Butterfly and Flame - Alina and Evan

Time is Fleeting

The winter was just around the corner and Christmas was days away. So much had happened ever since they had returned and she had been trying to piece together the tapestry of her life since then. It seemed she had been doing that ever since the day Michel had assaulted her. Ever since then her life had been a series of moments of great anguish, struggle or beauty. She hadn't had that much time to process it all then but now she simply wanted to forget but that seemed impossible. The nightmares still came for her even in the best days. She would wake up sweating and breathing so hard she felt as if though she had run a marathon. She felt the weight it was having on her family as well. Her parents had been distraught at learning of all that she had been through while they were away and had been kept in the dark. They simultaneously felt angry and helpless to help her. She recalled her dad crying, something she could never remember him doing. She felt heavy with guilt over it all. Especially for what had happened to her brother. That had been life changing for him and yet he couldn't have been further from despair than she was from happiness. For a moment she truly believed that it was a choice. It was a choice to be happy and just as easily a choice to be sad and despondent. She could see herself as the victim or as the hero in her own story. The trouble was that she wasn't sure if she deserved the happiness that lay before her. Not when she was also the cause of great upheaval in her family. Nothing could have surprised her more than learning the truth about who Ashley really was.

Evan stalked around the mansion like a man chained to a small cell. He walked down the long hallways and in and out of rooms as if looking for a way out. Just watching him made Christian anxious and he had been watching him long enough now. "Listen brother, you have got to get a grip. I know all of this has hit you like a bomb but nothing has really changed after all, has it?" Christian needed to snap Evan out of his melancholy and anger before he did something stupid or more aptly put, something truly Evan worthy, like leaving in the middle of the night and disappearing from their lives. He had done so countless of times before and it had always been difficult for him to adjust to life without his brother in it daily. Evan turned back to Christian with a stare he felt chilled by. "Nothing has changed? How can you sit there and say that?. Everything has changed. We are not truly blood brothers, I have lost the love of my life, and grandmother gave me this company like a present one would give a graduate. I feel like I'm suffocating Christian...I feel trapped and dangerously close to snapping. I have to talk to Alina or I'm going to go after them and bring them both back here and back to their senses". Christian sunk a little further into his seat. He knew exactly what had been tormenting Evan and he understood but he didn't agree with him. "Evan they need this time together. They need to talk and grieve and sort out all the truth from the lies. Grand has a lot to atone for, if only in her own mind, and well Alina needs to come to terms with who she really is. She too needs to find her own footing and come to terms with it all. Not to mention she needs to let the smoke die down from all the drama of having to tell her parents about what's been happening all this time. The girl has a heavy plate in front of her and you pressuring her isn't fair or healthy. I think you know that. How can you be so insecure after all you both have gone through? She loves you, you know that, we all know that, but she needs the safety and security of the love from her family to enter into a new life. One she's never known and one she is entitled to. Give her some more time and stop saying we are not blood. It's irritating me. The only blood I care about, between the two of us, is the blood we've shed for each other. Tell me you don't feel the same?" His eyes never left his brothers face while he said those words even though a little bit of him feared Evan would reject it, he still felt apart from them all. Why he couldn't see himself as everyone else did was beyond him? He was his elder brother and would always be that. He was the one he looked up to and tried to emulate. He was his idol if truth be told, he had always been and probably would always be. Christian stood up and slowly made his way to the floor to ceiling windows off the ground floor family room they stood in. He stared out the same window as Evan and forced himself to relax and wait for his brother to reply. He could never convince Evan of anything before but perhaps this time would be different.