Chapter 279: I didn’t fight!!

Theo stared at the ground as though she couldn’t bear to watch them hear it, "Every day, I’d have to live and breathe and train and pretend that I was still a person. It was exhausting,"

Sylas’s fingers curled into fists.

He could still see it.

Not clearly. Not as a memory he had lived through, but as the terrible image his mind was constructing from her words.

Theo alone.

Theo waking up to an empty world.

Theo with nobody to hold her when the nightmares came.

He had known she suffered.

He had known what Cain had done to her.

But he had never understood the full extent of what she had been forced to endure after they died.

Because they hadn’t been there.

They hadn’t been there to hold her.

They hadn’t been there to tell her she was allowed to fall apart.

They hadn’t been there to remind her that she didn’t have to earn the right to keep living.

And now she was looking at them as though she had committed some unforgivable crime.

"Then Cain came." She said, and dragged in a shaky breath.

Both men went rigid.

"He started talking to me. At first, I didn’t listen. I knew who he was. I knew what he had done. I knew he was a monster." Her mouth trembled, "I knew." She repeated it, more desperately this time, "I knew he was evil. I knew he was lying. I knew everything he said was meant to break me. I wasn’t stupid, Sylas. I knew exactly what he was doing."

She looked at them as though she needed them to believe that. As though if they understood that she had known, he might finally understand why she hated herself so much.

"But he kept coming back. He would talk to me when I was tired. When I was hungry. That I had failed everyone who ever believed in me. He would remind me of everything I couldn’t protect. He made me realise the truth behind my mother’s death..." Her breath hitched, "And I knew he was trying to manipulate me, but..." She swallowed hard.

"But what?" Zeke whispered.

"I was already broken. I was already so broken that there wasn’t much left for him to do."

A terrible silence followed, allowing her to hear everything else again.

The rain falling against the leaves.

The thunder rumbling somewhere overhead.

She could also hear her own heart, beating far too quickly inside her chest And she could hear the two men she loved breathing in front of her.

Alive.

Alive, when she had once thought she would never hear those sounds again.

"I kept telling myself that I would fight him," She continued. "I kept telling myself that I would survive long enough to kill him. That I would get out of there and make him pay." Her hands began to shake, and she looked down at them, "But eventually, I stopped believing I could do it."

"Theo..." Sylas’s eyes burned.

"I stopped believing in myself." She said it so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her, then she looked at them again, "And I stopped caring whether I lived or died."

"No." Zeke took a sharp breath.

Theo flinched.

"No," He repeated, shaking his head. "No, don’t say that."

"But it’s the truth!"

"I don’t give a fuck!"

"Zeke—"

"I don’t give a fuck what you thought about yourself back then!" His voice broke. "You were alone! You were grieving! That bastard had just killed us in front of you, and you were alone with him!"

He stepped toward her, then stopped when she recoiled. The movement nearly destroyed him this time.

"Fuck," He whispered, looking at his hands. "Fuck, Hellcat. I’m not angry at you."

Theo’s tears fell faster.

"I’m angry at him."

"So am I!"

"Then why are you looking at yourself like you did something wrong?"

"Because I DID!" Her scream ripped through the forest, and then she clutched her chest, doubling over as another sob tore out of her, "Because I did! Because I knew what he was doing, and I let him do it!"

Silence again. Except the skies.

"I knew what he wanted. I knew he wanted to take everything from me. I knew he wanted to use me. I knew he wanted to turn me into something that wasn’t me anymore, and when he strapped me to that table..." She was crying so hard that her words kept breaking apart.

She pressed her fist against her mouth, trying to stop the sounds coming out of her. It didn’t work.

"When he strapped me to that fucking table, I didn’t fight him."

Theo looked at Zeke, and whatever she saw on his face made her crumble even further.

"I didn’t fight him, Zeke."

Her knees buckled, and she caught herself against the tree beside her, clutching the wet bark as she struggled to remain standing.

"I could have fought. Maybe I would have lost. Maybe he would have beaten me anyway. Maybe he would have done it no matter what I did." Her fingers dug into the bark, "But I didn’t even try."

Sylas’s face had lost every trace of color.

"The injections," She whispered. "The experiments. Everything he did to me..." Her whole body shuddered, "I let him."

"No," Sylas said immediately.

Theo shook her head and said, "Yes."

"No."

"I DIDN’T FIGHT!" She screamed and sobbed at the same time, "I just lay there! I just lay there and let him do whatever he wanted because I didn’t care anymore!"

Sylas looked as though someone had driven a blade through his chest.

Theo’s eyes darted between them, wild and desperate, "Do you understand now? Do you understand why I can’t look at you? Why I can’t stand beside you? Why I can’t let you touch me without feeling like I’m going to be sick?" She then struck her chest with the heel of her hand, "Because you were fighting to come back to me...!"

Her voice shattered, and so did her heart.

"You were fighting to come back to me, and I was lying there, letting him destroy me!"

Zeke was already shaking his head, "Please—"

"You died trying to protect me," She sobbed. "You both died protecting me, and I promised that I would be strong. I promised myself that I would make him pay for what he did to you." She shook her head frantically, "But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was so tired that I didn’t even want to live anymore."

Her legs finally gave way, and she fell to her knees in the mud with a cry, both hands flying to her face, "And while you were fighting your way back to me, I had already given up!" The sound that came out of her was barely human, "I had given up," She repeated, sobbing into her hands. "I had given up on myself. On everything. On ever seeing you again. On ever being happy again. I just wanted it to end."

Zeke made a strangled sound.

Theo couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at either of them.

"I thought if I died, at least I wouldn’t have to feel anything anymore."