Adrien #2
“If I were you, I’d prepare myself for the fact that this won’t be a loving reunion.”
“Then what will it be?”
She doesn’t even hesitate. The smile sharpens just a little.
“Anger.”
I stare at her while she’s very much enjoying my internal panic.
She nods once. “Anger is healthy. Anger means she’s present enough to feel betrayed instead of disappearing into herself.”
“So that would be good news,” I say flatly.
“It would,” she says. “It would mean she’s not hallucinating you anymore.”
She gives me one last look, seemingly amused now. “So if she comes to you upset or furious—congratulations, you made it back into reality,” she says while standing up, ending this briefing.
Okay. That’s good. That sounds good.
As long as she comes, I don’t care if it’s to kill me. Bring it on.
?
I find myself once again on the last step to the basement, keeping a careful distance between me and the not-so-content-anymore Lucien.
My mouth curls into a faint, amused smile when I see him. We didn’t really get a chance to finish the talk the last time I was here. I was too busy losing myself in some blissful, old-fashioned violence. But the art that came out of it? Beautiful.
His face is blooming with every color the human body is capable of producing. Purples, reds, sickly yellows layered over each other like a bruised canvas. It suits him, really. Blood coats his hands and mats the white strands of hair to the back of his neck. He looks less curated this way.
He’s taken care of, though, almost too much.
I don’t know who’s been assigned to take care of him, but they’re doing far too good a job.
He could definitely look more broken than this.
There’s a line between keeping someone alive and making them comfortable, and someone in this household has blurred that line.
Only now, looking at him with a more contained mental state, do I really notice how different he seems from most of the times I’ve met him. He was always the man in a suit, or at the very least a crisp white shirt, immaculate, untouched and perpetually unbothered.
Now he’s been down here for over a week, wearing a basic black sweatshirt soaked through with his own blood and sweat. And somehow, stripped of the polish, he looks like a college football captain who got kidnapped by mistake.
I tilt my head, looking right into his eyes. He’s watching me too, with near-drowning emptiness.
He shifts slightly on the concrete floor, settling his back more comfortably against the wall, arranging himself into a relaxed sitting position, like someone getting ready for a friendly chat.
“I had a little outbreak last time,” I say, my tone light, remarkably conversational, even as I fail to suppress the smug curl of my mouth. “Sorry about that,” I add, not meaning a single word of it.
He gives a lazy shrug. “That’s okay.”
He’s been living in this filthy basement, on bare concrete, for more than a week and now…his entire existence feels like it’s submerged in a deep, haunting emptiness.
“Next time,” he breaks the silence. “Could you finish it?”
That stutters me for a moment.
My head leans to the side, analyzing the sudden change of his nature.
He’s suddenly far too reconciled with dying. I need to spark at least a flicker of life in him if I’m going to enjoy this at all. This is no fun.
Did the time down here really frustrate him so much that he doesn’t care about his own life anymore? Is it some of the perks of being a psychopath—to be at peace with defeat or death?
Or is it simply the fact that neither his father nor anyone else managed to save him until now that pushed him into this state of complete resignation?
I let his request sit between us, examining him more closely. I have my own experience with dying on the inside, so I recognize it when I see it. The man in front of me is already dead in there. There’s no decay and nothing left to fester.
“I would love to,” I say flatly. “Believe me. But we still need you.”
“You still haven’t killed him?” he asks, his voice lifting just enough to sound more alive and profoundly disappointed.
“He still hasn’t shown any interest in our situation,” I say, my tone turning accusing.
A slow wince crosses his face. It’s strange how simply sharing the same enemy makes him feel marginally more human.
“He’s not even looking for you,” I add. “Which brings me to something I can’t quite wrap my head around.”
Lucien lifts his gaze to me lazily, waiting.
“How is it,” I continue, my voice light, edged with amusement, “that the man you spent your whole life orbiting around suddenly doesn’t give a shit whether you’re alive or rotting down here?”
A corner of his mouth twitches, into something barely considerable as a smile.
“He won’t actively look for me,” he says calmly, as though stating a simple fact, without a trace of self-pity. Thank God. “He doesn’t like to let anyone think they have any power over him.”
I let out a quiet laugh. “That’s… sad.”
He stays silent, his eyes never leaving mine.