The world froze for a minute. A brick thrown at a stained glass window. Zeven's rage dissipated as he realized what he had just done. His grip on Chris loosened, and his hands shook as he peeled them off her. When his eyes fell on her grey ones he noticed how wet they looked, glossy and frantic.
She had stopped thrashing beneath him, but the tension in her muscles and the lift of her chin kept trying to resist. Her chest burned like fire and her heart pumped aggressively in an inconsistent tempo.
Zeven got up from on top of Chris slowly, unsteady on his feet. He didn't say a word as he left the room. His wobbling steps sounded off until the click of the door cut off the sound.
The door closed behind him quietly, before his unstable state collapsed on the floor. He leaned back on the door with his head tilting upwards. Everything around him was blurry, and his glasses lay somewhere on the floor in his room, flung off in his outburst. But he didn't want to see anything anyways, sure that even looking at himself would set him off again.
***
Chris drew a shaky breath, still stuck to the bed. The loud thud outside was only a muffled sound to her. Her mind was beginning to swim, it had been fought off for some time now, but she could feel it creeping its way into every fiber of her being.
In a final act of self-preservation, she escaped the vast expanse of bed and made her way for the door that led directly to her room. Her body ached with every step she took and she could have collapsed if she just surrendered to the temptation. But she kept moving forward, making her way up to her room without a sound.
***
His hand worked its way through his hair, tugging and pulling at the strands. It was too far, he had gone too far. Even if it wasn't his intention, he lost control of himself and lashed out. He had done so many times before with Chris, but every time before he stopped. He saw Aureile in those moments, he couldn't bring himself to hurt her.
But this time… He hadn't seen Aureile. He saw Chris's father in her. And by the time he could see Chris it was too late. The way she cried, the way she struggled, the desperation… they were the only things he could see now.
He felt sick. Everything in him screamed how he was just like his father. The thought alone made him want to rip off his own skin. Until now there was always the thought in the back of his mind that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't turn out like his father, but after this, the voice was gone.
Lost and helpless the emptiness was a conflicting feeling, his brain was full but inside his chest, his heart was unwilling to be moved. But as he remembered the way Chris looked- not her mother, not her father- the way she looked. Her bottom lip trembling and the tear caught on her eyelash and the feel of her wrist burning against his hand, his heart twinged in his chest.
The more he thought about his actions and the monster he must have looked like, the harder it throbbed, until it was too much to ignore. Jumping to his feet, he flung the door open.
"Chris I am-"
He looked at the bed and saw that she was no longer there. He made his way over, wanting to believe that his eyes were just deceiving him and that she was still there, still somewhere he could reach.
Completely destroyed and unusable, he gripped them loosely and sat on his bed, alone in his room.
The night crawled on, trapping both Chris and Zeven in a sleepless embrace.