Everything went silent now, dead silent, like there was no one daring to make a sound because that was the end of it.
Theo had nothing left to say, not because he was out of words, but because Diana had expressed a truth so profound that there was no space left for anything else.
Theo sat back in his chair and looked at the table with the expression of soone who had been given the full accounting of a situation and had found that every number in it was correct and every total was his own fault.
Rex looked at his plate.
He felt particularly satisfied about the pain Theo was experiencing. And of course, it exceeds his expectations with what Diana had to say to him.
He had made the calculation before any of this started, and the calculation had included this exact mont, and he had decided the outco was worth the mont, and he stood by that.
What he felt, looking across at Diana, was sothing closer to a specific kind of respect.
She had said all of it.
Every word of it.
Exactly the way it was true.
’Good girl,’ Rex thought. ’I really love her even more now, and she’s going to get rewarded for sure.’
The silence after Diana’s last words lasted about four seconds.
Then Diana took a slow sip of her cup and said, "You know what’s funny, Theo?"
Theo looked at her from across the table with the expression of soone who really did not want to know what was funny.
"The one who started all of this is you," she said. "You’re the one who punched him."
The table went still again, but differently this ti. This stillness had an edge to it.
"You ran up to the man I care about without any rational thought, in the middle of the market district, in front of everyone, and you straight up hit him." Diana set her cup down carefully. "And what exactly did you think that was going to accomplish?"
"Did you think I was going to look at that and feel sothing for you? Did you think that was the move, Theo? After years of doing nothing, that was the thing you finally decided to do?"
"Holy shit... she’s still at it." Rex was surprised that Diana was still willing to roast Theo. "Good... I’m enjoying this, and I’ll reward her even more soon."
Theo’s eyes, for once, appeared sad. "Diana."
"I’m genuinely asking," she said, and her tone was not cruel exactly, but it had no softness in it either. "Because I’ve been trying to understand it back then."
"You spent years not saying a single word to , not making a single move, not giving anything to work with. And then the mont you see sothing that scares you, the first real action you take, the first ti you actually do sothing, is to throw a punch at soone who hadn’t done anything to you."
"He was with you, and you’re acting like both of you were lovers..." Theo said tightly.
"Yes," Diana said. "He was with , and because... I chose to be with him."
"And your response to my choice, the first response you’ve ever had to anything I’ve done in six years, was to hit him."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Does that sound like soone who loved , Theo? Because from where I’m sitting, it sounds like soone who was angry that a thing he’d decided to keep on a shelf had been moved without his permission."
"That is not what you were to ," Theo said, and his voice had a dangerous quietness to it.
"Then act like it," Diana said. "Because everything you’ve done, everything from the years of silence to what happened in that market, tells a different story than the one you’re trying to tell right now."
Rex continued eating.
He was aware of everything happening around him, but he had nothing to contribute. Diana didn’t require any assistance. She was handling it perfectly on her own.
"And the best part is," Diana continued, and her voice had found a new register now, sharper and more deliberate, "the ABSOLUTE best part of all of this... is that after everything you did..."
"...after you made a spectacle of yourself and dragged this family’s na into every conversation in this city for a week, you had the nerve to sit there and ask your grandfather to win a magical contest on your behalf."
Theo’s eyes went cold, and he couldn’t say anything about it.
"Because you couldn’t fix it yourself," Diana said. "And you couldn’t face it yourself!"
"You sat in the corner and asked Mr. Nightwing here to clean it up for you, the sa way soone always has to clean up after you, and you didn’t even seem embarrassed about it."
"Diana," Elaris said, gently, not as a warning but as soone who was keeping track of the room’s temperature.
"I’m almost done," Diana said, with the polite tone of soone who was not almost done.
She looked at Theo directly. "You damaged the Nightwing na."
"Not Rex."
"Not ."
"But... you!"
"You did that with your own hands, in public, and the people at this table have been spending their energy this entire week trying to repair sothing that you broke in about thirty seconds."
She paused.
"That should have been your responsibility," she said. "That should have been you sitting across from Rex and having an honest conversation about what you did and what it cost."
"Instead... you hid behind tradition and let your grandfather stand in a courtyard and take a magical contest on your behalf because you didn’t want to face the consequences of your own choices."
She folded her napkin neatly and set it beside her plate.
"You’ve never faced the consequences of your own choices," she said. "Not even once."
"And honestly, Theo, that’s the most honest thing I can say about why none of this worked."
The dining room was completely silent.
Theo was not looking at the table anymore.
He was looking at Diana with an expression that had passed through anger and co out sowhere on the other side of it, sowhere that was less controlled and more dangerous.
His hand, flat against the table, started to shake.
"You..." he said, very quietly, "...have no right."
"Sorry to say, but I have every right," Diana said. "I earned it as a Starlight."
"You don’t know what it cost ," Theo said, and his voice was raising now, losing the control it had been holding onto. "You don’t know what it took to watch you with a nobody!"
’Nobody?! Oh, this fucking loser is going to pay." Rex was about to teach him a lesson, but then he already decided to save it for later.
"You don’t understand how it felt to see you sitting there today in my own family’s ho, telling you love soone else and claiming that everything I did was wrong, while you act as if you have no part in any of this."
"You sit there like you’re completely innocent, as if I’m the only one who made mistakes—"
"I waited," Diana said clearly. "That was my mistake."
"I waited for soone who wasn’t coming."
"I was COMING!" Theo shouted.
"When?" Diana said, for the second ti, in the sa quiet voice she had used before, and the repetition of it was worse than the volu had been.
Theo stood up.
The chair scraped back hard.
Diana did not flinch. She looked up at him with the level expression of soone who had said everything she needed to say and was not afraid of what ca next.
"You want to know what I think?!" Theo’s voice dropped back down to sothing quieter and worse. "I think you’re standing behind him right now the sa way you used to stand behind that arrangent with our families!"
"I think you found another excuse to hide behind, and you’re calling it love because it sounds better than the truth."
"The truth..." Diana said, "...is that I’m not hiding behind anything."
"For the first ti in years, I’m standing in front of sothing instead of waiting for it."
"You don’t know who he is," Theo said.
"Don’t you fucking dare say that to ," Diana said, her brow furrowing. "I know exactly who he is!"
"Don’t you see?!" Theo said flatly. "He is using you to get at this family, your family, and you are too stubborn and too proud to see it!"
"And in six months you will be sitting sowhere wondering how you ended up there, and I will not be the one who has to tell you I was right."
Rex sighed. ’Bro thinks he knows everything...’
Diana looked at him for a long mont.
"Theo," she said, "I have been wrong about a lot of things in my life, but... I have never been wrong about people the way you have been wrong about yourself."
Sothing in Theo’s expression cracked.
The specific fracture in Theo’s expression resembled that of soone who has been holding sothing very heavy for a long ti and has just been told, clearly and finally, that they have been holding it incorrectly.
And then he moved.
Not toward Rex.
Instead, he moved toward Diana.
The movent was quick, coming from a place beyond conscious thought. It was a reaction that happens when soone runs out of words and their body makes a choice their mind hasn’t fully approved yet.
"YOU FUCKING BITCH...!"
His hand shot up and forward because of all the weight that had been building up inside him since dinner started.
But...
Rex was already there.
User Comments
0 comments from readers