Business Arrangement

Part 31

CHAPTER 31:

The ink from the abandoned Bee pen slithers across the page as if magic taints its aura, Ender flashes his gaze on the area Gabriel strokes my thigh. I drop my head on the broad shoulder in a resting position. Gabriel leans his head in to lower a kiss against my forehead. Astrid and Kaito ask all the questions regarding Lolita's exact nature in her reasoning regarding hurting me in that interrogation period. I stare at Eden, she eyes me, not with hostility, but more questions than I believe I should answer.

"What have you been up to?" Eden asks me after Astrid steps aside when Lolita refuses to answer questions about Robert Millennium. It won't help her in the long run if she keeps up this stoic façade, like this place isn't hurting her from the inside out, being locked up like this with no knowledge of what's happening out in the world right now.

I glance at Gabriel, "Working."

"On what?" Ender disrupts, eyeing me.

I shrug at him, "Anything that keeps a Bee occupied, Ender. It's been quite some time, you know. I figure a thanks should be in order." I tell him, arching an expectant eyebrow.

He gives me a dirty look, of all things, a thank you doesn't seem to be the most appropriate thing to say when the last I saw him, I betrayed him as he betrayed me. Ender leans on his forearms, "I won't underestimate you again."

Gabriel arches a brow, "Regretting it now that you're in a snowglobe of the Nectar Society?" He asks him securely, leaning forward too. He pulls out a small black leather notebook with a golden Parker pen, fancy. That brand normally produces fountain pens, so as I watch Gabriel stroke it up and down, sideways in cursive writing, with those veiny hands straining with each movement. I memorise his movements like a painting in 3D.

I don't realise it until I flick up at the sensation of a heavy gaze, Ender has narrowed eyes and frustration dashing in them like fluctuating notions of music, the way sound waves dash around is how I imagine it looks in those caramel eyes, "I need to talk to you, alone." He states.

Gabriel tilts his head over, looking at me over his shoulder, I tap his hip.

He smiles, "You'll talk to me, Ender, or you won't get a single word in by the time your little war runs dry. You recall ever reading up on the history of the World wars, the 1938 beginning, Hitler moved into the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, WW II?" He wonders, looking at Ender curiously, but Gabriel isn't always about correct, right angles, he would often use an irrelevant but heart wrenching story and make it so relevant, even today. I watch him the same way a curious little beastie watches a recorded film in a theatre for the first time.

It's magical and it's scary...and it's like listening to a violin play under the stormy rain and harsh fire, but with a cozy book in a luxurious Victorian loveseat. It makes my heart beat faster and my mind relaxes.

Ender gives him a bland look, "Yes, what relevance does this have here."

Gabriel shrugs and leans back into me, "Maybe nothing, or perhaps everything. You set off on a war-storm against Lyra's family as if Hitler himself slithered his way back into you as a host. You plagued emotions, killed whatever you wanted for the sole purpose of blaming someone for who they are, for what they were born as. Your war wasn't with Lyra, but because she's a Stinger, you unnecessarily stabbed her many times until you tried to kill pieces of her for the sole purpose of your beliefs, your revenge plan...that did you no good in the end. You sit here and stew behind this transparent and yet opaque piece of glass without ever reflecting your choices. You want her aloe to teethe your way back in, but in reality, no one will remember you in a peaceful way. The same way no one sees Hitler as anything more than an animal, a sheep in a wolf's costume. Your wolf costume has been removed, your dragon fire burned out, what is it you live for now?"