To Deserve [Levi]

There was a bruise by the corner of her lip, where one side of her face was red and clearly swollen compared to the other. Blood shot eyes, stern brows. She sat there so still, not a fragment of what had happened hours ago lingered onto her presence. She looked angry, but not afraid.
Levi was afraid.
He watched her, intently, sitting cross legged on the bed of his apartment. The night was still, and it held a coldness unfit for the summer air. He was searching for and expecting signs of fear in her unmoving pupils. She should have been afraid, she was afraid, just awfully and painfully talented at hiding it.
She had eyes that were signs to anyone who tried to read her. It told a tale of a girl who was lost somewhere to the indifferent sun.
They were warning signs.

If only Levi had known that the same boy who grabbed face her and kissed her was the one who grabbed her wrist and slam her against the wall; the one who whispered “I love you” shamelessly in front of the whole world was the same as the one who called her a bitch and worthless and told her to die. If only he saw through his mask. This boy she loved was also the boy who destroyed her.
He would have said something and done something.
Was it too late?

Levi stood leaning against his desk a few feet away, watching the girl who still sat on the bed
Her boyfriend, supposedly now ex, was angry and jealous. He screamed at her, told her she was worthless, and threw her against the wall. He slapped her and spat in her face, threatening and beating until she declared enough with a fist defending herself aimed at his face. Then she ran, all the way, without stopping or looking back, to here, Levi’s pathetic apartment.
“Stay here tonight,” Levi spoke, voice raspy from the long silence that had drawn out, “we’ll go for brunch in the morning.”
She nodded, barely looking up.
What was there for him to do?

Soon, a onetime brunch tuned into a daily routine. She spent nights in his apartment staring into space while Levi let her rest her head on his shoulder. Eventually, she began talking. About abuse and his words that hurt her more than she thought they could. They watched Netflix, quarreled over Johnlock versus Sheriarty. One afternoon he texted her and asked her out to dinner. He put on a suit just for her, and was beglamoured by her in her little black dress. His friends got used to seeing them together, but they told him to be careful with her. They said she was fragile. Still, he took her to bars and she took him to galleries, saw paintings he never could understand. What even was the difference between modern and contemporary art? She was smiling again, the smile a little broken but smiling nonetheless.
It was late July when he sat on his living-room couch while she strolled in the kitchen. Levi was on his phone, checking the address of that Japanese place his ex-roommate had loved so dearly.
“Stop going through the fridge,” Levi looked up from the screen, “I’ll take you out for dinner.”
She halted, stiff and unlike herself. Levi raised an eyebrow.
She turned to look at him, mouth open ready to speak, but hesitated. Eventually, she asked, “why?”
He frowned, confused, “What? Why not?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, then continued, “are these supposed to be dates?” with her brows knotted and staring intently at him.
Almost taken aback, Levi responded, “yeah,” matter-of-factly.
She inhaled a great sum of air, then swallowed hard. She turned, away from him, where he couldn’t see her profile. An arrow of realization drilled through his consciousness.
He stared at her frame, gingerly, afraid to pierce her with his gaze. When she spoke again her voice was almost shaking, “why?” she repeated, then turned to face him again. She summoned up all her wit and stared him dead in the eye, a glimmer of moisture around her pupils, her brows still tied together in a painful frown. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
Levi’s lips parted, shocked and pained by seeing her desperate attempt to hold herself together. Her hands were clenched, nails digging into skin. The tighter she held herself the less she would fall apart. How did the mood change so fast?
“What do you mean?” he murmured a tenderness he could not recognize in his own voice. How much did it pain him to see her like this?
“Didn’t they tell you to stay away from me?”
Hesitation clouded his thoughts, but he got his words out, “yes.”
She bit onto her lower lip to stop it from quivering.
“But I know better,” he added.

That was when she lost it. She crossed her arms and clung onto herself. Her features crumbled and her eyes flooded. In shock, Levi rose. Quickly, he was at her side to help her gather herself, but his arms were limb around her as she cried because he didn’t know what to do. Today, more so than ever, or perhaps even for the first time, the man realized that she was really just a little girl, shaking and howling and finally excepting that she wasn’t capable of making things okay for herself all the fucking time. Smiling was a show she didn’t have effort to put on all the time.
Between sobbing and heavy breathing were words mumbled almost inaudibly.
“Why?”
“Why me?”
“Do you even know?”
“I’m insecure,”
“And oversensitive,”
“I’m scared, all the time,”
“Every time you touch me, I’ll flinch,”
“I’ll cry, and you’ll try to comfort me, but I’ll just stain all you shirts with my tears and you will never be able to wash them out.”
He didn’t know what to do. In the face of his favourite person crumpling to pieces he didn’t know what to say. Helplessness was a pain that haunted rather than pierced. “Because I love you,” Levi whispered, the only words that made sense.
“Even when you say that, I can’t believe you,”
“Will you love me when I’m being hysterical?”
“I’m worthless and selfish and defensive,”
“I hurt other people trying to protect myself,”
“Levi that’s all I’m good for, I hurt people,”
“You can’t even say you love me,”
“I have done nothing to deserve it.”

That was when he realized he really, insanely, unconditionally loved her, three words that used to be emptier gained more weight with each of her words mumbled, each heavier than the one said before. He didn’t know if she felt safe in his arms, if she was satisfied by his love, or secured by his presence. But he was the one who watched the empowering girl crumble and fall. That left a gaping hole in his heart and somewhere there was a glimmer of hope that she might be able to turn back into the girl she used to be.
It was with those emotions he was set off by the boy who was the root of her abuse. He almost walked straight past him that night in August before the boy said, “so you’re dating her now, huh? Good luck with that. She’s a bitch”.
Levi snapped.
This was the girl who stood her ground. She had opinions she voiced and knew exactly who she wanted to be. She was passionate and empowering and gleeful. She defended and screamed and attacked all at the right moments. This was the girl who went out and grabbed the world by its lapels, she used to understand. Life was a bitch, she needed to go out and kick ass.
Levi sent his fist flying across his face. Knuckle to jaw. The boy staggered, covering his nose and his mouth.
She was the one who ran to Levi a year ago and told him that she had fallen in love for the very first time. Then only to come to him again months later with a bruised lip dazed and shivering saying she had made a mistake. She had trusted too quickly. Now her trust was gone.
The boy, probably now with a dislocated jaw, glared viciously at Levi. He smirked, and said, “you think you’ve got the girl now so you’re the big shot? Listen here you little shit, you and I, we are all the same. We resort to violence when it comes to anger. You think you’re the better man? You think you can heal her? Bullshit. You are just―”
But before he could finish Levi punched him again in the nose. How dared he? He and Levi were and never will be the same.
There was a treasure inside that girl only Levi saw and understood. Even if she was being hysterical, and was defensive, selfish, and insecure, there was a passion in her that can light up and change the entire world. Levi saw it, and he will protect it.
He loved her, and she didn’t need to do anything to deserve it.