The Darkness Gets Bigger

10. Burn Everything You Love, Then Burn The Ashes

Cat's POV:

Small sparks from the flames rose into the sky like tiny fireflies dancing and then disappearing into the purple dusk.
I rubbed my bare arms, shivering because I was standing a good distance away from the fire we had made. Not nearly close enough to be warmed by it. Also because I wasn't allowed to wear a jacket. Xavier had rushed me out of the bunk, without giving me time to even brush my overgrown mess that I call hair.

"Throw those on,"

I glanced up at Xavier, who jerked his head toward the box he had dumped near the bonfire. I had repeatedly badgered him on the way here, begging him  to tell me what it held. At last, the guesswork was over. I trudged over the dry, brittle grass and pulled open the wooden crate.

"Are you kidding me?" I said, dumbfounded as I ripped my eyes away from the contents of the box. "Is this a joke?"

"Does it look like I'm laughing?" Xavier deadpanned, staring straight into the crackling embers.

The light from the fire fell on his face at an angle, accenting his cheekbones and making his eyes look hollow. Haunting, yet attractive. I couldn't help but take a long look at him, before he caught me staring and remarked:

"Less drooling, more tossing."

I saw the shadow of a smirk on his face, as he continued to be transfixed by the spitting, convulsing bonfire.

I scooped up the Take This To Your Grave record, still in its sleeve, remembering my own copy I had at home.

Home.

My mother, would remember her daughter leaving the house to meet with Fall Out Boy, and never coming back.

I stroked the old blue tinted picture of the four of them, smiling sadly as I placed it gingerly at the edge of the flame so it caught fire very slowly.

"You know, throwing is a much more efficient method," Xavier snapped.

He grabbed the Folie A Deux record, my favourite one, out of my hands and snapped it in two, before hurling it into the orange abyss.

He jogged back to the crate, muttering something about him always having to do everything for me. I watched him carefully as he returned with Andy's pair of drumsticks and his snare drum.

"Why are we doing this?" I piped up as he aimed for the centre of the inferno.

For him he was throwing away music he had never listened to, always thought of as irrelevant or not good enough for him to pay attention to. But for me, he was burning everything I loved. Everything I had left to remind me of my childhood, of my life before all this shit happened.

"Because," he said, smashing the snare drum onto the firewood.

Tears pricked the back of my eyes and I began shaking, not only due to the cold this time.

"Because? Because what? I know what you're doing Xavier, you're making me hurt because of how I hurt you. You're destroying the things I love, because I rejected your love. You're nothing but a a jealous bastard!" I yelled, making him lower the drumsticks from over his head.

He turned his head towards me, his normally charcoal eyes reflected the fire in front of us and for a moment, it really looked like his eyes were engulfed in flames. He stomped towards me, stony faced and stopped so our toes were touching.

I squinted up at him, waiting for him to punch me, but the blow never came.
I furrowed my brows at him in confusion.

"You're right." He said so simply, it was almost an anticlimax.