#ahot

Darcy—Chapter 17: Changes of Heart ☾

“Why don’t… you hate me?” I ask, part of me wanting to suffocate those words before they can exit. But they decide to tug their way out of my throat even as it feels like every part of my body is on edge from asking that one single question.

I feel a tear fall down my face, and suddenly there is a knot inside my chest that wants to be released. That will only lead to more tears, and so I try to bury it. I don’t know why I decided to help Iorda out with the Rein situation, because deep down I know she can handle herself. I believed her when she said that she was planning on tearing the guy’s ear off.

The thought arises that maybe I’m not scared of Iorda’s reputation getting ruined, more so that being around her makes me question why she’s even bothering to speak to me or to be not a total asshole to me just because of the rumors. It makes me question if there are any good things about myself, but that thought scares me. It’s far easier to tell myself I’m a danger or an irritant to be around than having to realize that someone thinks I’m good so that must mean I can like myself, or at least that I can—need to—try not to despise every action or word that comes out of my mouth.

I watch as Iorda pauses before she speaks.

“I just don’t.”

She says it as if it’s the most simplest thing.

“No, I mean—” I start, my deep breath more uneasy than I ever wanted. “Why are you still here? Can you even give me one reason why you kept on insisting to speak to me, or to not… To not act as if I’m a horrible person?”

Iorda’s eyes soften slightly, but other than that she stays the same. “Because you’re not a horrible person.”

“Be more specific.”

“Why?”

“Because then I can cross whatever you say off a list of things that are apparently true. If you’re not specific then I’m just going to doubt—” I start before sighing, resisting the urge to just break down in the center of the club. I brush my hair out of my face. “You know what? This is not your problem. It’s mine.”

I do not need to bother Iorda more with my crippling issues of self hatred and doubt. My irritation towards myself is only getting worse with the suffocating smell of spilled alcohol, the sound of people screaming along to songs, and how Iorda’s eyes on me—she looks concerned, and I hate it—feel like a thousand daggers digging into my skin.

Hell, the music sucks, too.

I throw my hair over my shoulders before walking past Iorda, not shoving into her shoulder. The tears on my face should be dry enough for her not to see. I can just go back to the dorm and cry. Wondering if I can believe Iorda if she says I’m a good person, or if it's just going to be another Riven situation where—

Iorda suddenly steps in front of me. “It became my problem the moment you involved me.”

I glare. “Iorda, I swear if you don’t move—”

“Musa told me about what you told Stormy.”

Dear dragon, I love Stormy to bits, but now I really want to search through this entire club to find her. She’s perfectly entitled to tell Musa what she pleases, but the fact that the information of my so-called ‘abnormal’ irritation towards Iorda reached her of all people made me more pissed than it should.

“So what?” I scoff. “You irritate me?”

“I want to know why.”

I try to step around her. “Newsflash, darling, this isn’t about you.”

“Darling?”

“It’s a term of endearment for people who piss me off.”

I don’t want to be near Iorda. I don’t want to start to think about the possibility of how I wasted all that time in my relationship with Riven. I know deep down that he was a dick, but I want to desperately sink into all the horibe things he told me as if it was a blanket of safety where I don’t have to make an effort to believe anything else.

Iorda stares at me as if briefly caught off guard, before her eyes widen. She clearly sees that I don’t want to be around, and good riddance for that. This time I shove her shoulder as I walk around her, only to run into two girls blocking the exit.

“Move,” I say, not waiting for their answer as I shove past them.

I feel slightly calmer at the cool air and the evening sky, the shiver of it sticking to my skin and grounding me. People are sparse, and so I begin to quickly walk towards an empty alley where I can take a breath and address the ache in my chest that makes me want to cry.

Several wooden boxes are pushed up against one of the alley walls.

Perfect.

I kick one of the smaller boxes to the side before sitting down on the largest, pulling my feet up onto the box and burying my face into my knees. Why the hell can’t Iorda leave me alone? Or maybe I’m the one who won’t leave her—I had to help her though with Rein, though—but that is a possibility I don’t want to think about.

Especially since more tears are falling down my face.

I messily wipe off the tears soaking my cheeks, choking on a sob that tears me to the core. Why couldn’t I have had a good first relationship? Why was I mentally impacted by something that wasn’t even my fault? Now, because of everything that happened with both Riven and the constant stress of having my parents fight, I’m stuck in circumstances I didn’t even want.

“Here.”

I look up, glaring through my glasses.

Iorda, holding some sort of cocktail. “I wasn’t sure… what you liked, and…”

“The only alcohol I like happens to be wine or champagne,” I say coldly, moving my hair out of my face and trying to create a scornful expression that will send Iorda running for the hills. “Because unlike some people, I am not lacking in taste buds.”

“It's… lychee. A lychee cocktail.”

“It is disgusting and, like the girl holding it, bothersome.”

Iorda rolls her eyes, but she at least is somewhat succeeding in not directly looking at my very obviously tear-streaked face. She stares up at the night sky as she sits next to me, the cocktails in her hands clinking with the ice inside the glass. I sigh, rolling my eyes before I decide to give the poor girl the benefit of the doubt.

I sip on the cocktail, expecting a strong and horrible taste…

I pause.

“It’s good, right?” Iorda tilts her head, clearly trying to lighten the mood.

But I’m not having it.

She is correct that the cocktail tastes pretty good, though.

“It is tolerable,” I say, taking another sip of it before trying to resume glaring at Iorda with as much energy my emotionally-exhausted body could muster. “You can go now, by the way.”

“And what if I don’t want to?”

A deep curl in my gut of irritation, anger, and fear at having Iorda so close to me with many of my walls down only started to grow. My nails tapped against the glass of the cocktail, and I crossed my legs before letting my magic fill me enough until my eyes flashed violet. That should scare her, because right now I want her gone rather than trying to figure out what her fucking angle is.

“Try. Me,” I sneer. “I fucking dare you.”

Iorda’s eyes widen very briefly, and it annoys me that she looks more surprised than any type of scared that would suggest her departure. I want her to leave. I want to stay ignorant to any type of peace I can have, because the dark pit of my emotions is easier to remain in; unchanging, familiar.

She looks me dead in the eyes.

“You’re not a horrible person. I’ve said that before, and I will say it again,” Iorda says, somehow not afraid to look me right in the fucking eyes despite me being fully prepared to use my magic enough to tear her mind apart if I wanted to. “Use your magic.”

I let an angry hiss leave my mouth. “I swear to the fucking dragon, Iorda, you are one of the most insufferable, bothering, stupid people I have ever met—”

“You could leave.”

“Yes, but I chose this spot in the alley,” I say sharply, my eyes still flickering. “You imposed on my space, and therefore, you are intruding on both my physical and emotional bubble.”

“I apologize for imposing on your bubbles,” Iorda says, so deadpan it must be sarcastic.

I don’t have any other retort for that, and it irritates me that this girl continues to catch me off guard with the things she says. No matter how stupid and idiotic they are. My hand grips the glass as I take a large sip of the cocktail.

“So you weren’t going to use your magic?” Iorda asks.

“Yes, I was going to tear the mind apart of a random girl just because she is the most prominent irritant in my life,” I say, rolling my eyes before I remove the glass from my lips. “I know what the rumours are—” I start, turning to Iorda with a firm glare. “But I am not insane.”

“And you just proved that the rumors are bullshit,” Iorda says with a calm nod, resting her back against the alley wall as she glances up at the small strip of star-filled sky visible from within the alley. “I mean, it was already proved with Stormy getting along well with Musa—”

“I got it.”

“And Icy… um, getting along well with Bloom.”

“I said I got it, Iorda,” I interrupt with a scoff. “Dragon, do you ever listen?”

“Sometimes.”

I decide to follow her eyes and look up at the sky. Truly, this was the most comforting sight all day. All the stars flickering in and out of view, all the galaxies visible to the naked eye. Sometimes it makes me feel at peace, and it tends to quell any emotional storm inside me.

With a silent sigh, I look back to Iorda. She had been so annoying to me that I never really took in her mannerisms. Just her words. One thing that I never clued into was the fact that her hair was only reaching her shoulder blades, which makes me purse my lips.

“Your hair is short,” I say.

Fey or strege, one thing that is shared alongside those who use the psychic element is a deep sense of spirituality. I’ve… admittedly lost the motivation of that for the past while, but yet, I’ve still kept her hair long; representing wisdom, power, confidence.

It's one of the few things I still like about myself.

Iorda shrugs. “Some asshole fairies at Alfea cut it off after I became strege.”

I froze at that.

Not just an emotionless mask, but truly gaping with my eyes wide. I can’t even guess how far away from any sense of humanity those fairies must’ve been to touch something sacred to Iorda, and it makes me wonder how bad some fairies at Alfea must’ve been to Iorda after… she stopped being one of them.

Part of me never listened to Iorda because…

I thought that she just pitied me.

That she had never experienced suffering…

But knowing this…

“I…” I swallowed, avoiding her eyes. “I’m sorry that happened.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not…” I say, my voice showing my concern. I should really bury it. I should. “That… that's something no one should go through.” She was silent, and suddenly I felt uncomfortable in the current switch from annoyance to worry I was experiencing. “Those fairies—the ones who did it—I hope they are suffering.”

“Thanks, but…” Iorda said, shrugging. “I’m not sure. I actually left Alfea a month after that happened, so I’m not sure where they are in life. But yeah, I also hope they’re not doing so well.”

Another moment of silence…

A tense one.

“So I…” Iorda started, breathing in slowly. “I know what it can be like for people to hate you. It sucks, and it can hurt a lot.” She fiddled with her bracelet. “You weren’t a pity project. I just wanted to show you, you know… Basic kindness and humanity.”

All of this made Iorda’s previous actions seem so much more real…

It makes me feel guilty that I dismissed all her approaches to simply be kind to someone just because of my own self-pity and hatred. Or maybe because of how ingrained all of the rumours were in my sense of self. She actually seems to care—seemed to, because I don’t know whether she’ll bother with me after this—and that hurts. The realization that someone besides my sisters bothers to care and even understands what I’m going through makes me want to cry, scream, and wrap my arms around the girl to show her how fucking much I value that.

True understanding.

No deceit.

Iorda breathes in slowly, beginning to stand up. “I can go—”

I grip her wrist before I realize what I’m going.

Iorda glances at me, and I freeze when I have no words to say.

“Um…” I mumble, my eyes pointed to the ground so that I don’t have to look at her. “You can stay.”

“Are you sure?”

I nod. “Please stay…”

Part of me whispers that I’m pathetic and weak for asking Iorda to stay. I bury that whisper by telling myself that I only want her to stay so I can apologize and tell her why I have been pushing her away. That I’m just being a decent person instead of some girl desperate for any type of kindness, because I am not desperate.

Iorda nods calmly before sitting back down next to me.

“I didn’t mean to… push you away,” I say, resting my face on my knees before turning it away from Iorda’s gaze. “I mean, well, I did. I wanted you to fuck off and leave me alone, but you weren’t the issue. I was. And it’s… hard to explain, but I didn’t want to…”

“Believe you’re a good person?’

Right.

Iorda understands this…

“Yeah. That,” I answer. “Um… do you know… Riven?”

The words come out before I can stop them. Words that will ruin any chance of me succeeding in pushing this insufferable girl away from me for good, and they are words that will also mean that I’m not too fucked up deep down to be able to open up to someone.

“I mean, yeah,” Iorda says. “He’s a dick.”

I let out a quiet chuckle. “He is.”

“But continue.”

“He’s… actually my ex,” I mumble, looking up at the stars to at least make this conversation easier. “It wasn’t a very good relationship and…” Iorda was so silent, just listening, without judgment. “When we broke up, the rumours were spread.”

Iorda was the one to freeze this time. “What?”

I roll my eyes. “When we broke up, the rumours were spread—”

“Yeah I heard that, but dragon, I knew he was a dick but not that bad,” Iorda says in shock, running her hands through her hair in disbelief. “Fuck, I really need to talk to Musa about breaking up with him sooner than later.”

“Hopefully she ends up listening,” I say.

Iorda’s phone buzzes in her pocket and she pulls it out briefly before frowning. I lean slightly closer to read the message, looking over her shoulder to see that it's from Bloom: We’re catching a ride back to the dorm in 5. You alive?

“You should get back to your friends.”

Though Iorda is no longer an idiot without self-preservation, she does seem to still have a complete lack of spatial awareness. She almost drops her phone when she realizes from my sudden input how close I am, and dragon, I don’t care. I chuckle at her reaction.

“Um—I—yeah I should,” Iorda says, pulling two strands of her hair over her face before standing up. “Anyways, um, it was nice seeing you. I’m sorry to cut this so short after you shared something like that, but I—”

“Relax, relax, darling,” I say, still burying chuckles at the girl. “You’re fine.”

Iorda nods, seemingly looking anywhere in the alley except for me. I know she’s very clearly introverted, but I don’t even reach her level of getting embarrassed just from having someone this close. It makes me wonder how she had even brought herself to talk to me in the first place when she's shy around people.

Iorda nods. “Uh. So yeah. Bye.”

She practically speed walks out of the alley. I smile to myself as I watch her leave, because even for a brief moment, my self-loathing and emotional pit has tucked itself into a little box. I know it's temporary, but still, knowing that I opened up to someone and that she is still here…

It’s a good feeling.