My Faulty Heart

I shuffle under the warmth of the blankets atop us, it's comfort battling with the hard ground. My eyes slowly adjust to the morning light when I look down to see Silas' arms wrapped around me, still asleep.

Ever since I was a child, I was always taught two things. Right and wrong. Black and white- that there was no in between. But that was until I grew up, until this moment, that I truly understood the shades of grey that make up our world.

It was all so easy. Murder was wrong and criminals were meant to be punished.

Silas is a killer but... so is Osbourne.

Even so, where does love fit in it all? Did humanity ever consider what would happen then? Love is the most ancient human emotion. In all our twisted history, there has bound to be unfortunate souls that have fallen so deeply, irretrievably in love with those that have commited such heinous crimes. What did they do? Join them? Betray them? Is it even betrayal or the right thing to do?

What is the right thing to do? Is morality not what we make of it in the moment, what seems like justice to us?

When it really comes down to it, we all do what we think is right, for our own selfish needs, for our own survival.

Timidly, careful to not wake him, I shift to face Silas. I study his relaxed features and tear-stained face, tucking a strand of his hair back. How deep in darkness must you be before you cannot find the light anymore? Is it even possible?

Shakespeare was right when he said, "Love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that they themselves commit." But what if I can't help it? If I am willing to sacrifice my own integrity, the foundation of my entire being, who will I be?

Loving you, Silas Golding, means losing myself.

Am I prepared for that?

As if in response to the silent warfare of my mind, Silas' eyes slowly flutter open.

I look at him and he looks back. The weight of unsaid words, unfulfilled hopes and regret hangs in the air, neither of us sure what to say.

"Did you sleep well?" He rasps, hesistantly.

I nod gently. "Did you?"

He gives me a half smile, eyes riddled with sadness, "The only times I've ever slept soundly was last night and the night at Fraser's. When you were with me."

Fraser's Manor. Seems a lifetime ago.

I look away slightly, sitting up. We stay in silence for a long time.

"Why?" I ask, dejectedly.

He sits up, "Do you really think anything I'll say will convince you? Will make it, make sense to you? No, because unless you were in my position, you'll always think that there was another way. There wasn't. So why do you ask, Eleanor?"

I want you to convince me. I want you to make me understand so that I dont have this pit in my stomach. Let me be blind.

"I need to know." I repeat, walking around the room.

He rises, "Justice."

I scoff, "Justice? or revenge?"

"Don't do that. Don't stand there and judge me when you know nothing of the things I've been through."

"If our pain justified malice, everyone's hands would be bloody, Silas." I shoot back.

"Oh, yeah! Then tell me Eleanor, tell me why after all this time you still haven't told Sonders where I am?!" He shouts.

I shake my head, every fibre of my being trying to silence the next thing that escapes my lips. I feel fire growing inside me before I yell, "Because I fucking love you, Silas! Beyond reason, beyond morals, you have this hold on me that makes me go against everything I've ever known to be right and I hate it. I hate that when it comes to you, I justify whatever evil you've committed and I've tried- I've tried looking at it from your perspective but nothing changes the fact that you not only took one life but four! Not revenge, not justice and it breaks my heart- because you're so good. Tell me, did you even think about Lina and Helena, about what would happen after all this."

He stares at me, dumbfounded. Eyes wide and fearful, almost as though I've threatened him. His brows knit together in regret."What did you want me to do, Eleanor? Hmm? Let the people that wronged my father, that stole my childhood, live happily and move on with their lives while he rotted in that room?"

"I wish that was the reason you killed them, Silas, but we both know it's not. Maybe Osbourne was, but once, twice, three times?" I counter.

He knew I was right, he just couldn't admit it aloud, couldn't accept that as the truth. Once I would've relished in that but now, now my heart is an abyss of anguish, mincing everything inside me into pieces.

"What the hell are you saying? That I enjoy this?" He hisses in offence, in anger.

"You killed four people, Silas. Revenge would have stopped at one." I reply, downheartedly.

Taken aback, he shakes his head. "You. Know. Nothing."

"Then explain it to me." I emphasise.

"You weren't there when I visited him for the first time, after I had learned the truth. When I walked into that small room to find the man that I had dreamt of in the fantasies I'd made of him hugging me, playing catch with me, stuck in a wheelchair as he yelled at nurses trying to clean him up. I was repulsed at how humiliated he was, how small he felt. The great academic, Waylen Chamberlain, reduced to nothing. I never told him who I was, that, he pieced together himself. I was enraged at what happened to him, at what he lost, at the life we could've had if it weren't for Osbourne and his vile envy, who destroyed it all and Quill who covered it up instead of helping my father." He confessed bitterly.

I say nothing.

"Life is a fight, never put your fists down." He said in a low voice. "Something my mother would say. She gave me some useful advice the few times she was sober."

"Who was your mother?" I find myself asking, sitting down in the corner as I fiddle with the tassels of the blankets, hesitant of what he'll tell me.

"Deep down she was good, I know deep in my heart she was, but grief changes people." He begins, wistfully. "I was only an infant when she fled from Oxfordshire after Waylen's accident."

Not 'father'. Waylen.

"My whole life she told me that he left us, that we were better off without him. I grew up without a father and watched as my mother ruined herself. I watched as other children chased after their father's in playgrounds, being cheered on at sports games and congradulated for school achievements. Things as simple as embracing him when being scared or hearing an assuring voice was something I was robbed of. I grew up believing something was wrong with me, that if I was good enough, my father wouldn't have left me and my mother would be happy, not drowning her sorrows. I remember going to school, reeking of alcohol because she forgot to the laundry. I would stand there as my classmates ridiculed me, teacher's whispering about my mother, "The alcoholic whore." Hatred bloomed in my heart. I'd run home crying just to find her knocked out on the couch, drool on her chin and the TV still on." He spat out, voice angry and repulsed.

I gripped the fabric in my hand, a bitter taste in my mouth.

"Those were better days. Better than holding back her hair as she threw her guts up in the bathroom, crying over the newest man she'd brought into the house. Better than the days I'd come back home, excited to show her my stellar report card, hoping that we could do something fun like my friends who'd go out for pizza with their families, but I'd find her flinging dishes at the wall and breaking glasses over some minor inconvenience. Better than the nights where I'd go to sleep hungry because I gave her the last good thing to eat or putting ice on her bruises that her boyfriend, Paul, would give her every now and then when he got angry. It was better than hearing him fuck my mother in the room next to me as I tried to sleep." He lets out a humourless laugh, voice trembling.

I closed my eyes tightly, still not turning my head, stifling the cries stuck in my throat.

"My mother needed a lot of help. But like all of us, she denied that and coped by her own means. She loved alcohol more than me, spread her legs for any man that walked by and when you don't respect yourself or your life, bad people enter. This man, Paul, was a recurring visitor, one night they both got really drunk, he hit her- then he grabbed her throat and began strangling her. I didn't let him do anything after that- because I bashed his head in with a brick I hid under my bed andI promised myself that if he ever hurt her again, I'd use it... and I did." He gritted through his teeth, heavy with shame and grief.

My head hangs low, covering my mouth as I sob.

"I'll never forget the scream she let out. Her 12 year old son, hands bloody, standing before the corpse of her abuser. She rushed to the body and pitifully attempted to revive him but when she realised it was over, helped me bury the body in our backyard. Shortly after that she left me, repulsed by her own son. I was forced into the foster system and the second I turned 18, I left. What was I to do? Let him hit her? I resented her but she was still my mother- and she left me. She hated me. They always saw the monster within me, it was only a matter of time until I succumbed to it."

With that I whip my body toward him and throw my arms around his neck, hugging him tightly as his body shook vigorously. "You're not a monster. Do you hear me?!" I cry, scrambling to hold him. "You are a good person, Silas. You were a good kid in a bad situation. You saved you're mother's life. Paul was scum. You only did what you thought was right. You were neglected and abandoned and you didn't deserve any of it. You are good and brave and you are enough, you're enough for me."

My faulty heart, lover of sin and tragedy, fated for disaster.