Jamie held Lena aloft awkwardly, not knowing what to do in the situation he found himself in, the feeling of holding anyone in his arms being utterly alien to him.
He looked away from her, feeling awkward at the idea of staring at the back of her head, but it felt wrong to look away, essentially ignoring a girl that was crying in his arms.
He considered patting her back, but he wasn’t sure if that might just make things worse, so he stayed as still as he could.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar state for him to be in, not knowing what to do. He had been pulled abruptly from the Mediators’ basement, but he found it easy to settle into the new role he was in, since it was nearly identical to the one he had moments ago.
Even in this scene for two, he was a bystander.
A weariness settled upon him once he realised that. Not a weariness that he wore on his shoulders, but one that weighed on his soul.
He was tired. So tired.
So as Lena cried, he did not comfort her, as he didn’t know how, but he took the opportunity to rest. He felt guilty for not feeling as bad for her as he should have, but he didn’t know why she was crying in the first place. Maybe she would tell him after she was done. It would be a nice change of pace, to actually understand something.
Unfortunately for him, he wouldn’t be getting an explanation, seeing as Lena had no idea why she was crying either. She wasn’t crying for a specific reason. Her suppressed emotions had simply become too heavy for her to hold, and the iron-tight hold she once had on them slackened in a moment of weakness, letting her emotions spill out, formless, the complicated emotions only vaguely expressed by her tears.
It took a while for Lena to stop crying, and when she did, Jamie was quick to notice.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He immediately felt foolish for asking, when the answer was so obvious.
“I’m fine,” she responded, dragging her wrist over her nose and looking down at the smear of snot that it left on her clothes. She quickly ignored the evidence and looked back up at Jamie. “I’m fine.”
Jamie stared at her for a few seconds, but quickly averted his eyes, out of discomfort, guilt, and the uncertainty of not knowing whether he was supposed to call her out on the obvious lie, or to just let it rest.
He stayed silent.
The silence bothered him, like it always did. The silence bothered Lena as well, but in her desperation to ignore her own thoughts, she spoke.
“I found a book,” she said.
“About what?” he asked. The question seemed absurd to him, as did the topic, but he didn’t know what else to say.
It was in that moment that Lena realised that she didn’t know if she wanted to answer him. She didn’t know if she wanted to tell Jamie that the world he was in was broken, not knowing if he would be able to handle such a horrifying truth, that the god that had brought him here had no idea what it was doing, and that it was unknowingly tearing his life apart despite claiming that it wanted to save him.
Or at least that was what Lena thought.
Even if it wasn’t a sensible assumption in the slightest.
“I’m not sure I want to tell you,” Lena said, finding a compromise between telling her truth and hiding it. “I don’t know what to do, Jamie.”
Her shoulders slumped downwards, and despite having the strength of a god flowing through him, Jamie’s arms fell, finding weakness at the sight of his love interest so distraught. Her shoulders shook silently as her body tried to cry, but found no more tears within her.
“What can I do to help?” he asked, wishing more than anything that he could make her stop crying. He wanted to wipe her tears away, and hug her close, and kiss her gently, but he didn’t want to kiss her, he was ashamed that the thought even crossed his mind.
But he didn’t need to do any of that, as the question was enough to stop Lena from crying.
She looked up at him, eyes red, wet, and wide. She had a smile on her face, but not one born from joy but from sorrow, or rather, the complicated, contradictory, nonsensical, human emotion that was hysteria. She defied the rules set by her genetic disposition and social upbringing that stated that laughter was reserved for happy occasions, and yet, Jamie could understand it perfectly, somehow, his brow knitting together in concern.
“Lena?” he asked, a tremor creeping into his voice, another nonsensical reaction from a boy who had the power of a god. “Are you okay?
Lena’s smile grew wider, as a laugh escaped from her mouth. It was a hoarse sound, grating against the walls of her throat the entire way up, strangled, choked, pained, and yet it was still a laugh. She laughed and she laughed, the merry sound clashing so violently with the way that Jamie’s lips pulled downwards into a frown.
The scene didn’t make much sense in a lot of ways, which might have been why both of them seemed to think there was such a strong sense of dread that hung between them, the dissonance creating the illusion of a moment of stress where there was no real need for one.
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“Am I okay?” Lena asked. “It’s not me you should be worried about, Jamie. I’m not the one that needs help.”
Though she had been laughing when she started talking, her voice had dropped quickly and gradually to a rough monotone by the time she stopped. She stared in Jamie’s direction with her brow furrowed and her lips curled up into a grimace, but with her eyes too unfocused for it to be considered a glare.
Jamie grimaced, and opened his mouth, but he bit down on the question sitting on the tip of his tongue before it could escape him.
“I’m sorry,” he said instead.
Lena blinked slowly, as if she was waking from a dream. She looked up at Jamie, and stared at him for twenty two seconds before speaking.
“I keep telling you not to apologise for things you’re not responsible for,” she said, struggling to keep her voice flat, and failing to do so. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s fine. Whatever you think you did. It’s fine.”
Jamie winced and bit his lower lip, before turning his eyes down.
“Stop doing that,” he said.
“Stop doing what?” Lena asked.
“Stop pretending like everything’s alright,” Jamie said. “Stop lying to me, Lena.”
“I’m not lying,” Lena said.
“Yeah. Right,” he said, practically spitting out the words. “Please. Just stop. The fact that you’re still even trying is honestly kind of insulting. Do you really think I’m dumb enough to believe you?”
Jamie winced as the words left his mouth, but it did nothing to stop Lena’s eyes from widening in shock.
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said.
“I know,” Jamie said, hanging his head and shaking it slowly. “But that’s part of the problem. You keep acting like I’m some sort of bomb, waiting to go off at the slightest touch. I’m not going to do anything if you make me angry, Lena. Maybe I’ll sulk, or go off in an empty bathroom stall to cry, or something, but I’m not going to hurt you. That’s the last thing I want. Why can’t you recognize that? Even the Mediators are at least honest with me. You’re the only one that still treats me like a monster.”
What Lena should have done at this point would have been to calm down and explain that her skittish behaviour around him wasn’t due to a fear of making him angry, but rather, a fear of hurting him. Even if that fear was irrational, it was the truth, or at least what she perceived to be the truth.
If she calmly explained the reasoning behind her irrational actions, Jamie surely would have had the necessary amount of empathy to listen to her and relate to the idea that, as a human, he too was sometimes driven by his flawed emotions.
But, as it was often the case with human interactions, the obvious solution went ignored.
“The Mediators?” Lena asked, pushing aside her reaction to everything else that Jamie had said, so she could avoid talking about it for as long as she possibly could. “You mean the same people that have been trying to lure you into killing yourself ever since you got here? Those Mediators?”
“Yeah,” Jamie said, his body and mind stiffening at the tone that invaded Lena’s words, similar enough to his father’s pained anger that the heat that rose to his cheeks was automatic and subconscious. “Those guys. At least they listen to me.”
“I listen to you!”
Lena’s unconscious choice to shout was rather counterintuitive to her attempts to endear herself to Jamie, but in the heat of the moment, she hadn’t thought of it.
“Oh really?”
The cynical tone that Jamie took also made it increasingly difficult for any sort of friendly conversation to occur between the two, but a small part of him did want to make her upset, in retaliation for how upset she had made him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The spike of anger in Lena’s voice made it clear to Jamie that he’d succeeded at making her upset, in some part, but he didn’t feel any better about it.
Why?
He had set out a goal, and he had achieved it. Should that not make him happy? Was that not the only logical result?
It didn’t make any sense, but most human concepts didn’t. They were strange creatures. Everything in existence operated in what was true. Life was truth. Death was truth. Existence was truth. Nonexistence was truth. Everything was truth in some sort of way.
Humans were no exception to this, and yet, their relationship with truth was complicated. They created their own truth. They created concepts and perceptions that conflicted with the truth of the world around them, and yet, their truth often held strong. Like miniscule universes, miniscule gods unto themselves, but at least the gods were lonesome.
Humans had other humans, and those other humans had their own truths. They clashed, they broke.
A strange observation.
A strange observation that drew great concern. A reminder that humans were not creatures of logic. Jamie had set out a goal and he had achieved it, yet it did not make him happy. Might he be unhappy when he achieved his ultimate goal? Would he?
Was it because his truth had been altered by Lena’s?
A concerning thought.
It was unclear as to whether this was a good or a bad thing, but ultimately, it wasn’t an option to prevent their interaction. As simple as Jamie’s claims were, that his wish was a simple matter of being loved, there was a level of nuance that he hadn’t included when he told Lena about it. Yes, he wanted to be loved, but he also wanted to be understood and to understand another. He wanted to learn how to be ‘human’, as ridiculous as the notion was, and in wishing that, he made it impossible for himself to use his new limitless power to directly tamper with those who he sought to be loved by.
A foolish notion, but once again, a very human one.
Jamie and Lena were stuck in a loop of shouting that would only be broken once one of them saw logic. Which would be a while. Though Jamie had as much time as he needed to complete his goals, meaning that this argument could take centuries if necessary, there was the danger that this violent clash of truths would alter Jamie’s truth even further.
It was an annoyance.
But, what could be done?
Not much, if Jamie’s limiting wish was to be followed…
A wish was a form of truth, was it not?
It was. A wish was binding. A contract that would be fulfilled, no matter how long it took. It was a truth that was as true as the sun setting and rising, as true as the birth of the stars, and the eventual death of the universe.
But to the humans, truth was malleable.
So why couldn’t it be the same for the gods?
For the first time in my existence, I bent my truth. Not in a large way, not in a way that would directly clash with another, but a way that could interact with Jamie’s truth. I would give him a little push, and he could choose to go with it, or resist it.
Jamie and Lena fell silent, as I asked them a question.
I didn’t know how I felt. Though I had managed to make them stop their pointless argument, that hadn’t been my goal. I didn’t know what my goal was in the first place.
How strange.