Master, my Master | boyxboy | (Book One: The Master Collection)

For Now. - XXV

Darcy and Juliette were alone in their new manor. Every room was filled with silence, no one besides Samuel and the two young women sitting at the lonely dining table. It was not supposed to be this way. There were supposed to be two other people sitting at this table with them, but the chairs were cold and empty. Darcy stared across the table at where Jasper and Eli would be seated if they were there. She yearned to see the couple filling the empty space, wanted to hear their voices. They were her friends, and they were gone.

Not quite gone, she figured, but not where they should be.

Juliette looked toward Darcy, and she closed an encouraging hand on top of her partner's.

Darcy then lifted her downcast eyes, meeting Juliette's beside her. She sighed heavily with an understanding nod. "He'll be back," Juliette promised.

"My only wish," Darcy said, "is that he comes back whole."

___

"I still don't understand," Silas shook his head in disbelief, "Why would he do something like that?"

Eli had just finished trying to explain why he was locked away in the rat-infested cell, his tale of how Edmund weaved a horrid lie enable to have him arrested. The longer Eli thought about it, as well, he couldn't grasp why Edmund would do something like this either. It was beyond extreme measures to get him away from Jasper. Eli just hoped Jasper was alright. He was more than certain the Young Master was aware of what state he was in by now.

Swallowing the chocked up feeling in his throat, Eli hid his sentiment to the best he could and shrugged. "I don't understand anything that runs through that boy's mind."

"How were things before? Before Edmund? Before me."

Sat up against the brick wall, Eli rested his head back. He'd gotten used to the awful smell stirring where the cells were located in the station, but he couldn't get used to the solid ground. His body ached all over. This cell only had one mattress and Silas was using it, and he gladly let the other boy keep it. "Before everything, Jasper and I were perfect. That's the only way I know how to describe us. Sure, of course we had to remain hidden from the world, but, in that, we built our own. We shared meals together, we shared a bed most times. Jasper Lancechester was...is...my everything. My greatest dream was to spend the rest of my life with him. Even if there was a possibility that I'd have had to serve under him until I was old and weary, I did not care. Being at his side meant more to me than–."

Eli's voiced cracked and he buried his face in his hands, muffling the unruly cry shaking his lungs all of a sudden. He didn't want to cry here, he wanted to be strong in his last moments. If not for himself, for Jasper. The last couple days had destroyed him, but he wanted his final hours to show that he could build himself up before everything was taken away.

But that was harder than he expected. Knowing he was leaving something behind...someone...took all that strength and shoved him down.

Silas neared Eli, placing a hand on the other boy's shoulder. Eli's body was quivering all over, his shirtless skin ice cold as he shivered. Silas wanted to be able to say something, something that'd be enough to calm Eli down, but this was a sadness he wasn't familiar with. When he'd made himself determined to hand his own life over to the authorities, he'd been ready to go. Eli wasn't ready for anything like this. The red-haired boy had made long term plans, had his life set out before him. Eli wasn't mentally prepared for this kind of event.

And Silas didn't want to see Eli in a place like this either, that was the last thing he wanted. What he had wanted, was for Eli to beat this life, live it how every human being should have the right to. He believed everyone had the right to live, to be free, to love whomever they pleased without such things being taken away. If anyone, Silas thought Elijah Goode would beat this world and its standards, live a long and happy life despite what was counted as abnormal.