A/N: Hey guys, it's me, elusive lights. This is my first story, so please read and enjoy! If you have any suggestions or comments, leave them in the review box! Thanks for stopping by!
Crushed flowers. She doesn't know why, but they always remind her of herself. The way that they have no life after being uprooted and trampled on. She supposes she is the same.
She doesn't even know why he does that to her—why he fuels that obsessive urge of hers that forces her to her knees and turns her into a simpering idiot, a wretched lapdog. She hates feeling weak; it is disgusting and pathetic. Showing signs of weakness is essentially stripping away one's dignity, and yet, inexplicably, she loves when he does it. She feels so much happier and more alive when he is around that it makes her sick. It is indescribable, unexplainable, with the only answer being that it just is.
Which is why she is furious and simultaneously feels nauseous when she sees her brother kissing that Asian freak, Yao Wang.
She can only stare, mouth agape, before Ivan notices and pulls away from his lover. Only then can she string together intelligible words, words not completely incoherent.
"I—you—he—how could you do this to me?" She stutters uncharacteristically, her mind trying to wrap around this new and unfathomable situation.
He takes a deep breath; he had known that she would be devastated. "Natalya—I have something I want you—where are you going?"
She doesn't stay for his explanation. Instead, she takes off running. To where, she has not a clue, but she just knows that she has to get away. She has to escape the madness that has erupted in front of her disbelieving eyes. Perhaps if she runs away, just disappears and never looks back, it didn't happen.
Of course, that is not the case at all.
Ivan quickly overpowers his sister, grabbing her wrist and turning her sharply around. His touch is cold, harsh, and both nothing and everything like what she has dreamed of, what she has hoped for.
"Listen, Natalya, you need to understand—" He doesn't even get to finish his sentence.
"Understand what?" Her voice is ice, biting enough to wipe the easygoing smile from her brother's youthful face.
"I love Yao Wang, and I am—" Again, he is cut off.
"You mean that effeminate, longhaired chink?"
Ivan stops cold. He glares at her chillingly and spits out, "Don't you dare talk about him that way," through gritted teeth. "I. Love. Him."
She scoffs. "You dare talk to me about love, when I have devoted my entire life to you? I offer you my affection, but no, you go off with some other man. Is it not enough for you to break my heart? Must you tread all over it too?"
That halts him. Upon looking closely at his sister, he discovers the tears dancing on her eyelashes, crystalline beads bobbing up and down with each blink. "I'm sorry, Natalya, I—"
At that, she utterly snaps. The carefully constructed walls that she has imposed around herself come crashing down. " 'I'm sorry, Natalya.' 'I didn't know, Natalya.' You think that saying 'I'm sorry' is enough?" She rounds on him, screaming at him for the first time in her life. She herself is shocked, he even more so. "I love you, Ivan—no, loved you. Time and time again, I came crawling back to you. This time, I will not let you make me look like a foolish, pathetic idiot. I have had enough! You think I do not know you do not love me? Do you really believe I am that blind?"
"I understand—" he begins.
"Shut up!" She roars, and he shrinks away in fear. "Shut up! You do not understand. You do not understand how hard it was for me to accept that you don't love me. You do not know what it feels like to hear others come up to you and say point-blank that you do not love me and that it is futile to try. You do not realize," her voice is shaky and very fragile, and she just cannot stand it, "how hard it is to continue to try to make you love me when I know that you do not love me and never will, not in the way that I want you to."
Pausing, she takes in a ragged breath, spent from her outburst. "I'm so tired of waiting, Ivan," she whispers hoarsely, feeling close to tears and hating herself for it, "I'm tired of waiting for someone who could never love me back. I cannot afford to mend the cracks in my heart every time it snaps in two. I just can't."
Tears fall from her eyes involuntarily, and she angrily wipes at them with the back of her hand. She mustn't cry, she mustn't, for crying is a sign of vulnerability, and that is repulsive. She forces her head to look up at him, eyes brimming with tears held back, and in that moment, she hates him. She hates him with every fiber of her being because in his eyes is pity, and she doesn't need someone's pity as if she is some kind of charity case.
She glares at him through red-rimmed eyes and, in an instant, there is a knife embedded in the wall, a feather's breadth above his ear. He doesn't flinch like she wants him to. Instead, he envelops her in a hug, and like the idiot she is, she allows him. He holds her carefully, as if she will break if he doesn't.
He can feel her tears on his coat, can feel her shuddering sobs that she tries to suppress, failing miserably. He can smell the sorrow around her, the sickly-sweet scent of crushed flowers and empty hospital beds.
He rocks her back and forth, and she feels like a helpless child, a feeling that she hasn't gotten since she was very young.
Into her hair, he whispers, "I'm sorry."
At the words, she crumples. Just like that. She pushes him away, and in her eyes is pure defeat. Her heart is broken by those words, absolutely shattered, because she knows what they mean, what the meaning lingering beneath them is: I'm sorry that I cannot love you back.
In that very instant, Natalya Arlovskaya finally realizes something that has been right in front of her the entire time, something that she has been too blind to see: no matter how much she tries, no matter how much she desperately longs for it, she and her brother are not meant to be, and they never, ever were.
Even though her heart is broken, she still tries for a smile. It comes out crooked, completely deformed, as if a blind man has tried to sew bits of a mouth together to make a horrible grimace. Her eyes are haunted, drained of any light that they used to have, and her body sags limply. She is like a rag doll that a petulant child threw away. She clears her throat once, twice, and opens her mouth. Nothing comes out, except a ghastly choking sound. She tries again, and finally finds her voice.
"Well, dear brother, I guess that this is it, then," she croaks. "This is the way it always was, and the way it will always be. Goodbye."
She turns around abruptly and walks away, head held high and shoulders squared. She half hopes that he will call her name, pull her back—anything. Only, he lets her go. He lets her go without a fight and it disgusts her that she should want or expect him to take her back. She supposes that inside, he is celebrating, finally rid of his annoying little sister who was unable to comprehend the fact that he does not care for her that way. Well, now she knows.
When she arrives at her house, there is a prevailing atmosphere of despondence. Everything is silent and empty and forlorn. After closing the door, she sinks to her knees and sobs quietly, letting loose all of the conflicting emotions and inner turmoil that she has suppressed all these years. An eternity later, an unspoken forever lost, she opens the door and screams in anguish her love for him.
For she cannot help but cave into that desire, the ever burning flame of desire she has for her dear brother who simply cannot love her back. She hates him, and she loves him. This is the way it never was.