Fragile Heart

Miriam had barely left the spire for a few minutes to eat some of the disgusting canned food in the kitchen, but had quickly returned to the spire. It was where she felt safe, out of the entire cathedral. No one and nothing could hurt her here, nothing but her own mind at least...
She had barely eaten anything the last few days, and slept even less. How could she, when this was all happening? She had stayed awake all night, but it was impossible to tell. The demon blood had kept her in good shape, though it was slowly ebbing out of her system. She needed more soon enough, she knew, but for now she ignored the thirst for more serious matters on her mind which drowned out all other thoughts she had.
With the knife in her hand she gently caressed the flat side of the blade. Soul, that was what she had named it. It seemed fitting, as this was the replacement she had so foolishly taken for the real thing. She had known nothing of weapons before this had happened, but she had read enough books to know every great blade needed a name. Everything that mattered, and this certainly did more than anything else.
Tears ran down her cheeks, and one of them hit the blade, splattering into smaller drops of water that almost glittered on the surface of the knife. She barely even knew what she cried for anymore. Her soul, her love, her family, it all seemed to blur into one enormous grief, which numbed her body until she could scarcely feel it at all anymore. She couldn't feel anything, only a simple hollowness, as if her body was an empty shell.

It had been a few days since he had last seen Miriam, but even if he had been able to come sooner he had purposely let himself stray away, afraid of what happened when he kept too close. There was something both appealing and repelling about being with her, and he was already concerned that it had changed him too much. It was a change that he silently craved, but he was now more than ever afraid that he had sacrificed too much that she would never be able to match. It seemed with each passing moment the fear of her forgetting everything became more and more likely, in which everything now became futile.
However he had promised, and after a day he knew he was already cutting it too fine. She needed his blood, that was certain, and he did not have the right to keep her waiting. As soon as the entrance wing was safe, he had returned up the stairs once more. The passage was becoming more of a routine now, and sure enough as he emerged she was there waiting.
'How have you been?' he noted calmly, but he could already see her tears. However he had learnt long enough not to make them obvious, since it seemed she disliked her need to cry almost as much as he did to see them. Regardless of her emotions his concerns lay more with her blood lust, although the gap between them ensured she could not grow hysterical instantly. He would prepare himself before he jumped though, but he grew more and more assured of himself each time he did.
The blade was still in her hands, reflecting the light off it in the mystifying way it always did so. It was difficult not to admire it, even if he supposed being what he was he should hate it. It was their means of mortality, and he wondered what would happen to it once she died. He assumed that its destruction would be ordered, as long as it remained in demon hands. However her death would most likely be in them, and so that was most likely the case.
Paitently he awaited her to compose herself, knowing it was best to get matters done fast.

Everything had been so quiet before he came, so she had heard his footsteps long before his voice. Wiping away her tears she refused to look at him. Only his presence was awaking a thirst in her she would rather ignore, but that was not the only reason she was slightly mad at him. For days she had waited with next to nothing to eat, and less sleep, though he had promised to try to come the following day.
"Good to know you havn't forgotten me yet," she said calmly, ignoring his question. She didn't know what to answer even if she wanted to. Secretly she was wondering if he had been with her, but she kept her suspicions quiet, not giving him the satisfaction of seeing her jealousy.

He smiled a tight smile, aware both of them were keeping their emotions close to their chests. 'Yes, its quite hard to forget a stubborn one like you. You do not seem whole-hard desperate yet though, so it seems I could have waited just while longer.' He smirked, before taking a back up once more to make the jump. Quite confidently he made it across, as he had expected, but he made no attempts to go near her just yet. He merely reached for his knife from his belt and took his arm, which had already healed entirely after last time. It was best to give her what she wanted straight away, rather than keep her waiting and more ravaged. She would only grow more impaitent and irritable whilst she was like this, and he had very little paitence for that.
He cut into the skin and looked at her. 'All yours' he said, waiting for her to come to him. He knew she would not wait or bother resisting.

She was already mad at him, but even more so when he cut his skin. She had wanted to seem calm and relaxed, not wanting to seem like a beast. She had wanted to wait at least a little bit before she lowered herself to asking for his blood, but he had now made that impossible for her.
She scowled at him, but didn't hesitate long before she took his arm and licked it gently. She didn't want to make a mess of herself like she had last time, but the more she drank the more the thirst grew, and it was not long before her mouth was just as stained with blood as it had been last time, the drops running down her chin, some even landing on Proteus' jacket. She did not care, not now when she thirsted so much.
"I am not your pet, I suggest you stop treating me like one," she said as she forced herself away from him and desperatly tried to wipe away the blood before it stained on her face and became harder to get rid of. She didn't have a mirror, but she was confident she had gotten rid of the worst part when she finally glanced at him. The glance only lasted a minute however before she busied herself with putting the knife back in the bag. She seemed to love watching it, but when he was in such close proximity, she did not trust either of them enough to leave it out.

'Who says I want you to be one?' he said with equal distain, moving his arm away and making sure it was starting to heal up. In general she normally cleaned the wound right up, in which blood spills were never much of a problem. 'You complain I'm making you wait, you complain when I give you what you want..' he sighed, annoyed at her attitude. 'It is hardly my fault you are in this mess, I'm just trying to make the best of it.'
There were still a few dried blood stains on her chin and around her mouth, and prehaps if the mood was better he would have helped her remove them. But her attitude just made him feel frustrated, and he saw no reason to want to help or kiss her. Instead he sighed. 'Is that enough or should I make another cut?' he said bluntly, after all that was why they were here. He had no reason to try and starve her of what she needed.

She didn't answer him, hoping he would realize that if she didn't ask she didn't need. Her mind was elsewhere and she simply stared out into the open air before them. She had always known what he was, but the past days she had resented it more than ever. All of her problems could be blamed on him, and she was not sure why she was so much more aggrivated because of this today, but she was. She had been ignoring the fact of what he was for far too long, but she assumed it was catching up on her. The more she ignored, the more consequences did she have to endure.
The memory of Rin bloodied by the stranger's blood had haunted her since the event, but lately her dreams had been haunted by it as well, though the memory had always changed to picture one of her family on the ground beside him in the place of the stranger. She had almost dreaded him coming, and yet she had waited for him, the reason she did not know. Her heart and arms still longed for him, yet she didn't bear being in his presence.
"She always said I looked like her, though I felt nothing like her," she said in an accusing tone, as if her mother's murder could be blamed on him as an individual instead of on his species. For all she knew, it very well was. She didn't know why she felt the need to speak of it either, she hadn't spoken of her mother since they were seperated, and yet now she could no longer hold her tounge. She simply tried to hold her tears back wihle she spoke.

It took him far to long to grasp what she was talking about, and even then he had no interests in her family. They were dead, and that was all that he thought should matter in her eyes. No amounts of talking would ever by some miracle bring them back, and so clearly reminiscing was just counter-productive. It would make her sad, that was all.
'If you want to try and fight over matters long past then leave me out of it' he said, annoyed. 'I don't enjoy reveling in the pointless..'
He simply did not care about them, but he could not deny that for some reason neither of them could explain he did for her. He therefore did not like her bringing this up and accusing him, even if the likelihood was he had killed at least someone she knew.

"Then I don't understand why you're still here," she said a bit too harshly. She wasn't mad at him, she was mad at what he was, mad at this situation, this place, everything. She fought the tears, for once successful. She wouldn't let him see her cry, she wouldn't let anyone see.
"Isn't this more pointless than anything?" she muttered, for once looking at him without looking away. His black eyes were as prominent and as entoxicating as ever, and yet they angered and saddened her like they never had before. A human had nothing to do with a demon if not for exorcising him, and likewise a demon had nothing to do with a human for not cruel intentions, not even a soulless human like she.

'It was right up until you acquired that pretty little blade of yours' he said with a sigh. 'And now you are one of us, whether you want to think of it that way or not. There is nothing about you making a deal that makes you any different from the demons that walk around down there' he said, gesturing to the Cathedral below. 'You have no idea what any of them were like as humans, or what means they used to become like that.'
Now they actually could have a future, and yet it seemed they were more estranged than ever before. It seemed to always be the way, the opposite of what was right.

She had known it to be true, and yet the words made her cringe, her chest suddenly aching with an intense pain. She did not wish to be a monster, nothing but a mere beast feeding on innocent humans. She didn't want to be a murderer, or anything else the word demon connotated.
"And you have no idea what I will be like as a demon!" she snapped back. "You have no guarantee there will be any appeal in me once I turned into such a monster," she said and wrinkled her nose to show her disgust for his kind. It was true, for some insanely stupid reason he had found her appealing as a human, but she was sure she would change to ridiculous amounts once she was turned, and nothing he would want anymore.

He nodded, knowing this was equally true. 'I guess I'm clinging to the fact that memories still remain, and I'm hoping after the centuries you don't just twist them into hatred like everything else.' He knew that if it came to it he most likely would have still loved Eliza should she have been alive, even still did prehaps deep down. But her death had also helped him see that there was little to gain from humanity or their feelings, so it was a sliding scale on both sides.
'For me waiting a few hundred years more to wait and see is of no matter, and if not I have other things to look for' he shrugged. 'But I'm afraid you have no choice in the matter. Its more a matter of waiting and seeing, and trying to hold on to what you have now. Of course you have killed people now, and I have no problem with you killing people in the future... It kind of rests on you I suppose.'

She didn't understand why he would wait such a long time for someone he might not even still want after she had turned, but then again she could not understand why he wanted her at all, it all seemed to bisarre. She would never understand him, she decided, but she didn't particularly care. She didn't need to know why he was there or what was keeping him, all she needed to know was that he was. That was more than enough for her.
"We're both insane," she sighed in a tired, breathless laugh as she laid down on her back, looking up at him. It was true, and there was nothing either of them could do about it, and the simple insanity of it all was nothing she could not laugh about. It was absurd...

'Yes i suppose thats one way of putting it' he said slowly, not really sure what else to call it. 'I don't particularly care though, do you?'
He assumed that yes, it was weird, but he was hardly complaining. He would do fine without her once she was gone, but given the choice that he had now he would rather stay here and let this be whatever it was going to be.
He sat down beside her, but he would rather remain sitting than lying down as she was. Instead he stared absently across the room, not really sure where his mind was wandering.

"Yes," she answered him a little too quickly. She did mind, but not for the reasons he would think, and she somewhat felt bad for telling him the truth. Feelings were wrong, specially in this situation. It was not that she minded him, she simply minded her own stupid weaknesses.
"I never thought I was capable of feelings like these, this seems a ridiculously stupid point to gain them," she muttered as she looked down, but within seconds she looked up smiling weakly at him. She knew this was stupid, she knew it was insane, but she still knew it was what she wanted.
"But I don't mind you," she explained simply in case he had understood her wrongly.

'You are human, of course you are capable' he muttered. Her concerns were hardly comparable. If she never thought she could then where did that leave him? 'Feelings are all but a natural by-product of being alive, well, in your case.'
He shrugged, not wanting to talk more about it. He was afraid he had changed too much, and losing his own self-identity was something equally terrifying. He much preffered when he was part of a group and recieving orders, he was starting to realise. It was a bit too late to miss that though.

"What did you do while you were gone?" she asked, avoiding the subject further. She had no intentions of talking about things that would lead nowhere. She could hardly describe her feelings, and in any case he would hardly care. It seemed a better option to leave the subject, and pretend it was not even a factor in their relationship. Not speaking of it made it no less true, but it made it easier to ignore the consequences.
A part of her hoped he had been occupied to give him a reason for not coming earlier, but she suspected he had simply ignored her, and how could she blame him? Specially after their last encounter she had not particularly expected him to want to see her again, yet here he was.

'Not much' he said, sure she wouldn't care for the details. He didn't particularly feel she needed updates of his life constantly anyway, as he did not particularly care for what she had done with the time. Both had stll managed to return here and so clearly there was nothing to worry about.
'Has any noticed anything?' he asked, commenting on both their meetings and her demon blood intake. Already she must surely be feeling the side effects, and so he wondered whether anyone else was growing suspicious. That was the last thing they needed.

"No one pays enough attention to," she answered him and shrugged. It seemed even Proteus hadn't cared much for her lately, and she couldn't blame him. She assumed it was for the best, and as long as she stayed alone up in the spire, no one would notice anything at all, she was sure.
Talking to Rin always seemed awkward now that they no longer particularly cared to mock each other. They had nothing to talk about if not to spot each other, and even that seemed pointless as of now. If she had nothing to say, she found it just as fine to stay quiet and hold her tounge. Hundreds of questions roamed in her head, of his relationship with Lillith to asking him to stay away from Proteus, but she could not make herself ask a single one. She already knew, and dreaded, every answer he would give her, so she found it better not to ask, no matter how tempting it seemed to do so.

He opened his mouth to speak but he had nothing of remote importance to say. He didn't feel the need to fill the silence with pointless drivel as humans so often tended to do, and there was no point in answering a question that he simply did not care for the answer. He stared instead at the snarled wooden floorboards on the other side of the hole, wondering of their age. He had always been told trees were there to outlive us all, of course until he had found the exception. In many ways there was much he took for granted, alongside the torture and boredom the constantly etched out this life.
'Life isn't going to be awful' he said eventually. 'Different, but then again so will you be.' He sighed, realising they might as well accept that. 'As you come to endure it you will come to enjoy it, as it goes for everyone. You make the most of now, as you will make the most of then.'

At first she almost smiled at his pathetic attempt at consoling her, but she quickly turned to anger instead as a more appropriate responce to his blatant lie. She couldn't see it as anything else, and were he not to be honest with her, there was no point in his consolation either.
"Yes, you seem to be so content with your excistence," she mocked sarcastically. "I can see the spark in your eye whenever you speak of Hell, and the fear in you whenever you lay eyes on my blade. Or.. was it the other way around?" How could he expect her to believe what he was saying now, when he was the living, breathing proof of the other side of the argument. He loathed his existence as much as she would soon, he longed for a swift death, why other reason would he stare for such long periods of times whenever she pulled her blade out? She had her suspicions about what he wanted from it. A swift release.

He smiled. 'Lets just say this is the effect of old age, and I'm concerned that your humanity may be contagious' he said sarcastically. 'I certainly was not like this before when I first was released, and I somewhat doubt you would be either. Prehaps you shall find a constant appeal in this existence that I lacked' he shrugged, finally lying back with his hands folded above his head. 'It will be harder to begin with for you, since you haven't exactly made yourself fit through your actions up until this deal, but you can at least consolidate the notion that when you are tortured you will have plenty of things to fester into blame which might speed up the process.' He smirked, but he knew that the likely decision to be blamed would be him. 'And then the new you will be free to stab likewise blades into anything you can find in a close proximerty' he mocked.

She smiled, well aware that all he was saying could in recent terms be considered bullshit, though she held her tounge, as much with knowledge that he would probably be confused by the term as because she was far too tired to fight with him on this subject right now.
"I want you to do me a favor," she said seriously, her voice revealing that it was something important she truly needed him to do.
"When I die I want you to burry the knife somewhere, so I can find it later. When I'm done with it you can use it however you want," she said, the words escaping her mouth reluctantly knowing what he would probably use it for. "But I want my hands on it first."
She hadn't left him time to refuse it, but even if he did now she hoped he would still reconsider once she died, which would probably be before him. Her morbid tone somewhat gave away her intentions, she wanted nothing less than the life of a demon, and so she wanted an escape plan.

'If I can I will' he sighed, halfheartedly. 'But if you die in here that just means I'm trapped in here too, and the likelihood is someone else will get the knife before I even can, let alone bury it. Its fine to make decisions now, but whilst you want to die so decisively then you won't leave the Pit. They will continue to torture you until that is fully out of your head. Only with boredom will the state I'm in happen, and even then I've got to say you've done a great job at contributing to both my confusion and frustrations. Not that it matters, if I'm going back the way you came I'd say I've got at least a thousand years in punishment to ordeal, that should be enough to set things straight for a while..'

She gritted her teeth. As much as she wanted to die, she even more wanted to want to die. Without that longing she would simply turn to a monster without inhibitions. Nothing to stop her. She had assumed that was what Hell did to a person, but she had hoped it wasn't true, despite her knowledge.
"Fine," she said, as if content with her faith, though she was as far from as possible. She didn't want to be a monster, she didn't want to murder innocent humans, but least of all she wanted nothing less than the certainty of lonelyness. The path she was threading would never lead to anyone or anything, she was doomed to an existence on her own, and she resented that more than anything. Had she not suffered isolation for long enough?
Suddenly she wanted to cry again. She wanted to scream and yell and throw everything at the wall, but she did nothing, simply stared at the air blankly. It was what she had taught herself to do in stressing situations, bottle it in. Keep it in. Save it for when no one is around. Only when she was alone would she allow herself to cry, and never would she allow him to see her weaknesses when she was capable of keeping them from him.
Anger mixed in with her fear and sorrow. He was incapable of doing the simplest thing she ever asked, and never had he successfully done anything she had asked of him. At times she wondered what he was good for at all. Surely demons with their age as well as powers ought to be prepared for situations, and have greater knowledges and further developed minds than the rest of them. Rin was not exactly the proof of this theory, she knew resentfully.