Pomegranate Seeds
"The saddest word in the whole wide world is the word almost. He was almost in love. She was almost good for him. He almost stopped her. She almost waited. He almost lived. They almost made it." - Nikita Gill
You're seventeen and you're not sure how old he is, only that his eyes are far too aged for his face and he guards his expressions like a man who's been broken many times in the same place, each new crack formed before the fragments were even healed together.
He's nothing like you, nothing like anything or anyone in your world, like a shadow slipping in and out, half alive, half not, something converging into a world it doesn't belong in.
He sweeps you out of the room, arms clasped around you, his heartbeat thumping through your body, too fast, you think, and his blood on your hands, wrong, all wrong, because he isn't human like you and shouldn't be bleeding, not so much and not so red.
That is how you start to care about him, digging a bullet out of him with your fingers, biting your lip to keep your teeth from knocking together and revealing how frightened you are. You hold yourself together, gripping his hand and singing and hoping it eases the pain a little, enough to keep him from going into shock, enough to keep him alive. When his eyes close and his hand goes slack in yours, your breath stops for one long horrible moment until you realize he's still alive, still bleeding through the bandages and turning whiter by the second.
Later when his blood has been scrubbed from your hands, and Stephen assures you he's resting and healing and not likely to bleed to death, you collapse in the corner of your room, arms hugging yourself until you stop shaking.
You suppose after that you're friends with John Young, not in the usual sense, but how could you be anything else after he saved your life and you dug a bullet out of him? Or maybe even then you're a little more, something you don't put a name to, or have a label for.
He's a strange sort, it seems, not the kind you fall for, not the kind you even try to understand. There's something broken behind his smiles, shattered glass where there should be a heart, and the shards cut at him and make him bleed inside but he hides it well.
He tells you things about himself, guarded pieces at a time, slipped details, barely audible admissions, just enough for you to weave a story out of it. You come to expect his visits, those appearances out of nowhere, learn to shut out the rush of air and pressure when he takes you with him.
"It's like I'm Persephone." You say once, his fingers entwined through yours, resting on your knees. "Always coming and going, stolen away and returned."
"If you're Persephone, does that makes me Hades?" he adds faintly, and there's a wry sort of smile on his face, and you remember too late what they did to him, what they made him into. Your fingers tighten.
"I always thought that Hades wasn't truly evil." You tilt your head, chin dropping on drawn knees. He runs a finger through one of your curls and twists it lightly between his fingertips. "He just was in a bad place." You say softly. "He couldn't have been evil, for Persephone to love him."
"Some people love monsters." His voice is soft, but you hear the sorrow, even here, even now, always present behind each word.
"Maybe she saw the best in him."
You're nearly eighteen when they make him human, rip out what he is and it should be horrible, but it isn't, because even lost, without direction, it takes the war out of his chest. Killing is human nature, but not the way of his kind, and when he's human he isn't as damaged and twisted, but just like everyone else.
You think, even unlabeled, you're something far more than friends now, and have been for a long time. There's a frozen kiss as time stops, you know what the best part of being human was? you, and then later his fingers brushing yours as he hands you his jacket. And then he's gone.
You're nineteen and you see him on the street, and if you didn't know every inch of him better than you know yourself you might have mistaken him for a stranger. Everything about him is odd, changed, from the suit to the stiff, barely breathing way he stands, You start to run toward him and stop because he's looking through you and not at you, and there's something cold behind his eyes, something damaged, as if his soul has been ripped out.
So you don't go to him, even though you want to save him, perhaps Persephone thought the same thing, and you wait, until Stephen answers your call, and he and Cara and a handful of others come.
You're twenty and he remembers fragments of who you were, fragments of who he used to be, and neither of you are sure what he is now, half soldier, and half not. They don't let him have a weapon - not that they could truly stop him, but he doesn't question - and they don't entirely trust him yet, but he's trying, and it's a start, enough for now, enough to build on.
He takes your hand, fingers interlacing, and there's something of the old John in his eyes, that mix of vulnerability and shrouded emotions you remember. He might never be back entirely, you know, and it's all right, somehow, because you loved him when he had powers, and you loved him when he was human, and you can love him now.
"Why do people care about monsters?" He asks quietly, and your tighten your hand in his.
"They choose to see the best in them."