Devils and Angels

i. pride and humility

f e u i l l e m o r t

the colour of a dying leaf

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MY PRIDE HELD ME BACK. 

Like sharp talons dragging into my flesh and words, heavy and bruising, yanking my tongue and curling it back into my mouth, burning it with my hot, rapid breaths; like wings beating at my back, trying to uproot me from the ground and spiral me into the oblivion pushing down on me. 

It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling―quite the opposite, actually―but each of my legs were pulling me in different directions, following my mind and heart, but I couldn't for the life of me decide which was pulling me where. 

It'd been seven-hundred and seventy-one days since I'd last spoken to Caspian Lucas, and extinguished the blaze in my throat as hot as the summer when I'd heard the echoing of my own steps intertwine with the pumping of my heart. The number was branded in my brain, growing with each day―with no idea of when the countdown began, and if all went right, no perceivable ending to the rapidly increasing number. Since that day, though, my tongue had forgotten how to form words around him, my mind halted to a standstill in his presence, and I still couldn't bring myself to lay down my weapons, because part of me was always ready for the fight. 

He saw me; I knew the feeling of his electric-blue eyes prickling into me like I did the back of my hand, and that was all the more reason to tear my feet away from the spot I was rooted to and push through the crowds, all elbows and stealthy slips, until I was out of his gaze and finally able to breathe again. 

Archie caught my elbow as I slid down the wall, his hand curving around the joint and hoisting me up mid-fall. His other arm wrapped around my shoulders, and I collapsed into his arms.

"Hey, sucker." He faintly smiled a little ways above me, the only thing keeping me from kissing the ground. "Run all the way here?"

"Feels like it," I admitted in sobriety, pushing away from his chest and trekking to the other side of the room. 

A chorus of greetings were murmured upon my approach and graceless mounting onto the table, with my legs kicking onto the one in front, beside Jessalyn's thighs which shifted to make room. 

"Monday mornings." She eyed me with sympathy, nodding her head in solemn assent. "We all feel you, Kat." 

"I don't want to be felt," I groaned, considering flopping back onto the table, then thinking better of it, bracing myself upright on my arms. "I just want it to be over, and it's barely even begun."

"It's the first day blues," Archie murmured, the set to his lips becoming tight. "You'll thaw out after first period."

"I'm not even sure what I have first," I confessed with a sigh, sliding the paper copy of my timetable out from my blazer pocket. I'd printed it last night, in a rush before midnight struck, and had shoved it in into the pocket in a hasty, crumpled fashion; lines forever indented into the page where it'd had the misfortune of folding over. 

My sudden movement was a cue for my companions to do the same, and sounds of rustling and fruitless smoothing of paper filled the air, until Jess announced that she had Mathematics first, in Eleven-A. 

She nodded at me to declare mine, and I smoothed out my piece of paper, my heart sinking in my chest when I glimpsed the identical subject printed in the first period of today, then in its respective class-times for the rest of the week. "Maths." I stifled a groan, pressing my fingers into my temple. "They really know how the cure the blues."