"I wasn't sure you'd show up." Evie walked to him as soon as he got his balance from getting off the ladder, pulling him into a warm and all-too-uncomfortable embrace.

"I wasn't either." Numb to all his surroundings, Blink pushed her arms away from his neck. "Off."

She sighed, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her face. "Blink, it's not like I chose for all of this to happen." When she earned no visible response from him, she decided it wasbest just to go on. "I don't want to be married off. I don't want to be worth nothing more than an appealing dowry. But I don't have a say in the matter.

"Girls like me, we don't marry for love. We marry because our families have money, and it's a good businessventure to merge with another family with money. I'm bred to breed, basically, no matter where myownheart and my interests mightlie."

"That's not the problem, Evie," Blink snapped, still continuing to stare coldly at that perfect face.

"It is the problem. You're angry because you think I'm just casting you aside. You think I love William, you think that I just wanted to throw your life around. You're angry because you can't have me allto yourself."

He barely resisted the urge to slap her, very nearly raised his hand. "No. I'm angry 'cuz you lied to me. 'Cuz, for some reason, you couldn't be yourself with me. 'Cuz you made me love you, and now that's all just gonna go away and there ain't a God-damned thing I can do about it." Alcohol mixed with the blood raging in his head, pounded in his ears. He could hardly see straight, which frustrated him, and he wanted her, which downright infuriated him.

"You think that's one-sided? Do you honestly think that with the time I've spent with you, the... the things I've done with you, thatit all means nothing, that I don't feel anything? I'm being forced out of this too, Blink!"

Before either of them could say another word, their mouths met in a clashing of teeth and tongues, the ferocity of it pushing both of them far away from any semblance of reason. They soon found themselves pressed against the chimney, skirt hiked up and suspenders unhooked, forgetting all possible onlooking neighbors. They took one another, fast, fierce, passionate in angst and frustration rather than love. It ended quickly, leaving them both to crumple to the cold, hard cement, breathless and unfulfilled.

"We can't do this anymore." Blink's voice was as ragged as his clothing as he let his head fall back against the brick of the chimney, his inebriation preventing him from feeling the harsh contact. "I can't do this anymore."

"I should probably go home." Evie stood, straightened herself, looking at him expectantly. All she wanted was for him to tell her to stay, to lay in his bed like she had weeks ago, to curl into his body as if it were what nature intended.

"Yeah, you should."

Evie was long gone by the time he finally decided to climb down the ladder. Loud, happy voices and clinking glass could still be heard from downstairs, so Blink stood in the dormitory alone. He bathed in freezing water, in the pitch-black of the washroom, and, pulling on clean britches, collapsed into his bunk to sleep off this nightmare.

A/N: I'm aware of how short this chapter is. But it's not the kind of thing where you can change the scene in the same chapter, it kind of has to be on its own. A new chapter will be along shortly, but I have to pay some attention to my other fic, so you will just have to bask in the glow of this for a little while. R&R, yadda yadda yadda. You know. -Layne