The Watcher

He was watching her; he had been watching her for some time and was
confused and concerned by what he saw. He had a perfect, uninterrupted
view and could track her every move yet she still managed to disappear,
to hide, for long periods of time. Each time she left she stayed away,
hidden and alone, for longer and longer periods of time. He knew that
if he moved now she would flee, scared and betrayed, yet if he did not
she would disappear, alone and equally afraid. He did not want to lose
her He must not lose her. A watcher did not lose the watched. It was an
unfathomable concept.

She knew he was watching her, he had been watching her for some time.
She knew however, that no matter how carefully he watched her, he would
never she her, because she never lifted the cloak.

He knew that she was concealing something, and she thought that he did
not know - her entire demeanour told him that- but she had
unintentionally let the cloak slip for a fraction of a second. A
watcher never missed a fraction of a second. He'd had hundreds of tiny
detached glimpses in this way. A collage of torn photographs that
simply refused to fit together. He was missing a vital piece, and he
knew that he had little time in which to retrieve it. He was a watcher.
He must retrieve it.

She decided once again to play the part. She donned the cloak and
stepped out of the darkness. It was a selfish act of self-preservation.
If she pretended not to know that he was there, if she pretended to
drop the cloak, he could believe that he saw her. It was better this
way. This way, neither of them would get hurt.

The movement caught his eye. The watcher stopped and waited. He tensed
as the farce began. Did she really think that would work with a
watcher? She was a true professional and the performance was
unparalleled, but he was a watcher. He knew - and this act could
deceive him. He sighed; she was too young to be one of the watched. She
was too young to be such an expert. Not for the first time, he cursed
the amateurs, 'the would - be watchers'. They had scared her beyond
belief; their halfhearted attempts had severely jeopardized his
chances. Her trust would be almost impossible to gain he had to step
carefully.

He was good, she had to give him that. He was patient and clearly very
determined. She smiled wryly. If she didn't know better, if she hadn't
been betrayed quite so many times, he would have won by now. The truth
was that she was simply too experienced in this game to be beaten by
patience and determination alone. She retreated into the darkness and
shivered.

It was his turn to smile. She was getting careless. She no longer hid
quite so carefully. For a moment he had seen her quite clearly, licking
her wounds. But the smile had quickly vanished when he saw the deep
lacerations, many still bleeding profusely. They would leave hideous
scars - if she could ever stop them bleeding quite so openly. He
shuddered at the thought of so much pain. Simply seeing the wounds was
useless to him. He would not have been set if there were no wounds- he
was her watcher. But he couldn't get close enough; she refused to let
him close enough to see the nature and cause of the wounds. He turned
away in despair. She would not come out of hiding again today. He swore
again, with more wretchedness than anger. He knew now that he had few
chances left.

She sat in the darkness, afraid and alone. Why wouldn't the bleeding
stop? It had never taken this long before, as they took longer to heal,
more tears fell, salty tears into open wounds. The more tears that
fell, the greater the chance that the old wounds would reopen. She
stared at the old wounds in despair. They ached intolerably. How much
blood could one person lose?

The watcher remained deathly still, ignoring the cold and the rain and
the dark. The wind howled angrily, infuriated by this intruder in its
kingdom of the night and relentlessly attacked him. The watcher
remained unmoved by such untamed aggression. The elements could not
harm him now. The tears coursing down his cheeks mingled with the
rainwater until torrents poured downwards, following the well-worn
gullies eroded in his face. He bowed his head ashamed. A watcher did
not cry, yet here he was, exposed and weeping, weeping like the
watched. He dug his nails into his palms, and defiantly turned his face
upwards, relishing in the pain of the sharp water pounded upon him. He
embraced the aggression, the human emotion of the elements and hollowly
laughed, an eerie laugh. He laughed to show them that they had not won,
and he, a watcher, would rescue her, and then their tears, and their
blood would fall like rain.

She awoke, and jumped, ready to face her attacker, hackles risen, ready
to fight and to flee. And yet there was no one there, just the
all-penetrating blackness, and the cold; but it was not only the cold
that chilled her to her core. She had heard the watcher, laughing in
the distance, she had heard his defiance and it had relit an ancient
spark within her, only to be immediately consumed by the darkness and
extinguished by the cold. To listen to the watcher was to accept his
kind, to believe in him she would have to face what she had learnt to
shun and to flee from. To heal her wounds she had only one choice, to
return to and to rejoin the watcher, to rejoin his kind, the kind she
had turned away from - mankind.

The watcher could no longer distinguish between the tears and the rain,
and as the tears mingled with the rain he cursed these emotions, these
temporal human emotions that insisted on interfering. He was a watcher,
he must not get involved, but he was already involved.

She sat, confused and angry. How dare he interfere now? How dare he
ignite that belief in her once again? She had rejected his kind, and
she must not rely on them again. She looked at the scars and once again
she felt the choking sensation rise in her throat. They had caused
these hideous wounds and yet now it seemed that he would have to commit
the ultimate hypocrisy and turn to him in order to stop the bleeding.
She cried, hot, angry tears that streaked the dirt on her face. She
couldn't trust him, she would not be hurt in this way again, and
because she could not trust him, she would suffer, and the wounds would
never heal.

He had to act and he had to act now. He had become emotionally involved
and now he would be called away. He must act now, act before he was
forced to leave, his work must not have been in vain. He must reach out
to her now.

Sleep evaded her. She spent another insomnia wracked night pacing in
the darkness. She could hear her heart beating, a reassuring constant
permeating through the turmoil. She paced in the dark and the cold and
she thought - dangerous thoughts, disturbing thoughts, she had trained
herself not to give in to such thoughts, and yet they were rampant in
her mind. What if? Should I? Can I? No! She silently screamed, I will
not give into such thoughts, she would not give in to him now, and she
would not let him win. All her work would not be in vain. She would not
surrender, she would not reach out to him.

He watched her from a distance. She was hiding from him; she was
carefully concealing herself in her cloak. As she had taken her first
tentative steps out of the darkness that morning, his heart had
plummeted, and it remained there, a heavy, cold, unforgiving stone
lying on his stomach. Her face was deathly pale, a cold expressionless
mask behind which she was hiding. Her entire being bristled with
hostility and aggression and yet she was clearly petrified and
vulnerable, and as she walked closer, his despair increased still
further, for through her cloak seeped patches of blood.

She walked slowly, every step was agonising as the cloak rubbed on raw
wounds. She concentrated on the floor, too afraid to look up, to meet
their eyes, for she knew that her fa?ade relied upon them not looking
into her cold, crying eyes; and so, in this manner, she made her way to
the water.

It was his last chance to approach her; he had no more time, for he was
being called away. He had broken the cardinal rule; he had become
emotionally involved with his charge. He had no right to remain; a
watcher never became emotionally involved. He was preparing to discard
all of his better judgement, to turn his back upon years of experience.
He was going to reach out to her now, before either of them was ready,
before he had obtained the final missing piece in her picture, and now
when she was most hostile to him. He had nothing to gain and everything
to lose, but he had no other choice, he could not simply abandon her
now. He had to make contact before he was too far away to touch. He
only hoped that she would understand the significance of his words. He
only prayed that he could stem the bleeding before she fled.

She stared at the two reflections in the water, shimmering and
ephemeral; the analogy did not pass her unobserved. A disturbance under
the water rippled the perfect image, sending a flurry of scars across
the face staring unblinkingly back. She looked away in shame, horrified
by what she saw. The two reflections were fighting each other to be
dominant. In the past, there had never been this conflict, only a
perfect, unblemished image, her mask placed underwater, staring
unseeingly up into her face. Yet now, there was a second reflection,
battling for supremacy, no longer content never to be revealed,
constantly hidden and masked. She picked up several pebbles, cool and
smooth, faultless. She pressed them against her burning forehead and
closed hr eyes. Out of the swirling blackness the reflection once again
came into focus, haunting, plaguing her. She screamed, a savage, carnal
scream. She tore her eyes back open and hurled the pebbles into the
water, banishing the terrifying image. It shattered immediately into a
thousand glimmering pieces, shockwaves radiating from the impact,
disturbing the entire pool. She ran, stumbling and afraid from such an
appalling portrait, tears blinding her flight, her cloak streaming
wildly behind her.

He stood watching her uncontrolled retreat and he calmly stepped
slightly to the left.

The impact completely winded her. She reeled back in shock. Emotions
flooded through her, completely immobilising ad frightening her,
emotions which she had banished, emotions which had no right, no place
here- relief, a leap of expectation and hope lurking behind the blind
panic.

He had made contact. He watched her closely as a look of unconcealed
aggression washed over her, but for a moment he could have sworn, he
knew, that he had seen a mixture of more instinctive emotions
dominating her trained attitude - relief, pleading, and even now she
was clearly fighting back panic. She was so vulnerable, that was
blatantly obvious, it was no wonder that she was wounded so
horrifically.

She furiously bit her tongue and stared angrily at the floor, boring
holes into it with her intense, concentrated gaze. Yet still she cried,
great wracking sobs that convulsed her entire body to her soul. She was
mortified. No one had ever seen her cry before. She was seething- how
dare he watch her cry?

He stood in total silence, patient and still. He had waited this long,
he could stop and let her cry.

She defiantly raised her eyes to meet his face. His eyes met and held
her gaze, and to her horror, she dropped her eyes first. He had been
watching her cry. He had not turned away embarrassed and intimidated
but had calmly stood there and watched her cry. She stared sullenly at
the ground, the silence screaming in her ears.

The watcher watched her and waited.

He had broken all of the rules. This was not how the game was played.
He was completely in control and she was trapped. To run now would be
to admit defeat. She tensed every muscle in a futile attempt to prevent
her flight.

He saw her tense. He put out his hand onto her shoulder. "Don't lie,
you don't have to hide, you don't have to be brave. You can't lie to
me." He quietly uttered, in a near whisper, so quietly, she was forced
to look up into his calm, reassuring face. His hand was angrily pushed
away and she fled. He looked down at his hand, it was stained a royal
red. It was his turn to cry. He cried and turned away.

She ran and ran, fleeing the watcher, fleeing her reflection. She did
not turn back, if she did not turn back, she did not have to face them.
She did not know where she was running to, just what she was fleeing
from, and so she continued to run, until every muscle in her body
screamed with pain, her heart pounded, resounding throughout her body
and her breath came in short painful gasps. She collapsed and fought to
breathe, fought for air. She fought to survive.

He watched her from a distance; he watched her run, afraid, alone,
running from him. He watched her now, as she lay crumpled, vulnerable,
physically and emotionally exhausted. Lying, broken, in a pool of blood
and tears.

As her breathing began to steady and the pain began to subside she
remained lying as she was, perfectly still and serene. Her mind was
completely clear. She stared upwards, gazing unseeingly at the sky. She
allowed her mind to wander freely, and slowly, painfully, the watcher
began to permeate her thoughts.

The watcher stopped. He turned back for a final glance at her. He saw
her lying there, alone, staring at the sky. He saw the blood, but he
could not go to her now, he had to leave her. He had become emotionally
attached and so he was being called away. As he turned away, as he
forced himself to walk away, he looked down at his bloodstained hand
and a wave of pain washed through his chest, as he abandoned her, he
felt his heart break.

She hauled herself up, drew her cloak closely around her and retreated
into the darkness. There she sat and thought, thought about the
watcher. "Don't lie, you don't have to hide, you don't have to be
brave. You can't lie to me." She stayed perfectly still, thinking. She
replayed his words over ad over in her mind and waited. She waited for
an emotion to wash over her, to tell her what to think, how to react.
But no emotion came. She sat, shocked and confused, and she did not
know what to think, she did not know how to react, once again, she was
not in control, and she was in complete free-fall. She had walked away
from the edge, and had stood, scared to look over the precipice. But he
had pushed her, before she had even had a chance to look where she was
falling. She did not know where she would land, even if she would land,
but she instinctively braced for the impact.

He looked back. He was too far away. He could not see her, only a trail
of blood, deep red, stark against the pale landscape, leading to her
hiding place. He did not know what she was thinking, he could not even
guess how she was feeling, and now he would never know, because he was
too far away to be able to see when the cloak fell, he had no
experience of this, he did not know how to handle this. He felt
confused and alone, the watcher feeling the emotions of the
watched.

Gradually, the shock began to wane and she began to be able to think
more clearly. The watcher had now unleashed thousands of rampant
emotions. Initially she had felt nothing, but now she was able to
identify anger, fear and confusion. She was infuriated by his
intrusion, this blatant interference into her life. How dare he? How
dare he presume that she was lying, that she was trying to be brave and
that she was hiding? How dare he interfere in this way and tell her
this, and inform her that she had been hiding and lying? How dare he
stand there calmly and watch her cry, trap her when she was crying?
Nobody had ever seen her cry and yet he had seen her lose control
entirely, seen her break down weeping. How dare he reach out and touch
her when she had been fighting them off for so long? His intrusion had
also frightened her. She had run from him because she was frightened -
he had been completely correct, he had known and this had petrified
her. How could he have possibly known? She had hidden behind her mask,
concealed herself within her cloak. She had been brave, externally; she
had not shown any emotions externally. Had it been so blindingly
obvious? She was afraid, afraid that she, the reigning champion was
beginning to lose the game. She suddenly realised that this was no
longer a game the stakes were too high. In a single statement, he had
turned the tables entirely. She had been playing with emotional fire;
she had the battle scars from previous training sessions to prove it.
The pieces carrying out intricately entwined moves were not carved from
ivory but from flesh and blood. The two major pieced had been circling
for some time, carefully eyeing each other, assessing the situation.
And how wrong she had been. She had entirely miscalculated and her
tactics had cruelly backfired. When he had finally approached, when he
had made the first move she had been forced to swiftly retreat. She did
not have the strength for another confrontation; her previous
encounters had completely weakened her. She could not do into this
battle wounded, and yet she could not be cured without confronting the
enemy. She had no tactics left to employ, she could not play her trump
card because he knew that he had the stronger hand. She was alone and
she was losing. She felt the panic rise inside her- sickening bile
rising from a stomach of lead. Waves of panic washed over, drowning,
consuming her, adrenalin pumped trough her body, her heart pounded.
Panicked sobs began to build in her throat, she needed to cry out for
someone but there was no one to cry out to. Hysteria began to build.
She became painfully aware of the hysteria beginning to take control,
and yet she was powerless to stop it. She was not brave; she had no
idea of how to be brave. Bravery had led her to this. Bravery in the
past had resulted in this. If she had not been brave in the past she
would not be here now, she would have abandoned it all and joined the
multitude of others. But she could not have forsaken her individuality;
she could not have denied her feelings. She had not been brave she had
been stubborn. She was not disillusioned enough to crush her true
emotions. She was highly emotive, to deny these emotions would have
entirely broken her. He had mistaken bravery for stubborn
foolhardiness. She had simply refused to live the lie that they did,
she had not been lying to herself, only to them, to him, and he was the
only one who had seen this - "You can't lie to me." But he had been
wrong. She could lie to him, she had lied to him, even if he had been
aware that they were lies, she had still lied to him. He was wrong she
was not brave. He was wrong she was hiding. Yet the hysteria refused to
subside. He had been wrong, but he had tried to invade her game, but he
had started too late. She already knew the intricacies of the game; she
had mastered its tactics. The panic completely overwhelmed her. He had
been right she was lying to herself. He had invaded her game but he had
disregarded all the rules- and he was winning. She was simply left
behind, horrified by his disrespect and his cheating. He was right and
she was wrong, and she knew that it was slipping away from her
spiralling out of her control. From here on, she could only lose.

The watcher, for the first time, felt true fear. He was afraid. From
this distance he was powerless to help her, she had never disappeared
for this long before. He could picture her, sitting alone, in the
unforgiving darkness, crying tears he had caused, mingling with the
blood from the wounds he had failed to heel. He had failed, and now,
inevitably, she would be forced to pay the price. She would suffer due
to his failure. He was afraid for her. Afraid of what he had done, what
he had created. The sudden realisation of guilt came crashing down upon
him. A massive weight, gradually, steadily increasing, beginning to
suffocate him, a crushing, and debilitating weight. He had caused this.
He was a watcher. He was sent to help and he had failed her. Watchers
simply did not fail the watched in this way. An iron hand began to form
around his heart, squeezing at his life source. Walking away had broken
his heart and now it suffered a new, alien agony, guilt and fear. But
what was his pain? He looked down once again at his hand, a ruby red
tattoo. He wore her blood as a symbol of her pain, her solitary
suffering. His hand would remain defiled in this way until her blood
ceased to fall. He only prayed that it would stop falling before it
stopped flowing.

So he was winning. She had to face the inevitable- the cruel, harsh
truth. He would win. She would lose. The ending had been predetermined
but the length of the game was not. Over that, she had the ultimate
control and she would never surrender but she would fight him to the
bitter end. The game would be finite for her but abruptly finite for
him. For he would win, but she would never witness her own loss. Only
one of them would be there at the end.

She was still hiding. She had not left her hiding place during the
night- the ground was still virginal, untouched. He could track her
movement by the rich trail of blood that she left, thick glistening
pearls staining the pale ground. He was unsure what her lack of
movement signified. He was unable to judge, to see from such a
distance. He had to get closer. He needed to know what she was
thinking, how she was feeling. He was her watcher. He was there to
protect her, but how could he fro such a distance? Why was she
remaining there alone, why was she still hiding? He was afraid- afraid
for her, afraid with her, afraid because he did not know what to do,
what to say, afraid that he would not be able to do, to say anything.
Fear, it had been strange to him but was now becoming an almost
familiar emotion. It still shocked him however, caught him entirely
unprepared. He had no idea how to even begin to control the fear, how
to react to the fear. And so, just as he had in the past, he felt the
tears begin too roll down his face, tears following well-worn grooves
in his face. Previously, these grooves had been alien to water, grooved
that until recently had been aridly dry. However, the salty tears were
now not unfamiliar and they were strangely comforting as they coursed
down his face, warm pearls. He unashamedly let them fall, freely and
uncontrolled. He cried, just as she had cried, only he cried silently.
There were no wracking sobs, only the quiet falling pearls.

She had promised herself that she would fight until she had lost.
However she would not now be quite so simply defeated. She prepared to
employ a new tactic.

He saw her emerging into the light, slowly carefully, deliberately. He
was too far away to distinguish any detail, to see any expression, to
look into her eyes. He needed to see into her eyes. In the past they
had often penetrated the mask, betrayed the fa?ade. She could not hide
red-rimmed eyes, scared eyes, and lonely eyes. Her eyes spoke volumes.
They alone would not, could not lie to him, and yet from this distance
he could hardly define her features, never mind see into her soul
through her eyes.

She could not win herself but she could join the winning side, she
could cross the un- crossable line and join him because underneath her
fear, her anger, and her shock and beneath her tears something else had
quietly simmered. She had been unable to hold his gaze because she had
recognised something deep in his eyes. She had felt something truly
warm in his touch. His laughter had ignited a spark within her. His
words had been significant, his touch, his look, his tone had been
significant. But to act upon these required attributes she did not
have, self -belief, bravery and trust. She was aware of the
significance of his words, the significance of him but she had to trust
him to join him. In order to trust him she had to abandon everything
she had previously believed in. She would have to open up; she would
have to remove the mask and the cloak. In order to trust him she would
have to be strong, to be brave, bravery she did not have. She would
have to belief in him enough to give him her trust, a trust that must
never be betrayed. It was her last chance. She would have to gamble
everything. If she was betrayed again, if she suffered one tiny wound
she knew that she would inevitably bleed to death. She did not know,
she could not know if this was a gamble she should take, would be
prepared to take. She did not know if she was brae enough. No, she knew
that she was not brave enough to take that step. She was not brave
enough to let it leave her control again. She was afraid. Afraid of her
own reaction, afraid of his reaction, she was afraid of the
consequences. She was afraid of what would happen next. She was too
afraid to trust him. She was afraid that he would not be able to catch
her when she jumped. It had gone so catastrophically wrong so many
times before. It was unreasonable to ask for so much, to ask for total
trust, unconditional, immediate trust. If he had truly seen through the
lie, past the cloak, surely he would be aware of this. How could he say
that she did not have to be brave? He was acting for the ultimate act
of bravery. Bravery she did not have, bravery she now desperately
wanted, and bravery she was desperately seeking. She could not trust
him and so she would lose. She could not trust him. She huddled further
into her hiding place and she retreated back. She drew up her knees
tightly to her chest in a vain search for security and warmth. Her head
dropped slowly into the cradle of her knees and her entire body
shuddered rhythmically in time to her sobbing. The sound crescendoed
deafeningly in the silence, it echoed in the emptiness surrounding her
and resonated in the hollowness inside her. She could not trust him.
She was alone, but now it was worse because she knew that she could
never escape. She had been given a chance, but she had reached out with
her hand in a fist and she was unable to wrench open her hand, she
could not let go. She was alone and she ached, real pain. She rocked
and she shuddered and she could not escape it. This time she could not
run from the image because there was nowhere to run.