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And yet, from the surface, it would have been so easy for someone who hadn't taken the time to get to know her to think she was perfectly fine. She sat on the couch beside him, with a giant bowl of popcorn in her lap, and she laughed (a little too loudly) at the show they were watching together. She'd told him that they were going to watch tv together, that day. She'd informed him, with a smile on her face and the most pleasant tone, that this was their date night. She told him to sit on the couch, and she sat beside him, and hugged her bowl of popcorn against her body.

But really, it was clear that Maebe wasn't as cheerful as she seemed. Neither was she the cold, vicious little vixen she'd been before she'd fell in love either. This was a new Maebe, something alien and devoid of labels. She was smiles and jokes, with the constant over tone of something breaking, something both fragile and immovable all at once.

She was pressed affectionately against Otto, but her body was hard as a rock, tense to keep from feeling how much he didn't want her to be there.

"Ugh, I should have been an actress." She spoke as if she was talking to an entire room filled with people, but never exactly to him - the only one actually there. "I would have done such a better job than these fools." She threw popcorn at the screen, and boo'd them dramatically.

His eyes burned her skin, and she turned to look up at them, meeting them without a shred of fear. It wasn't anger, or hate in her eyes. It was something he'd never seen before. Something that didn't look quite healthy.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She asked, her head cocking in confusion. He looked at her like he wanted nothing to do with her - she took it to mean something else completely, because her eyes lied as well as she did. "If you want to kiss me, you don't have to ask."

His words made no sense to her, because they did not fit within the narrow perimeters of reality that had to remain in place. She looked up at him, and felt like she was looking at a stranger. It made her head pound as it tried to deny everything she saw and heard with violent desperation.

"I didn't trust you. You knew that. You knew that I didn't trust anyone, because they all hurt me in the end." She spoke with a strained distance, as if she was trying not to care. "You convinced me otherwise. You told me you weren't going to be like everyone else, and that I should trust you. So I did." But the distance couldn't last, and her breath intake was a sharp, painful rasp. "And then you stopped. And I don't know why. Except I do know why, I just don't want to believ eit because you promised you wouldn't be like them." But even as she spoke, even as she felt the itch of tears threatening, she didn't cry. She took a deep breath, and settled back in place.

"So that's what I'm getting out of this, Otto. I'm holding you to your promise, even though you've already broken it. I think I deserve that." She popped a kernel of popcorn into her mouth. "Don't you?"

"This." Maebe emphasized the word heavily, letting it sink down as she tried to grasp it. "This. Explain to me what this is. Your temper tantrum? This attitude you've thrown up all of a sudden as a barrier for the truth?" Her eyes were sharp, piercing. She didn't know Otto's automatic defense systems would trigger at the first sign of control, but she did know that he didn't treat her like this without a reason. An actual, physical reason.

Maebe was starting to get suspicious.

"So you've broken your promise. That's true. You've hurt me. Congratulations. I'm impressed that it took you this long. So what do you want me to do, now? Stop wanting you? Can't. Would love to, but can't." She paused, actually tried for a moment, and found herself intertwined too deeply in the lives of the people she'd opened up to. This was what she'd been afraid of, all along. She'd just wanted freedom - a fact that, though she didn't quite realize it, was all Otto wanted from her now. "Stop loving you? Teach me that trick, because you seem to have it down." She seemed genuinely interested in learning how Otto had suddenly gone from loving her, to this cruel, malicious man.

Not hurt, as she should have been. Intrigued.

"Tell me what happened to you. To us. I'm curious."

Maebe realized with a start that for the first time since she'd known him, she did not think he was handsome. It was the look on his face, the twisted anger that boiled up from his emotions and layered his face with a mask she'd never seen before. Distantly, she found it kind of amazing that she could look at Otto and find something ugly for once.

But he wasn't supposed to be ugly. Not like her. Not like Taym. Not like the rest of the world. He was never supposed to be ugly, like them. And he was.

He was.

She winced as she felt the sting of regret when he tried to tell her that he hadn't stopped loving her. She wanted to dismiss it as a lie, because it had to have been. She wanted to brush it off and be stronger than this. She didn't want nasty, creeping, oozing things like hope trying to block her path.

But then the words he said next did not fit into neat little boxes like everything else. He was trying to explain why they'd gone wrong, but all she could hear were the little, distant warning bells that began to ring somewhere deep inside of her mind. Get out, they told her. Stop now, they warned her. Stop, stop, stop.

Her mouth opened, because she couldn't stop herself, and her lips tried to form the question, but it refused to come out. In the end, even Maebe herself was trying to keep the truth away. So instead, she let out a stuttered, flighty breath.

"Oh."

She was up on her feet before she could think, and she walked in circles before finally heading for the door. "I need. I'm going to. Go for a walk now. I should. Yeah." She picked up her shoes, and tried to slide them on her feet. "You uh. Yeah. I'll go."

Run, something inside of her whispered. It's all you've got left.

She was. She was ready to walk out of the conversation dead in the middle of it, because she no longer felt like being in control of Otto meant keeping herself in control of her own heart's safety. He'd done something, something, and it wasn't a matter of what he would or could do anymore. He'd already done something that he'd never wanted her to know about.

How many real options were there?

She felt the rush of guilty pleasure when he told her he'd still be there. He didn't mean it the way it sounded, but she couldn't help but feel like he didn't want to give up. She was only hurting herself by indulging in things like hope.

"I don't have to come back." She stood in front of the door, still turned towards it, but refused to reach for the handle. "If that will make this easier." She was inspecting the detailed hardwood of the door as if she was obsessed with it. "If there's something you don't want to tell me, I could make it easy for you." This wasn't a threat; there wasn't any malice in her voice. It was quiet, and shaky with fear. Her options were slowly running out.

He didn't stop loving you, a tiny, drowning voice tried to remind her. Hold on to that. Keep it safe.

"I'm not going to tell you what to do anymore. If. If it's too late to keep your promise." After all, what good was holding on to him tighter, if he'd already slipped away? Even Maebe knew when a good fight was lost. "Just tell me if you want me to stay away or not. I'll listen. For once."

No situation was too tense for just a tiny fraction of humor.

The truth.

Maebe felt her skin crawl with fear. It was a physical, rolling feeling, crawling across her nerves and raising the tiny hair on her skin. She turned around, and stared at him, her head tilting upward as she stared at him in hesitation. She felt it coming like a storm, a natural disaster that there was no avoiding. And she'd tried. Oh, how she'd tried.

She returned to the couch, curled up as tightly as she could, on the other end of the couch. She was a stark contrast to the way she'd been a few moments ago, curled up against him, in control, in charge. She had lost everything she held dear; her sense of reason, her sense of control, and now, she was sure, that last shred of sanity that she'd been clinging to for days now.

She looked more like a little girl than she'd ever looked, before.

"What is it."

There was no point in waiting for Maebe's reaction, because there was none to see. She remained where she was, still and tiny, and heard him admit that he'd broken the fragile bonds of trust he'd help create for the first time within her. It had been all lace and filagree, beautiful in its intention but easy to crumple. And she was left looking at the world through a liar's eyes again, with nothing else to prove her wrong.

If you leave them to their own devices, they will only ever disappoint you, leave you and wither away.

Lawr's words rang painfully in her ears.

She'd almost thought she was normal, for a second. Before he'd reminded her of exactly what she was. And exactly what she deserved.

"You told me that you wanted me to be faithful." Her voice was frighteningly even, and it gave nothing away. "Despite who I was. And then you have sex with someone else." Some small, rational part of her wanted to laugh at it all. Otto's big secret was that he'd given in to an illegitimate ********? A year ago she would have been proud. She'd lost that part of herself, along the way.

She suddenly wished she hadn't.

"Who was it?"