croupiexā:
The laugh startles Cassius, itās like Mallick knows something he doesnāt ā but that shouldnāt surprise him, now should it?
āLosing Saiyah devastated meā. If thereās one thing that Cassius prides himself in (admittedly, thereās quite a few), itās that heās perceptive. Itās what makes him so good at his job, heās able to read people, play the game of social politics in such a way that the customers still remember their casino visit as enjoyable despite leaving short of a few coins they initially entered the establishment with. So used to faƧades and lies said with a smile, in moments like these, Cassius is all the more appreciative of Mallick. Sure, thereās a hint of something akin to sadness in Mallickās gaze, but itās truthful and genuine in a way Cassius rarely sees in Kadeu. Truthful even in the face of aching grief ā an admirable quality that Cassius is certain he himself does not possess. Ā
āI love herā. Mallick still speaks in the present, as if the woman he loved isnāt long since gone cold, and it puzzles Cassius. Perhaps itās because those from his past heās unabashedly told āI love youā have long since been disavowed in his mind, firmly rooted in the past never meant to resurface. (Truthfully, they still do resurface on occasion, come knocking at the stoop of Cassiusā nightmares where he pleads with them to just tell him what he did wrong, and why he wasnāt enough for them to continue on loving him). To love something that is no longer in existence, itās strange.
Besides, if love is so terrifying, so risky, why risk it? Why risk the pain of having a love you once possessed later get ripped away? Surely, youāre better off never having felt what you could have lost, versus knowing for certain just how much pain losing the one you love is. (If he hadnāt loved his mother in the first place it wouldnāt have hurt so much the day he admitted to himself that he no longer loved her and the person she had become). To Cassius, no joy of love could outshine the shadows of a love inevitably lost.
Cas recognises that this is exactly what Mallick is talking about: fearing love because of an expectation that it will leave you. But when he tries to imagine a love that you just expect to be there in the moment, he canāt. That type of stability and trust intrinsically ingrained in such a thing is unimaginable to Cassius. And maybe he canāt because Cassius is as greedy as heās feared, greedy enough to want to control something that he shouldnāt (canāt). Because if he can control his own love, manipulate it to the whims of his already skewed logic, then he can never truly get hurt; never truly hurt anyone who makes the mistake of loving him back.
āI have to say, if itās easier for you to accept the way they hurt you, then you do not love themā.
āThatās a givenā.
Cassius did not love Emmeline, and Emmeline did not love Cassius. Cassius simply loved what Emmeline did to him, what Emmeline made him feel. (Or, distinctly, what Emmeline made him not feel). They had a mutual understanding of these facts when they made their agreement almost a decade ago, and when they had renewed their agreement just this past year. So of course, what Mallick stated was obvious to Cassius; accepting the hurt Emmeline gave him was far easier than it ever would be to actually love her.
Absentmindedly, he reaches up to his lip, feeling for the split that a healer had erased not an hour or two before. However, just as his fingers meet smooth unblemished skin, heās quick to draw them away, pressing his hands into his lap to still their fidgeting. The constrained motion doesnāt last long, and soon enough Cassius is reaching down to draw small spirals in the dirt with his finger, piecing together his own questions hidden beneath a winding logic. āBut thereās nothing wrong with that, is there?ā Finally, Cassius looks up from the ground, searching for Mallickās gaze when he asks, āWhat does it matter if someone I donāt love hurts me?ā Itās no less sincere as it is naĆÆve, a question that should have a basic answer, but one that Cassius canāt seem to uncover.
Mallick gives a slow nod and a light shrug.Ā
āGlad to know you understand that, I just had to throw it in for good measure.ā He said the last bit with a smile, but Mallick was nothing if assessing what this truly meant for Cassiusā and the bruises heād once caught a while ago. Not just once too. But Cassius had always been careful after the first slip up, maybe because Mallick had asked that first time and the answer had made sense at first, but not truly the second time. If he had to be honest with himself though, the place where heād caught the blemish had not particularly fit with the story Cassius had thrown as an excuse then. Mallick might have just wanted to believe that this could not be anything drastic. How many times had he caught himself in the line of fire with what was not considered as unreasonable violence in this faction? Too many to count.
But Cassius was not of Clubs, surely they had better laws to protect their citizens even if they were humans back in Diamonds? Maybe that was something he should start looking into, Diamondās actual laws, not the ones heād barely skimmed, but the ones that left people like Cassius unprotected by them. He couldnāt possibly leave his own faction to the ruins, but he could handle gathering as much information as he could while managing his own load. An idea all prompted by the way his eyes caught yet another bruise, but Mallick swiftly averted them, by now, he did not wish to alert Cassius of where his thoughts might be going. It would be better to play along, it might be safer for Cassius too.Ā
That was what was important, āWell for one youāre not safe in that type of relationship. It all goes so wrong so quickly.āĀ
Mallick had known self-destruction, The Resistance had stood place as his partner in that road for many years. But before itād destroyed him, it had inadvertently shown him that this wouldnāt have been what the person he was dying for would have wanted. He could read it in between the lines of Cassiusā question, thereās something there that scares him concerning Cassiusā future. Because if this is what the young man believes to be his ultimate truth, it will lead to his ultimate demise and Mallick cannot impede it. In the end, the fate of one could only be nudged and influenced, never controlled. Fate was like love in that sense, was it not? Yet people accepted fate a lot easier than they did the latter. It was quite strange.Ā
āI donāt think being with someone you donāt love is wrong, many families still arrange unions, for power, for money, for personal affairs. So to not love someone you decide to stay with is not wrong Cassius. Itās the reasons for it that can make a lot of sense, or little to no sense. I wouldnāt want any of my brothers being with a partner that did not keep them safe even if they didnāt love them. Why live at all, if all it is good for is to get hurt? Even worse if intentionally.ā
Was that truly the only purpose Cassius sought in life? To die miserably because heād decided that was his fate and it was all the worth it had in store for him? Mallickās expressions turned solemn, that was the one thing it would all eventually lead to. Although Cassius being human meant death would claim him sooner than many others, it seemed that the young man had already started down a path that would prematurely grant him his last hour at any given time. But it was contradictory to the actions he would take and the care he would take to not show where he was getting hurt. Still, Mallick had to know.Ā
āLet me ask you something, do you wish for death?āĀ






