The Fateful Heart 2

James heard the question, distant, somewhere in the back of his mind.

He hummed in response - or at least, he believed he did. But in reality, all he did was breathe just a little harder through his nose. Barely noticeable.

Evaline waited for a response, but didn't get any. She took a quiet breath out. It was better this way. She wasn't sure she'd be able to do this if James was awake.

"I've been thinking about what you said," she said with the same quiet and hushed voice, turning to face away from him again so she wouldn't see him.

She let another long, uncomfortable silence pass before she talked again.

"And you're right. I mean, I confuse myself sometimes. I was just... so different back then. There are parts I don't remember, but I remember the lessons. I was taught to be manipulative, and be obedient, and conceal how I really feel. Which would have been fine if..."

She sighed through her nose, trying to figure out where that train of thought was running.

The more Evaline talked, the more James found his mind waking from its muddy half-sleep. Exhaustion still weighed him down, but now he was listening. He was afraid if he said anything that it might scare her off, and he couldn't think of anything to say anyway, so he remained silent.

Evalint continued on, quietly talking to the darkness.

"Life wasn't so bad back then. It was, you could even say, peaceful. I would have been okay with my life if..."

She took a heavier sigh this time, deciding to reframe her sentence.

"I didn't want to join a war. Not for the reasons I mentioned. But it happened, and now I'm stuck. I'm having to save everyone else, but no one is saving me, and I don't want them to, anyways. It's just easier if... I don't know. It's less painful. And maybe that's why, for you..."

What was she even trying to say?

James was trying to understand. He was rearranging things in his mind - things he thought he knew about her, things she'd said before, that apparently, she didn't mean. Not in the way she said them.

He stayed quiet, and still, continuing to listen.

Evaline paused to shuffle the confusing thoughts in her mind, trying to figure out what she really wanted to say here. Was this even helping her? James wasn't even awake. What was she accomplishing here? She already knew all of these answers. She just... felt protective of it. Even if intrusive, these were her private thoughts and memories, and no one else could take that away from her.

If James were awake, what would he want to hear? She let this question stiffly float in her mind as she rummaged through possibilities.

"You've asked me twice why I get upset when you mention your father," she whispered. "And I've thought about it."

She paused again, mentally preparing herself to say it out loud, even if only directed to the empty air. It was always easier to keep things in her head than to say it out loud.

"I don't know how to grieve," she said, her body feeling detached the second the words left her mouth. "I did, once, but it wasn't the right way, and now, I don't know at all. I thought I did, but I'm not sure, because that was the person I was, and the person I could be, and I just... I don't know."

It made more sense in her mind, but out loud, it was a complete mess. She took a moment to recollect her thoughts and figure out what the answer to his questions was.

"I'm envious of you, sometimes," she said blankly. "And also disappointed, because I thought I was sent here thinking you had the answers to help me."

James felt his heart sink, and empathy tugged on him, pulling him deeper. He couldn't help but feel like a disappointment for not being able to meet up to Evaline's expectations, but he was glad that she was able to share. He didn't know everything that she was grieving, but he remembered enough.

There was the loss of normality. The loss of a friend. And whatever losses came with the ravages of war.

That was more than enough to weigh heavily upon anyone's shoulders.

He sat in silence a little longer, wanting to think carefully on how to respond. After the tension in the air that he'd caused, he didn't want to be hasty again. He wanted to think before he spoke. He knew what she was sharing was difficult to say out loud, and he didn't want to cheapen the value of her vulnerability with trite words.

Evaline thought it would have felt cathartic to admit these things out loud with James sleeping nearby, but it didn't. Not really. It just made her feel her own self-pity come to the surface, which she loathed.

After staring at the dark end of the cave for a while, she let her body slowly slide to the ground until she was laying down, knees tucked towards her chest.

She didn't really have much else to say, but there was one last pathetic confession that sprung up with the self-pity.

"Of course, none of this would have happened if I had just learned to let go," she said softly through a strained voice.

James wasn't sure what she meant by none of this would've happened. Her coming to Nye? Or was she vaguely referring to other life events she hadn't disclosed? The way she said it, it almost sounded like she was saying it to herself, with the assumption that she understood all of the implications of her statement, and that was all that mattered.

At that moment, James realized far too late that Evaline probably was doing just that. He hadn't even opened his eyes. She probably thought he was asleep.

Guilt pierced him through his chest and his eyes fluttered open.

He wasn't trying to deceive her. He wasn't trying to trick her into saying anything that was meant to be private. He didn't even know she was going to open up at all.

He stared at the ceiling for a moment, too afraid to look at her. Afraid that she'd be angry, and hurt, and lash out.

He tried to think of something - anything - to say, but his mind was still a useless wasteland of barely-formed thoughts.

"It hurts," he said quietly. "Like death. To let go."

Evaline was about to let the heavy silence fill her exhausted body with her nearly-empty mind now, but when James quietly spoke up, it was like lightning had coursed through her body and electrified every single piece of her.

Despite the great effort, she immediately bolted up and snapped her head back at James in shock. He didn't even appear to have moved. Did she imagine it in her head? His response?

She stayed there staring at him for a second, dumbfounded.

"You're—" she began, then immediately faltered. "Did you—?"

She choked on her own words, like it was her body protesting that it would rather not know. Still, she tried again.

"Did you hear... everything?" she finally sputtered out, her voice breaking at a higher pitch.

James swallowed, nervous.

"...Yes," he answered.

A lingering silence filled the air, causing the pre-built tension around them to nearly drown Evaline.

He was awake the whole time. Of course, she only started to talk because she felt guilty that James was trying to open up to her these past months and she hadn't, but then why didn't he... Why was he pretending to sleep? Or did she just not..?

It didn't matter now. He heard her, and she couldn't take back her words.

She tried to imagine if she were James, listening to her words. What would she feel if she were him? It was numbing to think about. So numbing.

Slowly, Evaline peeled her wide-eyed look away from James who laid very still despite being awake and hearing everything. She let her body fall back on the ground, knees still hugging toward her chest.

She was too tired to feel anything or properly react to this.

"Not like death," she finally said quietly in response. "Letting go doesn't hurt like death."

James laid in the uncomfortable silence that followed, waiting for her response.

“...Maybe not for everyone,” he said just as quiet. “But it did for me.”

Evaline felt like she should be having a proper reaction. Increased heart rate, nervousness, anxiety, defensiveness, something. But she was too physically and mentally exhausted to do this.

"What was that like?" she asked with the same hushed tone, not bothering to filter her words.

“It was like... a slow death,” he said, like each word had been carefully thought over, because he’d told himself this in his head many, many times before. Not rehearsed. Obsessed over. Once he’d finally found words to describe it, he couldn’t stop hearing them in his head, and even then, they still weren’t enough.

“I mentioned that my mother was never the same after my father’s death, and that was true. A part of her died that day, but a part of me died too. But for me, it was slow, and painful. Every day that followed I had to face the reality that life was never going to be the same. My family was never going to be the same. I was never going to be the same.”

He paused, staring at the ceiling. His heart felt empty, and yet, claws curled around his throat. Scratching, fighting, trying to keep the words down.

“At eleven, I didn’t know how to cope.”

The words were sitting at the back of his tongue, burning. Aching. But his stomach twisted into a thick, massive, heavy knot. As it settled in his gut, the numbess washed over him again.

“And all of a sudden, I became the man of the house. And that was fine, because in the face of tragedy, my family was all that I had. We had to draw together, but I had to grow up. There wasn’t time to be angry at the world. There wasn’t space to cry. We had to survive. I had to take care of my sister. I had to take care of my mom. I had to be strong, for her, because she was fraying at the edges. And with each passing day, the pressure came down heavier, and heavier. I worked full days. I watched my sister. I gave her my food when there wasn’t enough to share. And every day my mother would come home, count the money that I’d earned, sigh, and make sure that Larrel was okay.”

His mind finally started catching up to him.

He wasn’t sure if he was answering her question. But he was afraid if he stopped now, Evaline would say something, and it would break him.

“But it was never enough. We were barely scraping by. Starving just enough to save and eating just enough not to die. Warm enough not to freeze but cold enough to feel sick, all the time.”

He laid there with his mouth slightly agape, trying to find the courage to keep going, but he felt crippled as his mind started dragging him back there. To that day.

“It had barely been a year when my mom found a man to remarry. He lost his wife to an illness. She lost her husband to the goblins. And it would be mutually beneficial. Stability in exchange for a mother to care for his child.”

He couldn’t feel anything anymore, and yet, his heart sunk lower, and lower into his chest.

“I didn’t understand that at the time,” he said, his voice distant.

He found himself hitting a wall.

He couldn’t continue. Not if— not if Eve couldn’t handle this. He didn’t know how she would react, and that terrified him.