His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

Chapter 4: Pretty Little Liar

"Elyria, stop," I called to the girl as I started down the dimly lit stairwell after her. She didn't stop, didn't even look back, simply maintaining her quick and angry pace down the stairs. "Elyria, please," I said, a hint of pleading to my tone. "Stop." Finally, I caught up to her, gently taking her wrist in my hand. It was so small beneath my fingers...

She stopped and spun to face me, having just reached the landing between her floor and the one below it. I stood a step above her, gazing down into her angry purple eyes, and I didn't release her arm. Her hand hung limp and spidery, dangling in the air between us.

"Let me go, Eli," she said in what would have been a level tone but for the heavy edge to her voice. "I don't want to talk right now."

"Why?" I asked, frowning now. "Why don't you want to talk to any of us? And why won't you take any of this seriously?"

"I'm taking this seriously," she snapped. "I just don't want to sit and dwell on it like the rest of you. It's over. It's done. I'm back, and I don't want to think about it anymore." She began to pull her wrist from my grasp, but I tightened my hold.

"I want you to think about it, to talk about it," I told her, an emotion to my voice that was odd even to me. "If you don't, I'm just going to keep dwelling on it, and so is Kyrianna, and so are you."

"I don't need to talk about it. I'm fine." Here, her tone softened, but just barely. "Just let it go, Eli."

"Talk to me," I begged. "Please."

"What do you want me to say?" Her voice cracked, and the ire left her eyes as tears began to well. "That I was trapped inside my own mind for a month? That I couldn't talk or control myself or..." She trailed off for a moment, her gaze dropping to my feet. "I couldn't see you, Eli. I couldn't see Kyrianna. I was all alone." Her body shook once, knocking curly strands of blood-red into her face, but I knew that she was crying. I watched between a pair of tight curls as a tear rolled slowly down her pale cheek. "I was all alone."

I took that final step down to the landing upon which she stood, closing the space between us as I wrapped my arms around her tightly. "It's okay," I whispered, beginning to gently stroke her tangled hair with one hand. "It's all over now."

Her body jerked against mine with a sob. "I told you I didn't want to talk about it. I told you," she murmured into my shoulder. "I told you." I lightly kissed the top of her head but didn't respond. I merely held her more tightly.

Neither of us noticed that Kyrianna stood on the set of stairs above, watching us with a pair of cold, cold pink eyes...

-?-

"You've gotten very tiny," I commented as I handed Elyria a steaming mug of green tea. She was perched upon the edge of the midnight-blue couch that sat in the middle of my small living room, looking exceptionally tiny now that she wore one of my T-shirts instead of her own. The black fabric hung baggily about her emaciated frame, and I couldn't imagine why she'd asked for it. Well, I could imagine, but the answers were all girly teenager things that I barely understood.

"That's what happens when you try and fail to live on blood," she responded, her voice empty of emotion. She took the small green mug from my hands and turned her gaze away from me, instead beginning to watch the steam rolling off of the brownish-green liquid.

I sat down beside her, making sure to keep a decent amount of space between us. She obviously wasn't in the mood to be close to people, even though she'd insisted upon wearing my shirt. "He kept you very pretty," was my next remark, and I hated myself for it the moment the words had left my lips. It made it sound like she'd been nothing more than a doll for James to play with, and while that was essentially the truth, it wasn't something he really needed to be bringing up so soon after the incident. I opened my mouth to offer a hasty apology, but she spoke before I could say a word.