His Little Heir

What He Loved, What He Lost

     "Okay," Daya gave a wide eyed sigh, "Uhm, I-I can't say that you're wrong because you're not, but ah, you're not quite right there either."

     Leon clasped his hands upon his lap and looked down as if what he needed to say would appear on the bottom of his shoes. Naturally, one is very perplexed when they look for something that doesn't exist- like a dollop of snow on a hot summer day.

      Yet, puzzling perplexity couldn't reach him now. He knew what he saw, what he heard. Those were facts; worse so, was that they were the same that had driven him mad in the pale hours of morning. The same that kept her away.

     And neither could escape their existence.

     Could Leon blame her?

     How could he expect Daya to devote four years of her life to Austin, to love him so desperately that her entire being overflows with the force, then be drained of it all for a stranger?

     He put his elbows on the table, "Then help me make sure I'm right."

     "I'm just... frustrated."

     "Daya-"

     "I love him, okay?! I won't sit here and lie to you. What kind of person would that make me if I did?" She spun the spoon around in the broth, but dumped its contents mid sentence, "But I know that I can't have that life anymore. I don't 'want' that life anymore... I just.. want him."

      Leon let himself fall to the chair's back as he studied her. A twinge of jealousy ignited in his chest, yet deeper within him still, he knew that was little reason to be. No, something else throbbed in the back of his mind.

      "That's hardly a reason to want to betray me, Savech." He zeroed in on her twitching lips.

     "I didn't."

     "But you thought about it."

     Daya took swallowed a spoonful of soup and wrinkled her nose; too cold. She clamped the spoon in between her teeth, and punched in thirty seconds on the microwave's timer with a her brow raised, yet beside its palace of poise, her face was vacant. Only her eyes seemed to move as she watched him.

      Leon craned his neck to see into them, to see what they saw, but they only revealed his own reflection dipped in amber grey. He shook his head- what more could there be? What was he to their seemingly cold, unharbored gaze in this moment?

     Her lover?

     A trade partner?

     The spoon waggled in Daya's mouth as a sea of muffled words fell upon his ears.

     "I swear on all that is good, unholy, and the morally grey areas in between, if you choke because you're trying to talk with a spoon in your mouth, I'm not doing the heimlich remover on you." Leon rolled his eyes, "Please spit it out."

      Daya dropped the untinsel into the broth with a wry grin, "Yeah, yeah, you'd miss me though."

      "Whatever."

      "Look, I only entertained the idea for a grand total of thirty seconds because you hurt 'me' first. Simple as that."

     She swished the spoon around in its now steaming captor, filling the silence with the occasional clink metal against ceramic. He followed her left hand as it made each uncertain journey, and dreaded what awaited him on her right.

     The signature purple swirls from the days before flickered at every  twitch of her muscles; even with her dominant hand stationary, deadly blues of the deep hissed of reminders and memories better left buried there. Leon clenched his jaw.