Entry 4

How?

The biggest question, the elephant in the room waiting to be answered. But no answer came. Not from James, as he glared at me from the far wall; not from the room itself, which suggested no foul magic or necromantic purposes waiting beyond the darkest reaches of candlelight; and not from her. She only gazed at me with a look of confused and disturbed melancholy as the minutes passed by, neither of us speaking for fear of shattering the tension like glass.

But sometimes you need to break something before it can be fixed.

"You were buried. They showed me your grave; told me it was a peaceful passing, that you felt no pain when the end took you. How are you here? How is your survival even possible?"

My rush of questions seemed to resonate with her for a moment; just a moment. Tears started to well up in her eyes before she composed herself quickly, managing to hide that internal strife better than most trained killers could ever hope. I suppose she had a bit more experience with remorse and regret than I had expected. I still remember the way she looked at me from that crowd, watching me with just a hint of pain behind her eyes as my naïve ambition forced me out of that little village. If I had known just how much my absence would hurt her, maybe I would have stayed.

It's difficult to determine just how many restless nights have ended with me waking up in a cold sweat, wishing that the younger me wasn't such a selfish fool.

She had refused to look me in the eye ever since the initial shock of me being there, standing before her after all those years, had worn off. Was it the fact that she lied to me that caused her shame? Was it the knowledge that when that wooden box had been lowered into the ground, a piece of who I was died on the inside? Or was it simply the disappointment of understanding that her plan failed, and that I had made my way back despite everything? When she finally spoke, it reflected none of those.

"I wish you didn't have to see me like this."

The spark of rage within me caught like wildfire, and began to burn down every last barrier I had.

So, I let it out the best way I knew how at the time.

"You wish - do you know how much I went through to get back here? Do you have any idea of the sheer amount of willpower it took me not to burn this place to the ground when I heard you passed? I was absolutely devastated, and I wanted nothing more than to make someone else feel that devastation. To feel the shame, and remorse, and rage, and the pain that I did! 

"My mother had died, and not a single damned soul in this place sent me so much as a letter. No message, no notice, not even a fucking passenger pigeon to guide the way back! If I had stayed with my people, if I hadn't gone "scouting the area" as an excuse to come home for the first time in five years, I would have never known you were dead. And yet, apparently, you 'wish I didn't have to see you like this'. So, was I supposed to just never see you again? Was this one elaborate plan to make me feel guilty for leaving you here? Because it worked."

The anger inside me flew out unabated, blinding my rational side to the two words that it should have latched onto immediately: "like this". Completely oblivious to the questions and implications they had, I failed to notice the full arrangement of the room when I first entered. Shelves along the southern wall were lined with a particular variety of ingredients, followed by a row of small glass vials below, etched along the sides for fluid measurements. The wall behind James, who still stood with his arms crossed and a glare sharp enough to kill, was filled with small alcoves labelled from one to seven. Each alcove, with the seventh being the exception, were empty; and the stock of ingredients along the south wall had been rapidly depleting for weeks. Empty vials littered the bedside table, and the sound of labored breathing coming from her gaunt face was drowned out by the angry ramblings of a wounded heart.

She was dying, and all I did was hurt her more.