Wake.

Chapter Two: Luke

~=Chapter Two=~

~=Luke=~

It's been a week, and I've only gotten more and more curious about him. I'd see him snaking around the halls, as silent and faceless as a shadow. He never talks to anyone, and every time I see him, he's alone. He still refusing to talk to me and it's starting to get on my nerves. I finally snapped as I tried to confront him once more. "Why are you ignoring me?" I asked angrily.

He let out a heavy sigh. "I'm not ignoring you, Elise. I notice you. I'm just trying to protect you."

How did he know my name? He wasn't in any of my classes, no one calls my name in the hallway, and no one has spoken a word about me. There's no possible way he could have guessed. I shook off my confusion. "What do you mean you're trying to protect me?"

He suddenly got a bit tense. He paused for a moment, and spoke. "There's no use trying to lie about who I am or what I do, so I'll just say it." His eyes grew dark and my ears perked up with interest. "I'm cursed. Everything I show the slightest attachment to always gets destroyed in the end. Always. That's why I was scared to be in a public school anyways, because I knew that it was a matter of time before I started to care about something, and watch it burn to ashes. That's why I've been 'ignoring' you for the past week, to make sure that you don't burn like the rest." I continued listening in a confused silence. "It's like a sea of despair. The closer you get, the more likely you'll drown."

I gave him a sympathetic look. He must've been through some tough emotional trauma of some sort, he sounds like he lost someone important to him. I debated whether or not to ask if my assumption was correct. Reluctantly, he answered for himself.

"My father was never around when I was growing up, and believe me, that was a good thing. However, I was left in my mothers' care, and she was a hard worker. She would leave early in the morning and come back in the late night, and I began to see her less and less. But one day, she grew very ill. I tried to raise money myself to pay for her hospital bill, but it was all in vain. When I had come back from a fundraiser, she had passed. The one person I was allowed to care about, and she died. It was at that young age that I learned the limitations of the curse I was given." I looked at him sympathetically, as he shot me a distant look. This story definately was a difficult one for him to tell. "The worst part was knowing. Knowing that it wasn't her illness that killed her, that it was me. And now" he said, looking me dead in the eyes for the first time, "I have you to look after."

I blushed lightly, but the look on his face led me to take it as anything but

a compliment. His eyes showed a mix of emotions. Anger, sadness, anxiety, stress, pain, and now something that I couldn't comprehend. Fear. His eyes were dark, but they were anything but dull. They were full of pain and rage, and other things I didn't understand. Some people say that the look in a person's eyes can portray more than words ever could. If this is true, than his greif must be extreme. I studied his beautiful blue eyes until I realize where they rested. I broke the momentary silence with a question.

"What do you mean 'you have me to look after?'"

I mean," he clarified, "that I have no intention of letting you suffer the same fate as she did."

I looked at him curiously. "I hate to rain on your parade buddy, but you know that you didn't actually kill her, right?" He shrugged this off. "That's what the doctor said. Her illness was a coincidence at best. It wasn't me alone that killed her, I admit, it was me and my father. But, I was involved. And, simply by this exchange of words, you're condemned to the same fate. The difference is that now I know, and I shall not make the same mistake twice. A promise, a curse, and time. These and nothing more are what bind me to you now." He partially lifted up the bottom of his sorry in a way that someone would if showing a scar. I shrank back when I saw the black symbol he had shown me. A pentagram, the size of my palm, was seen like a burn on otherwise unbruised skin.

"Perhaps now you understand the magnitude of what I was trying to explain to you."