His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

Chapter 18: Moving On

"I don't want to talk about it, Eli," Elyria said the moment I walked through the apartment door – the eighth time she'd said it in the past week. It had become a bit of a pattern, really. After the first day, after I'd finally pried Kyrianna's body from her arms and had it taken care of, after I'd asked her how she was holding up that very first time, this cycle began: I would enter the apartment, she would feed me that line, she would flee to her bedroom no matter how I persisted, and I would leave her be; I couldn't spend every waking moment with her any longer, not when I was attempting to establish myself as the new head of what remained of the empire.

But after a week of this, it seemed she'd tired of the game. Now, instead of running to her room, she stayed where she was on the couch, a thick, dusty book spread open on her lap. She still wouldn't make eye contact, but she didn't move. That was a step in the right direction, wasn't it?

"Are you sure?" I asked cautiously as I closed the door, my eyes never leaving her impassive face. "I have a feeling you want to talk."

"No," she said simply, turning a page with a flick of a delicate finger. "I want you to leave me alone."

I took a slow step forward, my eyes searching hers for any hint of emotion; but today, her mask rivaled mine. "Then why aren't you leaving the room like you usually do when I come?"

"Because I want you to leave me alone," she said, and I realized she was no longer reading when she turned another page almost immediately, "not leave me alone."

"I don't think I follow," I said, stepping closer to the couch.

Finally, she turned her eyes to me, and I wondered if the annoyance dancing in them was just another part of the facade. "I want you to drop the topic and stay with me."

"You know I can't drop it," I told her, though I carefully lowered myself onto the empty cushion beside her. "You haven't said a word about it since it happened. You haven't said a word at all, really. Don't you want to talk about it? Isn't it bothering you?"

Her empty face broke out in a hard smile. "It is, Eli, but the reasons..." She turned her smile to the book on her lap, her eyes skimming the foreign symbols that covered the pages. "The reasons are selfish. I don't want to talk about it."

"I...don't think I follow."

She was silent for a long moment, her eyes suddenly frozen halfway down the page, but she soon snapped the book shut, the harsh thud shattering the silence. "I keep killing innocent people. That vampire, Derrick; that human, Gabriel; and now, Kyrianna. It feels horrible to know that without my existence, they would all be alive and well. Or, at the very least, they would have died more peacefully." She jerked her eyes to mine, and the hard glint to them sent a shock of feeling through me. "But do you know what feels even worse, Eli? Do you know what feels worse than being the reason that three people and probably more are dead? Realizing that you feel sorry not for them, but for yourself. Realizing that you're not wallowing in sadness because you miss them all, but because you might not be as perfect as you thought you were." She let loose a harsh laugh, lowering her gaze the closed book. "See? I'm doing it right now, just by having this conversation with you. I'm not honoring or remembering Kyrianna; I'm just pitying myself because, oh, poor Elyria, not always getting what she wants. Who cares about the dead! Who cares that entire lives have been wasted!" Her fit of hysteria died as she fell silent, burying her face in her hands, her elbows resting atop the ragged tome upon her lap.

"That's just human nature," I began cautiously when she didn't speak again. I wondered, was she crying behind those hands?

"You forget that I'm not human," she whispered, and the amethyst glow of her eyes swam behind the welling tears as she turned to me. "What nature is this?"