Frank and Evie had remained silent since they left her apartment.
Lyonfort had changed so much over the years that there were roof gardens, outdoor gyms, heliports, bars and even some swimming pools by now on the battlements of each tower, but no one dared to build anything on this unstable architectural failure the inhabitants called: The Broken Tower.
It had cracks everywhere and was about to collapse.
It was a quiet place, perfect for talking about difficult topics or meditating with the imminent risk of dying by falling into a hole.
The whole thing was terrifying in its own right, but at night, it was especially magical.
Up here in the battlements of the Broken Tower, the only thing Evie could do was to look at the starry sky and pray to whoever listened to give her the strength to confess.
Frank immediately took out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with his lighter, then took a couple of long drags.
"Do you remember the first time we came here, just you and me?" Evie asked, and Frank nodded without turning to look at her.
"It was a cold night, you shivered and hugged yourself so I took off my coat and wrapped it around your shoulders."
"The night of October 1, 2019 became the anniversary of EV-13's death, and the birth of Evie." She approached Frank, who was already leaning on the edge of this tower, staring at the moon. The sound of her heels was already a part of her personality, but Frank didn't want to hear it tonight.
"You know? All the songs I wrote or co-wrote are about you. I mean, 'Victor Frankenstein' and 'Hunter in Disguise' for example, though it's not like you don't know that." Frank whispered and turned to the right, lost in the dancing of the red flag that crowned the Vampire Tower. A little further east, he could see the turquoise blue flag of the Watermen Tower. "You do realise I'm an idiot who can't let you go, right?"
"Yeah, I know," Evie looked away from him, "With 'Victor Frankenstein' you kind of reminded me of Taylor Swift, because it's country-pop? Right?"
"It's power-pop slash country actually. Meh. It sounds really weird when I say it out loud. Now, tell me what's so important that you brought me here." Frank said, "It's been a long time since you and I set foot on this... Dangerous roof."
"I know it is dangerous to be here, but there's no better place to talk about this. This tower is important to both of us." She replied, "And if this tower collapses..." She raised her grapple gun, "You know I'll save you."
"Yeah, right," he raised his bionic hand, "I have one too," and resumed his smoking. "I am waiting. Or will you not say anything?" Frank insisted, smoking faster. His eyes were on the north, where the sea and the sky ended, hearing how the tidal waves clashed against grey rocks at the base of the cliff. That was the only sound he could hear, that and the wind, but there was not a word from Evie in the air.
"I'm thinking how to tell you what I want to say without breaking you any further, Frank," Evie wanted to talk about so many things, but she knew there wouldn't be enough life or words to confess all of her sins.
But she was sure of one thing... Frank would forgive her, because he was a noble boy, and even the enormous Great Keep of Lyonfort wasn't a big enough place to house Frank's heart.
The first time Evie entered Lyonfort, she thought for a moment that she was a princess.
Zeth had brought her, reluctantly, to apologise to Frank. That was the night she met the new guys: Finn and Everett, and she already knew Alex from college although they were never really friends back then. Frank asked her to go to a private place with him even when Zeth refused to leave her alone with him. They made it to the Broken Tower, where he forgave her for her biggest sin, and gave her a chance to redeem herself. He was just getting used to his prosthetics, and although Evie tried to help him, he said he could go up the broken spiral stairs on his own.
"So, you brought me here to not say a word?" Frank asked while lighting his second cigarette, and Evie shook her head.
"Not quite." Evie's face turned pink. "I'm sorry. I just... I didn't want you to know."
"Tell me once and for all why I was your Trojan Horse, Evie! Who was your target if not me?" Frank paced around and around, with a hand shoved into his pocket and the metal hand bringing the cigarette to his lips. The lips that Evie kissed and never forgot. The lips that once made her moan with pleasure to prepare her to receive all the love Frank felt for her in the most intimate way possible. "You've hurt me more than once in more ways than one, and yet, I still..." but he fell silent.
"You still what?" She was standing there, right next to him, looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something else.
She wasn't entirely sure she wanted an answer, though.
And he wasn't sure if he should give her one.
Evie backed away from him, placing a hand on a merlon and another on a crenet, facing south. She looked down at the rose garden eight floors below and then looked up to see the Donjon, much taller and larger than the tower she was standing on right now. She was curious to explore the battlements on top of it, but she never dared to do so. It would be like being on top of a skyscraper, even more so because this castle was on a steep cliff.
"I forgave you," He said, lighting another cigarette. "But I can forget..."
"Forget that I cost you too many body parts?"
"I can't forget that you took my heart and stepped on it with your high-heeled boots," Frank replied. She turned, almost scared and blushing, to look him straight in the eyes. "The betrayal, the pain of knowing that the one you love was only interested in ending your life... That's what I can't forget. And it turns out that was never your motive. I was never your target. I was just collateral damage."
"I would like to tell you that it is not true, but that is exactly how things are." Evie shook her head. "But you deserve to know this... The Hunter Academy had managed to track down Victoriano Rubinstein in Hallow Woods in 2017. Vanessa Helsee tasked me to find and eliminate him, so in order to ensure that your grandfather would be killed, I put the bomb in your backpack. The problem was that you lied to me, you told me you were going to visit your grandfather and instead, you visited Draco and Zeth."
"So much mystery for that, huh?" Frank nodded, "I visited Draco and Zeth because they wanted to talk to me about their suspicions that you were a hunter, that's why I lied but... Wow. They knew something was wrong with you and I never listened to them."
"When I called you on the phone and you told me you were with your grandfather. Pressing the detonator was... I can't explain it but, it was the worst second of my life," Evie said, looking down.
"This tower is broken because of you."
"I don't give a shit about the tower," Evie said, "Every time I see you my heart shatters... The pain of what I did is still there."
"Tell me the truth, Evie. Did you kill Grandpa Victoriano?" Frank looked her straight in the eye as he exhaled some smoke.
"It wasn't me. Vanessa sent a secret asset to eliminate your grandfather days after your incident." She replied and he looked at her with irrefutable distrust, "I swear that wasn't me! Your grandfather experimented on humans to create his own monsters, and that's why the mission was so important," Evie finished and held his bionic hand tightly, but he flinched away from the contact.
"No, Evie. I'm not ready for this." He said, putting out his cigarette on a merlon.
"Right..." She smiled softly and reached out to touch his cheek. "I will always be sorry until the day I die. But I also feel... Proud of you. You have become a noble and loving, successful and talented man. And there is not a day that I do not regret..."
"There isn't a day that you don't regret blowing me up, of course, you've already said that," he rolled his eyes, and she grabbed him by the chin to make him turn to look at her.
"There hasn't been a single day that I haven't regretted not telling you how much I love you every time I see you." She said, with teary eyes and a smile upon her face, "Frank, I love you. You will always be the love of my life. And I swear that I will always protect you, even if I must die for you."
"Evie... No, wait. Die for me? You think I..."
"No, Frank. You wanted me to talk, so I will. I'm sorry for hurting you so much," she slowly took a step back, "And there is not a day that I do not miss your lips, there is not a day that I do not think about our last kiss behind the bleachers. There is not a day in which I have stopped loving you."
"Evie, Don't be absurd." He approached her, arms open, but she shook her head and took another step back.
"No, Frank. Don't hug me or I'm going to break. You should never hug someone who is about to break," She turned around so he wouldn't see her cry, and no matter how hard she clenched her fists, no matter how hard she tried to hold back, she just couldn't do it, and she sobbed loudly, "I never thought I would love someone so much. Your forgiveness, your smile, your heart is the only thing that keeps me alive. For years I was forced to resist the cruellest and most unspeakable tortures, and I never broke, not even as a child... But now you are my weakness."
"Evie, for how long have you been dealing with this alone?" Frank didn't know what to do, whether to touch her or just look at her, but it was impossible to see her like that, "Evie, please. Let me be here for you, let me hold your hand and walk by your side through your pain. We can work through it together! Just let me in, let me save you from yourself!"
"That's the damn fucking problem with you, Frank! You've always seen me as a person, not as a monster or a murderer or a weapon! Because of you I stopped being a machine and became human!" She turned to look him straight in the eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks, fragile and vulnerable for the first time in her life.
"Don't lie to yourself, Evie. What you did to my grandfather was to..."
"Stop being so understanding and treat me like the fucking monster I am for once in your life, Frank!" She yelled.
Frank blinked rapidly.
Then frowned.
"No." He said, walking closer to her, "You did what you did because you knew you had to save innocent people! You were never a machine, Evie. You were always human, no matter how heartless you think you..."
"It's just that I was always heartless, but you gave me a heart," She wiped away her tears quickly. This was the first time she broke character to show herself as she was, not elegant or mysterious, but rather... Herself. Yes, this was the first time she felt human, and letting go of that pain wasn't pleasant, but at least it felt good to know she could still feel something. "You gave me love, a family, and I am willing to give my life to pay off my debt."
"You don't owe me anything, Evie." Frank was finally close to her, an intimate millimetre away, "I wanted you to live a life you never could. That's why I forgave you, that's why I allowed you to stay, that's why I offered you a family. Because I want you to have what you never could. If you want to pay your 'debt' then stop putting yourself in danger and stay alive."
"And that's why I hate loving you so much, Frank," she laughed, taking a long breath, trying very hard to return to her cold, distant role, "Because I don't think I deserve to be with you. I don't deserve to be loved by someone like you."
She turned around, and walked away.
"Evie!" Frank called after her, trying to catch up with her. "Wait!" But she ignored him and kept walking. "Evie! If you try to run away, I will catch you! My bionic hand is like your grapple gun! I can swing after you for hours!"
She stopped walking.
When he finally caught up to her, she was looking down at the ground, and he saw her shoulders shake slightly.
"Evie. Don't you want us to be together? Don't you want our happily ever after?"
"I do, Frank," Evie lifted her face and put a hand between his pecs. "But there are more secrets that I haven't told you, and it's not up to me alone to tell you." And then she aimed her grapple gun, firing.
The hook got stuck into a merlon.
"But Evie..."
"We will talk about that later, handsome. If I'm going to be with you and the others, I want all the secrets and lies to end first. See you later," and with a leap, she jumped off the roof and swung until she was on the wall walk three floors below.
The sound of the monofilament wire of her grapple gun was already a part of her personality, and Frank never got tired of hearing it.
With another shot from her grapple gun, Evie swung from the wall walk to a an archway in the mural passage that connected the Heart of Lyonfort to the Frozen Tower.
Evie landed inside gracefully, turning right to walk towards her apartment.
"You're so stupid, Evie," she told herself, walking quickly, "You know you were raised to love no one. To love is to postpone pain, every day until life is over. You're not weak, the last time you were, they sterilized you, electrocuted you, whipped you, beat you..." She paused for a second to see Frank in the distance, firing his bionic hand like a grapple gun, swinging like she always did, "You won't be able to live if your heart is ripped out, Evie. So keep it to yourself, no one cares about what you feel."