An Eye For An Eye

Six

“I hate you,” I said as Deucalion sat down next to me at the breakfast bar. After stuffing a spoonful of cereal into my mouth, I carried on writing. My hair was still a little damp from the bath I had before getting dressed.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I have the Beatles stuck in my head and it's not fair.” He chuckled and I frowned. “It's not funny! I have two lines of a damn Beatles song in my head and I don't even know which one it is!”
“It is a little bit funny.”
Sighing, I turned to him and smiled. “I guess it is, a little bit,” I admitted. “It's still not fair though.”

We carried on eating and I continued writing while chewing Chocolate Cheerios.
“Is that the same as yesterday?” he asked. He had finished his breakfast already and I had started eating before him. Then again, I was a little distracted with what I was writing.
“Yeah, I've carried it on,” I replied. “I could maybe read it to you later, if you'd like?”
He nodded. “I would like that.” I had enjoyed reading to him. It reminded me that I'd enjoyed reading to people in general but most people didn't care enough to sit down and listen.
“Okay then,” I said with a smile on my face. I nodded to myself.

Once I finished eating, Deucalion took the bowl from me before I could say anything.
“What are you doing?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“Putting them in the dishwasher, you took the plates last time and I can’t keep expecting my guest to clean up after me,” he said. He struggled for a moment but then his hand gripped the dishwasher door and pulled it open. “Carry on writing, Liza. I’ll be fine.”

I watched him for a few seconds before looking back at the writing. I could barely read what I had just written and I tried to carry on after adding in a missing ‘the’. He moved around in the background as I carried on writing.

A door slammed shut and I turned around to see Deucalion standing on the other side of the window. The balcony. Every so often, I glanced over. He was leaning against the railing. I kept trying to focus on my writing but my eyes always drifted back over to him. Figuring I might as well go out and talk to him inside of creepily watching him every so often, I stood and headed outside.

The wind blew my hair in my face and it was a bit cold and I saw no point in getting a coat. Looking out, I could see parts of Beacon Hills from somewhere I had never seen it before. It was close to where I watched the sunset before I came here. With the way it was facing, it would be the best place to watch the sunrise.

“How’s your writing going?”
“I was getting a little distracted,” I admitted. My cheeks heated up despite the temperature.
“By what?”
“You,” I said honestly. “Standing out here. I’m a little curious what you’re doing out here.” I leant against the railing with my arms crossed.
“I don’t have much to do, at the moment,” he said. “Besides, it’s refreshing out here. I can feel the wind and smell… pollution. Someone’s cooking something that smells quite nice.”

Chuckling, I moved along the railing and a little closer to him. “Can you tell what they’re cooking?” I was curious and wouldn’t be surprised if he answered.
“Tacos, I think.”
I hummed, tacos were delicious. “I kind of want to eat Tacos now.” He just smiled.

With eyes glowing red, he looked out across part of Beacon Hills. Moving a little closer, I smiled.
“It’s really beautiful up here.” I could imagine the sunrises with all their colours and cloudless summer days with a warm breeze. Part of me felt guilty that I could see it all and he couldn’t. “I’m still sorry.”
“Don’t apologise for your father, Liza,” he said, somewhat coldly. “I’ll admit, I thought he had sent you as another trick but you have proven that you are more than a pawn in whatever game he plays.”

“I really… It’s just that, if he can lie about something that big and have no qualms with it…”
“You don’t know what else he’s lying about,” Deucalion finished for me.
I nodded. “Yeah. He could have lied about Uncle Alexander, and they did lie until I started hunter training, and there’s all of the other things. Chris and I came with him here to do this and then he refused to let either of us help. What happened the other times he didn’t go with him for whatever reason?” I was rambling, I knew I was rambling. I leaned over the rails a little as I took a deep breath. Someone in a red car was pulling into an empty space.

“You said you didn’t like the hunter training,” he said.
“I hated it,” I said, remembering that I had told him I hated it. It had been tough, unwanted and humiliating.
“Then why do it?”

Was he trying to convince me to stop being a hunter?

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. I didn’t know why I carried on. Because it was expected of me? Because I’d be ridiculed if I didn’t? Or, at worst, disowned? “I don’t know why I do it, maybe it’s just because that’s what’s been expected of me all of my life, even when I didn’t know it.”
“I’ve found that while living up to other people’s expectations, those other people tend to stamp out everything you love.”

His words just seemed to hit me like a brick of realisation. And it was equally as painful.

Whenever I was around Dad, I could never write. Not once had I heard any praise from him for my writing, he just considered it a useless way of spending time I could be spending training. Training to be better like Chris or better like Kate. I’d spent the last few weeks with Dad and Chris preparing for things and my writing had just faded away. And now, in an Alpha werewolf’s penthouse, I was writing more than I had in the last month.

His hand rested on my elbow and I stared at it.

“I don’t have a choice in being a hunter. I’ll probably get disowned or something,” I said. I had never heard of an Argent who wasn’t a hunter. “My writing doesn’t exactly make me money and I’m not very good at keeping to a job.” The repetitiveness just sucked away all of the imagination and creativity and replaced it with exhaustion and a general feeling of nothingness.

“I’m sure you’d find a way to make things work, should you have to,” he said. “You are rather intelligent.”
“How would you know?”
“I thought I knew a lot and yet you have taught me new things I never knew existed.” The clock method and the pinky trick, I assumed. “You should give yourself more credit.”

Shaking my head, I looked across Beacon Hills again. It felt a little colder out here.
“I couldn’t, getting disowned means Chris would probably not be allowed to talk to me. Or Kara, she was meant to be a hunter until she started losing her sight. She started training too and then it got worse.” I missed her. Normally, we would be talking over the phone right now. “I miss talking to her.”

“You can leave now if you’d like. I’ll still hold to the truce whether you leave now, tonight or tomorrow.”
“No, I said three days and I’m keeping to it,” I said. And going back on what I said might make it seem like I’d go back on other things. “Besides, this isn’t anything like what I expected. It’s… nice, actually.”
“No, you expected me to be vengeful and blind you but…”
“But you didn’t,” I said, shaking my head.

“I’m still vengeful, I think. Still angry,” he said. “But towards you? You knew nothing and still felt like you had to apologise. I mean, if I wanted I could throw you from the balcony and claim you were my girlfriend with a history of depression and suicidal tendencies.”
“Great,” I muttered.
He must have sensed the panic as he quickly said: “I wouldn’t do that, I like you too much. You’re good company and… and there would be no point in killing you, Liza. I don’t really need to incite anger, there already is anger. Your father hates us, it doesn’t matter what we do.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t think he’ll stop. Everyone else wanted peace. Me, Kara, her father. You are your werewolves. And then he goes and… and does that,” I said. Hesitantly, I place my hand over his. “I really don’t know how much he’s lied to me over the years. How many people have they killed with false proof or with no proof at all? I don’t think I can do this any more.”
“Then don’t.”
“But it’s not that simple,” was my immediate response. “I really wish it was that simple.”
“I think it’s more simple than you’ve been told.”