ataraxia, lorenzo berkshire

"forty eight"

The prolonged hesitation had proved enough to make Valentina's dialogue - that she'd hurriedly prepared twenty seconds ago while the door between them was closed - evaporate out of the grasp of her memory.

"What-," Lorenzo muttered, forcing his eyes off of the everlasting gaze of her own.

"-What are you doing here, Val?"

Nauseated with the symptoms of sandpaper throat, Valentina parted her lips in hopes that an adequate answer would formulate by itself.

"..I," Her vocal chords croaked, riveting through her chest as she suddenly felt as though she'd forgotten how to use her words - her own voice.

For she was usually able to manipulate her thoughts and her speech around him as she was around anyone else.

All the circumstances back in fourth and fifth year - how sharp her tongue came to be when Lorenzo and the other Slytherin boys would mock her.

How even just mere months ago, Valentina would've had plenty to say to Lorenzo without an ounce of hesitation or inability.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

However, she could've never imagined the ugly segment of their time together to turn out just as hideous and twisted as it came to be as of the present.

She'd finally emphasised properly with Lorenzo's fears that had been harshly neglected and conditioned out of his mannerisms since he was a little boy.

The vulnerability of being emotional.

Lorenzo tilted his head slightly as he rested his shoulder against the oakwood doorframe, anticipating her answer.

"I'm-," Valentina cleared her throat, "Is Saskia here?"

He shook his head in negative.

"-Can I.. please come in, Enzo?"

Her voice was smaller than she could've ever thought was possible, and he seemed to notice, too.

Lorenzo while looking downwards upon Valentina, was overcome with guilt.

For it was his deliberate withdrawal, his social absence and his lack of comforting presence that had belittled her into a state of hysterical emotional confusion.

He wanted to feel her against him, to apologise for their entirety in which they'd spent together in which he'd behaved immaturely and unfairly.

For these lonesome months of Lorenzo Berkshire allowed him to insight and revel in self-reflection.

He regretted plenty.

His pathetic coping mechanisms and the people who he'd hurt as a result, with Valentina falling beneath this category primarily.

She was hurting. He knew she was.
And this caused him to hurt, too.

Yet, this sense of agony only seemed to stain a common trail wherever Lorenzo was to exist.

Like he were a hopeless sponge of pent up emotion, so much so that it began to overcome his body and into a type of aura that intoxicated and corrupted anyone who came near him.