They were never meant to fall in love.
At least, that's what Justine tells herself as she lays in bed at night, listening to the sound of Angus's breathing. She's been kept awake for the past few night with thoughts such as those. He fell in love, if he had truly done such a thing, with the old her, the sixteen year-old sadist who seduced and tortured three men. The old her would have driven Angus Bumby to the point of insanity by now, not let him live relatively unscathed. Of course, she could not deny the fact that she had manipulated him, making him think of his dear, dead, departed Lizzie, the Lizzie he had raped and killed a year or so earlier.
The problem is is that she had fallen in love with him. Not that she had meant to do such a thing. Justine never willing allowed herself to feel anything for anyone, not ever seen she'd seen what she had done to the one person that she had truly loved. She shudders, eyes snapping shut as she grimaces. Every time that she thought of what she had done to poor Malo, her once beloved Malo, she wanted to hurl.
She had gone back into her Cabinet of Perturbation once, just because she felt a sort of… pity toward Malo and felt something akin to regret. She'd never done it again. The ugly scar on her calf, ragged because it had been torn with human teeth, and her slight limp made her think twice now. Had she not used the pain to make her run, and had Clarice not been close by upstairs, she would have died. As it was, she almost did anyway. Once Malo had bitten into her calf, tearing the flesh and muscle and tasting her blood, he went absolutely insane. Well, more than he had been before. He actually managed to follow her back through the crypt by the scent and taste of her blood alone. The worst part was what he said as he tracked her down like a bloodhound tracks an injured deer. An involuntary whimper escapes her throat, and she curls up into a ball.
It was hard to bear, much harder knowing that she had slept with the man on multiple occasions, and she had considered herself in love with him at one point.
Although she did not mean for it to, her whimper of fright seemed to have woken her current lover up. One arm wrapped around her waist slowly, pulling her close to Angus.
"Hush now," He mumbles sleepily as he pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. "He's gone. They're all gone. Forgotten. Your past has been paid for."
Oh, if only he knew that they were not gone or forgotten, and that she will still paying for her past. The scar on her left calf itches slightly, but she doesn't dare move to scratch it. It doesn't exist, they don't exist, her crimes do not exist. Memories she doesn't remember must not have happened.
Her fear that sometimes keep her up at night, and her guilt, begs to differ, but she forgets them, forgets everything, in favor of sleep. Her curse of memory had not been lifted, but she could always pretend.