Thoughts From the River Styx
Today, a Lucky Us drabble… about Chloe.
~*~
She doesn’t hate him.
~
Things have never come easily for her. Not happiness—her spoiled upbringing saw to that; not trust—she’s a politician’s daughter, after all; and certainly not love—an experience that fundamentally involves happiness and trust.
So she was screwed, one way or another.
And then she got sick.
~
It seems she’s always losing things before she has a chance to experience them.
Her mother. Her happiness. Her trust. Her ability to have children.
She figures, what does it matter if her life is among those things?
What does it matter if he is among those things?
~
She doesn’t hate him.
But she’ll be damned if she ever lets him think well of her.
~
Because the way she sees it, she’s a walking corpse. Death haunts her every waking thought. She spends unhealthy amounts of time in the Catacombs and walking through graveyards.
(He saw her in a graveyard, once. Stared at her from the other side of the fence. The living side.)
And the dead have no right to impose themselves upon the living.
~
He’s much too alive, she thinks, to spend his time putting her together.
He’s much too alive to experience the fear of losing her (she still hasn’t forgiven herself for putting Adrien through that).
She wants to hate him for being the kind of guy who would go to the trouble.
~
She doesn’t hate him.
She hates the reporter.
Loathes her for being so beautiful, so interesting, so alive.
But the dead have no right to impose themselves upon the living.
~
So she tells the reporter everything she doesn’t hate about him and watches him drift just out of her reach.
Then she steps onto the dance floor because damn it, she may be a walking corpse
but his music makes her feel so alive.