|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 11:40 pm
His little doodle had started to grow more elaborate, morphing from a silly smiley face into a sketch of Regan herself. The long, pale hair started to take form, Fitz sliding the pencil down the page to add a thicker weight to the outside. While it may have seemed he was actual casual and blase about the entire situation at hand, he was listening rather intently, the expression on his face remaining calm.
How could she speak of this as though it was nothing? As though the bruise on her cheek was nothing more than just a simple everyday occurrence that was not worth caring about? This was the same girl who had not believed in love, who had told him that it was just an illusion.
Something in his chest ached painfully. Fritz did not pass Regan the notebook but stared up at her as the light expression slid from his face, his lips pressed together.
"It doesn't concern me, no," he said quietly. "But do you really think that I can just so easily forget about it?"
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:42 am
She was still holding her hand out for the notebook when his eyes shifted into something she didn't understand. Sympathy? No. Empathy? no. The deep dark understanding that there was nothing you could do, because she didn't know how to do it herself. She didn't like to feel vulnerable.
"Everyone else does, Fritz." She let her hand drop. "People see what they want too, and if they don't, they make it so it is what they want. A bruise on the cheek is nothing big, when it could be much worse. Cuts on the cheek? Broken Arm? I got it in a fight with bullies, that is the story."
She waved a hand down her uniform. "I go to St. Mags, a school meant to reform troublemakers, do you honestly believe that anything I say, would be even considered the truth?" She shook her head, "give me the book, so I can go home. So I can go back to the life that is normal to me."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 5:05 pm
He couldn't even say for certain why he was still here, with this girl who clearly didn't want him to be. Regan had made it more than obvious what she thought of him and his ideals, and yet Fritz had remained, interfering in the way that he should not, and yet couldn't quite help anyway.
"You're not wrong," he said, after a moment; but he hadn't dropped his gaze from hers, his voice tinged quiet at the edges; a sadness that someone who should have enjoyed life was so very, very much not. "People do only see what they want to see."
Like Tolliver. Like Hitch. Like everyone else.
Fritz half smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I'm not like them, I can't just pretend that I don't see what's right in front of me. And right now, that's you, with that bruise on your cheek that you don't want to talk about, which tells me enough as it is."
Stop talking, said the voice inside of his head. Stop talking. Let her go. Let her leave.
I can't, was the other voice, always so much more prominent. I can't let it go.
Because when had he ever? When he had ever been able to simply put the responsibility on someone else? Even as Celsus, he took and he took, because he couldn't help himself, because he had to carry the weight that other people could not or would not.
"That's not," said Fritz, and he held the book a little tighter in his hands without thinking of it. "Normal. You can't possibly think that that's normal."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2015 9:21 pm
The look he gave her would've crumpled her resolve, if she had allowed it. She didn't want to open up, like this, to a stranger. Someone she didn't know.
But it also made her want to do it, because he'd go back and he wouldn't remember her anyways. It was a big city. It was a bigger world then her, and him and this problem.
"I have a dead beat father, who thinks I look to much like my mother, who left us because she wanted more money, and more travelling. She left me with him, So he decided I was the one made to pay for it." She pulled back her face in a pained smile, "Until recently, I had been taken away from that."
She rubbed the makeup away and with it the facade behind the whole thing. "That, is normal to me." She tilted her head, "What I live now? Just a reminder that I am constant abnormal."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2015 6:41 am
He had not expected her to give in, even if Fritz had desperately wanted her to, for reasons he couldn't quite understand - other than the fact that he so very much wanted to be able to do something, anything. He was incapable of so many things, and yet maybe - maybe -
Fritz swallowed hard against the pain in his throat, though his expression had shifted to something quieter,
I was the one made to pay for it.
No, he thought, no. That's not fair, how could someone do this to someone so young and with so much potential - you took away the freedom, the life, the happiness, and replaced it with nothing but a jaded, negative view of the world.
Unchangeable.
A rage that he had not known could be brought about was flooding his senses, anger that someone had thought it was okay to hit someone else, someone defenseless, someone who couldn't fight back. Someone who had warped this girl's mind to believe that things like love and pleasure did not exist.
He tamped down on it and stood, slowly, Fritz staring at Regan, and a hand reached out. His fingers hovered above the bruise on her cheek, but did not touch, his eyes darkening.
"You are not," he said flatly, abnormal. And this is not bloody normal."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2015 9:30 pm
She let him sink that in, and while he was distracted, slid the notebook from him. She closed it too quickly to notice the sketch of her, and moved to put it away while not breaking eye contact.
But his hand reached out, and she felt the underlining fear of touch, mixed with the rage in his eyes. It didn't matter if it was gentle, or the painful. She flinched back, eyes widened with fear. She did not want tenderness. She did not want pain.
All she wanted was to be left alone.
"D...Don't." She tried not to shake, because she was stronger then that. She thought she was.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2015 2:20 pm
He let the notebook go without a fuss, mostly because he hardly seemed to notice it was being taken in the first place. Instead, Fritz's attention was on Regan's face, and the way that she had flinched, the way that she seemed to shrink back from him instinctively.
How could someone possibly have done this to this girl?
His hand stayed frozen in midair, hovering above her bruised cheek without touching. Fritz swallowed hard, pushing the anger down as it slowly, quietly seeped away, instead replaced by a look of sadness that seemed to weigh too heavily on his shoulders.
And slowly his hand fell as well, back to his side, fingers slightly curled in against his palm.
"Regan," said Fritz quietly. "Can you not see that this is wrong? That your life is meant to be better than this?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2015 3:41 pm
"No, It's not. Obviously it's not." She whispered out. "If it was suppose to be better, then it would be better." She hitched her backpack up high and then took some steps back, putting the bench, herself, her feelings between them as a wall.
"I've got my work to get back too." She huffed. "I'm leaving, You don't need to worry about it again. Don't come to my school either." She narrowed her eyes. "You'll make it worst."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2015 12:17 am
"No," said Fritz fiercely, and even as Regan began moving back, he took a step forward, instinctively, without actually knowing he was doing it in the first place. He couldn't explain the intense desperation to make her understand that this was not all that life had to offer when he didn't even believe it himself half of the time - or maybe that was exactly why he was trying.
"No," he said again, "No, that's not - this isn't all there is, there's - there's more, you have an entire life to find that out, just - "
Fritz stopped, dragged in a breath, and closed his eyes briefly before opening them again. He gazed at Regan, his chest feeling as though he'd run a thousand miles in a minute, hating what a giant bloody hypocrite he was, that he could try and say these things but not do them himself.
"Regan," he said, in a much more quiet tone. "I'm sorry. I'm not meaning to bother you, truly, I just...it pains me to see someone with so much potential look at the world as though it's already over."
Like you do? said a small voice in his head.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2015 8:13 pm
His trying would be lost on her. Whether he was doing it for himself, or for her, or for the world, she didn't care.
"There isn't" She looked at him and there was nothing there, no tears, no shed of emotion. Just an emptiness. Her father told her once, those eyes of hers, the ice blue. It was like a barren winter. Cold. Empty.
"It's bothering me." She turned on her heel and took off, "Stop worrying about a stranger Fritz." She left on that, but in her place, a small card slipped from her pack and stood out against the dark concrete.
Listed on it was the address to a mechanic shop, and the names of the workers there. Including one Regan Flores.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
