Of Frost and Fire

Prologue

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."

― Anais Nin

The deep voice of the stranger was the first and only thing that greeted her long before her eyelids, which had remained drooping for up to ten hours up until now, pushed open.

"Is it possible that you finally woke up, Miss. Cuthbert?" His dark blue eyes, which were raging like a windy day's sky, met hers and her heart skipped a beat.

She felt out of place and confused. She couldn't place him, and what made her more confused, and puzzled, was the puffiness and redness of the stranger's eyes. However, she did not have the power in her to voice out loud any question, nor even wonder within herself if he was crying before she woke up; because the word pain was the simplest word one might describe what she was feeling as of now, for every inch of her body was screaming in agony as though it was stabbed with thousands of sharp knives.

Nevertheless, despite that agonizing agony that was exuding from her frail body, she was, as a matter of fact, still able to feel the grip of the two large hands with which the stranger was holding both of hers.

Why was he touching me, she wondered.

It took her several minutes before she realized that the stranger was trying to console her. Gazing up at the little smile he had formed on his thin mouth, she couldn't for the life of her look away, despite the strong urge to do so. The pain that shot up to her nape was threatening to break her neck loose from her skull lest she stared up any longer. But staring up she did. She couldn't help it, for no one had ever before smiled at her this innocently, and openly.

No one but one person-- a person who seemed far away at that moment. The one person she hurt the most.

Caught in the act of staring, his little soft smile widened before he said, "If only you woke up a few minutes prior than when you did, Miss. Cuthbert, your uncle has just left."

Her eyes widened at that, but he didn't seem to notice because he continued," He is a very good man. He was insisting on giving me money because I donated all this blood to you, but thankfully I managed to escape his odd, and very unnecessary, generosity." He looked at her again before saying, " I am sorry, you must have wanted to wake up next to someone you know instead of me." He rubbed the area behind his ear with embarrassment, and carried on, " Someone dear to me was brought here and is in the emergency room now. I was in the hallway, waiting, and I happened to hear the nurses talking about their need for someone with the same blood type as mine. So, I volunteered and stayed with you since then, '' He explained.

Finally, she managed to ask him with difficulty and a hoarse voice barely heard, "Didn't anyone visit me but my uncle?"

The stranger pondered for a moment if he could tell her everything that had happened while she was in a coma, then he shook his head and chose to give her as little as she could handle by answering her only with, "Yes, there was someone talking to your uncle. I think it was the same person who brought you here, but he left the hospital in a hurry."

Tears gathered inside her eyes as she felt her heart contract, while the stranger looked at her baffled by her strange reaction. "Of course, what did I expect to happen after what I did to him? I just wished he would give me one last chance to say goodbye." She exclaimed, out of nowhere, at him.

He asked seriously and out of curiosity, "The man or your uncle? Can't you reach out to him again?"

Valentina could not, at that moment, argue upon the sense of overcoming such feelings— the feelings of being lost, torn, and exhausted, both mentally and physically.

She had always only endeavored to counteract such feelings by overworking herself, but now that she was finally drained physically, she couldn't ignore them and the presence of this stranger was urging her to confront them with his nagging questions. She tried to ignore the smell of the hospital floors as she closed her eyes as a measure which would fix the time and she would return to that one dear person, whom she so much wished to see, in a more eligible, more comfortable manner, perhaps without any greater delay.

But the painful truth was that he would never want to see her again, after what she has done to him. She tried to convince herself that her affection for him was sincere and that it must triumph in the end, maybe with little difficulty, over the evils she had started-- the evils she had put him through.

But deep down, she knew damn well that he would never forgive her. He will never forgive her for the evils she put him through, the ones she made him suffer through; of that she was sure.

Looking back at the stranger who was now hovering over her head, she tried to keep the tears at bay.

How she should begin—how she should express herself to this nice stranger, was now all her concern. She equally feared to say too much or too little, and so remained deliberating over her thoughts.

Her thoughts were all over the place as she came to decide that she should not trust this stranger. He will report her to the police.

She started to feel the heavy weight of her eyelids returning, so she could barely keep her eyes open as she mumbled, "No, I am here in the hospital because I..."

Although she could not utter the last word before returning to the dream world, the stranger was able to read her lips enough to widen his eyes in shock.

Despite her decision not to tell him, her tongue did slip after all, if intendedly.

He didn't move nor flinch. His shock was so great that it disabled his sanity by staying and getting involved with a woman like herself, perhaps because he knew that if he was gone, no one would visit her, or perhaps that lonely tear slowly flowing down her cheek was what nailed him down on his seat.

She was a monster. Crazed.