“Am I? How justified you must feel.”
The accusation was one he’d heard countless times before—spat most often by the entitled, ones who found their world upturned and suddenly in the foreign position of being disempowered. Adam would not deny the injury inflicted to the unknown girl was… extensive, perhaps even unwarranted. But was it truly his fault she so easily rose to the bait he’d provided?
He had not forced her to rush in with reckless abandon. She’d made her choice, just as Blake had made her choice—just as they all had to at some point in their life. She’d simply chosen wrong. You could have walked away. The fact lingered at the tip of his tongue, casual in it’s poison, yet did not drip between them. Instead, the bull examined her. How different she seemed now in her quiet; no longer screaming with her fury. Passionless.
Pitiable, he thought, but soon dismissed it.
He knew better than to look away from someone carrying the torch of a vendetta, though he found staring out at others an undesirable way to gather his thoughts. The only use to be found was aesthetically or for the sake of finding chinks in his opponent’s armor. Far too easy to look into someone’s eyes and thieve pieces of their soul for your own. Inconvenient to feel anything as they do—empathy an enemy when one had a point to prove. Even he was not infallible. He did not turn his head, though behind the blackness beneath the mask his eyes moved.
I could have killed you, he considered saying, as if he’d been kind in letting them trip away. Such words were lost to the gaping chasm within his mind. It was not for a lack of trying to, after all. Silence stretched in his consideration, and finally—words.
“You think too much of the end result, as humans like you often tend to,” Adam said, voice void of sympathy. “It’s a narrow-minded selfishness. You have been hurt, yes—but many more have been hurt, decades of pain existent long before your school fell or your arm was lost. Before you or I were even born. What do you think starts wars?”
He shook his head, disgusted.
“Stop questioning why this happened to you and open your eyes. Whether you want it to or not, it will continue to happen. As long as people continue to live in ignorance, the White Fang and people like Cinder will exist. The answers you want so badly can be found in any history book.”
Then a sharp laugh—almost derisive.
“Perhaps you should have paid more attention in class.”
there’s more than one way to learn a lesson.
