#killthislve

When Christopher Barnes had left Luxor Academy, his departure had been accompanied by a promise to himself that he would never return; and true to his word, even after he’d been found in his Russian exile and dragged back to America, he had flat out refused to go back to the school. It was hard to predict how long he would be able to keep his family at bay on the matter, but he was fully intent on pushing it for as long as he possibly could. True, the school itself wasn’t exactly to blame for the misery he had experienced in his final months there, but it had been the setting of it, and the very last thing that Christopher wanted was to be forced to return to the scene of the darkest period of his life now that things were so much better than they had been. 

But while Luxor was forever tainted by the memories of that time, Christopher still found himself yearning for certain aspects of life there. He missed the library, and the seemingly unending shelves of historical tomes that it was home to. He missed the grounds, which would undoubtedly be adorned with the beautiful colours of autumn right about now. He missed the comfort that his dorm room had given him prior to its transformation into his own personal prison cell. But there was something that he missed even more than all of these things; or rather, someone. And it was this someone that had brought him to this little café in the town only a mile removed from the front gates of Luxor Academy. 

Sighing into his half filled cup of tea after glancing up at the clock on the wall, Christopher reflected for what was at least the 100th time since he’d arrived that he couldn’t exactly blame her if she chose not to come; given how everything had transpired between them prior to his leaving, it honestly seemed rather unlikely to him that she would. Still, in his letter, he had told her that he would be there waiting all day, and so he was prepared to do exactly that, no matter how small the chance that she would actually make an appearance. With every chime of the little bells atop the door, his eyes lifted, hoping to see her familiar figure, only to immediately fall back to the table in disappointment. After awhile, he stopped looking when the bells chimed, and instead took to watching the second hand on the wall clock as it ticked away the seconds, minutes, and hours.