A Song of Silence

Chapter 111: Damage in the Dark

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I rushed into my room and slammed the door behind me. I locked the door and then for extra protection put a chair under the handle. My breath came in quicker and shorter bursts. I started to panic and curled up into a ball on the floor of my room. I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. All I could think of was the look on Azazel's face when I had walked into that meeting room. Shock, pity. I saw it all on his face. I knew what I looked like. My eyes were sunken and I had deep circles under my eyes. My thin body could be really seen in the clothes that I wore. They hung off my frame when they had used to hug my body easily. It was all because the people I had killed haunted me. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I was a monster.

Placing my hands over my ears to block out all sound, I started rocking back and forth in an attempt to calm myself. To stop my racing heart and my quick, short breaths. It was too bright in here. My powers reacted before I could stop it and struck out at the candle lit room. I was plunged into immoderate darkness and still it was no help. I am a monster. I am a monster. I am a monster. This mantra repeated itself over and over in my head and I couldn't stop it. Soon enough my nails were digging into the skin of my face and scalp. I drew blood and yet nothing seemed to help.

A pair of warm hands appeared on my shoulders. Panic laced through my entire body and I struck out with my hands and my lightning, pushing away the owners of said hands. A muffled curse followed my action as I scramble to get away. Looking up, I saw that it was Azazel that I had lashed out at. He held his blistered hands in pain, kneeling where I once had been. Panic laced through me again and I plunged the room into darkness once more, gripping at my eyes and face as I had been before. My breathing was still erratic and short as I struggled to calm myself.

I sensed a warm presence next to me. Opening my eyes slightly, I saw that it was Azazel. He sat next to me, his hands now healed, but he did not touch me. He was merely a warm presence to try to keep me calm. "Aerilynn, what is wrong?" I did not answer and started to rock back and forth in a ball.  He asks his question again.

"Just go," is all I manage to spit out before my breathing becomes erratic once more.

"You want me to leave?" He asks quietly.

"Why are you even here? I saw the look on your face. I am a fucking freak!" I snap at him.

"What look on my face? The look when I saw your emaciated and malnourished body? Yes Aerilynn, I felt disgust because I had pushed you there. I had pushed you away so that you were forced to go to the Istlean Ruins and do this to yourself. I was disgusted with myself, but never you Aerilynn. Never you." He says solemnly.

"Pretty words for a king, but they change nothing. You need to go and save yourself. You need to get away." I reply.

"Not until you tell me to go. I will not leave you in this state until you tell me to do so."

"Get out of here!" I scream at him. "Leave! Go! There are your words, now get the fuck out of here!!"

"Not until you mean it," he replies, worry coloring his eyes.

"I mean it! I mean every fucking word!! Now go away!!"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"Are you fucking crazy!! Get out of here!" I scream. He doesn't respond and just shakes his head. Deciding to ignore him in the hopes that he goes away. My body returns to its chaotic rhythm. Despite the hours that pass, Azazel stays. Soon enough, I sense his body sidle up to mine. We are barely touching and yet it is all the more comforting. He respects my demand to not be touched, but understands that right now what I need most I comfort. It's enough to make me relax, even if it's a little, it's something. Before I know it, due to a combination exhaustion and stress and many other things, I find myself dozing off and eventually sleep welcomes me.

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I jolt upright as panic at my unfamiliar surroundings awakens me. Taking in my bedroom, I find morning light streaming through the half closed curtains in my room. My bedroom is in quite a disarray, but what takes up more of my interest is the fact that I am in my bedclothes and Azazel lays next to me on the bed as he stares up at me. We say nothing as we stare at each other. I speak first, "Why arm I in my bedclothes?"

He arches a perfectly sculpted brow, "I would have thought that would be obvious."

I lower my brows and glare at him, "I know that, genius. Did you change me?"

As small smile appears on his face as he says, "Would that truly bother you after all the times I have seen you naked?"

Fuck. I quickly scramble to the edge of the bed. If he changed me then he saw my new scars and my changed body. He would have seen my ribs and hips that almost jutted out of my paper thin skin. He would have seen how little I had eaten and the burn marks I had given myself in my delusion when I thought the pain might make me hungry. Seeing my panic, Azazel quickly rephrases and says, "Relax, I got Madame Dietra to dress you. She was annoyed but nearby and I figured you wouldn't want to to dress you after....everything." I immediately relax. His last words are careful. Like he is waiting for me to break into a million pieces. Well lucky for him, because that is exactly how I feel right now.

Trying to regain my composure, I say, "Well, thank you for staying with me last night, but you probably have much to be doing right now. For both our sakes, you'd best be off." My back was still to him when I said this, so he couldn't see the tears that threatened to rise at the thought of him leaving me right now.

Azazel gets out of the bed and walks around it soundlessly. His clothes are still rumpled from the night, but he doesn't seem to care. "Aerilynn, what happened?"

"I don't know what you are talking about," I insist.

"So in a mere month, you lost fifty percent of your body weight and barely slept and you are telling me that nothing happened?" He asks quietly.

"I don't believe you. Not for a second."

"What would you like me to say!" I snap at him, "That I couldn't eat or sleep because the screams of those I killed in the Istlean Ruins and those I have killed in the past now haunt me! That I can hear their screams always and I want to tear my skin off just to make it stop! That I can't eat because it reminds me of the blood on my hands!" My voice has only gotten exponentially louder with each sentence.

Azazel regards me as I finally stop yelling. "The killing never bothered you before."

"That was before you. Before you I could excuse it as part of my job, but you made me grow a damn conscience." My words fly out of my mouth.

"And you are angry at me for making you have a conscience?"

"No, Goddamn it! I am angry at myself that I didn't tell you how sorry I was sooner. I am sorry I pushed you away. I am sorry I gave up on us. Most of all though, I am sorry that fixing the problems in the Istlean Ruins was the only way I knew how to apologize. And now look at us. I'm fucking frail and malnourished and you hate my guts."

My chest is still heaving with exertion when Azazel finally speaks, "What a pair we are. Both of us too fucking damaged to know how to communicate with each other when things go wrong when in reality, everything we have done is due to the fact that we are hopelessly in love with each other.