a finale unfolds {Eiji}

[ĸara вelova★]

Sorrow lasts through this night.
I'll take this piece of you
And hope for all eternity.
For just one second I felt whole
As you flew right through me...

She was washing up; the acryllic paint draining in a monochromatic spiral. The finished painting was drying on the easle, and Kara's forearms and fingernails were stained cerulean and azure. Her naturally dry skin, had absorbed the colours as she splashed her fingers across the broad canvas and now a masterpiece was sitting in Eiji's living room. Now Kara was trying to banish the evidence from her body.

"You're out of soap," Kara called quietly through the bathroom door, still scrubbing. She assumed Eiji was still in the room, possibly admiring her work. She tried her best to ignore the tiny glow she felt when she considered this. Eiji was the only critic whose opinion mattered.

During one of those rare moments when they were both completely silent, Kara had wandered over to his shelf of DVDs. She'd begun browsing through the genres, and she could guess that she was irritating him with her lack of comment on any of the titles. Kara never used her ability when she was with Eiji. She never knew how he felt, nor did she ever inflict upon him the constant agony she was in while around him.

Something that was growing more and more common occurred. Kara broke the silence of her own accord, posing a demand.

"Choose a genre."

Eiji had smirked, and Kara just raised an eyebrow at him. Of course, he was going to throw a challenge her way.

"Romance," He decided without missing a heart beat. But instead of selecting one of the romance movies, Kara slid 'Tropic Thunder' back onto the shelf and politely asked for the materials she would need.

Eiji's sink was going to be stained blue for a little while, and Kara felt slightly vindictive that she would leave a tiny part of her with him. Of course, there'd always be the painting, but that was a gift. This was her own way of lingering. Like paint under fingernails.

The more she thought about the painting, the more she decided she liked it. She'd redone the outline several times, and the final work had to have at least ten layers of thick paint slathered together. Blue was Kara's signature colour for painting. She wasn't sure why, because blue wasn't her 'favourite'. It was just a versatile shade that she knew so well and could work so expertly. The way her hands glided across the pages was natural with blue. Anything else was choppy and sharp. With blue Kara was at ease. There was something calming about it, even when the subject she was painting was unnatural to her.

[Eiji Almasy.]

It felt intimate, the painting, and so he felt like he was intruding, standing there alone with it while Kara was in the other room. He didn't know if she had merely painted what he'd demanded, or if the subject was more private to her; if it was personal, and if she was finally allowing him to see some real part of her. He glanced back at his bathroom, barely acknowledging her notice, and then returned his gaze to the art on the easel. The sudden air of poignancy was awkward, and he fidgeted; he couldn't look too closely at it, otherwise he would come to realize that it resembled him an awful lot.

In the changing days, he stayed the same, in the sense that all his bad habits went unchecked and he continued on as he always had. When the racing stopped, when there no longer were any nervous twitches and when he began to look at her in bemusement, he knew that it had all ended. Whatever it had been, it was fading, and it made him more than inexplicably sad, and wholly responsible. He refused to attribute anything to the return of a particular girl, afraid again to define anything in his life. So long as Kara's importance to him went unnamed, he could still believe that things would remain painless, and that a confrontation, and the truth, could be avoided.

He looked away from the painting and paced to the nearest window, hands resolutely in his pockets. He tried not to think about what the painting could mean, and he tried not to let the fact that it was a piece of her, however small, affect him too much. But she'd painted for him, which was something second to only her singing. The sound of running water traveled to him and he tried to ignore it, slowly beating his head against the glass pane.
"Idiot," he muttered, and because it definitely didn't feel like he got the message, he went on; "idiot, idiot, idiot."

[ĸara вelova★]

Using broken and uneven fingernails to dig the grime out of one another, Kara finished up in the washroom and pulled her hair back. Eiji hadn't seen her paint before; he probably hadn't been prepared for her style. When they'd first met, he'd asked her if she were an artist simply because he could see her with a paintbrush in hand. Kara didn't use paintbrushes unless absolutely necessary, and she didn't find 'necessary' to be very often.

Walking back into the room, she caught Eiji mid-head bang. She quirked an eyebrow and her lips curled in a would-be smile.

"That bad?" Kara joked sarcastically, although she was a little nervous that he didn't approve of the painting. She's tried to paint 'romantic', and her hands had begun painting on their own accord. It hadn't been her intention to depict Eiji about to kiss a picture-perfect brunette. While she illustrated the scene, she began to think about what it would be like to be that brunette. Pretty, intriguing, and flawless. Someone who could capture Eiji's attention and hold it. She was waiting for the day he grew bored with her and remembered how much better he was. It was only a matter of time before someone reminded him. Jessica perhaps. She certainly wouldn't waste time singing Kara's praise before Eiji if given the chance.

Although Kara tried hard to never use her 'gift', it was like a sixth sense to her, and it flowed naturally with her body. Certainly she could close her eyes and cease seeing for a while, or hold her nose and quit smelling, but sometimes that was uncomfortable, or sometimes you just forgot to check yourself. And sometimes it was too tempting that you had to peek, just a little. So the aggitation she felt radiating from him in that brief slip worried her, and a kanine scored her lower lip as her body made his discomfort her own.

"You could have said 'horror'," Kara frowned, crossing her thin arms over her chest. She took a couple hesitant steps toward him and the window but stopped short, and let her eyes drift lazily over her painting. Instantly she kicked herself; Eiji would think she was trying to portray herself as this beautiful, nameless brunette. Eiji would assume she was trying to be something she wasn't. Eiji would step back and look at her, really look at her and finally realize that she was nothing special, and that his moment's intrigue was just that. A passing fancy, a hobby he no longer enjoyed. A wasted era in his life.

She felt she needed to explain herself in the only way she knew how.

"That's not me. There's no need to be all weird, Lucifer. When the day comes where I would ever kiss you, your abode down below will freeze over."

With a pleasant sneer only Kara could make cute while deliberately trying to look vile, she turned to look out the window he was standing in, then eventually let her eyes dart away from his proximity altogether. He wasn't even a moving speck in her peripheral vision. She was trying very hard to draw in deep, even breaths so she wouldn't panic in her fear of what his uncertainty meant.

[Eiji Almasy.]

Eiji stopped his self-abuse as soon as she returned to his room, but didn't remove his head from the window. He remained there, resting against the glass pane and stared balefully out the window. It occurred to him that for a good month and a half, he hadn't worn this particular face.

"No," he said, tone faint and recoiling from the window back to him. His gaze focused on the small puff of air that had formed on the glass, and then he saw his own sullen expression looking right at him.
"I like it," and he didn't say anything more, didn't attempt to explain to her which part of her painting exactly, he liked best, or try to prove to her his honesty; he hadn't lied to her so far, and he really wished he wouldn't begin to either.

He turned in his position and leant against the window, head tilted and shoulder to hip leaning on the surface. He studied her now concealed profile, her quasi-rant still clear in his head; she always did do the worst job at playing nonchalant.

"It's okay if you do want to kiss me," he told her, everything about him mild and casual except for the color of his eyes, which were jumping bolts of green humor.
"I wouldn't fault you for it," the small grin that stood at the corner of his lips didn't excuse his comments any.

For one tense moment, he was standing too close to her, and every small part of him, and act that he did implied something else; the smirk just behind his grin was provocative, and his eyes were separate entity, so bright and so impious. And then his smirk broke, and it became a crooked quirk. He relaxed against his window and his gaze became hooded.

"Just kidding," he promised in that quiet voice, and he wondered right there how he had ever earned this girls friendship, how he even deserved to be anywhere near her when he was a complete and utter bastard of the highest kind. His ability, which was all mental, emotional and charismatic, not at all in the lining of his blood, of subterfuge, of switching masks and casting words, was a terrible one; and he, the one who used it so interchangeably, was worse yet.

[ĸara вelova★]

Kara picked up on his lack of enthusiasm in his reply. She tried not to let it hurt. She tried to call upon the many years she'd worked to be so distant from public opinion, or lack thereof. But it was impossible when it was Eiji. She couldn't grow distant from him. Even if she tried. But he clearly could. And it felt all wrong as she got closer to her physically, when she could feel him stepping back from her emotionally.

So when he spoke about kissing, she shivered. She imagined kissing him now, while he was like this. It would be like kissing dead lips, a corpse, an echo of the boy she called her friend. Where had he gone? He didn't sound like her Lucifer anymore.

And that's when she knew. Knew he'd opened his eyes and stopped being blind with her. He saw her for what she was, a worthless leech clinging to him as though he were a preserver in a life-sucking ocean. And when he pulled back, Kara let her eyes drop to the floor.

He remembered.

He remembered how much better he was, and how she was nothing to him. Her heart stuttered, and she let the sense she'd been dulling open up and reach out to him. What she felt was cold and empty, yet still unmistakeably Eiji. He hadn't been replaced with someone else. This was Eiji mocking her, Eiji trying to toy with her feelings.

"I don't get the joke," Kara replied stiffly.

It was the stupid painting's fault. She told herself it, but didn't quite believe it. Something she had done, or hadn't done, provoked this response from him. Suddenly she wished she would have reached out and felt whatever it was he felt for her all those weeks ago. Then maybe she'd be able to duplicate it and make him feel it again. She didn't want this to end. She didn't want this to go away.

_{When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.}

[Eiji Almasy.]

If she'd been anybody else, anybody, he would have kissed her. He would have done something heinous, used that particular look and that particular smile, and he would have kissed her, and he wouldn't have meant it. It would have been for fun, for curiosity, and as goodbye. She was Kara though, and he'd built up a heavy level of care for her; he couldn't even be near her without his conscience weighing down on him.

He shrugged and something terrible passed over his features.
"Maybe it wasn't meant to be a joke," he said in reply, all his words a harsh interruption in the silence that surrounded them. The peaceful moments of her painting had disappeared, and he strove to figure out what the hell was wrong with him.

To some extent, he was so much more worldly than Kara was, but she had a more sensible, uncredited level of knowledge above his. It wasn't conceitedness that had him eying her intently, watching for every flicker and curving of expression. He couldn't help but think that maybe Kara had found in him something other than a friend, which was the only explanation as to why it had become hard all of a sudden, to just be around each other. Or maybe it was all him, and everything he hadn't committed yet.

"Forget it," he dismissed, still against the wall and eyes still on her, "it's not important."
It wasn't until a beat after that, that he actually moved; pushing himself away and finding the familiar steps to the door.
"I'm thirsty. You want something?"

[ĸara вelova★]

It's not important.

Kara flinched as though he'd just said 'You're not important'. She stepped back when he started moving. His question was answered abruptly.

"Wine," she called after him, stealing his spot by the window. She stared out at the nothingness, seeing the same things Eiji did. Distance. Struggling. Confusion. And a blistering clarity.

There was something else she found too. She discovered, held onto, and sunk her nails in it. Refusal. So instead of crying, which she very much felt like doing, and instead of screaming, which she'd never done, Kara kept her silence and stopped thinking about Eiji. She filled her head with thoughts of Spain. She wondered what her family was doing right now. She wondered if she'd get a chance to see them again before it was too late.

Drama. It repulsed her. This curse on her was making her life so much more difficult to live. Without it she might have friends.

Without it she might have Eiji.

That ended her Eiji-less thoughts, and she turned when she heard a sound at the open door.

[Eiji Almasy.]

He was being unnecessarily prick-like, and he didn't have a suitable explanation for it. There was something that stopped him from asking her what she thought of the penthouse he and Draco were staying in; he couldn't remember whose it was, but it was theirs. It was something like a leash, and he hadn't went to seek out her hand, and the attempts to make her smile were few and far between. She'd painted on his canvas, and it was only during that time that they had both been rather peaceful; the silence then allowing him to contemplate without really actually filling his mind with anything. The After had been nothing but white noise for him, some strange haze where he could see in from out, an experience where he had no control. He wasn't lucky enough to say that he was acting out of character, or that perhaps it was just a really bad day; he finally recognized his actions, and he knew then what he'd been doing unconsciously before. If not his best try, he was still trying to push Kara away, he just hadn't figured out why yet.

He paused uselessly at the door after her request and spent an unusual moment there, studying her. It wasn't her, it was all him and he wasn't surprised. She was still lovely, despite her best efforts and all the contrary thinking she did. She was still prickly, still difficult, still different. The uniqueness of what he felt for her hadn't waned, it had simply changed, somehow. He wished he deserved her, even just a little bit.

It wasn't the painting, he realized, when he'd made himself turn around and move to the hallway and then down the stairs to the kitchen. The painting was only a pygmy compared to the larger picture, which entailed a lot of guilt. The guilt stemmed from the inevitable, what he was sure was to come; he always hurt best when he was hurting others.

He opened for her a Château Lafite Rothschild and immediately thought it curious how someone like her would enjoy something as sweet as his particular wine. Kara wasn't nearly as caustic as she wanted to be, but he stopped himself from thinking too much of the fragility of her, and how easy it was exactly, to abuse it.
"Fuck," he swore softly, looking down in confusion at the shattered glass at his feet.

[ĸara вelova★]

Something pulled her toward the sound of broken glass, and soon Kara was at the door her eyes had only moments ago fell upon. One hand lingered on the door frame, pale fingers looking more delicate than the shards of green glass amid the red puddle. It was impossible not to compare the wine to her own life. Its fate, tragic and unexpected by everyone but itself. It knew that it would vanish, one way or another. Sooner rather than later. Its outer shell lay shattered, in pieces. She couldn't help but take this as an omen, and she did not miss the irony of the fact that Eiji was the one to have dropped it.

Silently she moved to the paper towels, carefully making sure not to step in the mess. Kneeling down, towels in hand, she pressed the paper over the red and watched with wide eyes as it soaked up the mess. She looked up at Eiji.

"You can get me a merlot instead," she suggested, more to get some sort of reaction from him than to quench her own thirst. Of course she preferred the aged white label that clung to the sharp pieces of this bottle, but Kara had never been picky with wine. She mopped up the mess without a word, avoiding the broken shards that would surely pierce her skin if she failed to pay attention for a fraction of a second. She put more care into cleaning the mess than she ever did with anything else in her life. The red cloth stained her fingertips but she didn't mind. Kara was never opposed to getting a bit of dirt under her fingernails.

"Eiji..." she began, staring down at the sopping wet towels. But she wasn't sure what she wanted to say. Liar. She knew exactly what she wanted to say, only she didn't know how to say it. Nor was she sure if she should. The more the thought about it, the more it felt wrong. It was wrong to tell him, and it was wrong to keep it from him. She was trapped between a rock and a hard place, and there was no compromise. She couldn't give him a cryptic little poem, or a telltale song. She wouldn't insult his intellect like that. Nor did she want to wait until he figured it out; she was not patient when it came to information concerning herself.

"What do you do with bullies?" She asked instead.

[Eiji Almasy.]

"You shouldn't," he said to the sight of her kneeling on the floor, beside the mess of glass he'd made. It struck him as being wrong, her cleaning up his small disaster, and the red she was surrounded by was just disconcerting. He remained unmoved though, despite his poor attempt at voicing his objection, staring at her with glazed eyes, his grips numb. A moment later, he stepped back, reaching for a cabinet near his head for another glass. This time, he used the island in the middle, placing the glasses on the counter before emptying the bottle in each of them.

Their dynamic was painful to endure and the silence and the time in between all her words had him wondering when the break would occur.
"What?" was his initial response, her question surprising and a topic they had never discussed; "why?"
It wasn't so much curiosity that had him thinking about it; he supposed he was at fault for simply assuming that she wouldn't have any trouble with anybody, because of her nature to avoid people and anything related to them.

"Is someone bothering you?" he demanded, but the harshness of his person had moved to his expression, which was hard and all aware.

[ĸara вelova★]

"Hmm?" Kara murmured distractedly as she continued to mop up the wine, "No, not me. I'm writing," she stated, as though that would explain everything. The lie had come to her so quickly, so naturally, and it had slipped through her lips so fluidly and without hesitation that it couldn't be a lie. It was true. At least to Eiji, it would have to be true. Because Kara would sooner throw herself off his balcony than admit that someone was 'bullying' her.

Awkwardly climbing to her feet, using the island to steady her choppy movements, she stepped over the glass and toward the sink, holding the red paper cloths away from her shirt so the stains wouldn't settle in the thin fabric of her limited outfit. Wringing it out over the drain, then tossing them into the small bin below, she turned back to the roll of towels and ripped off another piece. Kneeling on the other side of the spill, closer to Eiji, she started to collect with a surgeon's precision each broken piece of the bottle, lying them on the paper delicately.

Where each corner hit the page, red spread quickly then slowed as it reached its maximum diametre. Kara's mind mused over new metaphors that correlated with her life. A sprinter that spent all their energy on the beginning burst of a marathon, unable to reach the finish line...

"Alexander Mendes is a ninth grader with self-esteem issues, and only five foot four. He's the prime target for bullies at his high school, and he doesn't know what to do," She detailed. "He's going to be a hero. But I don't know how."

Was that what Kara was going to be? A 'hero'? That would be nice, wouldn't it. But there was nothing heroic about Kara; she was selfish and cowardly. Not a strand of nobility spiralled in her DNA, and no act of selflessness would save her from Hell. She was her own hero, and her audience of one thought of her as a villain.

Heroes and villains. If only life were so black and white.

[Eiji Almasy.]

He wasn't exactly mollified by her response, and he took a considering stance, leaning against the counter, drink in one hand while the other sat inside a pocket. She wrote? He knew she read a lot, but it wasn't until right then he realized just how little he had deliberated over her; he wouldn't have thought her to write if she hadn't said anything. It wasn't because of his previous notions that he found her to be suspicious, and in fact, she had said it so seamlessly that it had to be something close to the truth; he really had no reason to doubt her, but there was something unsettling inside his stomach, a heavy pulse traveling up his neck and into his mind that had him choose not to take her at face value.

"Oh?" he said, impressed with her summary in spite of himself, but there was shrewdness in his eyes and something emanating from his presence that spoke of disbelief; perhaps she was speaking in riddle, and he wished, not for the first time, that she would just let him in.

"Leave it," he said to her, impatient with it all, "come sit with me."
But there was no* seats near them, except for the small breakfast table a little beyond the kitchen, where most of their morning afters took place. He patted the counter, entirely serious about wanting her near him.

"I can't answer you if you're not looking at me," he told her, that constant irritation of his apparent, where he needed to be able to look at her. As an afterthought, he mentioned; "I'll clean the rest up," because it really should have been him on his knees, and there was an unexplainable part of him that didn't want her there on the floor. This wasn't something she was supposed to do. Everything he offered her inside his homes was of the best, and was always thoughtful; cleaning up after him wasn't included.

[ĸara вelova★]

His discomfort was felt for only a moment before she remembered to 'turn off' her gift. She stood, with the same choppy movements as before, using the island to steady herself. She 'pulled up a seat' next to him, leaning on the elbows she placed on the counter. Her fingers curled around the stem of the glass he'd poured for her, but she made no move to drink from it.

"I rarely look at you," Kara reminded him, staring at the wine. His afterthought about cleaning up the mess was acknowledge by a slow nod, and the brunette turned her head ever so slightly to look at his glass. Speaking to his wine, she changed the topic.

"Is your violin here?"

She would never make those affectionate feelings come back to him. There was a reason he no longer felt them, and he'd only find that reason again and hurt her. But it didn't mean she couldn't try on her own. Perhaps if she showed him more of herself, let him think she was letting him in... because that was half of what it was. The other half was her generating more protective shields around herself and retreating even further in her recluse while Eiji studied her and forumlated an opinion. He was the person who knew the most about her, yet he hardly knew anything at all. She sort of missed the game of twenty questions he once played with her, and she knew that today would be the day she might answer each and every one, perhaps a couple even honestly.

Because today was the day Kara wanted to trust Eiji with everything, but still couldn't bring herself to say what needed to be said out loud.

[Eiji Almasy.]

He shrugged. He liked to think that she would look at him, if it really came to it, and maybe it had something to do with how he liked to think he was irresistible too; though mainly, it was because he liked to keep faith that she wasn't so lacking in etiquette, if not courtesy. He wouldn't make her, certainly, but he was persuasive at best, and intrusive at worst.

"Maybe, I don't know. I have many violins, perhaps one made it into the spare room," he replied to her question, and then; "you're changing the subject. Tell me about these bullies."

He wasn't being curt, or insensitive really, and he still wasn't curious. It was more a need to know, and a need to help her. If she was hypothetically, or fictionally speaking, or whatever, and it was all a guise, then he would kick himself later for not having been adequate enough for her. It didn't hurt, like it would have months ago, knowing that she was withholding something from him. He was patient now, on some level, and more accustomed to her ways so that he didn't bumble around too much. Her question, from his perspective at least, had been concerning, and even though he didn't know why, it was because of this reason that he was trying so relentlessly.

He went to say something else, mouth opening and words there, right at the tip of his tongue before he decided otherwise and promptly closed himself off; glass rising to occupy him. It occurred to him then, that even if she fabricated a suitable, maybe almost true story, it still wouldn't be enough. He wanted to be able to ask her for honesty without having her retreating, and in a split and separate moment after, he wondered if it was still about her and less about them.

[ĸara вelova★]

Kara took note of where the violin may be, and let the topic drop. His return to the bullies in her 'story' was not greeted with a grimace or a flinch of any type. There was no hint that it bothered her.

"Mostly they start by verbally abusing him. Name-calling, insulting him, putting him down. He doesn't fight back, because he doesn't know how, for one, and secondly he doesn't want to. He's not... aggressive," she decided that it was the best word to use, and stuck with it. She lifted the glass and twirled it the way she'd seen her father do a million times, and watched as the liquid clung to the walls of the goblet. Good-quality wine, although she wasn't sure why she'd been expecting anything less. A quick sniff, as the professionals did, and she took the first sip, lips pursed in a perfect 'O'. She held the wine over her tongue for two whole seconds before she swallowed. Normally you were supposed to spit it out to test it, but Kara thought it inappropriate while with Eiji. The rich flavour of the merlot was the perfect kind of sweet she was craving, and she felt satiated just from the scent of the oak it was aged in.

Then her eyes betrayed her normally strict self-control. They slid to peek out of the corner of her eyes to study Eiji's profile. It was not the first time Kara found herself envious of Eiji's flawlessness. It would be better if he were not beautiful - she wouldn't feel so inadequate around him. These thoughts weighed on her heavily, and her posture sagged. She distracted herself with the wine and then proceeded to play with the rim.

While Eiji was the only person to see her smile, today did not appear to be the day he would be the cause of it.