Challenge #135
Listen to a song you've never heard before as you view the prompts. (Hiromi | XYZ)
Note: I can't believe that I finished this, and then forgot to save it. I lost about half of it. Not that great a loss in the grand scheme of things, but I'd already started on the next part and really like how it was going, and then had a horrible time trying to remember how to match them up. So I apologize for any odd sounding bits, I'll have to comb through it later.
Peeping Alice pt.5
"For me. Of course."
"Alice. Please understand, it was for the best." Vincent leans forward, arms extended across the table to cover Alice's hands in his own.
"I'm sure it was. And what did you tell my parents?" She slips her hands out from under his, and places them in her lap, giving him a stern look from her watery eyes.
"I told them what they needed to know, Alice, you know this. You had extroidanary talents, even at that age. And there were a good many people that wanted you for their own purposes. You needed to be kept safe, and they understood that."
"Carolyn had talents too, ones that she uses none too wisely even now, yet she didn't need to be kept safe. She didn't need some black-clad guardian to take her away from our parents..." Alice's emotioned strained voice trails out into silence as she lowers her head, blonde hair falling to frame her face. Vincent watches and waits. He sips his coffee quietly, his eyes searching the small kitchen apartment for something, anything less painful to view.
After some time, his coffee finished, he stands and steps away from the table, back to Alice. "Alice, they understood. I wish you could do the same." You know the dangers.
I thought I did. "They understood that some strange man needed to take their youngest daughter away from them, to be safe?"
"Alice, you know what it was like that day. The crowd around your house was hectic and frenzied. People were expecting something to happen, and in time, something would have." Something your parents could not have protected you from.
Something did happen. "But you could, is that it?" He nods, although he does not turn around to view her reactions. The heavy tension in the air is enough to tell him she does still not understand.
"Alice." He sighs, and rinses his mug in the sink. I could've saved them Vincent. You should've let me stay.
"No, Alice." You know, that's not the way it works." It would have been impossible for you.
"I could've tried, Vincent." I could've saved them. We should've gone back.
"Alice, if you had stayed, things would have grown beyond their control. They understood that. They understood the dangerous risk that they would have been extending to themselves and your sister. And they were willing to separate you from that danger." To save you. Do you understand? His voice is calm, but emotionless as he turns to look at her small figure still bent, head on her hands at the table.
"I put them at risk." But I could've kept them safe.
"You were only eight Alice, it was not your decision to make." And you know that is not the way things work.
For a time, they are both silent again. He at the sink, watching her. And she at the table, silent tears falling into her sleeves. Face still streaked with tears but the cries subsided, she finally looks up at him.
"Vincent. I need to know what happened. What is happening! I can't keep going on like this, wishing Carol and I had normal lives, and not knowing exactly why we don't." And why they had to die for us to live.
You already know, Alice. "It's part of who you are, and in time, you will remember everything." His face set, and mind determined to reveal nothing more to her in her current state of heightened emotions, he exits the kitchen. She can hear the stifled clomping of his boots across the living room floor and then the quick open-close of the front door.
"Vincent!"