Once again, everything happened so fast. The golem, enraged and wild, chose his closest victim. Then, Ruby was on the floor. Clover felt shards of wood and wet strike her as the golem reeled on her. She managed to dodge. Barely.
Clover found herself taking a split moment of a moment to recover. She didn't dare to look at Ruby. She cringed to think what she might see if she turned. But she heard desperate footsteps and the thud of a kneel. Good. Koln had made it to her.
She finally mustered up the strength to turn and see the outcome of the attack, and she immediately wished she hadn't.
'Not
now, Clover. Don't you be thinking about this now!'
[sblock=Most likely long and extended roleplay...]
Time froze.
Her brain sped up.
Despite the danger, she could muster a coherent thought.
A string of them.
There Koln was. He looked defeated. Anguished.
Pitiful. Holding Ruby's (for lack of a better word)
lifeless body in his arms. So helpless. Both of them. Like some horrible documentary of a third world country. A father who had given life, limb, and blood holding his crippled, poor, starving child. So delicate, as though the two of them would break.
It looked like a snapshot.
The colors were murky, yet vividly bright. Particularly red. There was a lot of red. She wasn't sure if that was blood or Ruby's hair. Just a lot of
red.
They seemed so distant.
Like a spotlight had come up on a stage and shone on only
them.
They were right there, yet utterly intangible.
Clover rememered once, a long time ago, her mother and father had taken her to Central Park on a hot summer night. There had been a film festival going on, and tonight they were showing silent movies. Young Angelica had expected to be bored.
Other children were running off with their parents to go play on the playground.
She, on the other hand, enviously walked the other way to go watch a black and white movie with no sound.
And yet, even her young self had known it was so beautiful.
Serenaded by cicadas and peering past the fireflys, she watched blissfully as the two actors on the screen--vividly clear in tones of gray, vividly tragic and lovely--played out a love story. Clover's mother covered the girl's eyes when the woman in the movie was shot, but she still remembered very clearly the last scene. The man holding the woman as she died in his arms.
Koln holding Ruby as she lay still in his arms.
Brought back to reality, she heard Koln speak. Not to her. No one had
ever spoken to her like this. No one
ever would,
"I... I'm sorry for everything! You are NOT a heretic!
'Like two star-crossed lovers.'
I'm sorry, I did not mean it at all! I AM the sinner, I'm the demon, I was wrong, always was, and I'm sorry I was always so emotionally distant.
'Forever dead.'
I am so 
ing selfish and weak, here begging you to abandon the tranquility of a peaceful Providence-given slumber just so you can continue to spend eternity with me in the violent thorny throughs of Damnation.
'Forever pain. So delicate.'
Just please don't leave me, not now at least, Ruby... I love you..."
Clover had heard enough. The love that Koln had just expressed for Ruby--for a girl he had practically just met, a girl he wanted to burn at the stake for her beliefs, a
vampire--was more tender than any silent movie.
It was something she would never know.
And she envied Ruby every
second for it. And, for one horrible, terribly contrived, ill-deserved, fleeting moment, she found that she was happy that Ruby was down for the count. Happy that Koln finally felt every ounce of pain that Clover felt every time Koln and Ruby gave each other
that look.
And then, with a passion, she
hated herself.
[/sblock]
Clover finished her thoughts just as Ruby was coming to.
Now, more than ever before, she wished she had been able to walk off the edge of the building that Halloween night.
