Watch Me Watch You ((Closed))

[Katya Love S5]

“You’re avoiding me,” his voice in her ear made her jump and whirl around to face him, her back pressed up against the book shelf. She wasn’t avoiding him intentionally. Besides, how could she avoid him when she didn’t know when he’d show up? She had been really busy with helping Tristan with his video, but for some reason she knew he already knew that. Katya felt her stomach churn as she turned her back on him to put the book she gripped in her hands away. His breath was heavy on the back of her neck and it made her shiver despite the stuffiness of the library. He didn’t say anything more, he just continued to stand behind her and breathe. Katya figured she should say something before he grew too impatient, “How can I be avoiding you when I don’t know if you’ll pop up?” Her voice did not betray her unease. It was strong and held a bored tone as if she had more to do with her day than to quash his insecurities. It was hard to control her fright and uneasiness at his next words, though. “You haven’t been in your usual places this past week.” The idea that he knew where “her usual places” were was highly unnerving. It proved that he had been watching her much more than she had figured. Her breathing now came in short spurts as she busied her trembling fingers with fixing the lopsided books in the shelf.

“I’ve been helping a friend,” she muttered without looking at him. Katya chewed on her bottom lip, thinking she’d give anything to have Tristan in the library with her at this particular moment. The stupid older boy had cancelled on her to go spend some time with some girl or another. Katya let out a shaky breath as he pressed up against her, pushing her into the bookshelves. A small whimper escaped her as he stroked her hair and whispered harshly into her ear that he was “fully aware” that she’d been helping a friend. The words “helping a friend” were spoken with such disdain that Katya felt her head reel from it. She had to bite back the mean remarks that were swirling around openly in her mind. She was still much too scared to say anything more than a “good.” She hoped he picked up the idea that it was good she didn’t have to explain further, not good that he’s been watching her. She was still really unnerved at the idea of being watched, just like she was unnerved that he was still pressing her against the bookshelf. She was stuck between him and the musty books that had once been her saviours and were now mute and… just books. Katya paid no attention to his menacing rambling as she let her hands inch toward a book. Finally, with a desperate look at the book, she latched her fingers onto the binding of it and yanked it off the shelf. The book fell to the floor and fell open, distracting him enough for her to shove him away and make a run for it. Her breathing was laboured as she pushed out of the doors and into the brightly lit corridor.

She hadn’t stopped running just because she left the library. In fact, she wouldn’t stop running until she was a good distance away from the library, but even then she slowed to a fast paced walk. Every now and then she’d look over her shoulder, her eyes darting nervously from left to right; expecting to find him right behind her. Her heart beat was quick, and she could feel it through her shirt. It was an odd sensation, and it made her realize just how frightened she really was. Her palms were sweaty with how hard she was clenching her fists, and she had to control tremors from shooting throughout her whole body. Not once had Katya ever felt so scared. Not once had she ever cursed herself for feeling as scared as she did. What was there to be afraid of? An ignorant guy who has mental problems? Deep down, though, Katya knew her anxiety was caused by the fact that he seemed to know a lot more about her than she did him. It is only natural for a person to feel like they are a target for some psychopath when the other person they are conversing with knows more about the first person than the first person knows about them. That was what Katya was feeling right at that moment as she turned her head to face forward and continue her fast paced walk to a place she could be safe. Where was that place, though? Apparently he knew all of “her usual places.” Where was a place that wasn’t usual for Katya?

The place that her feet were now carrying her to wasn’t her place at all. It was Tristan’s place. It was a place he had shown her when she had agreed to help him film the video project he wanted to do. When he had shown it to her, Katya knew better than to think it was a place that he only shared with her. Tristan’s reputation preceded him. He was known for manipulating girls into thinking they were the only one for him, using them for whatever reason he felt he could, and then dumping them aside. Katya often found herself pitying those girls with how close she had grown to Tristan, but she was grateful that she was not one of them. She felt nothing toward Tristan romantically. He was just a friend who needed her help and coerced her into doing it with that charming but poisonous smile of his. She, quite without realizing she had reached her destination, paused in front of the suit of armour that led to the room Tristan used for his private film collections. Her breath was still short as she looked the suit of armour up and down, trying to remember what he did to make it open. She hadn’t been paying too much attention at the time he took her there, because she figured she wouldn’t ever go there without him with her. Now, as she looked at the dull and lifeless suit of armour, she found herself wishing she had done just that. Paid attention.

Finally, after a painstaking five minutes, Katya reached up and knocked on the suit of armour’s helmet three times. It sprang to life and turned it’s head to the right once and then to the left before staring down at Katya with a quiet curiosity in the air around it. She chewed on her lip before holding up her index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers, then she dropped her ring and pinky fingers to make a two. After that she lifted her left hand, held up four fingers with her five on her right hand. She held her breath as the suit of armour seemed to look her over before stepping aside to reveal a hidden door. A bright, but shaky smile placed itself on Katya’s face as she pushed open the door. Only Tristan would make his password so simple. 4/02. His birthday.

[Katya Love S5]

The room in which had been converted into the vault of the collection that it was, was a marvelous one. The ceiling was high like in most of the castle, but the difference between a normal room and this one was the large white sheet that hung from the vaulted ceiling beautifully. Katya looked up as candles flickered on as she stepped further into the room that felt so sacred. She let out a small breath as she examined the mechanism that Tristan had rigged up with magic back in his third year, or so he told her. The white sheet was connected to a thickly braided rope that once pulled would cause the sheet to fall over the ceiling as a makeshift screen. There was a magically enhanced projector in the centre of the floor, facing upward toward the sheet, so the audience could lie on the floor and look up to watch a movie. Along the walls of the room were hundreds of films in canisters. Tristan had told her they were all muggle movies because the muggles had better movies than the wizards. Katya could understand that because she believed that muggle fashion was ten times better than wizard fashion. She knew that being pureblooded didn’t mean you had to reject all things muggle related, it meant you were confident enough with your upbringing to embrace some of the more useful muggle items and ideas. This was one reason why Katya considered most people in Slytherin bigoted. They did not completely understand what being pure these days meant. They were still stuck on the old notion of ‘purebloods rule, mudbloods drool.’ Honestly, the term mudblood made Katya’s stomach churn and she never used it because she knew that the use of it would inevitably end up in some kind of wizard civil war again and Katya absolutely detested any kind of war.

As Katya reached up and pulled the long rope, the thoughts of why she was there returned to her. Her stomach did a flip as she yanked the rope down, causing the sheet to flourish out and spread over the ceiling. The sound was deafening, a rush of fabric and the sound of air getting caught in the sheet. Katya stood, looking at the bright white sheet before she moved toward the movies and picked out one that had been her mother’s favourite. Gone With the Wind, and although Katya knew it was not her type of movie – she felt comfort from it whenever she watched it. The memory of her mother talking about it made Katya hold onto the movie much more than she would have normally. After all, it was a movie about a completely different country, and one that Katya would have otherwise not have heard of. Now, as she placed the film into the projector and lay down beside it, she felt her mother’s presence as she always did. It was frightful, but lovely at the same time, because she hadn’t felt anything like it in the past two weeks from her change. It had been as if the moment she cut her hair and decided to be social, her mother had disappeared from her completely and Katya couldn’t cling to her memories anymore. The candles had dimmed considerably now, and Katya felt herself closing her eyes as the projector whirled to life and cast the images of the movie across the screen. The audio from the movie was the magically enhanced part of the projector, Tristan had told her. The audio played as if it surrounded them and not just from the projector, which was why Katya jumped when the beginning music roared around her.

For as long as she could, Katya paid attention to the movie. It was long, however, and soon she found her attention going elsewhere. Her eyes still watched the screen as thoughts floated behind them. They were thoughts of him and how he scared her, how he knew her, and how she didn’t even know his name. He seemed to know everything about her. He knew her grandmother had just recently died, he knew she gave up on modeling because of her mother’s death, he knew her birthday, her place of birth, her father’s birthday and her parent’s anniversary. She knew only what he looked like. She didn’t know his house because he was always in plain robes whenever she saw him, and she didn’t know his age, but most all she didn’t know his name. A name was very important when getting to know someone. It showed not only how many people could possibly be like them, but also their personality. Katya, because she shortened her name from Katarina, shows that she doesn’t like to be formal. She hates formalities. She hates shaking someone’s hand on their first meeting. She likes to go out, hang out with the person, and get to know them that way. Screw formalities, and screw the pleasant talk. Get to the good stuff and get to know each other by your actions. If they talk incessantly about themselves, they’re obviously self centered or they are too scared to ask you about yourself. If they don’t talk enough, they’re too timid to really hold onto a potential friend therefore you had to make an extra effort at making them feel comfortable. If the only thing that came out of their mouth was bollocks, then you had an issue with a party animal and a pathological liar. Katya, although she was new to the social scene, had been able to psychoanalyze anyone from a distance she was ten.

The only person she could never really psychoanalyze was herself. She tried, numerous times, to understand where she came from and what made her tick. It was so difficult, because she was so complex that it hurt her to even think about the issues she had with her family and not to mention the issues she had with her non existent friends. Some nights, she’ll lay in bed and think about what made her tick that specific day; but it always delved deeper than that. A simple thought of her being in a bad mood because she hadn’t gotten an E or an O on an essay turned to a complex idea that perhaps she wasn’t good enough for an E or an O, even in a class that she was amazing in. She beat herself up on a daily basis. If the grade wasn’t good enough, she had to get better; if the smile she gave to some guy across the room was faulty, she was to blame and not the putrid smell of her potion that was drifting into her nose and making her cringe unintentionally. Everything was Katya Love’s fault, and never anyone else’s. She had found over the years that it was much easier to blame one’s self than to blame a whole group of people who are just waiting to prove you wrong. Katya often took the easy way out of things, because she didn’t want to have to deal with the messy clean up of the difficult way out. Which led her back to her present problem. Was there an easy way out of this him issue? How pathetic, she was referring to the problem as the him issue because she simply had no other name to call it. There was no way she knew the guy’s name and therefore she was in the dark at who he really was, and that frightened Katya.

Her mind whirled with names that she knew, but none fit him. None of them. So, growing tired with fear and boredom; Katya let her eyes fall shut as the movie continued to play on the screen. She had lost track of what was going on about fourty minutes ago, and she probably wouldn’t wake up again to see what was going on. She was wrong. When she woke up again twenty minutes later, she wasn’t alone, and she knew it before she even opened her eyes.

((Tristan will now enter this post.))

[Tristan MacCay]

“What’s going on with you, Tristan? You’re the one who asked me here, remember?”

“Yes, yeah, I remember. It’s just -…”

“Yeah, I know. Katya. You know, next time you ask a girl out, maybe you should leave the thoughts of an anti-social loser in your dorm room.” Natalie kicked her feet into her shoes and stood up from the bank of the lake. Tristan, who normally would have stopped her from leaving, just laid back on his elbows and watched her go. Her long black hair swayed as she made her way toward the castle, and Tristan was surprised to see he wasn’t jumping up and chasing after her. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Natalie, he did – well, as much as he could like someone. His mind had just been elsewhere for the whole date. He kept thinking about how he bailed on Katya to spend time with Natalie who probably wouldn’t matter to him after that night. They were supposed to be working on his video, and he bailed on her. Katya had only been nice enough to help him, and this was how he treated her? Dumping all the work on her? It was eating him up inside, and that was the precise reason why he didn’t chase after Natalie. Tristan sat up with his elbows on his knees and looked at the setting sun which was sending colours across the lake’s surface. He didn’t know how long it had been until he realized the whole sky was a dark navy blue. Gathering his things, Tristan stood from the bank and followed the path that Natalie had taken earlier to head into the castle. He contemplated finding Katya to apologize to her about bailing on his project, but figured she would have retreated to wherever it was she went to after the sun went down. So, with this thought, Tristan made his way to his hideaway. The moment he reached the suit of armor, he knew that the room wasn’t empty. Quickly, he gave the password and then pushed open the door to the grand room, ready to chew out whoever had entered his domain without his knowledge.

“You’re luc-…” He stopped, though, his rant dwindling away as he saw who was curled into a ball on the floor. The screen was pulled out and Gone With the Wind was playing on it from the projector on the floor. The girl wasn’t watching it, though. She was asleep. That became evident when Tristan set his things on the table and took a seat beside her. He watched the movie for ten minutes or so, and then he felt her stir beside him. “I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.” Tristan spoke the lines from memory, as he took his eyes off the screen and looked down into Katya’s. She stared up at him with silence and then without warning, she move her head into his lap and curled up next to him like a frightened puppy. Tristan sat, startled, for a moment before gaining his composure and moving his hand to stroke her head. It was so weird, because Tristan never let anyone mean anything to him and here he was, holding a 13 year old because she seemed to be in need. It wasn’t because he liked her, as in romantically, it was because over the past two weeks they had worked together; Tristan had developed a brotherly over protective feeling toward her. She hardly told him anything about her life, but she didn’t have to. He knew the story just like everyone else did.

The only sound was the movie in the background, and then finally Tristan said, “Did you come just to see me, or were you hiding from someone?” Perhaps the question wasn’t one she wanted to answer, because the moment he asked it; she clawed into his skin and held on as she started to shake. Tristan’s eyes grew wide and he pulled her up so she was sitting in front of him. Tears were pouring from her eyes and she looked like she could hardly form a sentence. She finally said something, though, and when she said it; Tristan had to strain his ears to hear her.

[Katya Love S5]

Katya laid still, her eyes closed, as she tried to steady her breath. He had found her. Somehow, he had figured out where Tristan’s secret video room was and was here to harm her. Her stomach did flips, thousands of them. Her hands began to shake and she had to keep the tears behind her eye lids. When his voice broke the silence, Katya felt like she was soaring. She opened her eyes to see Tristan staring down at her, quoting the scene of the movie that was playing above them. Relief washed over her as she realized it wasn’t him, it was Tristan. Her heart returned to its normal beat as she let out a huge sigh. “My favourite line in this whole entire movie is ‘Observe my hands my dear...I could tear you to pieces with them. And I'd do it if it'd take Ashley out of your mind forever. But it wouldn't. So I'll remove him from your mind this way: I'll put my hands so, one on each side of your head, and I'll smash your skull between them like a walnut. And that'll block him out.’ It’s a bunch of bollocks, though. You can’t block someone out at all. Even if you smash your skull like a walnut.” Katya looked up into Tristan’s blue eyes as she shrugged, “I should know, I tried for seven years.” She moved her head into Tristan’s lap and curled up next to him. It might have been awkward, but it didn’t feel awkward. It felt right, she felt safe when he didn’t shove her off. She had developed sibling like feelings for Tristan. He had fast become someone she looked to for advice, protection, or just some brutal honesty. Right now, she was looking for protection. For protection from the one thing that had her scared enough to run back home. Could Tristan give it to her? Could he wrap his arms around her and block out all things treacherous? No, because you could never block out anything.

She could feel him stroking her head as the movie continued to play behind them. Katya embraced this moment, trying to push everything that made her uneasy out of her mind. It was a fruitless attempt, but she made an effort at it anyway. She was numbing her mind to the point where she could fall asleep, when Tristan broke the silence between them with a question. A question that Katya didn’t want to answer. She made this apparent by digging her nails into his leg and shaking in terror. Her eyes welled with tears as he lifted her up so she could sit in front of him. Tears fell down her cheeks as he waited for her answer, and when she came up with one; it stayed on her lips until it tumbled out clumsily. “Him.” The word most likely meant nothing to Tristan, because he didn’t know who “him” was, but that shouldn’t have mattered because the word held so much terror. Katya wiped at her tears before she tried to get a further explanation out. She shook and she began to feel like she was going to pass out, so she leaned forward into Tristan, who pulled her around so she was facing the same direction he was. “For the past three weeks or so, after my huge social turn around, some guy has been popping up all over the place. He was really nice at first, talking to me about random things, but I never learned his name and I never told him mine. Then, one day he calls me by my name; you know, that’s not too weird, but then he started to talk about things I’ve never told anyone else. And… today…” Katya shivered as she went limp in Tristan’s arms.

“Today he pushed me into a book shelf and was being, really creepy. He was… jealous, I’d say, of how much time I’ve been spending with you. And here’s the big thing that has me… like this,” Katya closed her eyes as tears fell some more, “he’s been watching. He knows where my usual places are. He knows nearly everything about my daily schedule.”

[Tristan MacCay]

Tristan smirked as Katya recited a line that Rhett tells Scarlett about how he’d squash Ashley from her mind if he had to. It was a good part of the movie, and Tristan wondered if it was her favourite part because of the relation to her life. “I would have thought your favourite part would be when Scarlett returns to Tara and gives the whole ‘as God as my witness’ speech. You strike me as a strong woman like Scarlett O’Hara.” He smirked again, knowing she’d catch the undertone of him calling her selfish and spoiled; just like Scarlett was. He was only teasing her, though, he didn’t really think of her as spoiled or selfish because he knew her better than that. Whatever Katya did, she did for other people- even if she didn’t let them know that. That was where they were completely different. Tristan didn’t do something unless it benefited him in some way, but Katya would do anything as long as nothing harmful came from it. She had a caring heart that she disguised and guarded well; something that Tristan never had to do, something that he never planned on doing. It was tearing Katya a part to care so much, and that was evident. Even as she tried to isolate herself, Katya was caring too much about whatever and it was tearing her apart and inside out. Tristan smiled softly, “Perhaps it’s time for you to stop trying to block that someone out,” he tucked her hair behind her ear as she moved to sit up. He watched as tears fell out of her eyes and she tried to pull an answer out of the bottom of her stomach. As she mouthed her answer, Tristan leaned back with his hands behind him, holding him up. Finally, one word. Him. Then she leaned against him, and Tristan pulled his arm around her. She felt so limp, so fragile. Before he could ask what she meant, she elaborated.

What she told him, he didn’t like. After she finished, Tristan sat in silence as he tried to wrap his head around what Katya was telling him. “He’s been following you? He knows all your secrets?” Tristan let out a small sigh as he shook his head, “I know… you’re going to hate me for saying this, but I think it might all be in your head, Kat. I mean,” he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, “this school is rather small. If I’m able to know all the fifth year girls by name, this guy can sure as hell know the right stuff about you. Especially if he is a pureblood and can look you up in a book, or has parents who know a lot about your family.” Tristan was immediately kicking himself for saying this, because it was painfully obvious that this was really scaring Katya. He couldn’t help it, though, this was how he dealt with everything that was quite… frightful or unnerving. “Maybe he’s just a guy who has a crush on you and picks up every little detail he can.” Tristan, even as he said this, knew that wasn’t much better than what Katya was thinking. The one thing that did bother him, however, was the fact that this guy had gotten violent with Katya.