Cursed: Redemption

Chapter 12: Expecting the Unexpected Doesn't Exactly Work

~Persephone~

My hand reaches up and covers my eyes as I walk further away from the Destroyer and into the strange white light. Nothing here feels solid, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m dead or not, though I severely doubt it. Everything about this seems off, surreal, whatever you want to call it, but I still keep walking.

Almost imperceptibly the light begins to fade as I walk until I’m left in the midst of a beautiful dawn. My eyes begin to tear up ass I realise which dawn it’s meant to be. I scan my surroundings for him, silently cursing what he’s doing to me.

I find myself wishing that I’d never met him, that I’d been anywhere else that day. I wish that he wasn’t so understanding and kind, only to leave me when he got too scared of finding joy. As my thoughts turn grim, I feel his arms wrap around me, comforting me.

When his hand nears my face, though, my eyes snap open and I nearly bite it off. He curses me, pulling away as I turn my back on him.

“What the hell, Seph?” he yells, but I ignore him and try to walk away. Sadly, he’s controlling this little reality, so I keep finding myself back in front of him. His arm shoots out, his good hand wrapping around my wrist and pulling me closer. I still don’t look at him, and he growls, getting more agitated by the second. “I’m trying to help you, why can’t you see that?”

“I don’t want your help, Leo, I never want it again. I’m tired of being dependant on you, wanting your approval and feeling like a failure every time you run away from me. I want to be free of you,” I hiss at him, wrenching my arm from his grasp. “Somehow, I’ve learnt to regret what we have, because all it does is hurt me and I have no way to stop it. I feel powerless and I hate you for it!”

My outburst shocks him, I can see it, but I can’t help feeling the small bit of satisfaction sparking in my heart at finally telling him. I can’t believe I’ve waited four hundred years to say it, but now I really don’t want to stop. “You left me, and I’ve finally had enough. If I never see you again, it’ll be too soon.” I’m struggling to hold back tears from the pain I’m causing myself, from the cracks growing on my fragile heart, but I keep my head led high.

I storm back into my realm, breathing deeply to hold back the sobs threatening to escape, hoping against hope that he won’t follow. Sadly, he does, and I can feel his hand around my arm again. My patience has grown thin, so I do something I’ve always dreamed of…I send a few hundred volts of electricity through his nervous system, watching gleefully as he convulses in mid-air.

Though I can’t bring myself to walk away again, seeing him like this releases the weight from my shoulders and I sigh contently. When he comes to again, my eyes meet his in a murderous glare, and all I want to do is laugh at how outraged he is.

He gets to his feet slowly, avoiding any contact with me and staring at the purple swirling mists around his feet with what I gather to be malicious intent, or shame. Most likely both amongst a myriad of various emotions, but mostly shame, I hope.

And then he does something I don’t expect, he starts humming.

The song transports me to a time I wish I could forget, a time when we were so achingly happy waking up in the morning would make me smile instead of cry. When his arms would be around me while I fought off nightmares that weren’t my own. When he was there and I felt safe, when everything was as it should have been.

He hummed the song he wrote for me, a song I held close to my heart, the sound trapped in a crystal ball no bigger than my thumb hanging on a chain around my neck. I stand frozen, watching him silently, unable to let him stop as around us, memories grow in windows, his mixed with mine.