Chapter 195: Touch me.
~Raphael's POV ~
Three days felt like years.
I watched her from every corners and shadows. Always watching. Never approaching.
She's killing me without lifting a finger. When she said, she would be punishing me, I never thought it would be something like this.
My eyes followed her as she moved through the castle. Her movement were fluid, graceful, and ethereal. She spoke with her council, all the time in that hall. She played with the children.
She laughed with Gwen and even Drogon that was still in his Drogon form, although, Haggar said he was healing softly.
But never once did she look at me.
Not even when I stood in the doorway of the great hall, burning with the need to hear her voice while she spoke to her council did she look at me. I was outside the hall once again, looking at her pleading she would look at me.
Just say my name. Once. Please. I willed my mind through the bond. But I got nothing.
I was a ghost in my own desperate yearning.
And the worst part? I could hear her thoughts when she wasn't guarding them.
'Don't look at him. Don't think about him. Focus on your people. Focus on anything else.'
But then, in quiet moments, her mind would whisper: 'He looks tired. He looks lost. Why do I still care?'
Those thoughts gave me hope and destroyed me at the same time.
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"You're pathetic," Haggar said on the fourth morning. She found me staring out the window, watching Ava teach the children how to tend the gardens below.
"I know," I muttered.
"What does she think about when she sees you?"
I closed my eyes. "She thinks about kissing me. She thinks about forgiving me. She thinks about running to me and begging me to hold her like I used to." I paused, pain slicing through my chest. "And then she thinks about all the people I killed. And the cycle starts again."
Haggar was quiet for a moment. "So what will you do?"
"Stop being selfish," I said, the words tasting bitter. "Stop making this about my pain. Make it about theirs."
That afternoon, I found myself in the castle's memorial hall.
At the hall, hundreds of names were carved into black stone. The people who died when I burned Mesodomica. Men, women, children. Families destroyed in my rage.
The guilt poured in again. I did this. All of this.
I knelt. That's all I have been doing lately. Kneeling.
The stone was cold against my knees. I pressed my palms flat against the floor and closed my eyes.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the names. "I was lost. I was broken. But that's no excuse."
The words felt empty. How can one apologize to the dead?
I stayed there for hours. Reading every name. Trying to remember that each one was a person. A life cut short because of my fury.
Kira Kelson, age seven. Thomas Wright, age forty-three. Elena Frost, age nineteen.
Each name was a weight on my chest. Each name was a reason Ava couldn't look at me.
When I finally stood, my legs were stiff and my chest was heavy with guilt.
Stepping outside, I saw she was waiting for me in the hallway.
Ava stood with her back against the wall, arms crossed. She'd been watching me.
How long has she been there?
Her thoughts reached me before her words: 'He stayed there for three hours. Three hours reading names. Maybe... maybe he's really trying.'
"You read the names," she said aloud.
I nodded. "All of them."
"Did it help?"
"No." I took a step closer. "But it was right."
Her expression changed, although still guarded, but softer somehow.
Her mind whispered: 'He looks different. I have been fighting the urge to ask him questions and where he has been.'
"The children ask about you," she said quietly.
My heart jumped. "They do?"
"They say, they like you and still call you mine, although I don't know why, they would do that."
I'm still yours. But I didn't say that.
"What do you tell them when they ask of me?"
"That you're trying to remember how to be good."
It felt like I had been slapped. "Am I?"
She looked at me then. Really looked. Her eyes searched my face like she was trying to find something she'd lost.
'Goddess, I want to touch him. I want to hold him. Why is this so hard?'
"I don't know," she said. "Are you?"
'I'm trying. Goddess, I'm trying.'
"I want to be," I said. " For you. For everyone I hurt."
She stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell her skin, see the beautiful ice blue of her eyes.
Her thoughts were louder now; 'He smells the same. Like chocolate and vanilla with the smell of nature. Like my Raphael before I found out about Mesodomica.'
"It's not that simple, Raphael."
"I know."
"You can't just say sorry and expect..."
"I know."
She was so close now. Her breath touched my face when she spoke.
'Kiss me. Please. I'm so tired of being strong.'
"Then what do you expect?"
You. I thought. I need you.
"Nothing," I said instead. "I expect nothing. I just... I need you to know that I am deeply sorry and would do anything to fix the chaos I have caused your people."
Her eyes filled with tears.
'Don't cry, little eye. Please don't cry.' I wanted to say these to her. Hold her, and console her.
"I want to hate you," she whispered.
"I know."
"I want to lock you away and never see your face again."
"I know."
"But I can't." A tear slipped down her cheek. "Because underneath all this anger, I'm still that girl who fell in love with you. And I hate that about myself."
I reached up slowly, giving her time to pull away. She didn't.
My thumb brushed the tear from her cheek.
Her thoughts screamed; 'Yes. Touch me. Make me feel alive again.'
"Don't hate yourself for having a heart," I said. "Hate me instead for breaking it."
She leaned into my touch for just a moment. Just long enough for me to feel hope flutter in my chest.
Then she stepped back.
'No. I can't. Not yet. I need to be stronger than this.'
"I can't do this yet," she said. "I need time."
"How much time?"
"I don't know."
"Okay," I said.
She looked surprised. "Okay?"
"I'll wait. However long it takes."
"What if I never forgive you?"
The question sank deep. But I knew the answer.
"Then I'll spend the rest of my life trying to earn something I'll never have. But I'll still try."
She stared at me for a long moment.
Her mind was quiet now, walls back up. But I caught one last thought before she blocked me out completely.
'Maybe there's hope for us yet.'
Then she nodded once and walked away.
But this time, it didn't feel like goodbye, that I was losing her forever.
It felt like a maybe. And that was more than enough.
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