STRANGER, jesper fahey

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"I'm not one to hold grudges."

Fixing the door hadn't exactly been an easy feat, in fact Gwen had given up five minutes in after she'd watched her brother delve off into the shadows, pretending that she couldn't see the figure waiting for him with nothing more than their steady heartbeat giving away. In the end, she'd been too tired, mentally and physically to struggle with the shattered wood that splintered, and had simply lifted her table and slumped it against the hole where her door had once stood, before calling it a night and stumbling her way up the stairs and wondering if she'd wake up to find it some strange dream.

It hadn't been of course, she'd realized that when she'd awoken the next morning with her wrist still throbbing something awful and her whole body feeling like a building had collapsed on top of her, aches and pains tearing her apart in their terrible agonies as she struggled to catch her breath, laying upon her sheets that had tangled around her limbs like bondage, holding her down like the clawed hooks of hells, pulling her into her damnation below where she'd suffer for all her sins.

But before she could truly delve into her own dramatics, before she could sit there and do something disastrous like think about her stained soul, her haunting ghosts, her breaking heart in the quiet of her room...she heard something in the air drop, and her hands latched out just in time to catch Scruffy as he'd pounced from her bedside table, into her open arms as he yowled indignantly, pawing at the bruises of her face as if furious at her interruption to his daily routine of trying to smother her with his thick fur that she found everywhere.

"You're lucky I haven't skinned you yet." She muttered, barely able to afford a scowl on her dark features that ached, letting him go so he could knead the soft skin of her arm, trying to get comfortable and taking up the rare opportunity to lie down upon her mortal corpse that was always desperate to keep herself busy, so she didn't have a chance to succumb to the past and die from everything the world contained, the things she'd seen, the things she'd heard, the things she'd done all for the sake of survival that she hadn't even wanted, only not allowing herself the relief of death because of the guilt at being able to live while her brothers couldn't.

And yet, Kaz was alive, well, some part of him was she supposed, a darker part of himself that he'd brought forth for a dangerous and addictive taste for vengeance and brutality, forsaking the softness that had once maimed him because it no longer served him...and wasn't it strange, wasn't it ironic that the two had spent most of their lives apart...and had become the same kind of monster in their separation?

There was a part of her that wondered if it would be such a sin that she just...didn't get up, that she continued to lay upon her tangled sheets and just wait until death and rot would take her, let her fall asleep and not wake up, to finally become the corpse she felt like and leave the mortal coil of the earth to it's own devices. The thought, the relief of peace or eternal damnation something that she desperately wanted to grasp in her greedy hands...and yet, even now it appeared that she was a coward who could never reach for the things she wanted because she believed she didn't deserve them, whether it be death...or whether it be love.

Grey eyes were haunting her, following her, accusing her with every simple movement she took, betrayal running deep and bleeding into the scars they both carried, and saints, what she would give to just to heal what had been broken or even erase it completely, so she wouldn't have to feel this weak, this heartless, this agony.

But she deserved his hatred, there was no question about it, she deserved to be looked at with scorn, she deserved everything he'd give her and more, he'd place a bullet through her skull and she'd thank him with her dying breath...but the pain she felt was bittersweet, because in the end, it was something they fucking shared, only she didn't have the right to feel it. Falling in love with Jesper Fahey was easier than breathing, and now she was reaping the consequences of such action, because inside her there was a burning, a cathedral of longings to devour her divinity and sanity, leaving nothing but ash and wasted desires in its wake.