Dynamics of a Human Heart Ch. 06

"'Helen of Troy', huh? This is the extent of your knowledge of classical literature?"

"Tell you what: If they put Brad Pitt, and Orlando Bloom all sweaty and violent together in a movie version of..."

"The Divine Comedy."

"Which is Dante, right?"

"Right."

"Okay, get those two and throw in Olivia Wilde for good measure and I promise you, I will know Dante all to hell."

"Interesting choice of words, but not wrong," Miranda, finished with her food and tea, stood up and began pushing Sam towards the other end of the room, "But I have to ask, why does 'Sammy the Lesbian' care about Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom?"

"One, don't call me Sammy," Sam punched Miranda in the arm.

"Ow!"

"Two," Sam continued uninterrupted, "Any woman that would say no to Brad Pitt has something terribly, terribly wrong with her."

"Okay, I get that and three?"

"Orlando Bloom seems so girly anyway; it really doesn't feel like that much of a switch."

"Ouch."

"Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em."

"Look, if you're going to put him in the same scene as Johnny Depp or Geoffrey Rush then of course—"

"You two hens just about done prattling on?"

Grey's tone was as razor sharp as the straight edge that he had used on himself last night. The girl's dialogue fell to shreds at his words.

"Wow," Sam commented, recovering first, "Fuck you very much too."

Grey smirked at that and continued to sip from his glass as Sam began to examine his wounds.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fantastic, next bloody, stupid question."

Sam just shot him a dirty look while trying (and failing) to keep her blanket in place.

"Well, I hate to admit it, but the insanity with the razor blade actually did bring the swelling down a good bit."

"Your firm grasp on the obvious does you credit," he held up his drink, "Shall we have a libation and toast to my good health?"

"Okay, listen you--!"

"Sam..." Miranda spoke up.

The blonde girl spun around dropping the blanket into her lap, "What?!"

"You're being baited."

"I'm being—", then it clicked, and Sam turned to face Grey with an expression that was equal parts awe and dread.

"If I don't let you get under my skin, you don't get to rampage around inside my head and fuck with me."

Grey sneered and held up the glass, "Top of the class, you are. Happy fucking Christmas, now put your tits away and get out."

"My...," she looked down and indeed, her breasts were completely exposed and even though they had just made love, the sight of them made Miranda's muscles begin to tighten in anticipation.

"...oh," Sam wrapped the blanket back around her bust, tucking it tightly to keep it in place, "Better?"

"No, now get out."

"When I'm damn well good and ready, now shut up," she reached forward to touch his ribs.

"That is about e-Goddamned-nough!" Grey lurched away from her, spilling some of his drink.

"For fuck's sake!" Sam cried out as her temper frayed.

"Enough!" Miranda demanded, "Both of you!"

And miraculously, they both fell silent. Sam began to sulk while Grey...

Something had changed in Grey, in that moment, it was if his usual display of sarcasm and casual cruelty had collapsed, exposing truth: a man, weary and badly wounded, held together by nothing more than scar tissue and sheer willpower. That he was completely alone, in a cold, dark place.

Gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. Miranda had never truly understood the point that Nietzsche was making until just now. She saw that vast abyss within her; stretched out in front of her, as she had in the alleyway last night. Once again, it beckoned to her, offering a way out. Just take Sam and let the darkness take Grey.

Her violet eyes shimmered in the light as a wave of understanding so profound and complete it brought her to tears, engulfed her.

Grey had been made to stare into the abyss, had been forced to and it had stared back at him for so long that it must have come for him; ravenous, merciless and the only way he could survive was to make it a part of himself. A terrible void at the very center of his being; a wound far worse than the burns or the scars or the beating.

In order to save his soul, Grey had been forced to surrender a portion of it to the dark, to the emptiness between the stars.

And it was killing him.

"No."

Two sets of eyes came to rest on her: one a study of confusion in azure; the other: a pair of smoldering embers in emerald and jade.

"No?" Sam repeated.

"No," Miranda confirmed, "We're not leaving."

"What are you on about?" Grey narrowed his eyes in reptilian suspicion.

"We're not leaving you here. Not like this, not in this place."

"You'll bloody well do as I say; get your knickers about you and piss off! Leave me the hell alone!"

Miranda was relentless, however, "No. No, we won't leave you alone."

"We won't?" Sam asked, trying to get a handle on the situation.

"No, Sam," she said, not 'Sammy', which meant she was serious, "We won't." She turned to address Grey.

"You've been alone too long, Grey. Those wounds you carry inside you have poisoned your soul and left you here with nothing but the dark and the cold."

As she advanced on him, he found himself suddenly on the defensive; trying to scramble away from her and forgetting that he had placed his cot flush up against the walls. It had been so he could be as far away from them as possible. Now, it served only to prevent any kind of retreat or escape from the young girl.

"You just...keep your bloody distance," he rasped.

"Miri..." Sam warned, "We talked about this: what the fuck are you doing?" She noticed that Grey was so freaked out his hands were shaking and he nearly dropped his glass.

"Testing a theory," she replied.

"What? That we can provoke someone with cracked ribs to pull his shit together, enough to beat us to death?"

"Please, leave me be, poppet," Grey whispered, and while Miranda's heart ached for the man, battered and pained as he was, she would not relent.

"No, no I won't 'leave you be'."

Grey dropped his cigarette his hands shook so badly and Sam swallowed hard.

"Sweetie, crazy violent guy backed into a literal corner, he's going to mangle us."

Miranda looked back and forth between Grey and Sam. Her inner self was on the edge of the precipice. She took a deep breath...

...and leapt.

"No Sam..."

Miranda dropped the blanket that had been covering her leaving her bare, for the first time before Grey's eyes.

"...he won't."

Grey's eyes widened at the sight of the girl and he could not repress a small gasp as he felt a swift pain bolt through his heart, the first in a very long time, at her beauty.

"Holy shit," Sam whispered.

"How long, Grey?" Miranda asked as she confronted him, "How long has it been for you? A kiss? A touch? One warm word or a woman's body against your own."

In her nakedness, Miranda found tremendous strength and Grey; in all his darkness and misery, could not stand against it and it almost seemed that the fluorescent light reflecting from her pale skin caused her to glow and she drove back the oppressive blackness of the room with her radiance.

This was Miranda Inoue in all her glory: for the first time unabashed, unashamed, and completely in control of the moment.

"Look at me, Grey."

Grey was doing anything but; blinded by the vision before him.

"Grey, it's okay," Miranda assured him, "Just, look at me, please."

Sam wheeled over to Miranda, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Checking to see if he has a soul," Miranda replied, "without looking down his throat."

Sam opened her mouth to say more, but two things caught her attention suddenly as Grey began to look up.

His hands hadn't been shaking, they had been trembling.

Moreover, when she saw the look in the man's green eyes, she knew why. For the first time since she had met him, there was something new there.

Longing.

In that moment, Grey became a human being, in Sam's eyes, as he looked upon the nude form of her lover and some small part of him, ancient and long in disuse, reached out to attempt to form an emotional connection with another human being.

Miranda smiled at him, it was like a stone angel.

"It's okay, Grey. I understand how you must feel, the pain---"

Grey's face went from wanting to apocalyptic as he shot up to his feet and threw his glass on the floor between himself and the naked girl. It exploded scattering crystal shrapnel all over the room.

"Pain?!" he screamed, "You think you understand pain?!"

Sam grabbed Miranda around the waist and half dragged her away from the raving man.

"You ridiculous, bint! You stupid, worthless, little idiot! You understand pain? I am pain!"

Grey began to advance on the girls, completely unaware or indifferent about the broken glass being crushed beneath his bare feet.

"I am torment and I am agony," he continued stalking towards the girls, "I am hateful despair and lies!"

"I am all the raging fires of Hell!"

He was inches from Miranda's face now.

"And you, poppet, what are you? What are you to that? To me?"

Sam looked at both of them worriedly and quietly prayed.

Miranda placed one hand flat on Grey's chest.

"I am hope, Grey."

Slowly, she began to push Grey backwards the field of broken glass.

"What are you--?"

Miranda stepped onto the broken glass without hesitation.

"Miri!" Sam cried out.

"I'm hope Grey, your hope that your life doesn't have to be a living hell," she continued to push the older man steadily backwards, "The hope that peace, is possible for you."

The pair of them left bloody footprints on the ground, causing the broken glass to glitter like rubies. Their blood mixed and swirled together upon the concrete.

"I'm the hope that the past can be laid to rest, that demons can be banished and that whatever mistakes you've made, can be forgiven. That you can be forgiven for whatever it is you've done."

Grey backed up against a wall as Miranda continued her advance.

"I've done terrible things. Things God couldn't forgive me for."

Miranda leaned into him pressing her hand hard against his shirt, she could feel the contours of the scar tissue beneath her palm, "Then I'll be the hope that, one day, someday, God will forgive you."

"And if he won't?"

"Then I will."

"Why?" Grey asked, his face crumbling.

"Because forgiveness is granted because it is needed, not because it is deserved. And you need to be forgiven."

"To what end?"

"So that you can remember things like hope, compassion, mercy. To help you become who you were meant to be."

"And who, exactly, would that be Miranda?" Grey's entire body was shaking and his voice had taken a quaver.

Miranda reached out and touched one unshaven cheek gently with two of her fingertips.

"Human."

"Game. Set. Match," Sam commented, licking one finger and making an invisible tally mark in the air.

Grey cried out spinning around and slamming his fists into the wall with a loud crunch as he stood there, trembling, his back to Miranda, shunning her as he attempted to deny her words, her wisdom, and her presence.

"God, every cell in my being wants to see you eradicated," Grey whispered.

Miranda placed a pale hand on his shoulder, "And what's stopping you from doing so?"

Grey spun around to confront her.

"You! Your beauty, your compassion, it makes me weak."

"It makes me strong."

Grey barked out a bitter laugh, "Of course it does!" He turned and began slamming his fists into the wall; causing a shower of wood and plaster to rain down. Each blow was a denial, a denial of Miranda and everything she represented, everything she was offering: Compassion, mercy, salvation.

Hope.

He drew back his fist for another blow and a slender hand grabbed his wrist and held it fast.

"Enough Grey!"

Grey was astounded: he could not break the girl's grip and when he turned to regard her in shock, he saw something that nearly brought him to his knees.

A woman: beautiful and strong with violet eyes like burning amethyst. A hard violet.

"How did you become so strong?" he whispered, stunned.

"It's the only choice you've left me, Grey."

A bitter smirk twisted his scarred face,

"The little girl's become strong and going to save the world then?"

"Not the world; just you, and I--," she jerked him forward until their noses were nearly touching, "—am not a little girl!"

They were locked together like that; it could have been mistaken for an embrace, a gesture of affection.

Those who believed it to be would be very mistaken indeed. They were neither friends nor lovers; they were opponents, duelists, their respective willpower serving as their weapon as each tried to gain the upper hand against the other.

She was strong; her virtue fueled her. He was devious and had years of experience in this arena. She was the gifted amateur; potent, though untested. He was the savant; cunning, quick, and a seasoned veteran in the war of wills. And in the end, virtue untested is innocence..., which could not stand.

Sam sniffled and Miranda's attention shifted just for a heartbeat.

And it was over. Grey's expression slid into a more familiar demeanor, one the girls had seen before:

He was showing his teeth and leered at her like a crocodile.

"Tell me..." he began in a tone that the girls had only heard once before.

The party.

"Tell me, Sam; how does it feel to see your bird here completely starkers in of a stranger; and a bloke no less, has to sting a little."

"Don't you dare..." Miranda hissed, her own expression crumbling into a look of horror and rage.

"I mean, I've heard of 'friends with benefits' and all that," the non-smile got bigger, "But I'm not even that and I've got her in all her pale glory," he continued applying venom to his tone as an assassin might to a knife, "I can see what all the fuss is about. She is rather..." he seemed to reach for the right word, "...yummy, isn't she?"

"Sam, don't let him do this," Miranda pleaded; her grip on Grey's arm white-knuckled as she desperately attempted to think of the right way, the right words, to keep what has happening from happening.

"Now, and I need you to be honest here...Sammy," the girls both flinched as he turned their title of love for each other and corrupted it into something hateful and ugly.

"I've never seen two girls; a pair of toss-pots no less, try oh, so hard to bring a man into their, what is supposedly, exclusive relationship."

"Stop it!" Miranda screamed in that hideous, scarred face with those white, hateful teeth.

"So tell me, honestly," he looked between the two girls, "Is someone just not...measuring up?"

Sam began to cry and Grey took the opportunity to rip his hand from Miranda's grip. He placed both hands on the girl's shoulders and shoved. She slammed against the wall with a grunt and sank to the ground, her hands folded over her face in misery.

Grey hid his teeth back behind his lips and looked down, expressionless, at the fallen girl.

"You lose...bint. Now sort your kit and get the fuck out of my flat."

Miranda hiccupped and crawled; weeping, across the floor to Sam, gathering up her discarded clothes and blanket as she did. She covered herself; her cheeks flushed now, flushed with the shame that had been absent mere moments before.

"She saved your life!" Sam snarled at him.

"And I told her that was a mistake."

Miranda pulled on her clothes; her eyes fogged with tears and her whole body shaking.

"Why?" Miranda asked; pouring her heart, her hurt into her expression, leaving herself vulnerable just one moment for; a chance that maybe, there could be some, that this could all be made right.

"Because you crossed a boundary; you pushed and you got you and your tart burnt in the process. Try to remember this the next time you attempt to do whatever the bloody hell it was you were trying to do," he gestured at the cold, dark confines of his chambers, "This? This is...eternal. It cannot be denied. And you've lost; you've taken the person that matters most to you in the world down with you."

"I hate you," Miranda growled.

"Good. Then you've come one step closer to having something in common with me," he gestured at Sam, "Bet she has some hard feelings toward you about all of this."

"Not half as hard as I do against you!" Sam yelled.

"True. But then I don't claim to love you," he gestured to Miranda who was slowly getting to her feet, clad only in jeans and shirt, "She does. And doesn't that just make all the difference?"

Sam hung her head, unable to deny his words.

"You should have never attempted to become a part of a world that you had no hope of comprehending," Grey said to Miranda.

The young girl screamed and bull-rushed him; she grabbed him by his lapels and slammed him against the wall hard enough for bits of it to coming showering down.

"Damn you!" she raged.

Grey just began to laugh; a choking, raspy sound.

"Omissa spe, qui in vobis est!"

She slammed him against the wall again before dropping him and yanking the door open.

"One day, you're going to choke to death on all that hatred and arrogance and I just hope I'm there to see it." She grabbed Sam's wheelchair and almost ran Grey down as she took her out.

"Oh, don't worry, you will be. You won't miss a thing, Miranda."

Miranda flinched as her name rattled off his tongue like teeth down her spine. Any rebuttal on her part was answered by a slammed door in her face.

"What did he say?" Sam whispered, "At the end, the Latin."

Miranda gritted her teeth; she knew what was awaiting them both, when they got home but she wanted to have a final moment of commiseration with Sam before the fight.

"'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'"

*********

The girls returned home in poisonous silence. Sam had refused to let Miranda push her chair for her and they shared neither a word nor a look. When Miranda tentatively put her hand Sam's shoulder, the other girl angrily shrugged it off her while still patently ignoring her.

An hour later, they sat on opposite ends of their couch: Miranda pretending to read a book while Sam pretended to watch TV. Usually they bonded over this show; an anime called 'Death Note'. Anime was one of the few exceptions in regards to Miranda's disdain for all things related to Japanese pop culture and the girls had bonded over it, this particular series being a favorite.

But not tonight, the silence in the room thickened to the point that it felt as if it would choke the life from them both.

Samantha grabbed Miranda's book from her hand and threw it at the television knocking it over and sending it crashing to the ground.

"Did Light, do something to upset you, Sam?" Miranda asked quietly.

Samantha grabbed a pillow from the couch,

"You stupid, selfish, bitch!" She hammered Miranda with the pillow to enunciate each word before she threw it against the wall.

"I'm sorry," Miranda said quietly, still not looking at her.

"You're sorry? You're—" Sam looked like she was trying very hard to control herself; her entire body shook with rage, "What were my words to you huh? What were they?!"

"'Miri, you're playing with fire."'

Sam held up her hand counting off the words, "'Miri, you're playing with fire.' And what else, Miranda, what else did I say to you?!"

"'If you're going to do this, do it right,'" Miranda whispered.

"So what do you do? You decide to walk on glass, drop trou and start peeling away at him except, whoops; he flew into a psychotic rage instead and proceeded to put us through Hell."

"You didn't see the look in his eyes when he saw me like that."

"Oh, it's the same look any man would have; he wanted to fuck you, pure and simple."