Discussion with a Blind Man

"What was that all about? At the party, I mean. It felt like you were cutting off the circulation to my arm!" I snapped, skipping past hello. Leander just barely bothered to turn his head.

"Ah, so you did come. I wondered if you would," the blind man greeted me. He sat on a large windowsill, back pressed to the glass, head turned so that I saw his face in profile. He gave me an airy wave of his hand, though it was a fair bit off from looking normal. "And trust me--I could have cut off the circulation to your arm, Shiro, but what you're calling that wasn't even close. I would have had to squeeze a lot harder."

"What the heck, Leander?" He was normally so pleasant, this side of Leander was one I had never seen before.

"Oh; je suis desolee," he murmured gesturing with his hand almost absently again. "You make it easy to forget... But I have to know how to defend myself somehow, don't I?" I wanted to tell him he shouldn't have to know, but I knew it was useless. "However this is not the point here, is it? I asked for you to come here to apologize for my reaction the other night, and to say that I believe more than ever that you belong here." I shook my head on instinct, even though I knew Leander wouldn't hear it.

"Leander, s'il te plait--"

"I will not let it go. I got to see you stumble to him before you let me go. The look on Dante's face--he was worried; he looked scared to death for you. There's a fierceness in his voice when he talks to or about you. You are everything he could have ever wanted, could have ever asked for, and you landed almost in his lap." Leander smiled and closed his sightless eyes, tilting his head back slightly, like he was imagining the scene.

"Except I'm already dead," I shot back. Leander chuckled and pressed his cheek to the window.

"Yet we can touch you. Others see you. You are as real as Antoinette or Cerise or I, even though you say you have died," he looked like a thoughtful child, curled up to the window, probably taking in the sun's heat.

"No ordinary person can give you their sight, Leander. No ordinary person has wings. I'm not all the way alive, I'm not all the way dead anymore, but I lived my life, got hit by a car, and have spent the past two years working unseen by the living in a hospital. My time as a normal person is up. I can't afford to let myself love him and lose that--please, understand that," I explained, praying Leader would finally understand.

If he did, he didn't even acknowledge it in the most basic form. Instead, he laughed.

"Shiro, the problem is that you don't get to choose to let yourself love him or not. He loves you, and I can tell you love him, despite your insistence you don't belong here and that you can't let yourself love him. You never had a choice in the matter, and you never will. You love Dante and he loves you; meet the matter head on," he advised, leaving me fighting to keep my mouth closed. For a blind man whose only typical companions were his maid and an organized crime Boss, Leander had said something astoundingly wise, however the best had yet to come.

"My life has been a cruel joke," I protested weakly, Leader rolled himself closer to the window.

"Love is just as cruel as it is kind; it sees everything, but it's also..." Leander turned from the window to nearly face me and opened his beautiful yet sightless eyes, pain clear in his voice. "Blind."

It felt as though he'd brought a lightning bolt down on me. I didn't have to ask him to explain, I had my own interpretations, and I had a feeling they lined up with his anyway. Instead, I found myself asking "Who said that?"

Leander stood and smiled. "J’ai fait. I did. I've always had a touch of a poetic streak, though it's had to put it into use when you can't see to write and Antoinette doesn't have the patience. She doesn't even like describing things for me anymore," he halfway held out a hand tentatively. "Speaking of Antoinette, would you mind helping me hunt down where she went?" he asked good-naturedly. "I dismissed her to talk to you and who knows where she's gone."

"Of course, Leander," I murmured, walking to him and taking his arm. Normally I would have tried to start up more of a conversation, however my head felt like he’d opened it up and dumped a hive’s worth of bees in. The words Leander had spoken kept floating through my head.  Was it really true that I didn’t have a choice? I had said I couldn’t let myself love Dante, but at the same time, there was no way to rid myself of how I felt about him—just try to keep myself from getting caught in a relationship with him. That alone was a quickly losing battle; it was becoming harder and harder to draw a line to depict where we stood. I would waver, and then I would become a wall again. I would want him close, and then I would remember and try to push him away. Dante had patience, but I think he also had half a mind to strangle me sometimes, with the way I continuously slipped and then tried to correct or make up for my slip.

Maybe Leander was right. Maybe love was cruel, kind, all-seeing, and blind at time same time, and I was just one of its victims.

I certainly felt like I was.