"Elle-- I--"

"Enough."

Childhood friendships were a funny little concept.

On paper, the idea sounds excellent— some children meet around their most impressionable age, through shared circumstance or otherwise, and become friends. The friendship they forge in their youth will be stronger than any obstacle either of them will have to face. The concept of childhood friends promised so many things; a shoulder to cry on whenever you wanted, an ally to stand with you in the face of everything— to have a childhood friend is a notion comparable to a dream.

Unfortunate, that like dreams, reality often has plans that run contrary to anyone’s hopes.

The romantic notion never accounts for the dirt of reality; that both those friends will change as they grow up, morphing from the children they once connected as into adults neither recognized, burdened by a hundred multiplying responsibilities and worries that reality conspired to tear them away from one another. It won’t account for all the excuses they’ll make for one another, how many issues they’d overlook and let fester just because it’s them— and how could you bring it up? How could you bear to drag something so ugly into the limelight, when you already have so little time with them nowadays? Inevitably, the bond that was once stronger than anything else in the world becomes a burden, another worry to maintain, another pebble in your boot.

Eventually, from things unsaid, one or both of them will turn away, telling themselves that they had to leave because they no longer had time or some other perfectly mundane reason.

Usually, that’d be where it end. A friendship that was supposed to last a lifetime ends in a quarter of it— crushed underfoot by age and pressing responsibilities. Everyone involved accepts it— aging practicality having whispered into their ears that they had to move on, that that’s just how life was, that even though it was sad, there was nothing to be done about it.

What a vulgar idea, to let it all die after everything you’ve put it through.

How could the world expect me to let it all go, after everything I’ve done? How could I let this wither and die, when it’s mistake haunted me a decade later, echoing through every facet of my life until it was all I had?

[][][]

Snow crunched beneath me, lapping at my heels like encouraging hounds. Caustic recollection flooded my veins with ice, staining my world numb. Keep running, it lovingly whispered, keep bottling it away. Do not dwell on it. Keep your head down and keep doing what you’ve always done— it’s gotten you this far, hasn’t it? Why change, when you’ve come this far without it? Remember. Remember. Do not change. Change locked you into that closet. Change is your mother’s ire. Change is the ruiner of your dying dream. Change is the reason your father’s dead.

My vision blurred, light from street lamps and lit windows blending together in haphazard gray-amber swirls, like the brush strokes of an amateur painter. I could barely make out where I was walking, other than the fact that I was on a cliff-side street, with an ice-slicked railing overlooking a city that I could never once call home.

I didn’t know where I was, or where I was headed, but I found those concerns to be a distant, distant thing, drowned beneath a torrent of disgust and sorrow. Sobs climbed up my throat, stifled by the cold breaths I choked down to strangle my urge to cry.

The Warden’s retort echoed in my head. How long before you tell him? How many secrets? How many unsaid things? Why do you refuse to change? Why do you cling to your mother? Why are you a failure?

I heard the cold comfort of my younger self’s rebuttal, calm with the acceptance of an ageless refrain: I’m scared that I’ll be wrong— that at the end of the day, I’d have suffered at my own hands for nothing.

I bit my lip, feeling my chest splinter more than it already had. I roughly yanked the warmth charm off my neck, and I immediately felt the effects, a stiff breeze blew past, sending shivers up my bare-arms, the few tears that had run down my face felt like pebbles of ice, and the frozen breath I took stung.

Good. After a glance towards the railing, where cobbled street quickly gave way to cliff-side heights, I swallowed, rubbing at my frozen tears with the back of my hand. I hurled the warmth charm over the edge of the cliff, down to a place I couldn’t retrieve it. I didn’t deserve its comfort, after everything that happened tonight.

I took another, deeper breath, letting the chill seep through me and settle in my bones like ink staining water. I stopped walking, letting myself lean against a brick wall beneath a warm amber light. I sniffled, forcing my focus onto how could I was. I swallowed more stinging air, and watched my breath frost in front of me. If I thought about it hard enough, I could ignore everything that had happened in the last couple hours.

Somewhere behind me, snow crunched as hurried footsteps slowed to a stop. I didn’t need to turn to know it was Arthur— who else would’ve come after me?

Aren’t you just a rotten bitch? My psyche sighed. Making him chase after you, making him put in all this effort just for you to hurt him.

Sometimes, I wondered whether my actions were truly my own, whether it was really me who decided on what to do next, whether it was truly my decision to continually push everyone away, or it was some fraud that played the part everyone expected. Part of it came from disbelief, I think— that I’d been aware enough to be conscious about the reality of what I was doing, its implications on the people around me, and the fact that what I was doing was intrinsically wrong, but I did it anyway. Who else could? Who else would see their own issues and choose not to fix them?

A part of me screamed that I was blameless, that I couldn’t be held accountable for listening to what my emotions demanded of me. Trying to dictate emotion through logic was a fruitless endeavor, the argument went. Every time I’d try to repress some kind of emotion, it would inevitably bubble back up later down the line. It didn’t matter how I restrained it— whether it be through cooping myself up in my library for days to stare at my journals until my head grew fuzzy, or slept until the sun faded, the sorrow or the pity or the dread would be there, waiting for me to trudge through it again.

Applying a logical framework to it’s utter opposite never worked, not for me, at least.

But I had the awareness to be conscious of the problem, I had the ability to change, I just didn’t. I’d catch myself at critical junctures, listened and watched as opportunities for me to improve passed. I let opportunities to change pass me by— and why? I knew that I disliked change, that I’d grown comfortable like a parasite burrowing into a framework I clawed together, that at the end of the day I was pretending and telling everyone else that everything was fine.

Did that make me a horrible person? Yes, absolutely. Did that make me undeserving of love? Yes, probably.

I knew all that, yet I couldn’t bring myself to change. At the end of the day, despite the effort I made to communicate, despite my very real emotions in that carriage with Arthur, despite all the little things I told myself about trying to change— I’d still cracked at this critical point. I’d still failed when it mattered, and efforts mattered little if they couldn’t bring definitive results, I knew that better than I knew myself.

So at the end of the day, the blame still lied solely with me. I’d paid lip service to an ideal I was never committed to.

Rationale turned away from the icy reflection simmering beneath my skin. Rationale guided my mind, falling back onto habit, turning towards the immediate future. Restore the status quo with Arthur, do not dare ruin the only thing you have going for you, it demanded. Lie if you must.

I did not have the mental acuity nor time to tamper away the way I felt— to truly actualize and process my familiar and ignored epiphany— to deny the vicious cycle of stagnation that I had let swallow me.

“Elle!” Arthur let out a large breath, breathless. “Elle…”

“Hmm?” I hummed, half-turning to face him with what I hoped to be a neutral expression.

“We— we got hired… The Warden wants our services…” Arthur breathed out, hands on his knees.

Lie if you must, habit had demanded. But I’d never been a great liar. Good, maybe, but not good enough to hide the smallness of my voice. I hoped he couldn’t hear it. “That’s… that’s great, Arthur.”

Arthur took a heartbeat to respond. “Elle, Elle? Are you okay?”

I took a deeper breath, pulling myself up off the wall. I rubbed at my eyes, wiped away the last of my tears and snot, and let out a long sigh. “Yeah,” I slowly said, coating my words in exhaustion I didn’t have to fake. I turned, mustering what I hoped to be a small smile. “Yeah, I’m alright. Just tired, is all.”

“I…” Arthur took a step forward, before stopping at the edge of the light, getting an expression like he thought better of it. His face creased in concern and uncertainty. I’m certain that my lie wasn’t convincing, I just hoped he wouldn’t be brazen enough to inquire further. “Are you really? I know the Warden said some things that were—“

“Oh!” I chirped too quickly, in a voice too fast. “All that— don’t worry about it. It didn’t— it didn’t mean anything.”

“Elle—“ his voice had a note of desperation “— you stormed out. Things— things clearly—“

“— are fine.” Arthur flinched, and I stomped out the flicker of guilt in my chest. Things are fine, I silently pleaded, comforting myself. Things are okay. I am okay. Nothing is wrong.

His lips thinned. “… if anything’s bothering you, you can talk to me about it...”

I frowned, swallowing. How many secrets, the Warden’s echo whispered. How many things left unsaid?

Arthur caught the waver in my expression, and stepped forward. Without meaning to, I took a step back, and felt my heart tumble at the flash of hurt that crossed his face.

“Elle…” he said gently, in that pitying tone of his. The tone that said I was being too stubborn for my own good, the one that conveyed the amount of pain he felt at the fact he couldn’t be there for me. Somehow, his continued concern stung more than my Shade’s easy sadism. Sorrow rose in my chest like a wave, and I tore my gaze down. I did not need pity, I did not need a confirmation that things were not fine.

I bit my lip, as if to keep my secrets locked within my throat. I couldn’t meet his eyes. All the secrets lingering beneath your skin— all the things you’ve left unsaid— how long? How long before you confess to the full extent of your failures? I opened my mouth to speak, and nothing came out. I tried again, opening and closing my mouth to no avail. I still couldn’t look directly at him— simply peeking at him out of the corner of my vision.

“Is it about what the Warden said?” Arthur tried, taking another step closer. His expression had become pleading, as if he were begging me to let him help me— that he couldn’t stand to see me in pain.

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A shivering girl who’s too afraid to step out of her mother’s shadow. My scowl trembled, swarming sorrow warring with the toxic guilt and dull anger that mixed within me. Will you tell him, little fraud? Will you confess just how badly you’ve deceived him?

Do you really want to change? Really? Truly? Do you want to ask yourself this question again?

“It is, isn’t it?”

How could you do this to him? Guilt sobbed into my ear. Look at the pain he’s in— how could you? How could you? Why couldn’t you tell a more convincing lie? Why couldn’t you put on a more convincing smile? Why did you have to lose control? Caustic truth murmured, weary and flayed, You can’t even pretend to be alright, what a failure this was. What a failure you are— unable to even accomplish this simple task.

“Elle— please—“ he took another step forward “— tell me whats wrong—“

What’s left but to tell him the truth? whispered some part of me, but I couldn’t. I looked back at our history, at all the hundreds of things I’d never given voice to, that I’d shoved down and away and ignored, and felt helpless, like an ant told to lift the sky, or legless spider told to untangle a ball of yarn. Weary sorrow had ruined the guilt, digested the anger, twisted the truth like a knife in my throat, hollowing me out save the urge to sob at the severity of it all.

I opened my mouth, and found myself wordless. How could I not, when I felt as if I were being crushed beneath a collapsing tower of lies? Arthur stayed stock still, watching me, waiting for a response, and I said the only thing that I could still cling to— the age-old mantra that had gotten me through so much before.

“— nothing’s wrong,” I finally whispered, stepping back. I took another, as if anything I said or did would convince either of us otherwise. “Nothing’s wrong, Arthur…”

“Elle,“ he choked out the plea, his expression twisted into anguished worry. Habit urged me to go to him, to comfort him, to tell him that I was going to be okay, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to move towards him, to do anything other than to silently ruminate in utter shock and despair at the colossal, unsalvageable mess I’d tied us both into over the decade. “Please.”

Someone like you would never associate with him. He’s too good for us. How could you? How could you? How could you? It felt as if I’d been fighting an uphill battle all this time, only to reach the top of the mountain, and realize that the rest of the world waited for me. Even I could tell, with what fraying awareness I had left, that I was horrifically overwhelmed and losing coherency. The fact lent an odd separation from it all, as if I was both sobbing and watching myself cry at the same time.

None of it made any sense. Disbelief and guilt had stained my emotions a color I couldn’t comprehend, hollowed me out and twisted my perception until I couldn’t see.

I stood at the edge of the lamplight’s glow, numb and hollow and staring unseeingly at Arthur. My vision blurred, and my face buried itself in my hands as a sob I couldn’t hear shot a painful hiccup through my chest. I could feel the congestion in my nose that made me sniffle, the cold wetness at the corner of my eyes, and the shaking of my hands, but I couldn’t truly feel any of it. I couldn’t feel the uncontrollable urge to scrunch up my face and sob, nor the coldness of the tears streaking down my face. Sorrow and exhaustion and truth and rationale had abandoned me. Anything I could’ve reached for, I couldn’t. It felt as if I could hold onto nothing at all.

Arthur tried again in his sickeningly pitying tone, his sudden platitudes resounding as if through water. “E— elle? Hey— hey hey— it’s—it’s going to be okay, yeah?”

Without anything else to hold onto, my mind reeled for the only thing that still made sense.

“Stop,” I eked out, my voice tinny and weak even to my ears. I tried again, reaffirming my grip on the emotion. “Stop— Stop!” I yelled, gritting my teeth as if it could stop the tears dribbling down my face. He took another step forward, and I yelled louder. “STOP— stop. Don’t,” I huffed, nails digging into my palms. “Don’t.”

My best friend’s face twisted into hurt confusion. “I— what— what? Elle— I—”

“Stop trying to comfort me,” I spat, holding back tears. “Especially not in that tone.”

Please give up, I silently begged, Please see that I am not worth it— just please turn around, if not for your sake, then mine.

The look of pained shock across his face reignited a fresh urge for tears. “Elle— I— I don’t understand— what tone…?”

“That one,” I ground out with a long, shaky breath. “The one you’re always using when you’re trying not to hurt me. The 'oh, it wasn’t actually that bad’, the ‘look on the bright side, Elle’, the ‘I’m so sorry to hear that’, the ‘oh— poor you’— your— your pity…”

Arthur made a pained whimper. “Elle— w— what— that’s—“

I continued before I lost my nerve. “That’s not what? Pity? I know how you are, Arthur— I know how I look to you—“ my voice hitched, stuttering and dying out “— a girl who lost her parents and broke. A girl who’s so close to breaking that you must be so very careful with…”

A shaky breath climbed itself out of my throat. My gaze fell to the snow at my feet, I didn’t have the heart to watch his expression, to see if anything I was saying was even working. Everything about this was wrong. My tone was off— I couldn’t convey the level of anger that the words I’d use justified, Arthur was more hurt than anything else, and showed no sign of abandoning me. All that had come out just sounded bitter and pathetic and brittle. Another failure on my part. Frustration flickered to life, then drowned in numbness’s embrace.

Grief laced my childhood friend’s words. “I— Elle— that’s— that’s not… I… Y— you’re not some… You’re not some cracked glass sculpture…”

Any fury I had rallied finished deserting me, leaving me too tired to fight. Too tired to try and convince myself that everything was fine, that the fault was with anyone but me. “… then what am I, if not a fraud and a liar and a failure?”

“Is— is this about what the Warden said? I— I— … no… no…” He shook his head, as if to clear it then took a deep, shaky breath. I still couldn’t meet his gaze. “Elle— you’re not— you’re not what she said— you’re not a fraud or a liar or a failure— Elle! You’re the best mage I know! You’re my best friend in the whole world!”

“… I knew you’d say that.” Softly, tiredly, I shook my head, bitter. “Please, please stop lying to me… I— I know how I look to you— some poor girl for you to befriend, someone for you to be a hero for, the mage to your knight.“

“— I’m not lying!” Arthur shouted. I flinched. “I’m not lying— I’m not! How—“

I deflated further. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d believe it even if you said it a hundred times over.”

I won’t believe it because I can’t even believe myself. I don’t know how you can prove it, because I don’t even know myself, because I’ve been lying and pretending for so long I can’t distinguish between the truth and the things I’m telling myself. I can’t tell whether anything I say is truthful.

“Then… then… can you tell me about it?”

A sob wracked my frame, fueled by guilt, because Arthur was trying so, so very hard for me, and there was nothing I could do to make his efforts worthwhile. “I don’t know, Arthur. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m friends with you because I want to, or if you’re all I have, or because I have to—”

“… what… what do you mean by that?”

Well, some functioning part of my emotion absently eked, truth’s out, might as well tell him the rest, you rotten old hag.

I gave him a sad look. “You don’t remember?”

A growing look of horror on Arthur’s face tore another hole through my heart. “I— no— I don’t know what you mean…”

I huffed out a bitter laugh, stuck on how much of an idiot I was. Of course he didn’t remember. “A week after my mother left,” I quietly muttered. “You visited. You brought food with you and practically doted on me like some kind of moron for the entire weekend. I gave you a book, and then—“

“— then I said I’d protect you."

I swallowed, nodding. “Mhm. And I said I’d show you another world?”

“I…” My best friend still looked confused. “Yeah— I remember…”

I could feel the tears now, solemnly falling with no attempt made to stop them. I breathed out, not through my nose— I knew it’d be congested beyond belief— and sucked in a wet, cold breath. “That was an Oath, Arthur. I can’t break it.”

Arthur made a choked “oh” noise. Then, he stepped closer, no doubt intending to take my hands, embrace me, hold me, let me cry, anything— anything as long as it was to comfort me. His arms, halfway to reaching towards me, lifelessly fell back to his sides as I took another step back out of the lamplight, unable to properly meet his eyes. The cold exhaled like a chasm. Immediately, he adopted his reassuring smile, though I could tell he didn’t feel it. He tried approaching again, slowly, opening his arms. “Hey— hey hey— it’s— it’ll— it’ll be alright—“

His shaky voice died when I took another step back.

Softly, with the exhaustion of a decade, I harshly whispered, “How many times have you said that, over the years? How many times have you reaffirmed me, telling me that it’d be alright…? That everything was fine, even though it wasn’t? … Even though it never was— w— why did you keep saying it, even when you knew it wasn’t… wasn’t true?”

“Please— I— I had no idea— I thought that…” Arthur trailed off, crestfallen.

“Thought what?”

“I didn’t… I didn’t know, half the time, and every time I noticed something, you wouldn’t tell me about it so…” Guilt had consumed his expression, and he looked on the verge of tears. “So I thought you didn’t want to talk about it— and if you didn’t want to talk about it, I— I was okay with respecting that, I didn’t want to… I wanted to support you in any way you wanted…”

He’s got you there, cold comfort noted, stop blaming him for things you know are your own fault.

I kept silent, only sniffling and moving to dry my tears on the hem of my shawl. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I even should’ve said anything at all. Instead, my gaze stayed glued to the snow, too blurry to be of any use to me anymore. The cold had sunk so deeply into my bones I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore, and my face felt feverish. A part of me faintly wanted to lie down in the snow and never wake up.

Arthur broke the silence first, muttering, “W— what happens if you…”

“… if I break it?” My throat tried to let out a bitter laugh, but all it managed was a pained whimpering noise. “Don’t know. All reported incidents result in fates worse than death, or just death.” No trace of the anger was left, no trace of anything, really. All I felt was cold, and cold, and cold. “I can’t skirt the rules, either. Intention matters.”

And that was at the core of it, the reason for nearly everything I did— an Oath spun by a child who knew no better, who unwittingly took her fate into her own hands and permanently chained it to something she had never wanted.

We fell silent for a long, long time. I stood there, too numb and too dumb to really convince myself to move, even if I knew I’d catch my death out here if I continued. Arthur didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t see him out the periphery of my vision anymore, but I knew he hadn’t walked away. He continued standing in the cold with me, silent as the snow falling around us, solemn as my future.

“So— then… what— what was all of this…? All your research— was it just to fulfill the Oath?” My friend’s voice was brittle and small, a far cry from his usual self. A testament to how much I’d hurt him tonight. It spoke leagues that he hadn’t abandoned me yet, he really was too good for someone like me.

“That was the initial idea.” A sour wisp of a chuckle escaped me. “… how lucky that I’d landed into the singular field with zero meaningful advancements in the last seven decades, right…?”

“Then— then… what did you want to do after it…?” He sounded scared, like a small child thinking about something they much rather wouldn’t.

“… Move on with my life, probably.” Move away, leave it all behind. Take my family’s fortune and abscond into the dark, to live someplace else. Anywhere across the sea. Anywhere away from here.

“M— moving on… as in— leaving…? Did— did you only stay my friend so you could fulfill your Oath?”

Hurt him, a vicious part of me sneered, but the voice was empty and weak. Posturing like a cornered animal, more than anything else. Hurt him and push him away. You don’t deserve someone like him— he doesn’t deserve to be tied down to someone as awful as you—push him away and everyone involved will be better off for it.

“I… I don’t know, Arthur. Maybe.” I tried to shrug, but I couldn’t muster the energy. My eyelids felt heavy, the toll of tonight beckoning me to sleep— to run away from my problems. “I’m— … I’m really sorry, Arthur. I don’t know anything. Larissa was right, when she said all those things. I still can’t get over my mother, I still can’t get over myself to give you the treatment you deserve, I’m a lot stupider than you’d think.”

“You’re not… It’s…” Arthur started, and then stopped, his comforts and denials dead. He didn’t say anything else.

I breathed in the crisp, cold air, and let it out. I stopped crying a bit ago, and the numbness had settled, no longer quite so poignant and all consuming. Now, it sat in my chest, dim and dead with the feeling of long-expected finality. Well… my thoughts absently droned. I gave Arthur another look out of the corner of my eye, to see if he had anything else to say. He remained motionless beneath the light’s glow. That’s that, I suppose.

“I…” my voice was still quiet, but not as weak and stuttered as it had been. Any sort of energy I tried to put into it fell flat and dead. “I should head home, then. You should too, Arthur. Wouldn’t do for either of us to get sick from this.”

I slowly turned, some part of me waiting— begging for Arthur to stop me, to chase after me, to put in the effort again. I stomped out that part of myself. It had no right asking him of those things, no matter how much it hurt, after everything it’d put him through over the years. I shot him one last look, still unable to properly look at him. “Good night, Arthur. Sleep well, alright?”

Then, with a slow sigh and without another glance back, I left Arthur behind in the fresh fallen snow.