UsernameEmailRegionInterestAOL IMICQ IDYahoo! IDMSN IDJabber

Who: Cecilia and Cael
What: Facts are revealed, opinions are voiced...
Where: Brunch and then Cecilia's
When: Friday
Status: Complete



It had only been about ten minutes, but Cecilia Hooke could have sworn that this brunch had gone on forever. Fidgeting in her seat, she adjusted the yellow-and-white sundress her mother had bought her, and surveyed the rest of the event.

More and more it seemed like she was being forced into these kinds of things. After Evan had died and her relationship with Donovan had gone south, her parents had been surprisingly lenient with her when it came to making her socialize--it was the only way she had gotten away with being a recluse for as long as she had. Now, however... unfortunately, they seemed to have decided that she should be moving on. She had heard her mother chattering on rather endlessly to her friends about how terribly old her youngest daughter was getting, after all.

She wondered when the next charming pureblood man with a shiny ring would come calling.

Of course, they’d have to find one who would touch her first. Giving herself a soft, bitter laugh at that thought, Cecilia leaned back into her chair and sipped at her water goblet idly, debating upon just how long she could make one glass last. The longer she could avoid talking to anyone, the better, she thought as she looked around the faces--some familiar, some not--populating the party.

Honestly, she regretted having snapped at Cael over the journals. It would have been nice to have someone to drag with her and subsequently help her plan an escape. As it was, she wasn’t even certain they were speaking at the moment.

Not that she cared. Of course.

While Cecilia was squirming in her chair, Cael was making his way towards the bar, his left hand massaging his right after a wizard had given him an unnecessarily firm handshake. He wasn’t sure if the guy was trying to prove something to the younger wizard by crushing his hand, but it was causing him a bit of discomfort – something he definitely didn’t need when he had been dreading this event before he had even arrived. This wasn’t exactly his type of crowd, but his boss had sent him to represent the firm, and maybe get some additional clientele.

Still, these people…they made his skin twitch with the way they gave him sideways glances, indiscreetly giving him once overs like they were making sure he was up to their standards. They were the hoity toity pureblooded wizards – the only type of wizards he knew of who still actually hosted brunches.

He was about to grab himself a shot of something or another – a shot of ‘inspiration’, if you will, so he could get back to feeding people bullshit in order to get them to consider having work done on their home, or even have another home built, since it wasn’t like they didn’t have the Galleons for it – but his attention would be pulled towards a petite woman sitting in yellow and white. He was so distracted that he damn near collided with one of the servers carrying a tray of champagne glasses. He apologized, took one of the glasses, and downed its contents in a matter of seconds before placing the empty flute back on his tray.

It wasn’t a shot, but it was something to calm him down before he went and approached the woman who had been driving him absolutely mad for the last couple of weeks.

Slow steps were taken towards her, and even if she didn’t notice him approaching, he would pull out the empty seat beside her and lower himself down. When she finally looked over to him, he managed to let his lips pull up into one of his cheeks, forming a crooked albeit slightly forced smirk.

“Hello, beautiful.”

It would have been a lie to say that Cecilia had not detected a presence make its place beside her at the table. She was perhaps going to be considered rude for pointedly ignoring whoever it was, but she could not have cared less. Certainly it had not been far enough yet into this brunch to have to be forced to speak to someone, and she was not about to deny herself her solitude.

Until she heard that voice.

It took all she could to not whip around, to keep her composure about her in response to the low tenor of the one person she hadn’t been able to stop thinking of. Turning with shaky control, Cecilia regarded Cael with mild surprise, but no lack of pleasure--whether at the sight of him, or just the fact that he was speaking to her, she didn’t know. Whatever it was, she could not hide the relief.

“Mister Gray,” she breathed out with a soft smile. Without thinking, she laid her hand on top of his and squeezed lightly, as if grasping onto a lifeline. In all truth, given her outlook on such events, it was probably no exaggeration. “I should have expected you’d be here.”

He really couldn’t be too sure what kind of reaction she would have to seeing him, considering how their last conversation had been through journals, and it hadn’t exactly had the most positive outcome. He wouldn’t have described it as a fight, but they had definitely been arguing over some offhanded remark he had made about ‘proper behavior’. The more he spent time with her, the more he learned about her, even though they rarely did much talking when they were in each others company. That was the beauty of their arrangement, when things had started out – there were never any strings attached. They weren’t supposed to mean anything more to each other than a good snog, or a shag, but it was Cael who found that not getting attached was much harder than he had anticipated.

Still, she made it damn near impossible for him to get attached, which was one of the things that bothered him the most. He couldn’t even get upset with her for that, since she made it clear she wasn’t looking for anything. He just wished that she would loosen up a little, since he was sure that being so rigid all the time would make any person snap.

When her hand reached for his, it took a lot of self control to not make note of the action with his eyes – he was afraid that if he brought what seemed to be a reflexive action to her attention, she’d be quick to pull away. Instead, he lifted his other hand to place it on top of hers, his thumb idly brushing over the back of her knuckles as he looked at her.

He was consistently amazed at how every time he saw her, she seemed even more stunning than the last. He was particularly fond of how she looked while wearing that dress – it was casual, but bright and feminine, and it practically made her glow.

“We do have a history of running into each other when least expected, don’t we?”

“Not an entirely pitiable set of coincidences, at the very least.”

She’d have cursed herself for thinking it, but she relished the returning of her affectionate gesture. It had been entirely gut reaction on her part, and something she might have shared with a close confidant, but there was no denying that with him it was not quite as innocent... and she was more than happy, somewhere that she didn’t want to acknowledge, that he had found no issue in reciprocating.

And, of course, if she was lucky, those around them would take it as a hint that she was too engaged with her current company to bother her with their chronic nosiness.

Yes, that was the biggest relief of all.

“I’m relieved you’re here,” she finally admitted, pointedly not bringing up their... whatever it had been. If she could ignore the entire thing had happened, she happily would. After all, Cecilia knew that she could not bring herself to apologize for her harsh response to his words, even if she did feel sorry for having said them. She may have been overly agitated by his assumptions, and sorry for causing him to be frustrated, but she had to keep him at arm’s length... much more so than she was succeeding at doing lately. “You’ve successfully saved my life, because I’m certain I was going to off myself within the hour otherwise.”

Or run away and embarrass her parents. Either would have resulted in her subsequent death, so it really didn’t matter.

He was always intrigued by the way she could take everything and make it sound 10 times more eloquent than he’d ever be able to do. Her English dialect was also much different than his own Scottish brogue, which tended to make some people underestimate his intelligence – he was pretty sure that even she had figured him to be some sort of heathen when they had first met at the bar, even if she wouldn’t go so far as to admit such a thing out loud, since that wouldn’t be ‘proper’ – the whole reason they had gotten into their little spat in the first place.

He let out a snort at her dramatics about offing herself, a hint of pearly whites revealed when his smirk cut just a little deeper into his cheek, making one of his dimples much more prominent.

“This isn’ exactly the most lively group, is it?”

He looked around at all the wizards and witches who were standing around, listening to the string quartet that was playing in the distance.

“I almost died myself when I saw that tea, crumpets, and cucumber sandwiches were actually on the menu…”

He shook his head in disbelief before turning back to Cecilia – he thought it might be difficult, getting a conversation going, but as per usual he found that words came easily when it was speaking with her, mainly because he liked speaking with her. She was intelligent, and had a bizarre sense of humor that was so subtle that you had to really be tuned in to the underlying sarcasm that was hidden in her words – but that was only when she let herself say what was on her mind instead of censoring herself so she didn’t say the wrong thing in front of the wrong person.

She laughed--not loudly, but certainly not as quietly as was polite--, a genuine smile freely tugging at her lips at his words. Come to think of it, it was actually a bit odd that he hadn’t expected the menu, being from the kind of family he was so clearly from... but then, maybe growing up mainly in a different country had taken an affect on his knowledge of English high society standards. After all, she had little idea of how things were in the day-to-day lives of socialites outside of Great Britain.

Cecilia sent him playfully admonishing look, eyes lighting up in impish amusement she hadn’t experienced in such a long time. No one had been able to make her laugh so genuinely before she had met and begun to regularly speak to this man. It was... freeing, feeling lighthearted for once in her life, even if the emotion was fleeting. Whatever that part of him was which had managed to tap into that long-elusive happiness of hers both thrilled and terrified her at the very same time, and that was the reason it was so vital that she pull back.

But maybe later. It couldn’t hurt to enjoy it for a few seconds now, could it?

“Tsk, didn’t your mother ever teach you of the enjoyment of the finer things in life?” she asked. “You know, those cucumber sandwiches can really be to die fo---”

“My goodness, Cecilia Hooke, is that you, darling!?”

The end of her sentence lost on the air, Cecilia turned towards the presence that had somehow in the past few seconds come rushing towards her to come face-to-face with a tall and lanky, middle-aged witch donning a pink dress and immaculate hat. Before she could think to protest, she was scooped into an overstated and insincere hug, her hand torn away from Cael’s entirely. When the woman--she couldn’t remember her name, but for some reason ‘Yaxley’ seemed fit to the face--had released her, she was left standing, too surprised to even attempt to hide the discomfort that had just washed over her at this new member to their conversation.

Unabashed, Large Hatted Yaxley clapped her hands together and continued on. “Goodness, I do hope I wasn’t interrupting an important conversation,” she said, in a tone that said she was not sorry in the least. “I just haven’t seen you out in society in so many months, and with a man, darling--why, I simply had to tell you how very thrilled I am to see you’re doing well again. Your mother must be so relieved you’ve finally found a new suitor!”

Sweet Circe, this was not good.

Cael had been content, just sitting there holding her hand, enjoying the sound of her laughter and the way her eyes gleamed with amusement. She looked happy, which was something he couldn’t say very often. Most of the time she looked like she was suppressing that feeling on purpose, like she thought for some reasons she wasn’t meant to experience such a feeling. Half the time he didn’t know what she was feeling, since she was so skilled when it came to hiding her emotions – she was always so…neutral, yet now, as she sat before him in her pretty dress, she had a whole new light to her that he hadn’t seen until now. He found himself broadly smiling at her, anticipating what she was about to say next when they were interrupted.

Blue eyes blinked as they focused in on the stick figure in the hat who had greeted Cecilia like she was a horrible actress going off of some half-assed script – saying all the things she was supposed to say without actually meaning a word of it.

Cael looked between the two women, eventually standing to his feet since he felt a little awkward being the only person who was still seated at the table, especially when he was the primary focus of this woman’s one sided conversation with Cecilia. He tried not to pay too much attention to what was being said, but there were definitely things that stuck out to him – the fact that he was being dubbed as a ‘new suitor’ was something that was impossible for him to ignore, though learning that Cecilia hadn’t been seen ‘out in society in so many months’ was something else that made his mind wander.

“Of course, we all understand why you’ve been hiding yourself away, dear…what with all that dreadful business with young mister Rosier and all the awful things they were saying about him being a Death Eater and all. Oh, and then that whole mess with Rookwood – what a travesty! I say it’s for the better, that no good blood traitor, giving up his brother like that! And did you hear he’s planning to marry that halfblood twit Kettleburn? Who is he, to give up you for someone like her? A fool, I’d say.”

Cael was trying to keep up with everything that was being said, but he suddenly felt like he had suddenly been submerged in a pool of ice cold water. His throat felt incredibly dry, and he reached down to take a sip from her water goblet. Before he knew it, the last drop fell from the lip of the glass onto his tongue, and he was left feeling just as parched as he was before he started drinking.

There was no stopping her, was there? Cecilia had opened up her mouth twenty or more times during the course of Yaxley’s blabbering to say something, anything that would shut her up, but nothing would come out. It felt like she had been punched directly in the stomach, all the air in her lungs exiting in one rush and leaving her helpless to halt the vomit of information leaving the other woman’s lips.

She wasn’t missing a single detail of the story, either. Hiding away---Rosier---Death Eater---Rookwood---blood traitor---marry---Kettleburn--- Merlin, she couldn’t breathe, this had to be some sort of horrible nightmare. Cecilia couldn’t even turn her head to look up at Cael to see his reaction, and truthfully that might have been for the better. This was exactly the kind of information she had been intent upon never letting him know about her. He was one rare person in the world who didn’t know--or hadn’t, before now--all these stigmas attached to her, all this baggage she was carrying around, all these issues she had and just how fucked up her life had gotten in the past few years. Now that he did--

-- she didn’t know, she didn’t care to know what he thought.

Without a word or a dismissal, Cecilia used what little willpower she had left in her body and turned on her heel and ran--ran to... she didn’t know where she was going, but the hedge maze not far away seemed a good bet. She just knew she needed to get away from this situation, be alone, and no yelps of surprise or protest from the witch left behind were going to stop her.

She weaved through the greenery until a sharp snap! sounded from just below her and she lost her balance, stumbling into the hedge just in front of her. Looking down at the broken heel helplessly, she sagged into the manicured leaves and put a hand to her face, trying her damndest to fight off the stinging in her eyes.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.

Cael had only just gone to lower the glass from his lips, not even able to catch the look of mortification on Cecilia’s face before she was turning to run. He couldn’t say he blamed her, what with this woman going on about subjects she had no business bringing up so casually, but he also found himself frozen in place for a moment, only able to watch her get further and further away from her present company.

It was when the awful woman spoke again that Cael got a sense of clarity, turning to acknowledge her screeching with a look of complete and utter distaste.

“If you’ll excuse me.”

He had no reason to extend any sort of pleasantries towards the witch, but even though he was still reeling from all the information that had been introduced to him in such a short period of time, something in the back of his mind was telling him that he should act on his best behavior, if only for Cecilia’s sake.

Maybe it wouldn’t make much of a difference, since he was pretty damn sure that once he and Cecilia talked about what had just happened back there, he wouldn’t have to worry about anything like that any more…

Not when she found out the truth about him.

Cael’s pace picked up as he searched for the girl in the pretty dress, who had just 5 minutes ago been sitting beside him, holding his hand and smiling. He twisted through the maze, hearing the leaves rustle, trying to follow the sound in order to find her. He would come to a sudden halt when he saw a heap of yellow and white fabric out of the corner of his eye, just as he was about to turn another corner to continue his search for her. His chest was heaving slightly, due to the energy he had exerted while running into the maze after her, and he swallowed roughly before he approached her. He lowered himself down in front of her, unsure of what he was supposed to say – unsure of what he wanted to say.

“…don’t tell me this is your idea of a stealthy getaway.”

It was the first thing he could think of – trying to at least break the tension in the air as he reached forward to carefully pluck a leaf from her hair. It pained him, to know that she – that they - had been so happy just a minute ago, and now?

Now he didn’t know what to think about anything.

She had heard him coming, heard the rustle of leaves and grass get louder and louder. It occurred to her that she should pick herself up and move away, because she was certain that Cael Gray was one of the last people she wanted to face right then. But in her current state, she could hardly control her own breathing, much less her legs enough to get on her feet and flee again.

And so there she sat.

Cecilia’s eyes turned to the ground, refusing to watch any more of him than his feet as he approached her. She couldn’t look at him now, now that he knew. What did he think of her? That was one question she didn’t want to see answered in his eyes, and so she averted her gaze--in fear, in shame. After all, now he knew it all, didn’t he? The Rosier and Rookwood stories had been all over the Prophet when they had happened, and it would have been foolish to think he didn’t know what the old bat had been talking about. So he knew that she had dated not only one convicted Death Eater who had been killed--murdered--by the Aurors, but that she had also managed to date another possible Death Eater, who had turned in his brother in his place and on top of it made her look like a disgrace of a pureblood by running off and marrying an inferior woman.

Hell, why had he even followed her? Did he really need to make this any worse than it already was?

She winced, feeling his hand come towards her, and her shoulders tensed. A second later, when he had discarded the singular leaf, Cecilia noticed she was still tight, still holding a breath. Shakily, she let it out as he spoke and retreated his arm, not sure what she had been expecting. It certainly hadn’t been for him to continue to act kindly towards her.

Then again, little was ever truly genuine amongst their kind, was it?

“I don’t want your pity,” she finally said. There had meant to be harshness in her tone, but it failed marvelously. Instead, Cecilia merely sounded tired and a touch defensive. “You should not have followed me. They already believe you’re with me; that’s embarrassment enough for you, I’m sure.”

Cael let out a heavy sigh through his nose as he watched and listened to her, eventually lifting the hand that had been used to pull the leaf from her hair so he could rub at his brow, becoming all the more overwhelmed. How had things gone from good to this so fucking quickly?

“I think you’re pitying yourself enough for the both’ve us, Cecilia.” He dropped his hand, looking at her. Any ounce of that rare bit of light that had shined through when she had laughed, when she had smiled at him, it was completely gone. It was like he was looking at a shell of the girl he had been speaking to earlier. Still, this wasn’t about him coming to feel sorry for her – quite the opposite, actually.

“The way I see it, we’ve got two options here - we stay here, with you sittin’ on the ground, gettin’ your dress all dirty, or, we get you off your ass and get the fuck outta here. Either way, you an’ I are gonna have ourselves a chat…that much I know for certain.”

He wasn’t angry with her, but he was definitely getting frustrated. He wasn’t going to have her beating herself up over her past, thinking she had shamed him somehow, when he was fairly certain that her being seen with him was only going to tarnish her already ruined reputation amongst the pureblood elitists. As far as he was concerned, they both deserved to know the truth…

He needed to know where she laid her loyalties, and she needed to know what kind of man he really was.

Rising to his feet, he extended his hand to her, a silent offer to help her to her feet if she chose to leave the maze with him. If not, he’d leave her sitting there crumpled up on the floor looking pathetic, but he wouldn’t leave her. Not before they discussed everything that needed to be discussed.

A rush of something, too weak to be fury but too hot to be relief, washed over her at his proclamation that she was somehow pitying herself. She was offended, honestly, but the truth of it was that she didn't have the energy at the time to argue the point with him. From the way whatever she had been feeling quickly drained away, Cecilia wasn't sure if she actually cared that much about it to begin with. Maybe he was right, that she was pitying herself. Would be it so hard to understand if she wasn't? To say she'd had a rough time within the past couple of years would have been the understatement of the century.

He kept talking, but the words seemed to go in one ear and out the other until he extended his hand towards her, causing her to realize he wanted her to get up and leave somewhere with him.

Cecilia didn't know if she wanted to go, even as she reached up and allowed him to pull her to her feet. But what else was she going to do? She knew she didn't want to stay at this party, and it seemed that for some reason, going with Cael was the lesser of two evils at the time.

Before she knew it, a crack! went off and they were gone. Where grass had been one instant was now the plush carpet of the sitting room of her apartment, although admittedly it took her a moment to regain her grips upon what had just happened and to where they had Apparated.

She discarded her heels next to an armchair, kicking off the right and remainder of the broken left, keeping her back to him the entirety of the time. Taking a few steps forward towards the middle of the room, consciously distancing herself from him in preparation of this... chat he wanted to have so badly, she crossed her arms over her chest.

"I'm surprised you still feel there's anything left to talk about," she said, the snap coming back to her voice just slightly now that she was in more comfortable environments. "You've certainly heard all you need to know about me from that old bag back there."

The reason he had brought them both to that location, rather than his own place of residence, was because he wasn’t expecting to stay all too long after he said what he felt needed to be said – after he asked the questions he wanted to ask her. He was expecting her to come back to her senses once their environment had changed, and he watched her pad across her carpeting, not looking at him once as she moved.

He didn’t say anything for a long while – he just stood there, trying to think of how he was going to start this line of questioning. He figured it would just be best to get everything out in the open as soon as possible – rip off the Band-Aid, if you will, and just get all of this over with.

He wasn’t expecting this to end well, no matter what he did.

“Did you know – about Rosier?” A beat, allowing her to process the question before elaborating. “Did you know what he was? What he stood for?”

“Evan,” Cecilia snapped, voice hard and suddenly stronger than it had been since this whole ordeal had begun. It threw a veil over the knot of uncertainty that had twisted itself up at the nature of his question.

Something seemed odd about his asking that, didn’t it? Anyone who was someone in their social circles would never have bothered with such a question--being a Death Eater was not a fault, after all, but a prestige. Their significant other may not have known for certain that their lover was leading such a life, but few, if any, would have cared. Of course, when a man was found out for being such a thing, they all threw up their hands in pretend astonishment and exclaimed about how terrible it all was, how mislead he had been, but it, like most else, was a load of bullshit. Sons who became Death Eaters were their family’s pride, and Evan Rosier had most certainly been a pride to the pureblood community.

So why was he asking, then? The more Cecilia thought on the matter, the more uneasy her wondering made her. Who was Cael Gray, exactly? She had never really dared to find out.

Her hands tensed around her arms, leaving her knuckles white just out of his view, as she opened her mouth to answer. Well, she supposed all there was left was to be honest. What could it do to Evan if she told his secrets now? He was long dead, she thought bitterly.

“I knew exactly what Evan Rosier was,” she answered, tightly controlling her voice into a flat, emotionless line of speech. “I knew what he stood for, I knew what he believed. I knew dangerously more than I should have.” She stopped for only a split second before adding on the one thing that she had never dared say to anyone after his death, the one thing her parents had forbidden her from ever saying for fear of what the world would think of her and their family.

“I was in love with him, and I don’t care what he did.”

Cael all but flinched when she snapped back at him with her former flame’s proper name – honestly, he didn’t give a shit what he name was, but he wasn’t about to point that out to her. The way she became so defensive when it came to this man told him enough about her feelings about him, which was why he would just stand quietly, allowing the air around them to become thicker and thicker with each passing moment. Every word she spoke on Evan Rosier’s behalf only added to the weight in the air.

And then she had to say that. She had to tell him that she was in love with this man, despite what he had done, despite who he obeyed. In fact, it seemed like she approved of his status as one of the Dark Lord’s soldiers. His mouth was dry again, but when he spoke, it was his tone that would become harder.

“I don’t doubt that you loved this man…but I’m nothing like him.”

It wasn’t easy, for him to stand there and see her in this kind of light, but really…shouldn’t he have expected this? Why he had been denying to himself that she was just another stuck up, elitist, close minded pureblood he didn’t know, but all the signs had been there. He had just chosen to ignore them, since he enjoyed her company too much to let himself believe that she was like them - the ones who turned their noses up, and treated him like a dog when they found out that his blood was ‘dirty’. It was degrading.

“I can’t imagine it would do well for your pristine reputation, if they were to find out your new ‘suitor’ was someone like me…”

There was a bit of venom in his voice, finding it hard to feel sorry for her and her failed romances when he was still getting used to the idea that she had absolutely no problem with innocent people being murdered, just because it was at the hands of her fucking boyfriend. That wasn’t sitting well with him.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. She knew it hadn’t been some kind of sweeping understanding for what she’d gone through, and she was sure that he was going to at the very least think she was a monster for the things she had allowed to happen, knowing what Evan was the whole time and choosing him over the “right thing.” She had gotten that impression the second he had asked her the question--did you know? You didn’t ask that because it just didn’t matter to you.

But despite all the signs, how clear it had all been in retrospect, Cecilia did not expect for him to say---that. Which, he hadn’t actually even said it, but they both knew she knew what he meant. That he was a---

Her stomach felt like it had dropped through the floor, but not in the way that it should have. That was, she didn’t feel suddenly appalled, suddenly disgusted at the idea that she had been touched by, had become so enamored with a mudblood. No, it wasn’t anything like that, and she didn’t have the presence of mind to question why she wasn’t offended by that aspect of this... Instead, she was simply overwhelmed with fury, frustration that he hadn’t told her until this moment. She had never hidden what kind of family she came from, what kind of people she knew, and yet he had chosen to hide the one thing that he knew their whole relationship--or whatever the fuck it had been--rested on. She felt... played, in a way, strung along.

He had wasted her time, this whole time. He was just one more man who had turned out to be a disappointment, and that was crushing; more so than she would have liked to admit.

“Even if my reputation hadn’t been destroyed already...” she began slowly, a tremor in her voice. Whether in fury or something else, it wasn’t clear--maybe both. “...I would never dream of accepting as a suitor someone who doesn’t care enough to be honest with me about something as basic as---this.”

Finding that she could still not bring herself to look at him, especially now, she stared hard at the far wall. If she had to look at him, she didn’t know what kind of effect it would have on her. After all, Cecilia very much doubted she would ever see Cael Gray again after he had stepped foot out her door that day. “You could never be Evan, and that’s not the problem,” she said. “So unless you have something more to add, I’ll kindly ask you to leave.”

Cael stood there, his jaw clenched as he braced himself for whatever she had to say in reaction to learning the true nature of his bloodline – that it was tainted by muggle blood due to the fact that his grandfather had not been a wizard. It wouldn’t matter to explain to her that despite that one ‘discrepancy’ in his lineage, he came from a family of wizards – but he wasn’t the one who cared about such things.

“You’re acting like I’ve been lying to you – like I told you I was something I wasn’t and let you go along with it. You made your assumptions all on your own, without me leading you to believe I was something or someone that I wasn’t. I’ve been nothing but honest with you, Cecilia, but where I come from, most conversations don’t start with ‘My name is Cael Gray, and I’m a halfblood’.”

He stared at her – her back still to him, unable to look at him. He wondered whether or not this was because she didn’t want to look at him now that she knew what he was, or because it hurt to know that this man she had let herself become close to was someone she knew she shouldn’t ever see again, since status was clearly so important to her.

Maybe it would have been easier for both of them, if she thought of him as this disgusting, lowly halfblood – that way he could at least forget about her, because he knew there wouldn’t be any chance at all of getting her to see him as just…him, which was all he had ever presented to her the entire time they had been seeing each other.

He just wished he hadn’t gotten so fucking attached, because this might hurt less.

“…you say this information is ‘basic’…yet it’s enough for you to send me away without so much as a second thought.”

She had been determined to stay staring at that wall, detaching herself from him in as clean and surgical manner as was possible after how terribly wrong everything had just gone. It was difficult to just turn away from him, from someone it was now painfully clear she had begun to care a great deal about, but she had to do it, or she was going to be hurt even more--again. And while no stranger to heartbreak, it wasn’t something that Cecilia felt she could take yet another time. Not from someone who had known from the beginning that none of this would work out. Not from someone who had gotten her to feel fleetingly happy for the first time since Evan had died.

It was unfortunate, then, that she couldn’t help but to spin on him, when those last words came out of his mouth. He was---accusing her of dismissing him without a second thought, of being so heartless and so unfeeling about this whole thing that it didn’t hurt her at all to have this happening. How dare he--

Stalking up towards him before she entirely knew what she was doing, Cecilia stopped less than a foot away, staring up into his face and letting him see her eyes now, because if indifference was really what he assumed she felt about this whole thing, then that was the one thing that would prove the opposite. It was a horrible circumstance, that the first time she would dare to show him real emotion was at the time when there was no chance they’d ever be seeing each other again. But she would not have him go out thinking that he was the only casualty of this unfortunate affair.

“Whatever the fuck you might think of me,” she hissed, all ‘proper’ behavior certainly done for now, “don’t you ever treat me like a soulless drone, and don’t you ever class me in with those who would no more than spit on you.”

That was it, wasn’t it. Those who he assumed she was just like--who, at one point, she had been just like--had spit on her too. She had known for a long time, that she was no longer one of them. She could not forgive him for keeping it from her, and there was no way she could ever be with him if she ever wanted to regain her pride, but--

“If you really want me to hate you so badly for your blood, then tell me so I can kill you on the spot and have it over with. Otherwise, yes, you can get out and not make this any worse--for either of us.”

When she finally turned on him, he once again found himself gritting his teeth – this time it was because he was seeing all the emotion that was swirling behind those eyes, chaotic specks of forest and amber that were boring into the shards of diamond and ice that made up his own. His eyes were usually sparkling and calm, but now they looked like oceans after a storm.

When he spoke again, his tone was extremely tense, but controlled, trying to keep his composure.

“That’s the whole fucking problem, isn’t it Cecilia? You need everyone to tell you how to feel. At least they – the soulless drones as you called them – they know what they want. They may spit on me, they may want to kill me, but at least they don’t just stand idly by.”

He stared at her for a moment, before he scoffed, shaking his head, pivoting on his heel to turn away from her, towards the door. He would open it, and stall before turning to look at her again.

“Do you want to know the truth – about what I think of you?” It was a rhetorical question, since she was going to hear it regardless of what she wanted.

“I think you’re beautiful - I think you’re cunning, intelligent, poised, sophisticated, elegant… I could keep going, but none of it matters. Stop fucking worrying about what I - what they think of you. And stop being such a fucking coward, because the self loathing routine isn’t exactly one of your more endearing qualities.”

With that, he slammed the door behind him, apparating before she had a chance to say another word to him. He was just…pissed off. He figured he would say everything he needed to say while he had the chance, since he didn’t really think he’d be getting another opportunity ever again. It wasn’t like she had been the one who wore the dark mark on her arm, but she accepted a man who had as her lover, which just made him conclude that she was indifferent to the fact that hundreds, thousands probably, of good witches and wizards had been tortured and/or murdered, all because of their blood.