Julia Lelieveld and the battle with the underworld
~11~

And before I looked up I knew who it was. The bad feeling in my stomach told me that. It was Lucas. I looked at him, his gaze was unfathomable. I didn’t know what had happened yesterday. Perhaps his father had been right that he was changing. Yet somehow my fighting spirit came out when I was with him. The hatred I had against him.

The elevator started moving, but before we were even one floor up, the lights flashed and the elevator shook for a moment.

My instincts were on edge, what happened? But before I could answer that myself, the elevator stopped and the lights and the wrong music went out. The emergency lighting shone a gloomy light in the elevator. Shit, this sucked.

There I was, stuck in the elevator. That precisely the power went out while Lucas and I were in the elevator.

Lucas walked to the control panel and pressed the yellow button with a bell on it.

Nothing.

This one didn’t even work. Then it would be a major power outage. Lucas slammed the control panel hard, perhaps hoping it would suddenly work. But alas, the lights stayed off. I saw him look annoyed. He reached into his pockets and sat against the back wall of the elevator.

I took out my cell phone to see if I had coverage, I was afraid of that. No network.

I followed Lucas’ lead and sat down. Because of the small space our feet almost touched. I moved a little to the side so that I would be as far away from him as possible. Not that it mattered much, there was barely a foot between us.

I looked at Lucas, he was staring straight ahead. He seemed very concentrated.

I wondered what was on his mind.

I still couldn’t understand how bad he was. How it had flipped so terribly the moment I could control the fifth element.

We clicked before then. I had even felt good with him at times. Especially when Eva had had her practice match and I was left alone in the gym, after a day full of events and emotions. One day Sandra confronted me with Mom’s death and Dad’s work. That Officer Jerry told me about the gangs and that I had a fight with Dad. When Lucas had comforted me in the empty gym and at that moment it felt so damn good. I still didn’t understand. Now all I felt was disgust for him. He had unceremoniously pushed me off the roof. He enjoyed someone else’s misery and pain.

And now I was locked in the elevator with him. I felt the anger begin to grow in my chest again. How my heart started beating faster and my breathing became heavier. Unconsciously I tightened my jaw. My hands clenched into fists.

I tried to look at my lap to calm down. I still found it hard to have these hateful feelings, but I couldn’t stop them.

“I won’t hurt you,” Lucas said through clenched teeth.

I looked at him vigorously and said, “I’m not afraid you’ll do something, I’m afraid I want to hurt you.”

He looked at me inquiringly.

“How ironic, then you know how I always feel when I’m around you. And since that is very often…” And he shrugged.

“Why are you making it so hard on yourself? You really don’t have to be around me that often,” I said irritatedly.

He let out a sarcastic laugh. “As if it were that easy.”

I looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that my feelings are very intense, despite my feeling of wanting to destroy you, I can’t stay away from you. You are like a magnet, I am drawn to you and when I am not around you I somehow feel incomplete. Some sick side effect of an e-warrior not allowed to destroy his prey, which is ordered by the Evil of Evil.”

He looked as if he was in a lot of pain, his jaw tense and his eyes staring at infinity.

Suddenly I felt a pang of pity run through my body. What was that? How could he make me feel like that? He is my enemy and yet I sympathized with him. Perhaps because I found it so difficult to have these feelings of hatred. To restrain myself from harming him. That was new to me. I had never felt anything like it before and I didn’t like it. But I was afraid it would be part of my new me. Since evil is after me and I have to defend myself by force. My stomach turned at these thoughts. Ever since Mama had been killed so violently, I had developed an aversion to it. And now it would become a part of my life?

I turned my face away from Lucas and looked at the wall of the elevator, I felt my eyes start to sting. No, I had to hold back my tears. Something I had unfortunately become very good at. I wrinkled my nose and blinked a few times and sighed deeply. I closed my eyes and counted to 5 in my mind. This always helped, I felt calm again and the lump in my throat and stinging eyes were gone. I looked straight ahead again and saw Lucas turn his head quickly.

What was I supposed to say to this? Looks like he was having a hard time with it too. Somehow he couldn’t stay away from me. Renzo had that feeling too, but in a very different way. Not to destroy me, just the opposite. If only I was stuck in the elevator with Renzo, instead I was stuck with his evil brother. Suddenly I realized that Renzo has also been in his shoes, he was also raised to harm me. But Renzo has repressed it and chosen not to be like that anymore. Now I knew what to say to Lucas.

“You could change.”

He looked up and looked me straight in the eye. I didn’t know what I saw in his eyes. Confusion? astonishment? anger?

“What do you mean?”

I think he knew exactly what I meant.

“You could turn your back on your upbringing and faith.”

He sniffed and looked at me coldly. “That’s the greatest betrayal you can do, it’s not for me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t, okay?!”

He started to get angry, his voice got louder. But I didn’t want to let it rest.

“What do you mean? That you can’t?”

He clenched his jaw again and looked sideways at the wall of the elevator. I kept looking at him, I couldn’t read his face. I waited for him to say something first.

After two long quiet minutes, he turned his head again and looked at me.

“To break with our faith, our promises and everything you believe in takes a lot of willpower. Not many e-warriors can do it. You lose a part of yourself that will never come back. You are no longer complete, because the faith will never return. As an e-warrior you need a certain trigger to be able to change.” He raised his shoulders. “Like I said, not many e-warriors can do it.”

“A trigger?” I asked.

He nodded. “That something happens that gives you such an aversion to your own standards and values, that you become so torn inside that you can no longer live with them, only then would you be able to break with everything your life stands for.”

I got a bad feeling in my stomach when Lucas said this. What would Renzo have gone through to make such a decision? Because if I understood Lucas correctly, you wouldn’t be able to change until something terrible had happened.

“So you understand that it is not possible just like that, even though at the moment it is very difficult for me that my own faith is playing a sick game with me. I can’t help it.” He shrugged again.

There was something else that gnawed at me, something he’d talked about.

“What do you mean by losing a piece of yourself?”

“Something for which you train and educate all your life. Everything revolves around that one belief. If you turn your back on that, you lose everything you live for.”

I thought to myself what it was like to be with Renzo. How intensely and violently we reacted to each other, precisely because he had turned his back on his faith. When we were together we forgot everything around us. Only us together in the world. You could see such feelings as a gain, perhaps it outweighed the loss he had experienced.

“What are you thinking of?”

I looked at Lucas in surprise. Why did he ask that?

“Why?” I asked him.

“I can see that your brain is working overtime, I’m curious what your view is on what I just told you. Since we are in an honest mood after all.”

He laughed faintly, he was right. This was the most honest and somewhat normal conversation we’d ever had, if you could call it normal.

“I wonder, if you turn your back on your own faith, if you choose to do so, how much of a loss is it. And to what extent does that weigh up against the other feelings you get in return?”

I looked at him questioningly. He stared at me for a moment and then drew his eyebrows together. He shook his head. “What do you mean? What do you get in return?”

Oh, he didn’t know. In itself logical, given how Renzo and Lucas interacted. And probably that was no different than with other e-warriors who had turned their backs on their faith. So it was not known what the changes were. This was also all I knew. Could I tell him this? Or was that against the rules? He still looked at me expectantly.

I sighed, hoping I was doing the right thing with this.

“When you kissed me at the emergency exit of the gym, it was unbearable for me. The moment your lips touched my lips, my head seemed to split in two.” I thought back to that moment. A shiver ran through me. What a bizarre turn. That I was now talking to Lucas about this when we were so close together in an elevator. No possibility to leave.

“You wanted to hurt me on purpose, and because you’re an e-warrior and I’m a practitioner, it had such a violent reaction that it nearly killed me.”

I looked at my knees for a moment. I heard Lucas clear his throat and shift awkwardly.

“Sorry about that.” He looked at me sincerely. I looked back wide-eyed. Did he really mean this? I think so.

“How did it feel for you then?”

He seemed to think for a moment. He looked uneasy.

“At that moment I felt unbeatable. It seemed like I could take on the whole world. Supreme.” He still looked at me uncomfortably.

I nodded. I couldn’t replace the words to respond to that.

It felt weird talking to Lucas about this.

“The difference between you and Renzo is that when Renzo and I kiss, it’s indescribable. There is no better feeling.” Now I was the one looking awkward. He looked at me with a certain look I couldn’t fathom.

“So what I was just trying to say is that you get different feelings for it.”

He still looked at me with that look. I looked back, not knowing what would happen. He looked away with difficulty.

“Right, that’s something I didn’t expect. Turning your back on your faith is already something very extreme, but then just getting or developing such feelings for someone you otherwise had such hatred for. I really can’t believe anything like that right now.”

He looked at me incomprehensibly. I shrugged my shoulders.

“This is what Renzo and I experience, I don’t know if it’s the same with everyone.”

He looked at me with that look again. It seemed exasperating. As if his heart was being torn apart.

Now that we were on the honest and uncomfortable tour, I could safely ask him.

“How did you feel when you came to see me after Eva’s practice match?”

“At that time you were not yet a practitioner, but I was very much attracted to you. Not with hatred like I feel since you changed. But with feelings of affection.” He seemed ashamed.

“I’m not used to having such feelings.” He raised his shoulders.

“I was attracted to you too, but that has disappeared since the elements are inside me.” I looked at him regretfully. At that moment I was really attracted to him. Somehow we clicked. And now I have these hateful feelings. How complicated it could be.

“Have you never been in a relationship then?”

He looked at me inquiringly. “Yes, but that consisted only of lust, not feelings. In my upbringing I have never experienced or seen love.”

I looked at him incomprehensibly. A pang of sadness went through my heart.

“What do you mean?”

“My father and mother do not have a good relationship, they do not show love and they have never shown me. I don’t know any better.”

How awful. How can a child grow up without experiencing love? How can he feel love for someone else? How damaged can someone be?

“That’s why it took me by surprise when I had certain feelings for you, something I’d never felt before.”

“No wonder you don’t see how bad it all has been, what you’ve done. You don’t know any better,” I said dejectedly. My feelings overtook me. I could have cried a bit. What a pity that someone could not experience love, only had bad feelings. I turned my head and closed my eyes for a moment. I knew there were crazy people in the world, but not giving love to your child is a very bad form of emotional abuse. And the worst part was that he didn’t even realize it himself. He didn’t know any better.

“I don’t understand your reactions sometimes, why you’re so angry.”

“Angry? You pushed me off a roof!” I said in disbelief.

“That’s part and parcel of being a practitioner and battling an e-warrior. That’s what I’ve always been taught, one of the two won’t survive. That’s nature.”

“Nature? Lucas, listen to what you’re saying. That’s impossible! You can’t just kill someone because your father taught you to, can you? You really do know the difference between good and evil. Not everything your father taught you is true. Why else is there the law? Prisons? To punish people who don’t follow the rules. You can’t just act like that without being punished. Even worse, without any guilt at all.”

He looked at me wide-eyed. He shook his head and looked away.

“You confuse me.”

“That’s only good, you really have to think about the norms and values ​​that you have been taught, those are not the norms and values ​​that most people have. They are the norms and values ​​of bad people, people who are in prison.” I looked down at my hands resting on my knees.

I couldn’t say anything more, what a bizarre conversation this was. I couldn’t get my head around it. Was he naive or was it really ignorance? Lucas was also quiet. He, too, seemed lost in his own thoughts.

After a few minutes I suddenly felt a hard jolt and the elevator came back to life with flashing lights.

We looked at each other for a moment, it was different than usual. This conversation we had had about our feelings, experiences and norms and values ​​had brought about something. And I couldn’t tell if it was positive or negative.