"A Flame that Fades"

Chapter 9: The Price of Love

Freya's POV

It was clear now. He didn't need me, nor did he want my help. So what was the point of me staying here? If he wasn't going to let me close, then what was the point of hoping he'd ever come around? Maybe I was just fooling myself. Maybe I always had been.

I tried. I really did. But the walls he built around himself were too thick, too high. No matter how much I pushed, no matter how hard I fought to break through, I couldn't get past them.

I had given him everything I could—my time, my patience, my trust. But what good had it done? He still pushed me away. He still acted like I was a burden, a problem he couldn't fix. I wasn't asking him to be perfect. I wasn't asking him to open up completely. Just... something. Just enough for me to know he cared. To know that maybe, just maybe, he didn't want to face this alone.

But every time I tried, he shut me down. Like I didn't matter. Like none of it mattered.

I felt...useless. Maybe I wasn't meant to be the one to help him. Maybe I wasn't strong enough for this. Maybe...I wasn't even worth the fight.

That thought stung more than I cared to admit.

I stood there, in the middle of the quiet library, surrounded by books that once felt like a refuge. Now they were just distractions. The silence wasn't comforting anymore. It felt suffocating. Just like the silence between us.

I could leave. I could walk away and never look back. It would be easier, wouldn't it? Easier than continuing to watch him self-destruct, harder than pretending I didn't care. Because I did care. Too much. And it was killing me.

But what was the point of staying if he didn't want me here? If every attempt to reach him only seemed to push him further away?

I sat down at one of the tables, running my fingers through my hair, fighting the overwhelming sense of helplessness that threatened to swallow me whole. I didn't want to be the one to give up. But it was hard not to, when every step forward seemed to take us two steps back.

I had no answers. No solutions. Just a gaping hole where my hope used to be.

My frustration boiled over. I hated how he couldn't see it. How he couldn't understand that I never had any intention to hurt him. All I ever wanted was for him to know he wasn't alone in this world. That I saw him.

I saw the anger, the hurt, the way he wore his pain like armor—silent, distant, cold. But it was there. Always there, lurking behind the impenetrable facade. And it broke my heart, because I couldn't help him if he kept shutting me out, if he kept pushing me away.

I just wanted him to know I cared. To see that he didn't have to face this alone. That someone—I—could see past all the walls he built. But no matter how many times I tried to reach him, it was like I was speaking a language he couldn't understand, like he couldn't hear the words that mattered.

Didn't he know how badly I wanted to fix it? Fix him. But not in the way he probably thought. I didn't want to change him. I didn't want to "save" him, because he wasn't broken. He didn't need to be fixed.

I just wanted to be there for him. To let him know that his pain wasn't invisible to me. That he wasn't invisible to me.

It hurt more than I could put into words—this ache deep inside me that grew every time he pushed me away. Every time his silence grew colder, like a wall too high for me to climb.

I knew I couldn't force him to open up. But did he have to make it so hard? Couldn't he see that I wasn't trying to hurt him? That I wasn't some enemy lurking in the shadows?