.:Trying To Take The {E d g e} Off:. [Anzie] (blitz-ish)

Despite his best efforts, he seemed to have been caught. Who was he kidding, trying to pretend he wasn't the culprit. The one or two other shapes down this street were too far away to be the perpetrator. "Hey, you dropped something, dork." The sharp words, clearly calling him out, send the short hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. His hackles are up, though they shouldn't be. Here he was in the wrong and he only wanted to snap at this girl for disturbing him. The pebble he had kicked was now being thrown at him, and only the fact that it was a soft throw kept him from attempting to dodge. As it was, with the rock simply landing near his feet, he would have looked an even greater fool - not something he wanted right now.

Both she and Saylor had turned him into an idiot and then dumped him on his but in his weakness. It left him inexcusably bitter, and turned him into what he was now. He stuck to the places of low population, where people rarely paid attention to anyone, a spectre of the bright-eyed swordsman that he once was. Old memories of how he used to search so desperately for challengers came to him and he sneered at his past self. He was such a fool, believing that he was anyone special. Sure he might have been able to wield a sword better than most, but that didn't make him anyone of note. He hadn't gotten reaped, he hadn't volunteered, to most people he was a nobody and to everyone else he was a disappointment.

And damn it if it didn't hurt. Every time he turned around someone looked at him with disgust or pity - and he wasn't sure which was worse. After so long he was sick of it. It had been two years since she died and he still couldn't extract himself from her memory. Even now she was pressing him down, holding him under the waters of her own cruelty, and for all Saylor had tried to bring him out of the wet she couldn't manage. Perhaps that was why she kicked him out into the rain to be on his own, again. Rain, it always came back to that gloomy weather pattern. He had met her in the rain, had searched for her in the rain, had mourned her death in the rain. As long as there was rain, he wouldn't be able to get away from her.

Even his meeting with Saylor had been in the rain. She had called him out about his moping, had given him a helping hand to get off of his ass and move on, but it wasn't enough. Now she was gone and he was kicking himself over and over. Perhaps it was getting to the point where he should just stay away from women, they only ever seemed to cause him problems, the least of which being heart ache. With this girl now shoving herself into his life it looked like he would never get away from the opposite sex, and it was driving him crazy. Is a normal relationship so much to ask? He knew that he hadn't been all that great of a boyfriend to the girlfriends he had had before her but that was why he had changed himself for her. He didn't want to hurt her like he had some of the others.

In all of his years of dating, he could only say he had had one "normal" relationship, and that was nearly four years ago now. After so long he could hardly remember the girl and had an even harder time remembering what dating her had been like. All he knew was that he had thought she was the one, until one day they both realized there wasn't anything between them anymore. They broke up, quietly and peacefully, and never saw each other again. He sadly realized he didn't even remember her name, even as he so desperately wanted to forget her name, and Saylor's. It wasn't fair to judge Saylor too harshly, she had gotten a broken boy and had tried to mend him as well as she could. It wasn't enough for either of them, but her leaving broke the cracks she had tried to mend all over again.

Now this husk of his former self looked to be going into a third downward spiral, with yet another girl at the center of it. At least it isn't raining. The sky overhead was mostly blue, with a cloud here or there, there was no sign of the traitorous liquid to be seen. Maybe he should listen to the weather, it seemed to tell him when his life would take another hit. He put his foot on the rock and rolled it around under his toes. The hard mass pressed against the sole of his shoe enough to feel, but not enough to hurt. It made a soft scraping sound, and he wondered if it would leave any mark. He cast his eyes towards the girl, trying to keep his gaze and his emotions level. "I didn't drop it." He had kicked the rock, not thrown it. "And I didn't mean to hit you with it, either."

She could believe him if she wanted, or not, it didn't matter to him. What was the point of caring what people thought about him, it couldn't be anything worse that what he thought about himself.