Her Emerald Eyes - Mahoutsukai no Yome (Short Story)

Promise

"No!" Elias jerked upright in his bed, arm outstretched as if reaching for something. His eyes recognised the room, and he panted, hand moving to clench at his chest.

"Elias? What happened?" His laboured breathing chased away her grogginess as her concern grew. "Elias! What's wrong?Are you alright? What do I do?"

Is he having a heart attack? She thought to herself.

"Elias." She called again, tugging at his sleeve.

Finally, he turned his skull to look at her.

She merely stared back, with wide, emerald eyes.

"Chise," he gasped out, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into a squeezing embrace.

She yelped a little, struggling slightly to breathe. "Elias, are you okay? What's wrong?"

"I—" his body trembled as she gave him the time he needed to gather himself.

"It hurts. Inside my chest. It hurts."

Alarmed, Chise tried pulling away so that she could take a good look at him, only to realise that he had locked her in a dead grip. "Do you need medical attention? I'll go get Shannon—"

He hugged her even tighter the moment she mentioned leaving. "I had a nightmare, I think."

Chise blinked. "Pardon?"

"You left me. I couldn't reach you. No matter how hard I tried," he explained, albeit cryptic to Chise's ears. "And it hurt."

"Why would I —?"

Then his trembling amplified, racking his body up and down, so violently as if he was....sobbing? "What is this...feeling? Is this an emotion?" His voice was strained.

Emotion. Nightmare.

Chise had a grasp of the situation now.

She gently stroked his back to calm him, feeling those strong posterior muscles ripple as he shuddered. "Elias, can you try describing to me this feeling?" Chise asked in a soothing voice.

"It hurts. It is as if a blade has pierced through my body, and an invisible hand is twisting it in my gut. It is crushing me from within. It hurts. Something is choking me...it's difficult to talk, to breathe—"

He abruptly stopped, and Chise felt something drip onto her back.

He reluctantly let go of her, and she recognised immediately what it was.

Tears.

Chise didn't think this was possible. She didn't think Elias himself thought he was capable of crying.

Elias touched his eyes, and stared at his hand that came out soaked. He tried wiping the substance off of his face, but more trickled down his skull and dripped off his jaw. "What is happening to me?"

Chise's expression softened. Now it was her turn to hug him tight, putting her arms around his neck. She had to stand on her knees because he was just so tall even when he was kneeling. "You're crying, Elias."

"Crying?"

"Yes. I do it too. You've seen me cry. It happens when we're emotionally overwhelmed."

"I...don't understand. Why does it hurt...here?" Chise felt his hand clench back at his chest, where his heart should be. "What emotion is this?"

"We cry for many reasons. But in your case, right now, I think it's...sadness."

"Sadness?"

"Mm hmm." Chise let go of him, so she could place her hand over his. She seemed so small in his presence, yet she had no idea how important to him she had become. She eased herself into his chest, where it hurt. Her warmth seemed to soothe his emotions; the worst of his tremblings were over. "We usually feel sad when we lose something—or someone—very dear to us, that we never want to part with. Or when we feel...hopeless. I...think I know how you feel. The pain, it can be crippling, it makes you want to stop living."

Elias remembered how she was when they first met. He recalled that Chise had little to no will to live at that time, her charitable actions never held any regard to her own well-being. His arms tightened around her. "Is this...what you feel...often? This much pain?"

"Felt," she corrected, smiling up at him. "You made it go away. Sure, it wants to come back sometimes, and sometimes it does, but you always kept it at bay. Being with you, everything felt better."

That comforted him. To know that he was worth being by Chise's side, he was glad she thought so.

"I suppose...I feel better as well when you're around. Whenever you're not close to me, I get cold—lonely, and recently there's...something else. Something that comes with the cold...and the pain."

"Something else?

"I think...it happens with the thought of you leaving me, that one day when you walk out the door, you may never return to me. Together with the pain, I felt something like this once, when you left with Cartaphilus and I couldn't find you. In my dream, you left me, and I couldn't get to you. You left me and you didn't come back."

Chise was too stunned for words. She would never have imagined Elias to value her so much and so dear that he dreaded the thought of her leaving, as if she ever would. Where else would she go now that her heart belonged to him?

"Fear," she said. "I think that's fear."

Elias was silent for a moment as he digested this information. "Fear," he echoed, trying out the word in his mind. "Yes...I was terrified of losing you, that you may never return to my side, that you would wish to leave me, that no matter what I do, I cannot have you back. Yes, that scares me."

Chise pulled away from the hug to look at him, and held his hands in her lap. Despite having no facial muscles at all to conjure any facial expressions, she could tell that he meant what he said. She could tell from his voice alone.

"I didn't know..." she began. "All this time, it never occurred to me that I wasn't the only one between us to have this fear."

Elias' skull titled the way it did whenever he was confused. "Huh?"

"I was once afraid of the monsters that haunted me. I had gotten used to being an unwanted burden, of being homeless. The pain tortured me so much I became numb, and I lost my will to live. I wanted to die. I stopped fearing anything then.

"But when you bought me from that auction...when you told me to hold my head high and treated me as a person, cared for me when no one else did, even when back then I was just a specimen to you, some of those entities became my friends, and I finally have a home to return to, I found somewhere to perch on. You, Ruth, Silky, you guys have become my family...then slowly a new fear began festering. I was afraid that one day I would become obsolete to you. That one day you would toss me away and leave me, and I would lose everything again. I was terrified of you abandoning me. Heh, I still do, actually."

She looked down in shame and regret. If Elias had done things the way she did, always expecting to die at the end of it, how would she had felt? She would be heartbroken, consumed by the fear that at any moment she would lose him. Was this what he had felt every time she risked her life? "I didn't know. All my reckless actions...I must have caused you so much distress. I'm sorry. I had never thought about the possibility that, maybe, I have become important to you as much as you are important to me. I had always believed that I was disposable to you."

"Chise," Elias cupped her face with his hands and tilted her head so she could look at him. "You are the only one, who truly sees me. When the fae are disgusted by my very existence, and when humans fear me as a monster, you accepted me. When I belonged to neither kind, fae or human, you offered me a kind of warmth that no one has ever shown me. You never flinched at my touch, and you always return my embrace. I have walked this Earth for many centuries, yet I received these things from no one but you. So tell me, Chise, how can you be disposable, when you are so precious to me?"

Chise practically threw herself at him. "I see now," she said. "In our loneliness we found comfort from each other. And in this house, I found somewhere I belong, somewhere I call home. My promise to you still stands, Elias. I would never leave you until you are done with me. My heart," she placed his hand over her chest. "Is yours."

"And mine, yours." He inched forward to nuzzle her face.