hits different [e+j; day 4 leisure]

We hadn’t stuck around to see what Nicoli’s fate came to be – Elle hadn’t let me, had instead dragged my numb self away from the crime scene. We sit a way from the falling blood now, recovering from the fallout. Elle, physically. Me, emotionally.

Nicoli’s body is long gone, probably already on its way back to Eight in a cold, wooden crate that should probably belong to me, for all the help I’d been at the end. The fight replays in my mind like the training videos mother would make us watch on a weekly basis. Just another montage of my greatest failures. Every swing, every strike that fell short of my target, crystalised forever in my brain. This is my punishment, stinging more than any cut ever has before.

In my solitude, I wonder what would have happened to the lone candle I placed in the centre of Nicoli’s chest. No doubt the lone flame I’d lit had been quickly doused by the chill of nightfall. But the thought that the small candle may have fallen from his body as he was carried away makes me sadder than I think it should. He deserved better. We all do.

At the very least, I hope that the momentary light helped guide him back home, wherever that may be.

The remaining tealights sit heavy in my satchel – almost too heavy to bear the weight of. In a swift, flippant motion the contents of my bag are strewn across the rocky ground. The candles scatter in all directions as they roll away from my shaking body, but I manage to grab one before it is able to tumble out of my reach. Elle barely flinches at the sound, and I’m grateful she doesn’t make a fuss over the instinctual action. It’s a refreshing change of pace from Fenrir’s nagging voice, “don’t do anything stupid.” He’s still here, yet he’s gone forever.

My heart skips a beat; my breath catches on a sharp inhale; the pain in my chest is back again. Everyone leaves me, everyone already has. The cold candle in my hands confirms as much.

“If he were here right now, that candle would have already been lit.”

I don’t look at her for a long while as I try to find the right words to express the gnawing feeling in my stomach, and that feels easier to do when I’m looking at my own shaking hands. The candle grows heavier by the minute, though, as the silence traps the two of us in an awkward, frosted moment.

“It feels wrong to light it without him.” I eventually manage a feeble explanation: this is not my calling card. I don’t know how to start a prayer or atone for my sins. Once again, I don’t have a fucking clue about anything.

“I know what you’re thinking,” it’s reading her mind like an open book, “that you’d be better off on your own.” There’s something to be said for Careers and their stubbornness. The hardwiring in their bloodstream that makes them think that they own the world, and that the best way to conquer it is alone.

“You’re right.” I turn to look at her now, finally, barely even flinching as she finishes threading a needle through her skin. Her eyes still shine too brightly – far brighter than my hollow ones do – despite the grim task at hand, and even though it’s obvious now that we were both injected with the vampire serum, I wonder just how far the differences run. How does she still manage to find the strength to put herself back together when I feel like I’m falling further and further apart?

“Everyone around me has died. I’m like a bad luck charm.” I wait for the familiar cowardly feeling of watering eyes, but no tears flow, the toll of the last four days too heavy for any more raw emotions. At least I won’t look like a fucking cry-baby tonight.

“You should leave before I rub off on you, too.”

It’s not said with malice, or anger, or even resentment. It’s stated so matter-of-factly, the plain truth of the cards we’ve been dealt. A mirror of my past and an insight into my future all in one: I’m destined to be alone. Any sane person would have left by now.

Every sane person already has.

table by dars!