A/N: This was part of my creative writing class' final. Inspired kind of by Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was a clear winter night, with a cold and crisp breeze. A man, tall and darkly cloaked, with rough, crude, yet slightly handsome features and a suspicious glint in his eye, stepped out of the bar onto the street. He looked up towards the faint, pale stars in the sky and grunted, then looking down at his pocket watch for the time. It was almost time. He wanted to get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. The man’s name was Dmitri.

He saw a tattered form running towards him in the distance. The face was obscured by the dim light of a gas lamp, but he knew immediately who it was by the way the figure approached, hiding a meek limp with a light natural air of modest elegance, an air that always intrigued him—even now. He knew she would not have missed this opportunity for the world. Her frantic footsteps increased in volume as she approached.

In a few seconds, he finally saw her pleasing face, rouged with the effort of having run so quickly. A couple locks of her blonde, curly hair were askew, but though her overall appearance seemed disheveled, it was well hidden by her elegant poise.

“Dmitri,” she panted, walking now slowly towards him, “I thought I would never hear from you again. Thank God I--”

“You may never see me after this night,” he stated apathetically, eyeing her pretty features. “It all depends on whether I can get to St. Petersburg on time.”

“Never again?” she repeated, her eyes widening in panic as she stepped closer. “Dmitri, what are you saying? You can’t leave!”

“It is just the way of things,” he said, blankly, looking at his watch again. The young woman in her increasing distress irrationally snatched the watch and threw it away. She didn’t mean for it to, but it landed in a gutter and became irretrievable. Dmitri flashed his eyes to her, now suddenly furious.

“That was an expensive watch!”

The woman glared at him. “Your watch?” she replied raggedly, beginning to shake in anger. “Is that all you can think of? Oh, God! What happened to the heart you used to have? How can you tell me so calmly that we may never meet again?”

“I was a fool back then, when I said I loved you,” he sighed, feeling something silently and uneventfully die in his heart. The woman looked at him in shock.

“What? You no longer…you…” Dmitri only stood in silent fuming, grieving his quiet loss.

“When did you stop?”

“Perhaps a month ago.”

She stood, silent, distraught, and speechless. “And-and do you take me as a fool for still loving you?”

“Perhaps. Every lover is a fool. It must be worse for a woman—women are less rational.”

The woman stood silent as her anger and shock were kindled even more. Her features hardened and she slapped him across the face.

“You’re the fool! You know that my mother is sick, and I left her side so that I might see you again! You knew I would come, you selfish, empty-hearted, faithless—“

“I don’t have time for the names,” he said coldly, pushing her off of him and throwing her easily to the ground—she had begun to beat him as she fell into this fit of rage—“I have to leave for St. Petersburg before eleven o’clock. I have a train to catch.”

The woman looked up to him with deeply hurt eyes as she began to cry. “Did you ask me to come so that I might be abused? You wicked, wicked creature!” she said, lunging towards him again. “I loved you, Dmitri! I waited every day with bated breath for any sign of you—you never wrote me, never, after the first month you were away!”

“I wrote you every week.”

“I hardly consider those pieces of scraps to be letters!” she cried, beating his leg. He shook her off his leg with some difficulty. She lay on the pavement, sobbing on the gravel. “Thoughtless, cold man! You never gave me peace of mind!”

“Get off of me,” he growled, pushing away her reaching hand with his foot. “Quit acting like a little girl. I’d like to remember you as the graceful woman I thought you were.”

“I’m no girl,” she retorted quietly, rising to her knees. “And you certainly are no man. You’re not even human. Did I do something wrong, that you should desire to never see me again, to abandon me to a world full of strangers? You were the light of my eyes! Did I ever mean anything more than just a stupid, irrational little girl to you?” She clung to his arm, her begging eyes attached to his empty ones. He frowned and paused, about to speak, but then suddenly, a brief moment of a very pleasant memory of the two of them just last spring flashed into his mind. He remembered the way she had laughed, how she had looked… his eyes softened for one moment, but then as reality clouded his brain once more, they hardened again.

“Yes. I loved you, once,” he mumbled, feeling as though he could have felt that way again…but there could be no going back now. He had a deal with Nikitov that had to be made tomorrow, or else he would become bankrupt. To give up such a proposal for a slight renewal of the feeling that had died months ago would be foolhardy. He reached into the pocket where his watch had been, but then realized that the watch was no more.

“I have no way to tell the time,” he finally said with open resentment. “I may be running late.”

She glared at him with eyes full of spite, pain and tears.

“Good,” she whispered fiercely, her eyes suddenly becoming bitter and her grip harsh. “I pray that you never make it to St. Petersburg, and that you become miserable and alone, with no consolation but your heartless money and vicious, pitiless heart, cruel monster!”

She spat in his face and began to run off, but he grabbed her arm before she could get away, and pulled her roughly to him by her wrist.

“Let me go,” she hissed, kicking him and hitting him, spitting on him as well.

“Not so fast,” he snarled. “I didn’t bring you here to insult you. I am not nearly as heartless as you think.”

“Ah! Really? Oh, what a kind and stunning heart you have!”

“I want to explain my situation.”

“And why,” she said, panting from her failing effort to escape, “should it matter to me what your ‘situation’ is?”

“It concerns you and your family.”

“And why would it?”

“We were planning to be married once.”

“Yes, once,” she said, finally surrendering to his strength, “but I see the worth of your promises.”

“I struck a deal with a fine man I met in Serbia last month,” he said, becoming businesslike, “and he said he could give me a fair sum of money—enough to live comfortably on for a good while. It could pay for your mother’s medical bills.”

“Mama would sooner die than accept money from you after she hears about this insult.”

Dmitri pushed her lightly off.

“I can get this money for you; however, I would have to work for him for three months in St. Petersburg. If I miss this opportunity, I would be bankrupt…and I would be back in Serbia for an indefinite amount of time.”

“I don’t care a thing for your situation! Just let me go!”

“You won’t last two days without me,” Dmitri said, disgruntled and sullen. “I’m doing this for you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” the woman hissed. “Though I might die of heartbreak, you’re already dead.”

Suddenly, the two heard music faintly playing. It was a sweet song on a violin, only one part in many to a song they both recalled strongly.

“Do you hear that, Dmitri?” the woman stated with solemn calmness. “This is the song we danced to when we first met.”

“Yes, I remember it.”

“I was wearing a cream white dress and a red ribbon in my hair.”

“I remember it well,” he stated with blank coldness.

“You were very gentlemanly…it was before you got wrapped up in business and money,” she pointedly added with a tinge of bitterness.

“I am not wrapped up in money,” Dmitri retorted.

“It only shows how much of a fool you really are.”

“I’m more responsible than last we met.”

“Perhaps; it depends on how you define responsible. Throwing away our engagement without any notice does not say ‘responsible’ to me.”

“Don’t question my judgment! You don’t understand--”

“Oh, I understand. I know what it’s like to be poor. I also know what it’s like to be alive. It’s all a matter of choice—you’ve chosen avarice and I’ve chosen poverty. You love money now, and though I see the selfish, greedy man you really are, I… I…” She faltered as tears filled her eyes. “I still love you, Dmitri, and I think I always will.”

“Then you are the real fool,” he grunted, again reaching for the phantom pocket watch to check the time, only to realize this and rest his arms aimlessly at his sides.

The woman looked at him, swaying lightly as though she might soon swoon. She had no words left to say. The violin’s song reached a cadence then quietly continued.

“So, I suppose this is goodbye, then,” she finally said. Her quiet words, oddly enough, clambered wrongly in Dmitri’s ears, like a dance step not quite in step.

“It would seem that way,” he remarked, feeling a horrible emotion growing inside him.

“There is no convincing you to change your mind? Not even one shred of you loves me? Your old self has completely died?”

“It has,” he spat coldly, the strange feeling growing uncomfortably as he looked in her eyes. Her eyes were such a queer blue-black in the yellow light, which made him stop and investigate them. Something in him played strikingly out of tune.

“Then we have nothing left to say,” she said, turning away and hiding her tears. Her elegant poise was faltering. “Go pursue your glittering dust. May you rust with your gold.”

She then escaped from his reach as quickly as a fleeting breeze. Dmitri watched her go a little while, wrestling in his heart with the strange feeling. It didn’t seem right to let her go. The violin played the final cadence and a large clock chimed half past ten. He had time to go, but his premonition was too strong. Last minute doubts arose. Did he want to go? Could he go? As he watched her run and disappear, memories came rushing back to him, and inert emotions were awakened in a dizzying panic.

“Alisa!” he suddenly found himself crying out after her, looking frantically for where she had gone. He ran desperately down the street. “Alisa! Alisa! Come back!”

His words echoed vainly in the empty street. Dmitri almost ran after her, but then stopped and gave himself a moment to gain rationality again. Why was he pursuing a random second of feelings and memories? She said herself that there was nothing left say. It was obvious that they, as a couple, were completely finished. How could he give up such an opportunity for wealth for such a fleeting feeling?

Dmitri calmly and simply closed his hands into fists and put them in his pockets. He looked at the clock and sighed heavily, letting the feelings of yesteryear pass through him without consequence. His years of foolish love were over.

When he decided this was the right conclusion, Dmitri then departed the opposite way. The gas lamps were being extinguished steadily as he headed with decent haste towards the train station, wishing he still had his pocket watch to check the time with.