The Devil Doesn't Bargain (MatD part 2)

Chapter TWENTY ONE - Perigee

(The Night We Met - Lord Huron)

Each night, I forwent dinner and instead returned to the secret room where I would spend hours among the books and exploring each corner, always finding something I hadn't noticed before. Some evenings, I would return to my bed with darkened eyes and make quick, passive conversation with a rather worried Marlene before pulling the covers up over my head and tugging my eyes shut tight. 

Sleep however, rarely came.

My dreams during the rare hours it did were exactly as to be expected. My mind was wound around the home I once knew, the parents I once loved - still loved. Only now I was left to wallow in the lies laced below the surface. 

What could be real? 

What could be fake?

Had they ever loved me?

Am I really going to die?

Do I even care?

My parents' smiles often clouded my dreams until it was all I could see just before a blinding, billowing cover of white light and I would wake in a cold sweat. My skin clammy and pale, my heart thumping and aching.

Tonight was no different. 

My bones too heavy, my body too drained, I tossed below my quilt back and forth with fingers clenched against my chest in desperate attempts to calm the swell of emotions just below. In the short time I had been able to fall from my reality, I dreamt of my parents again only this time they twisted and turned in smoke until I was met with Sebastian's pained face and frantic words.

"How could they do that to her?"

It was his voice that startled me from sleep, once again saving me from myself.

The still fading light outside the window curled over my sweat stained pillow and I realized I couldn't have been asleep for more than an hour. My roommates weren't even in their beds yet, though it looked as if Marlene had already left her nightly glass of water on my nightstand tucked aside a little note I knew would say some rendition of the same thing.

I'm here if you need me.

Perhaps she was in the Great Hall with the others finishing up dinner or huddled up in the common room studying as I ought to be. Despite her kindness, I couldn't bring myself to linger long in those places, surrounded by students and forevers I may never have.

Instead, I groaned and rolled off the side of the bed, messily folding a spare blanket beneath my arm and stuffing my feet into my boots before shuffling out past the lingering students and into the halls. I kept my head low, thankful that in the chaos of their studying, few even noticed me as I wound up higher and higher toward the Room.

The hallways and staircases up thinned of students, leaving only the occasional cat and wall hung portrait to pass by. Yet, when I turned the final corner at the top of the steps, my heart sunk, spotting the jumbled uniform of a student slouched below the tapestry across from the usual entrance to the Room. I grumbled, fumbling through possible ways to make them leave long enough for me to sneak into the secret space.

Yet, in my frantic haze, my eyes landed on that of the student's and my breath caught - the desperate eyes of a crushed soul.

Familiar, desperate eyes.