Chapter 140 Special Elective

Chapter 140 Special Elective
Skylar's POV

I chose a chair near the middle with Elias beside me, Ryan was across the table.

Professor Hale swept in a minute after the bell, dropping her bag on the desk without any of the usual preamble.
She picked up the book. “Today, we're starting with Heathcliff.” she smiled. “One of the most argued-over characters in English literature.”
She walked slowly around the front of the room. “Heathcliff is cruel. He's vengeful, he's obsessive, he's capable of causing enormous suffering yet the novel also gives us a man whose actions are rooted in intense love, rejection, grief and humiliation.”

"Wuthering Heights," she announced, writing it across the board. "Tell me your thoughts. Don't hold back.”
A few hands went up. I kept mine down, glancing sideways at Ryan, who was leaning back in his chair, his eyes were already tracking the room.

"Skylar." Professor Hale nodded at me. "You look like you have thoughts."
I sat up a little straighter. "I think Heathcliff's whole arc gets romanticized way more than it should be. People read his obsession with Catherine as passion, but if you actually look at what he does, digging up her grave, manipulating an entire second generation just to punish people who wronged him decades earlier, that's not love, it felt more like revenge to me."

She moved back to the board, writing down two words. ‘LOVE & POSSESSION.’
“Hmm.” She turned back to me. “So your saying…someone loving another person so intensely that they become obsessed with them, isn’t a morally good love?”
“Yes, I don't think obsession can be called love just because the person feels strongly.”
She nodded. “Why?”
I paused for a second, trying to gather my words together. “Because love should still leave the other person with a choice. The moment you start believing that loving someone gives you a right to control them, it stops being love and becomes possession.”

"Interesting." Professor Hale wrote something down. "Anyone disagree?"
"I disagree." Ryan's voice cut in before anyone else could raise a hand.
"You're judging him by what he did after he lost her. That's not the same as judging the feeling itself."
I turned in my seat to face him fully. "The feeling doesn't exist in a vacuum. What he did is the evidence of what the feeling actually was."

"Or it's evidence of what happens when something real gets denied for twenty years." He shrugged. "You don't get to spend your whole life wanting one person and come out the other side reasonable about it."
"So obsession's just love that got interrupted?" I rolled my eyes.
"Basically, yeah."
Professor Hale relaxed on the edge of the table.

"This shouldn't be an argument. Manipulating Isabella into marrying him just to hurt her brother, trapping the second Catherine into marrying his own dying son out of spite. Ryan, that's plain cruelty."
"Nobody said cruelty and love can't exist in the same person." Ryan finally sat forward, resting his elbows on the desk. "You want love to always look gentle….It doesn't. Sometimes it looks like refusing to let go of the one thing that made your life make sense, even after it's gone. Even after everyone tells you it's wrong."

"That's not love, that's possession." I scoffed.
"Is there a difference?" He tilted his head. "You're acting like wanting someone completely, refusing to share them, refusing to let anyone else have what's yours, is some kind of moral failure. At least Heathcliff never pretended his love was clean."
"Wanting someone completely isn't the same as owning them," I shot back. "Love that requires ownership isn't love."

"Now that," Professor Hale interjected, holding up a hand before Ryan could respond, "is exactly the kind of question I want us actually sitting with. Let's widen it." She turned to the board, writing beneath love and possession. Is love inherently possessive?

"Ryan," Professor Hale said. "You clearly have a position, defend it properly."
He didn't hesitate. "Fine. I think wanting to possess someone is just an honest extension of loving them. You don't fall for someone and feel neutral about other people being close to them. If you actually love someone, some part of you wants to be the only one who gets to. Anyone who says they don't feel that at all is either lying or they never really wanted the person in the first place."

"Real love trusts the other person enough to let them exist outside of you.” I interjected. It doesn't need to control who they talk to or how they spend their time or who else gets close to them."
"Trust is easy to talk about in theory," Ryan said. "It's a lot harder when you're actually watching someone you care about hand pieces of themselves to people who don't deserve it."
His eyes never left mine, pinning me in my place.

"So your answer," Professor Hale said, "is that jealousy and love are functionally the same thing."
"My answer is that pretending they're separate is naive," Ryan said. "Possessiveness isn't the opposite of love. It's what love looks like when it's honest about what it actually wants."
"And what happens," I said, "to the person on the other end of all that honesty? The one being possessed?"

He didn't answer right away, something behind his expression flickered, before he leaned back again, the ease sliding back over his face. "Depends whether they wanted it too."
Professor Hale paused, thinking. “Can love become so intense that it changes into something morally dangerous?”
“Yes.” Ryan answered immediately.
I looked at him, that answer surprised me.
“Why?”

He shrugged. “Because anything taken too far can become dangerous but that doesn't mean the feeling itself is wrong.”
“So obsession isn't inherently immoral?” she raised a brow.
He shook his head. “Not by itself.”
I stared at him. “Seriously?” I sighed, getting tired of the arguments. “Obsession means you've lost perspective, Ryan.”
He chuckled. “Or….it means you care enough that you don't want to let go.”

Professor Hale let the silence sit for a moment before finally speaking again, a small, satisfied smile tugging at her mouth. "I think Skylar's made the stronger case here, honestly. Love that requires control isn't trust." She paused. “Skylar's position is stronger because she protects individual autonomy. Ryan's argument is useful because it challenges the assumption that every form of interference is automatically immoral.”

She turned back to the board, tapping the chalk lightly against Heathcliff's name. "This is exactly what philosophy is supposed to do. Force you to actually examine the things you've been calling love your whole life." She looked around the room. “We've moved from a fictional character to questions about freedom, intention, autonomy, morality and the limits of love. There isn't a perfect answer, but there are better arguments.”

A few students murmured in agreement, and I let out a slow breath, some of the tension in my shoulders finally easing.
I glanced toward Ryan, ready to enjoy the small victory, and found him already watching me, that same look from a moment ago still sitting there like the professor's verdict hadn't touched him at all.

I glared at him anyway, just for good measure….he only smiled.