44. [and i don't want the world to see me, 'cause i don't think that they'd understand~]
[It shouldn't have been that surprising. Eve knew something was wrong, that she was hurtling towards a breakdown and was powerless to stop it, but like most people she'd made a conscious effort to ignore the signs. Maybe she believed that through the power of positive thinking she could heal herself, that if she surrounded herself with all the trappings of mundanity the fantasy would become reality. That's not how the real world works though, and instead despite her best efforts the beginning of the end came from one of the last places the First Woman expected it to happen.
She was sitting in her Developmental Psychology class, taking notes, when the lecture topic shifted to the subject of religion. From a purely psychological perspective, belief and faith were tricky things, and this professor apparently felt that any good future teacher needed to know how to deal when kids started asking about such things. It started simply enough - how many students believed in God and why - and that's when the questions started. 'Think of the world around you the disasters. If God exists, why does he not act? Why does he not participate and intervene? Why is he content to just watch?' The questions, blunt as they were, echoed in her mind, bringing with it things she'd been asking herself for months. Queries that she knew she could never ask out loud, because those closest to her would never understand.
The rest of the class passed in a blur, and soon enough Eve found herself standing out front of the church. She wanted desperately to go inside and engage the priest in a conversation about her current crisis of faith, but couldn't force herself to give voice to those feelings. Instead, she ended up walking aimlessly. She was missing a class at the moment, but she didn't really care. What was the point of going to school when some random whim could send her to the place where her next death might be waiting, or to some other ridiculously life-disrupting event? It was just like she told Samael, nothing in her life was under her control anymore. She was little more than a puppet, and the only times things ever felt right anymore was when she gave up on any facade of control she thought she had and just let others decide her fate. Those times when she was wrapped up in someones arms, breathless, unable to think, and even when she just went along with the crowd.
It's one thing she loved so much about being in Asmodeus' presence, that rush of giving in to hidden desires. The fact that the true object of the majority of those repressed urges was entirely off-limits added a level of illicitness that she couldn't get past, much as she wanted to. In her eyes, Asmodeus was safe in that he made her feel comforted and even loved; Samael was danger incarnate, pervasive, seductive, and constantly in her head tempting her no matter how bad she knew he was. She couldn't just tell people these things; if she mentioned wanting to avoid Samael and spend more time with Ash it would raise eyebrows. Plus, if Samael got wind that she was ignoring him he'd probably make it his personal quest to torment her even more. It was a hopeless situation, and all she could do was hope for things to change even though she knew it wouldn't work.
She was fighting a losing battle, powerless against the tide. All she could do was plaster a smile on her face and fake it until she made that faux-happiness a reality.]