Learn to Love Again

A/N: Carrion/Candy obviously. Kinda… More of Carrion just thinking. This is supposed to be a one-shot; I really don't think I can go anywhere else with it… This is very short and very unorganized and little out of character so before you review, I know. 

Disclaimer: I don't even know what the point of these things are. Isn't it rather obvious I don't own Abarat?

Carrion sat in a dark room with the moonlight casting flickering beams of luminosity onto the walls and smiled grimly at the thought that even on this shady, sinister island he could not escape the light. He had just returned from Efreet with Letheo in tow but rather than go meet his grandmother as he normally would, Carrion proceeded directly to his library and had sat there for many hours since. His servants had all come, offering him food and drink, but he turned them all away with a sneer preferring to be alone and uninterrupted.

It was that girl. She had come from that damnable world of hers and shattered his perfect routine of following his grandmother's very word (for he knew not what else to do) and both loving and hating his Princess' memory in peace. Carrion had been so content in his own never-ending misery and the girl had brought back that hope that he knew only once before, that hope which had been snatched from him so cruelly and his heart torn and shredded into a million pieces by the one person he thought would mend it.

For he knew that he could have killed Candy Quackenbush had he really wanted. His grandmother had always told him that love could only hurt and destroy and he was better off without it. Carrion knew this well enough but unlike her, he had begun to understand that love was an inevitable thing, something that couldn't be helped no matter how much he wanted to stop it. For years after Boa was gone, he had looked for it but found that he compared every woman he met to his Princess: none of them were beautiful enough, charming enough, sweet enough… So what made Candy so different?

Not to say that he loved her but he was intensely fascinated by her. But Carrion barely knew the girl. He didn't know anything about her world, or her family, or even her. Why had she come to the Abarat in the first place? How was it that she was always able to elude him, just barely as if she was teasing him? And what about her had Carrion so captivated? Oh how he wished he could explain it! With Boa, it was so easy to understand his ardor; she was beautiful and kind and charming. But why Candy? Why was his mind even wandering down this road if he really didn't love her?

Later on, as Carrion lay in bed attempting (and failing) to sleep, his mind floated inexorably towards Candy and the things he had noticed about her, with the hope that he could figure out why she had such a hold on him. He loved the way her eyes seemed to sparkle although not with happiness as was usual but with passion and life and a barely visible sadness to which he could relate. And he had seen hidden behind her mismatched eyes an excitement that made her soul glow. He loved the way she spoke in a direct, unfaltering manner as if she didn't care who was listening to her or who might take offence at her words. Carrion felt he may know everything about the girl when in truth he knew nothing at all. And he knew that. He loved the way she seemed to have no fear or worries and how she had stood up to him with pride and dignity as he chased her through that house. No one had ever done that. He loved the way she seemed so mysterious, that she had secrets upon secrets upon secrets hidden inside her beautiful dark-haired head. And he wanted to know all of them, every single one.

Carrion might love her, he didn't know. It had been almost sixteen years since he had last seen Boa and he knew that one of these days he would have to pick himself up, lick his wounds and move on with his life. He just didn't know how. Carrion didn't know if he would ever see Candy again or even if his fascination with her would come to nothing. And he didn't want to know. And he didn't care. Carrion had found, long ago, that there was a different side to a broken heart, which some people never found, a sort of lamentable joy. It was laughable, that someone could find contentment in such hellish desolation but he knew that his heart wasn't broken but instead perfectly intact. It meant that he could feel. It meant that he was still human. It meant that someday one would come along that he would fall for but she would love him too and would never go away. And his years of misery would make that moment all the more sweeter. And with that he smiled, his first true smile in many years, and fell asleep.

End

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