Chapter 29. Tribulations
Blaze and Satchel take carriages back to their parts and Bayn goes crazy once he sees Aisha, it breaks a piece of me to see him like that even though he hates me. He screams over her, shaking her as if that’ll bring her back, like his breath running out will be bring her’s back. When he blames me for her death it cuts through my heart like a hot knife, because in a way I am responsible. I beg him to let her go so that her body can be preserved until its time to bury her, but he refuses, he refuses to let her go.
After almost an hour Gemini has to call the preserver to gather her from him, they nearly have to fight her from his arms and when they finally do get her, he trails behind them screaming and I hear a piece of his heart shatter in each yelp. Libra walks to his study pulling me behind him in a fit of rage, I should be angry if anything. Not him.
He lets go of my wrist once we’re in his study and for the first time I see what its like with the door closed. Instead of pushing me against a wall like the usual, he paces the floor, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “That could have been you.” He lets out a shaky breath almost like it hurts him to do so. “If the situation was tweaked only a little differently, that could have been your neck and Bayn wouldn’t be the one with his soul ripped from his body. Do you get that?” Green flashes in his eyes, skimmers like a radio station that’s buffering not knowing which song to land on.
“If you wouldn’t have kept the truth from me I probably would have figured what was in that cave in the first place, we could have save Aisha’s life do you get that?”
“Aisha’s life doesn’t matter to me.” He spits and I know he means every word. “Its your life, your life is valuable, irreplaceable. You walk around here playing hero like you can’t be touched, you can.”
“Her life mattered to me! To Bayn! I made him hurt, its because of me that his soulmate is taken away from him. You may only care about yourself but I’m not selfish like you, Aisha was loyal to you, to these lands and you disrespect her like this? You disrespected her today, she was sad in her last hours, feeling like she didn’t do enough for your pathetic manor. A hero? What kind of hero lets one of her people down?” The radio finally decides what station it wants to be on as the familiar pitch settles in his eyes. “I trusted you,” my voice is only a whisper now and if the wind whips a little harder from the crack under the door my words might be missed, “more than anybody here I put my trust in you and you,” it pains me to think, but I have to say it, I feel that if I do say it that would make it more true, more real, “you broke my trust. You let me walk into a cave blinded by who the woman the cave belonged to even was, when she was my mother. How could you?”
Something tugs at my heart as I speak it aloud, he hurt me and its a different type of hurt because out of everyone I put my trust in him. He’s been blunt with me from the beginning so I expected nothing less but the hard truths from him but maybe I shouldn’t have made any expectations for someone I barley know. I mean what’s his middle name? What does he do for fun, what does he see as actual fun? I don’t know him at all I don’t even know his mothers name so can I blame him for what he did? “Love, I’m so sorry.” His apology is unexpected, he stops pacing and walks toward me, I back away not sure on what to expect from this side of him. “I didn’t mean to make you feel that way, you can trust me.”
“How can I trust you? You could have helped me avoid all of this but instead you let me walk into yet another heartache.” Libra stands in front of me but he still makes no move to shove me and for that I’m both thankful and confused.
“I had too let you figure this out on your own no matter how hard, no matter the consequences. If you knew who the cave was actually for you still would have been determined to open it- more determined and I didn’t think the stories about your mother held any truth, that she was crazy but I’ve learned that most stories are true. It wasn’t my place to tell you love please understand that.” Each word settles inside me, and with each word I forgive him piece by piece until my forgiveness toward him is whole, because he’s right. It wasn’t his place to tell me, he’s not of any relation to me he’s not involved in my family, it was my father’s place to tell me so he is in the wrong here. He should be the one feeling the bitterness of my hurt.
Libra grabs my hand hesitantly, his eyes focused on me and mine on him. Warmth spreads up my arm from just this simple gesture as his depths seem to stare into my soul. “Everyone has tribulations love.” He whispers, moving closer to me as each second passes. “In order to succeed we must be ready for them, and we must overcome them.” I let his words sink down to my core, never breaking eye contact as his other hand grabs mine. “Do you think we can do that?”
“Tribulations are meant to be overcome.” I whisper, feeling like my skin is burning under his gaze. He laces his fingers through mind, holding our linked hands by his side.
“Yes? You do think so?” With every word his breath hits my lips as his are now inches away from mind, if I tilt my head the wrong way they’ll be touching.
“I do think so.” I say shakily.
His lips move closer to mind and they tease me as he speaks. “Do you believe in redemption?”
“People can be saved, yes.”
“Can people save people?” His eyes scan my face.
“Yes.” A knot forms in my throat from the nervousness I now feel.
“Can you save me love?” I don’t have time to register the intensity and deepness of his words as his lips brush slightly against mine and an exhilarating feeling rushes through me at the soft and delicate gesture that only lasts a second tops. “Save me.” Libra’s hands squeeze mine, his lips moving to my cheek and leaving a soft kiss there as well. He tips my chin up with a pointer finger paying no mind to my frozen state. “Save this world if you will and all who call it home, but don’t forget to save yourself. Its good to be selfish at times.”
I don’t know what to do, or say, all I know is that as his thumb brushes slightly over my lower lip and he stares at me seriously I feel a strange sense of happiness. I feel like I belong here in Ecladias for the first time and his hands mold into mine like they were sculpted as two pieces of a puzzle meant to be finished later in life. Its an odd feeling, to feel pieced together with a man you barley know.
Libra drops my hands, smirking at my loss of the ability to form words. I feel slightly guilty, that I find happiness the day its taken from someone else but I have to push that away in order to stop myself from grieving all over again for Aisha. “Goodnight morpher.” He whispers, a strange emotion in his voice.
I open the door to his study and feel like I’ve just come up from suffocating as the outside air hits my face. “Goodnight.” With that I begin walking the halls of the manor, tired as anyone would be after going through what I went through today but seeing sleep as no escape. So I don’t go to my room, I instead walk to parts I’ve never discovered yet in hopes to clear my head, think about my next move and how I feel about all of this new information. Particularly how I feel about Emilia and her ancient morphers who are probably asleep in their cages right about now. I walk in a cloud like state as Libra’s lips still linger on mine, the first thing that has brought me actual joy in all of this is him.
Its never been a visited topic before but he has been the only happy thing, the only thing that has brought me actual joy whether I show it or not, whether I acknowledge it or not. Even in the bad times, the times he pushed away I was amused by him and even in the times he used violence as a go to I was moved by him. There’s something under his skin, someone, a Libra he doesn’t want society to see because he has made this cold and heartless image of himself and I want to know the real him, the Libra who sits in his study with reading glasses on and a book in hand. Every time I see a glimpse of him he closes off, he locks the door to his true self so that no one not even me can see inside and I hope that in kissing me he doesn’t decide to lock the door again. There’s something beautiful beyond that door, something peaceful and I know he’s afraid to let it out but I’m afraid to die without every witnessing it more than I have.
Infatuation is strange because it can get the best of your mind, you can drive yourself crazy trying to get your mind to be one with he whom your infatuated with. But life is strange because you never really know if your living the truth until the truth is revealed. Until your truth is revealed and you accept it, only then do you live the truth- in truth, but I don’t think I’m ready to accept some things so for now I’ll have to live in a lie. A lie that my mother isn’t a mentally unstable queen from another world who preserved her body just so she could rule forever, that my father didn’t keep this from me, that I didn’t get traumatized by the drug use of a woman who wasn’t even my mother and that I don’t have the future of an entire world resting on me. Lies get the best of us at times but at times, lies are the best of us.