Chapter 2 #2
Vile reversed the grip and took her hand. He stood from the table and pulled her up to her feet. The sudden movement slammed her into the table, jostling it.
Which knocked several pieces tumbling from the table to the floor.
She didn’t have much time to worry about if they were all right from the fall—she was too busy trying not to step on them as she staggered forward.
“I do not enjoy the fact that you seem eager to belittle what is, on my part, a stalwart attempt to repair matters with you.” He glared down at her. “And will you focus on what matters, please, and not the game pieces? Kindly?”
“Why should I treat them any differently? They’re people.” Yanking her hand out of his, she took a step away from him.
“They are not real people. They simply exist as part of the scenery.” He rolled his eyes. “We went through this with Peter P—”
“If what you say is true, we’re all just words in a book, aren’t we?” God, she hated Wonderland. “If their suffering doesn’t matter, then neither does mine.”
Vile blinked, furrowed his brow, and then burst out laughing. “Is that what you think this is about? Their suffering? I promise you, their pain is nothing like yours.”
Sasha huffed a laugh. “What is a promise from you worth?”
“I very rarely lie. Properly-written villains don’t have to resort to cheap tricks like simple lies to win.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I know you hate me, but I thought you respected me more than that.”
Shaking her head, she took another step back. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. “None of this is real. It’s just another horrible nightmare. It can’t be real—”
“Sasha…?” He took a slow step forward. “Why do you hate Wonderland so very much?”
“Fuck off, if you think I’m going to tell you.” She laughed, resting her hip against the stone railing of the balcony. It gave her a sense of some stability, where everything else threatened to float away from her. She had nothing else.
Vile stepped in closer to her, slowly—giving her ample time to run or back away. For once, he didn’t seem like he was trying to threaten her. “And if I promised not to use it against you? Here, or in any other story?”
“You said ‘you very rarely lie.’ But not ‘you never lie.’ There’s a difference.” She jabbed a finger into the center of his chest.
And tried not to think about the smell of roses as he drew near. Or the fact that he looked so damn handsome and twistedly beautiful in the makeup and the bizarre clothing.
Tried and failed.
“Shut up, shut up. Don’t say a fucking word!” Shutting her eyes, she dropped her head. She wanted to scream. Why? Why was she like this? Why did she do this?
His voice was strangely soft when he replied. In a way she’d never heard from him before. “One more thing you assume I would leverage against you. Why?”
“You. Are. The bad. Guy. You. Chopped. Me up. Into. Tiny! Pieces!”
By the end, she was punching him in the chest with both of her hands, screaming at him. “And you bring me fucking here! Here! And I fucking hate it here because it’s this fucking story and of course you fucking brought me here!”
Now, she was crying.
Letting her hands fall uselessly to her sides, she let out a long, wavering breath. Hanging her head, she gave up. Through it all, Vile had just stood there as the Queen of Hearts, taking it all. Not responding. Just watching her.
And she knew why.
None of it mattered.
Why would it matter?
Who the fuck was she?
Nobody.
Sasha Lancaster wasn’t anybody. She was going to lose the game he’d dragged her into like so many other people before her. That was, if she was real at all. She might not be. This whole thing might just be a story in a fiction fib inside of a lie. Jury was out on that.
She didn’t matter. She didn’t exist.
So none of it did. “When I moved to college, and Sidney went to New York, it…didn’t go well for me.
I don’t know how to describe it. I used to get these horrible panic attacks.
First time being away from home. But I was an adult, right?
I was the responsible one. The mature one.
Sidney was supposed to be the headache child, not me. ”
Vile said nothing.
So, she kept talking. “I started getting nightmares. Horrible, vivid things. I’d wake up being unable to breathe.
Unable to move. Night terrors. Once, I flung myself off the bed in the middle of the night when I was so scared and so desperate to move.
I gave myself a concussion when my head hit the floor.
Shutting her eyes, she couldn’t look at him—anywhere near him—as she continued.
“I was afraid to even see a therapist. My parents were helping me pay for tuition. I didn’t know if the college was going to report it to them or—or whatever.
So I just…ignored it. Never saw a doctor.
I started to do really weird things to keep myself awake or control the anxiety. ”
Biting back the bile that wanted to rise up, she dug her nails into her palm. “I discovered I could keep the nightmares away if I fell asleep listening to like…books on tape, or whatever. I found out by accident. Didn’t mean to. Passed out a few times listening to them and then noticed a pattern.”
“Hm.” That was the first time he made any sound at all since she had started.
Nodding, she wiped away at the tears on her cheeks. “Yeah. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. On repeat. F—for the roughest year and a half of my life. Until I…resorted to self-medicating.”
She continued before he could cut in. “Sidney noticed immediately. First time we were together after I started. Got me to a doctor. Just a…fucking anxiety problem. Turns out she had it, too, from moving away. But this story—this fucking story—”
“Harbors the association to that time.”
“Yup!” She was half-frantic, half-furious, and entirely disgusted at herself. Disgusted over the past. Disgusted for having told him. Disgusted because she had wanted to tell him.
And even more disgusted because all she wanted, all she needed in the world was—
Turning, she kicked the stone railing as hard as she could, the sudden blinding pain making her spew out a series of creative obscenities.
He chuckled quietly beside her. “An inventive way to stop yourself from thinking incriminating thoughts, but one that I fear will do you more harm than good overall.”
She growled at him in response.
“Especially when I can guess at what it was going to be, regardless.”
Sasha went rigid as Vile, with a shocking amount of tenderness, pulled her into a hug.
A hug.
And just held her.
She couldn’t help it. There was just no way she could summon the strength to push away.
“You are meant to be on my side, Sasha. What happened in the Regency Romance was because you took actions against me. I was angry. What occurred…occurred. As I said, I do not apologize.” His voice was a deep rumble that was more soothing than it should have been.
“However, if you did not matter, if I did not find spending time in these stories with you enjoyable—would I not have cut my losses and just offed you twice more already?” He paused, and when she didn’t answer, nudged her playfully. “Well? You see how much fun it is for me to kill people.”
Yeah…
Okay…
Whatever.
“And one more thing. Look at me.” He shifted to put one hand to her cheek. “Come, now. Look at me.”
Finally, she gave in. One of his blood-red eyes was a shifting, glowing shade of purple. “What?”
“You are as real as I am, my dear Sasha*.”
Gaze flicking between his eyes, she searched for the lie. Searched and searched and couldn’t find find it. “Swear to me. Swear to me on your fucking existence you aren’t lying to me.”
“I give you my word…”
Her eyes slipped shut.
And she once more couldn’t find the strength to push him away.
As, this time, he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.
* Chaturanga. So you know I am not being needlessly unkind by inventing things.. - V
* If you don’t tell her, I won’t. - V