Fan Fiction ❯ Drowning on Air ❯ One-Shot

All characters and plot ideas are solely owned by me, trademark

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Drowning has never been my ideal way to die. I always envisioned myself dying in battle from the stroke of a sword lightning fast, obviously faster than mine. I even hoped I might have some kind of heroic end. I can almost picture the scene in my mind—the crooked grin on my face, wiped away in the blink of an eye by my succeeding expression of utter shock. There would be nothing in me but surprise, surprise at being bested, beaten, destroyed. But I never entertained the idea that I would be met with such a graceless end. Not drowning, not so simple, not so trapped.

 

But it seems that I will die drowning in the violet depths of her eyes.

 

With a sword in my hand, I am, as I've been told in the shaking whispers of my victims, unstoppable. Men, women, brothers, sisters, mothers—sin and I will be at your side in the belly of an instant. I am believed to be thief, liar, assassin. Grown adults cower when they hear my name.

 

They call me murderer.

 

How is it that I—a veteran of guilt and sorrow—am engulfed so helplessly in her violet waters? Why do her clear violet eyes pierce straight through my dented and battered shell while her crystallized tears make the earth quake beneath me?

 

I have lived a life of secrets, hidden in the shadows of the trees and the silver shine of the moon. Long before my fabled name became a thing murmured in open dread, I had surrendered my humanity to a cause, a cause that was so twisted and warped that even I couldn't grasp it. For this unfathomable cause, I have lived—even committed—more heart-wrenching horrors than any innocent can stomach. Each death, each cry, each tear spilt on the ground climbs atop my mountain of secrets—my hill of sins. I have lived only for myself—my survival, my ferocious struggle against the constraints of my heart. Nothing beneath my mud covered boots or above my blood-splattered hair is able to break me. Lives swathed in shadowed blood have forever stained my hands, creeping and seeping into the minute crevices of my palms. Always booming, screeching, echoing—their anguished cries have burrowed deep within my mind.

 

Only one person can sway me

 

That one person can stop my blade from slicing through flesh and sinew; stop my heart from pulsing within my chest. She makes me choke back my snide remarks and cynical views. She speaks and my heart flips into the roof of my mouth. She smiles and I suffocate. She touches me and I am dazed. She is my impalpable dreams, and I am her flawed reality.

 

She has lived her life in the shadows of women who are legends, yet she has gotten no remorse. Constantly she is reminded, not of what she is, but of what she will never be. There will be no exalted pause before her name and no reverential silence after it. Not like them. Never like them. But she is just a girl, a queen to be, with the arresting eyes of a woman so much more wise and weathered. Within her is curled something striking, almost staggering, as if she houses a soul far larger and vastly more defiant than any of those whose shadows she walks in.

 

She is my bane.

 

“Marcus.”

 

She appeared slowly, standing in my shadow this time. Fat drops of rain clung to the edges of her fiercely curling red hair, causing each strand to glisten. The faint trail of freckles that marched up the bridge of her nose stood out starkly against her pale skin, enhancing each sharp angle in her face. I could see smudged tracks on her face from her pained tears. Somehow, these almost invisible hints of her sorrow were more of a raw reminder of my sins than any bloody memory.

 

“Hmm?” I asked in an emotionless tone. My secrets, my pains, cannot be allowed to filter out through my words. This mask of imperfection, of careless abandon, will never slide away from my face. The shrouding darkness behind it would only shatter her oblivious perceptions to pieces.

 

“I know sometimes that I...” She paused and tilted her head away. “These hidden boundaries that we have to toe around because of rank, because of blood—how do you live like this?” She looked up at me with such genuine violet eyes that I felt myself drowning again, but I sank into the depths voluntarily. Her eyes, like twin flames, are mesmerizing, deep enough to get lost in a spiral of violet. With the drowning, I forget who I am. I forget the many deaths that I have executed with the cold precision of a surgeon. I forget the agonized tears that I have spurred so indifferently. I can only focus on how to breathe, and even that is an impossible task.

 

She has the gaze of a queen, unnerving and captivating, and yet—she has never discovered this part of herself. She mustn't have ever wanted to kill, to really end a person's life with such malicious intent that her anger simply scorched beneath her skin, because that gaze would have destroyed anyone who incited her wrath. Her eyes slice through people's souls, with a kind of quiet power that none are aware of until they are ensnared in her grasp.

 

But she will never understand that this—not any flaw of hers—is what unsettles people about her.

 

“Look,” she started after realizing I wasn't going to answer, “I know that we're…more different than any two people can possibly be.” Her hand reached up and she tapped a feather light finger on the knife hidden up my sleeve. I barely held back a shiver. “I know my mother forced you to teach me.” She fiddled with the edge of one of her polished buttons. “She…told me and I guess I understand what you meant then, when you—”

 

“When I threw you out,” I interrupted dryly. And we had reached the crux of the matter, the reason my dark hair was dripping little torrents of water down my face, the reason why I was standing outside in the middle of the harsh rain storm instead of sitting comfortably within the heated room where I had taught her lessons for two years. This time, when the droning monotony of my lecture had been interrupted, it had been more than a simple argument springing from the frustration caused by the rain. I had exploded, furious at allowing myself to rationalize that this little teaching venture was just a means to an end—not a prolonged attachment to a person that was slowly poisoning my beliefs. And she—she had splintered into pieces.

 

A small and weary sigh escaped from her thin lips, almost hidden by the sound of the thundering rain around us. “But can't we try to at least—I don't know.” A second, identical sigh followed close behind. “So you've never belonged at court, never stepped foot in our society; why does that mean that we have to hate like this?”

 

That sweet naiveté, such an endearing quality in her fighting spirit, keeps bloodlines and nobility her most chief problem. The secret monster that dwells in me so quietly—she could never comprehend, never understand the sight of light leaving the eyes of the dying. And it's safer this way, making her think that we are forbidden because she is a queen-to-be and I am…I am glass shattered beneath her shoes. So much safer than letting her think that while she would cry at the loss of her garden, I had stared impassively while hundreds lost their fight against me—against the cause that I had lost my soul to so many years ago.

 

I have dwelt in the shadows not to hide from others, from those who hate the very thought of my existence—but to hide from the image of myself that I am no longer able to bear. In daylight, in polite society, I am a reckless grin, nothing more than a painful smile. At night, veiled by the moon, I am flint-edged eyes—power, horror, grief.

 

“What makes you think that I hate you?” My voice was light, almost gentle.

 

“You don't?” She sounded surprised. She tugged at the elegantly stitched hem of her blouse, twisting it fold over fold, veins tense under her white knuckles.

 

“No, I do. I was just wondering. Is it the fact that I almost never speak more than three words to you in one day? Or is it because the only words I ever say to you are—well let's admit it—more vicious than any insult thrown at you by that arrogant sister that follows you around. Might it just be that you've realized that look in my eyes whenever you're near me really is disgust.” My heart tore viciously in my chest, and the pain was nearly physical, leaving me split open and bloody. “You are an insufferable, spoilt princess, the illegitimate daughter without a cause. People bow to you while they whisper behind their hands about what a failure you really are. You, Lyn, are one big façade just waiting to have a breakdown. I will be at your throat, as you've said before, until I know I never have to see you again. Or at least when I'm not being ordered to grovel at your feet, your highness.” I bent my body in half, spreading my arms in a mock-bow. The words came out filthy and bitter in my mouth.

 

My breathing almost stopped all together at the furious pain that shadowed her eyes. Within them I could see violent storm clouds, wild tempests of fury. “This is what I get for trying to make peace? How stupid I was! You're nothing but a worthless, immoral criminal.” The fabric trapped beneath her too-thin fingers tore abruptly at the seams, thread curling around her fingers. She let out a dry sob, cutting her eyes away from mine.

 

There was something inexplicable blocking my lungs, suffocating my heart. But at her words, it was impossible to keep in the strangled laugh that emerged from my lips. My crimes, so much larger than the petty theft that she thought I had committed, would make her innocence collapse around the gilded walls that embody her world.

 

It was terrifying how delicate she was, how easily broken. Terrifying how easily she could die. All it took for her to be lost was a single beat from my heart.

 

It only took a breath to die.

 

I couldn't help the sick satisfaction that welled up in me as I watched her storm away. It meant she'd been saved at least one moment longer, saved from a man worse than a thief—a killer and a coward. Years ago—a lifetime ago, I would have stopped her, looked past everything caging us away from each other, folded myself into her innocence, and draped her around my flawed soul.

 

“I didn't want this,” I murmured, voice cracking, as her shadow receded from view. The pain of her departure seared up my throat, burned past my heart. Guilt coiled in the pit of my stomach like a ravaging serpent, winding around a heart hidden away for much too long. I tried to laugh my sharp longing away—felt it catch in my throat. “I—I can't—” There was so much trapped within that one word, chained to the emotions that I couldn't let loose. Now all I could do was force my heart to start beating again and my breathing to even out.

 

Tomorrow…a single moment, the space of a breath.

Tomorrow in my place she would find emptiness and silence. It would deafen her, blind her at first. But after a while, my lost presence would become only a memory, blurred and faded at the edges. I would become just a painful smile—flint-edged eyes.

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I would really appreciate it if you could answer these questions in your review. I want to know if it's too rambling, or too clichéd. I also want to know if the bit explaining about their fight while he was teaching her is really necessary and if anything is confusing because of lack of info.

Thanks!