The Fall [2]

Prologue

❝ you want some company? ❞

It's too peaceful.

Her eyes twitch as she stares at the road outside. Everything seems out of place; too peaceful, too quiet.

She is restless, yet, deprived of her energy. There is anger somewhere inside her, resentment. It's growing in a frightening pace ― but there is more.

Fear, pushed down by grief.

Disgust. It takes form as a sour taste in her mouth. She swallows it down like it's bile in her throat, but can't free herself of the feeling it accompanies. Helplessness. 

Too fucking peaceful.

The morning wind offers her a distraction that she so sorely longs for. Half of her hair blows back with every new rush; her breaths grow harder, her eyelids heavier. Motionless, she sits there, and doesn't turn turn to the person sitting in the driver's seat even once.

You're alive, and I'm still here.

Invisible grime paints her heart grey ― with him being the only one by her side to stick to, she finds herself led by his volatile decisions and the mad rush that fuels them. She can't tell what's on his mind, but she knows his calculated attitude has been thrashed. He knows it, too. And he fumes.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons neither of them has said a word since they got into the black corvette.

"Seth, where are we driving?"

Her question is rather a tired mutter than an inquiry breaking the silence that has began to reside between them.

Hearing his name uttered by her light voice makes the man experience cold-hot sweats in turns. We — it's no longer a simple you and me. What are they, a fucking team now?

"Somewhere as far away from that goddamn' temple as we can get." After his dry words, Seth allows himself to glance her way. She has sunken down in her seat, head resting against the fine leather-padded seat. Dark brown splatters decorate her top and neck like sharp thorns the stalk of a beautiful red rose, and it's a perverted contrast to the polished vehicle the two are planted in.

But the worst is her face. It pains him to see the reflection of a bloodshed that her face has become. It litters her body like mud ― it's not something that belongs on a soft face like hers.

While he glances at her, her fatigue eyes stare ahead into the distance as though intrigued by the emptiness of her view, and for some reason, he feels the urge to look into them blow over the top.

"Hey," he suddenly says, hungry for some sense of normalcy. "Look at me."

He wants to see the same hopeful look in her eyes she had met him with outside the Twister just an hour ago. The longer they drove, the more it diminished and the heavier the silence grew ― Seth fears that with it went the light.

Finally, at his words, Amber turns to look at him, and her expression is wan, with no specific emotion displayed.

"Listen," he then says, and he doesn't say it in a Seth Gecko-way ― the steadiness is gone, the coolness has been traded for impulsiveness because he's left with nothing but doubt and fear. Seth Gecko doesn't do doubt or fear.