in any way, shape or form - even in her own mind's eye. 

"Myself." 

Her one, calm word sounded like the first gust of wind of a tornado's widest wing. It changed his basic thought procedure. For once, he was not a mere listener to her story, but a companion. Akin to someone who had endured and fought and survived and killed by her very side. Who had seen it all and yet lived to recount the horror. 

Of course she was defending herself. Of course she was telling herself active lies. Telling herself that she was, maybe, a little bit safer than she thought. 

"And you are still the second most paranoid and self-defensive person I have ever known.", he cracked a smile, for her sake, that looked like it belonged anywhere but there, in the cold that seemed to be seeping out of her mere memories and into the otherwise warm air of the training ground. 

She half-turned to smirk at him, joining him in ridiculing the twisted darkness of her life. But her hand suddenly flinched on the ground, as if the cold had seeped even into the floor and frozen it into the cold floor of her captor's abode. 

No. Not captor. Former captor. 

She restarted her briefly halted breathing, before his quickly raised fingers could even reach her chin. 

"I am fine.", she reassured him.

A strange, almost strangled smile appeared on his lips. 

"No Princess.", he took out his knife from the scabbard as he spoke. 

She could see it coming, but she reigned in her fighting instincts, and froze herself into not even so much as defending, or moving a muscle even as the blade suddenly moved against her skin and drew a sliver of blood from behind it. She did not even flinch. 

His eyes stayed on hers and he said the next words, "You did not even so much as flinch not because it did not hurt, but because you have trained yourself to endure such minor pain and not utter a syllable about it." 

He placed the knife back in its place and said, his eyes boring into hers, as if he was trying to inject the words right into her very soul, "You are not fine, Princess. You have simply gotten so used to waking up alone at night and feeling that unending terror seeping into your bones and crying out to no avail - no reprieve - that you have stopped crying out at all. Now you simply feel it all without moving a muscle, with a straight face, and pass it up as being fine."