Chapter 87 87: Open Your Eyes

"No-Noah? Will you be staying here tonight?"

Her smile she was trying so desperately to maintain was struggling to hold when she asked the question that troubled her the most.

Even when they weren't able to talk at school, she was still able to see him because she knew of his favorite spots. She unknowingly became a stalker and now when she felt that if he left she would probably never see him again or worse, if she wasn't strong enough and she dies.

Her tears began to fall to the thought of having to die with so many regrets or never seeing Noah again even though she patiently waited for so long for him to acknowledge her existence again.

"….." Noah narrowed his eyes when he saw the way Ailetta looked towards him. He almost answered yes instinctively since he had to wait for Arachne to finish changing and he didn't want to risk going out at night. But when she began to cry he realized that her question meant so much more than what he naively believed it to be. The sound of his heart seemed to pulsate loudly as he felt the need to clutch his chest. Seeing her like that pained him and he couldn't fully understand why since he knew how she felt about him, but he didn't know what feelings he had for her.

The brief lapse of silence and the pandering gaze of Noah caused Ailetta to become worried and inwardly she panicked. She couldn't gauge what Noah was thinking, especially now when his entire aura and even his physical appearance seemed to have changed. His childish features were gone after the structure of his face became more masculine. And his devilish eyes were much more oppressive than before. Even if he didn't mean to, the way he stared was causing her to lose focus due to the pressure she was feeling.

"I-I'm sorry!" With a tearful voice that could even make the deaf hear hear her pain. She turned to run away before giving Noah the chance to reject her once again.

"Wait!" She stopped in her tracks when Noah called back to her, but she was too afraid to turn around, but that didn't stop her from directing all of her focus on every word he says, not even the people watching her existed at this moment.

"Why did you bother asking me a question if you weren't going to let me answer? Are you an idiot?" His question made her want to crawl into a hole, but then she noticed the sound of footsteps and realized that Noah was approaching her.

"Now if I were to answer yes, then what would your response be?" At this point he was seriously observing and analyzing every twitch, eye movement, any and everything to help him respond after hearing her answer.

He doesn't know why seeing her fighting for her life didn't phase him, but seeing her in tears did.

Everything about her made him feel like a contradiction, which is a huge reason why it was so easy to avoid him during school, him being the reason for her bullying was just an excuse to avoid having to deal with the complex emotions he had regarding her.

He likes to be alone, but he allowed her to always keep him company. He wasn't going to trust anyone again, yet he shared his most prized stories with her. Even now after everything that happened, he was constantly reminding himself, well more like convincing himself that the best way to grow was to lose all of his humanity. Yet here he is now.

Ailetta didn't realize that Noah was also struggling with conflicting emotions. She was already surprised enough by his question. '? Was my question not direct enough? Wait, would trying to sleep with him make me seem slutty? I didn't want to do anything else…Oh no! My question does suggest that! What do I do??' She tried to stay composed as she formulated her feelings into words, but she couldn't hold in her shock when her thoughts began to run out of control.

However she didn't know that her reaction and hesitation to respond only helped Noah's thoughts have its own imagination as well. 'Why did she suddenly become shocked? I don't understand…I just wanted to know what she wanted before I answered so I wouldn't misunderstand what she wanted. Ugh why is talking so complicated?'

The two sat in silence, both in deep thought, the noisy spectators were not only getting impatient, but they were mostly confused as to why the two hadn't said anything for so long.

But Noah was more important than them all. The more he had to think about so many complicated things, his emotions were spiraling out of control, emotions that he wasn't ready to deal with yet.

"Yes! Coughs* I mean yes…I'm staying the night here. Now will you tell me why you wanted to know?" He said helplessly, but he felt more relieved to get those words off of his chest. Now he didn't have to continue thinking about the what ifs that was the source of his internal struggle.

The sudden burst from Noah had caught Ailetta off guard, but when she saw the look on his face and heard the tone of his voice that not only sounded desperate to hear her answer, but also curious. She struggled to hold in a giggle, but she couldn't stop herself from smiling. Noticing the frown forming on Noah's face, she was quick to realize that smiling wasn't the right thing to do after she knew that this conversation was also hard on him too.

Now that she received another chance to redeem herself, she took a deep breath to voice out what she wanted from him without implying what her earlier thoughts suggested she did before.

"Th-this may be the last time we ever see each other again if, if….." She hesitated to finish, she thought she was ready to talk about it, but she started to become emotional again. Noah noticed this, yet he thought that she was trying to imply that she was worried about him and that he could possibly die since he was traveling 'alone'.

"You don't have to worry about me dying out there, I've been doing just fine, In fact I've never felt better." Noah boasted proudly, but he noticed that Ailetta didn't seem to feel happy or relieved to hear his declaration.

"I'M NOT WORRIED ABOUT YOU DYING!" She screamed before she caught herself and lowered her voice, but at the same time she clenched her fist tight enough to the point of shedding blood.

"It's me…I…I don't think I'll last long enough to see you again…" She looked up to see the shock written on Noah's face. Either his shock lowered the pressure that she felt from looking into his eyes or she was more influenced by her own emotions to care as she boldly stared into the pair of purple irises in both of his eyes.

"I'm not like you Noah, you know that right? You've seen how we all struggled to survive till now. Do you honestly think we can survive the way we are going now if we had had to fight something like that ant by ourselves, or that huge thing outside the dorms? I just….I just want to spend one last time with you…"

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As she spoke up to this point, she noticed an expression on his face that she had never seen before and that was fear. Fearfully she turned around and then looked around her to make sure there wasn't a monster lurking nearby. She didn't know what could possibly make him wear such an expression when he seemed to have become the sort of person who becomes excited in the face of death.

She didn't know that her words sparked a cord in him, the moment she talked about herself dying countless scenarios and images popped in Noah's highly active imagination. Different scenes of her dying by every different kind of creature he has killed so far played out in his mind.

And with each death, each time the light in her eyes gave out and her body became limped, his heart would feel as if it was being stabbed and for reasons he couldn't explain, he felt horrified at the thought of her dying.

He tried to look her in the eye, but his heart just couldn't bear seeing her face at this moment, not after seeing her lifeless face so many times in his visions. He looked towards the ground, his body slumped, resembling a person that was defeated.

"Why….?" He muttered just barely loud enough to hear, confusing Ailetta in the process.

"Why are you telling me this now?" The way he peered into her eyes scared her. Ailetta didn't know how she could have angered him. Her first instinct was to apologize until she noticed something odd about him, his entire body was shivering!

She had to think fast about what was happening to him before this went from bad to worse. 'What does he mean, telling him about this n-!'

She noticed what went wrong, she knew that he had serious trust issues and when he said 'why bring it up now?' He must've thought that she had a hidden agenda. But that only made her frustrated.

"You doofus!" She blurted out, causing the rising conflicting emotions Noah was going through to slightly falter.

"Why do you think I could only say it now? Who was the one that told me not to follow him? Who was the one that repeatedly left me even when death was always around the corner? Who was the one who just leaves and never says where's going?? You never gave me the chance to talk to you!" She heaved, trying to stabilize her breath after her much needed venting.

At this point, any hint of mistrust was gone from Noah's point of view and he could only look down in guilt. He remembers all of those moments she talked about clearly. During the times it happened, he felt that he was justified in doing what he did.

If it wasn't for the lapse of fear he experienced from imagining her dying then he would probably try to argue that what he did was best for both of them. But now, deep down, he didn't know what to think, what to feel, or even what to say.

Ailetta didn't like the fact that she had to yell at him or the fact that she made him out to be selfish. She knew that all he ever thought about was going into the worlds of the books he basically lived through. She couldn't exactly blame him from tunneling everything else out, but why did it have to be her too??

"!"

Noah was so deep in his thoughts that he didn't respond to Ailetta approaching him before she grabbed his hand, startling him out of his daze.

"I don't want you to feel guilty about all of this…I just want you to understand why I want to spend this night with you. Just one night and then you can enjoy your adventures just like you always wanted." Even as she spoke those words, all Noah could see was a painful smile on her face, with tears running down her face."

He motioned to wipe away her tears, but then he stopped from the guilt that was preventing him to show that he cared when most of his actions showed otherwise. The only thing he could do, something he didn't intend to do, but did subconsciously was to squeeze her hands in his.

The look on her face, that painful smile, it reminded him of a time from a long time ago. The time he was emotionally betrayed by Regina, and during that time when he found out he displayed the same smile Ailetta was showing now. He shook his head at the thought and smiled mockingly that was directed to himself.

"I guess I can be an asshole too."

...

A/N: I know a lot of you won't like where this development is happening, but I'm making sure I stay consistent with the character's personalities and I felt that this needed to happen at some point. Noah will not immediately become lovey dovey for Ailetta, but it's a huge step for him to notice how he feels about her.