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Wanda's POV
I stared at Kyle, my eyes blurring with hot tears. His lips kept moving, but I heard no sound. All I could hear was my heart pounding, blood roaring in my ears, my heavy, strained breathing. What he was saying didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
My life was just shattered. Shattered with two little words: He's gone.
"No." I breathed, barely a whisper.
"I'm so sorry." Kyle's eyes matched mine, tear for tear. His voice broke with agony as he continued to apologize.
I clutched at my throat. I couldn't breathe. I stood up off the cot, shakily. A strange choking noise was filling the room. What is that? I thought. Then I realized. It was me. I was making the strange noise. There was also a loud crying noise. It took a few moments for me to realize that it was Jamie.
He had lost someone too.
I took a step towards the door, and my legs gave out. I fell to the floor with a thud.
"Wanda!" Kyle yelled. Instantly, he knelt down beside me. "Are you okay?"
"Yes." I said quietly, tears streaming my face, soaking my skin. "I'm, I'm okay." I sat up slowly, resting on my hands. Instead of standing up, I pushed myself against the cave wall, and rested my back on the cool stone. I stared at the wall across the room.
Kyle looked at my face, and at Jamie. The boy was crying, a gut-wrenching, heart-rending, painful sight. Doc went over and placed a hand on my shoulder. I shook him off in one fluid motion. I didn't need his comfort. I didn't need anyone.
Except for Ian.
I needed Ian.
Not only did I need him, our baby needed him too. It was at this moment that it hit me. I was a lone alien in a human civilization. I could barely do anything to help out, with my frail, weak body and all. And now, I was going to be a single mother, raising her child in a cave.
That thought made me cry even harder. I buried my face in my hands, and began to cry. Harder than I have ever cried before. I drowned out every other sound in the room. It was just me and my crying.
Kyle looked up from his spot on his knees. "Doc."
"What?" Doc said absentmindedly, staring at me from above.
"Get Jamie out of here. Take him somewhere, to his room or something. Just, get him out of here." Kyle sputtered through tears.
Doc nodded knowingly and grabbed Jamie's forearm. Shakily, the two walked out of the room, Jamie's eyes still clouded with grief and disbelief.
"Thanks." I mumbled to Kyle through my hands.
"Yeah." He grunted. I raised my head as he stood up. Carefully, he walked over to me. His movements were slow and calculated, as if he were approaching a wild animal that might freak out at any second, just like Mel had done. Timidly, he sat down beside me, leaning against the wall. "Uhhh." He let out a slow sigh. "I'm so sorry Wanda."
"It's not your fault Kyle." I reassured him, half-heartedly. "There's nothing you could have done. Absolutely, nothing."
"I'm still so sorry Wanda." He told me honestly.
I continued to stare at the wall, thinking about what I was just told.
"He's gone. He's actually gone." I said aloud. "They actually shot him. Both of them. Point blank."
"Right in the stomach." Kyle added quietly. With that note, my hand absentmindedly flew up to my stomach, to my barely visible baby bump. I placed my hand there protectively. He looked at me sadly. "Can I be honest with you?"
I looked at him glumly. "Of course you can Kyle."
"I just, I can't believe you're reacting like... this." He blabbed.
"What do you mean?" I asked him, unsure of what he meant.
"I mean, usually, when bad things happen you..well…." He trailed off. His eyes looked away from my tear stained face.
"Freak out?" I finished.
"Yeah." Kyle laughed lightly. "Just because of how you reacted to when we uh, you know, were, uh, still, uh, you know…" He trailed off once again.
"Were trying to take Souls out of bodies, and ended up brutally murdering them and smearing them all over the walls?" I finished his sentence. He looked at me sheepishly, his piercing blue eyes full of shame. He nodded timidly, his face clouded with shame.
"Yeah." I mumbled. "I was was kind of expecting to flip out like that again, but, I just…..can't. "
"Why not?" He looked at me confused.
"It's like, everything is moving in slow motion. Everything is shutting down, and I, well I can just can't seem to turn it back on. I have no control." I told him honestly,
"I know the feeling. I feel the same way now, and, I've felt it many times before this." He sighed.
"Does it ever go away?"
"No. Sadly it doesn't." He looked towards the wall. "It only dulls. It doesn't hurt much after a while, but it's still there. It will always be their. The best you can do is learn to live with it, learn to accept it."
I sighed and leaned my head against the wall. My eyes traced up to the ceiling, where I examined the rays of sunshine that were filtering through the vents into the room. I never liked this room. It was usually dark, and cold, and it smelled weird. This room made the hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck stand up. I never liked to be in here.
But now, I didn't want to leave this room. My spot on the floor was the only place I wanted to be right now.
I knew that as soon as I left this room, people would treat me differently. They would stare at me with giant, pity-filled eyes. Some would offer to do things for me, jobs that I can do just fine, like making soap and cooking. Some would keep their distance, uncomfortable. Others would treat me like they would a wounded animal, afraid to touch me, worried that whatever they did would break me, or send me running for the hills.
I wasn't ready to deal with all of that.
Kyle sat still next to me, not out of fear I think. He wasn't being gentle with me. Please, Kyle was the least gentle person I knew. No. He was sitting here because he felt the same way I did. He wasn't ready to face any of it.
I thought back to something Kyke said a few moments ago. 'I feel the same way now, and, I've felt it many times before this.' This statement confused me.
"Kyle?"
"Yeah?" He responded sadly.
"A little bit ago, you said something." I held my firm gaze on the ceiling. "You said that you've felt it before. The pain of losing someone. You've felt it." I brought my eyes from the ceiling, slowly bringing them back to Kyle's face. He was eyeing me sadly. "When?"
"Did Ian ever tell you about the rest of our family?" He asked. I shook my head. Ian never shared anything about his family with me, probably because it was too hard for him to tell, but it was something I had always wondered about. "Well, it might interest you to know that Ian and I had three other siblings."
"Three?" I looked at him surprised. I figured it had just been the two of them.
"Yeah. Two older brothers and a younger sister." Kyle said.
"Oh God." I said aloud.
Kyle looked at me confused. "What?"
"I'm just imagining…...two brothers. Two more of you and Ian. Yikes!" I giggled slightly. This caused Kyle to laugh. Only now did I realize that my crying had stopped. This talk with Kyle, it was already helping.
"Nah." Kyle sighed. "They were pretty calm actu…...actually, no. They weren't calm at all. You're right Wanda. They were like a crazy mix of Ian and I, but they came before us, so that would mean that Ian and I are just halves of them." He looked confused, like he was doing difficult mental math.
"You've lost me." I chuckled.
"It's okay. I've lost it too." He grinned at me crazily.
"What were their names?" I asked him.
"Dylan and James. They were a year older than me. Twins. They look exactly like Ian and I, and we all look like our dad. We all could have been quintuplets. It was crazy how similar we looked." He said. He took a breath. "And our sister, her name was Charlotte. She was almost fifteen years younger than me. She was, uh, let's just say, unexpected."
My hand crept back up to my stomach, where my own little unexpected baby was waiting. "Did, uh, she look like you guys too?"
"Actually no. She looked like our mom. Now, she did have the same blue eyes like the rest of us, but she didn't have black hair. It was dirty blonde. And she was small, I mean, she was only seven, but she was still itty-bitty, which, the rest of our family is not." He looked at me with a smile. "If I could see her now, my guess is that she would probably be about your size."
I smiled back "Dylan, James, and Charlotte." I felt the names roll off my tongue. "What happened to them?"
Kyle's face darkened instantly. This was apparently a very sore subject. "It was about, eight years ago, I think. Yeah about eight." He rambled. He seemed to be searching for words to tell the story. This was a hard thing for him.
"It's alright Kyle. You don't need to do this now.. I can tell it's hard for….."
"No." He cut me off gently. "No. It's fine you deserve to know. It was eight years ago. My family had been on the run for, oh, about 2 months at that point. We were in the woods, camping whenever and where ever we could. And we had been doing well so far. Sneaking around, stealing food, collecting weapons, the works. But then, they found us."
"We were in the woods just, walking when they appeared out of nowhere. Seekers. They asked us to go with them, to 'aid the peace" as they so cordially put it. Then they got more forceful. They started to threaten us. There were about 6 of them. All about my older brother's size, and he was a big dude. Then they pulled guns on us. My father told us to run, so we ran. Ian and I went one way. Dylan, James, and our dad went another way, and My sister and my mom went the other." Kyle was beginning to cry again.
"Ian and I, we, we just ran. I kept looking back for Seekers, but none of them followed us. Not ask ingle one of the followed us. After a few minutes of running, we stopped to rest. Then we heard it. Gunshots. 5 gunshots. One for each member of my family."
"Oh my God." I sucked in a breath. I knew that Seekers now were aggressive, but eight years ago? I was shocked. They killed five people. Five poor people. "I'm so sorry Kyle."
He shook his head. "And you know what? I was finally okay with it. I had finally accepted that it was just Ian and I. I finally accepted the fact that he was the only family I had left." And now," his voice broke off suddenly, his eyes streaming with tears once again. "Now I have no family. None at all."
He was making me cry. "You have Sunny." I offered, trying to give him some comfort.
He shook his head again. "No, not really. She blacks out for a few hours everyday, and even when she is here, she doesn't really know me. She just thinks she does. Really, I have no one."
I reached out and slowly and grabbed his hand. "You have me."
He looked at me with a look that I have never seen before. He looked like he was about to cry again, but not out of sadness this time. No. This time he was grateful. He was looking at me with a look that said one thing: thank you.
"Wanda." He breathed and gave me a weak smile. "You don't have to do that. I know you don't like me."
"You're wrong Kyle." I said softly. "Now, you're right, I didn't like you, at first. But who can blame me! You did try and kill me."
"Sorry about that." He mumbled. I smiled.
"It"s alright Kyle. That was before you and I truly got to know each other, before we became friends."
"Family." He corrected me softly. "If you could have, you and Ian would be married, right?"
I nodded sadly. I would have loved to have married Ian. But now I can't.
"Well, in our society, whenever a girl marries your brother, she becomes your sister-in-law." I stared at him, confused by all the human jargon. Wow. Jargon. I didn't even know that word was in my vocabulary. "She basically becomes your sister. So, you are essentially my sister, which makes us family."
"Family." I repeated softly. I liked it. Then I thought about one other person that was in Kyle's family. My baby. My innocent baby that would never know it's father. The baby needed someone to look up to, someone to follow. A father figure. I think Kyle would be a good fit. "You have both of us in your family now, so your stuck with us."
"Yea, wait, go back both?" He asked. "Whose the other….." He trailed off when he saw my hand move to my stomach. "Oh God Wanda. Your pregnant."
"Yes. But you can't freak out, or apologize for Ian anymore. My baby needs it's Uncle Kyle. Can my baby have it's Uncle Kyle?" I shot him a little grin.
He smiled back. "Of course."
"Don't tell anyone youth, okay? Just, not yet."
"Alright." He agreed. "Wanda." He sighed loudly.
"Yeah?"
"I am so sorry."
"I told you Kyle. You don't have to apologize." I knew and he knew that it wasn't his fault that this happened. I think he just needed someone to blame.
"No, I'm apologizing for something else." He said. He looked at me with the most simcere expression I have ever seen. "I am apologizing for anything bad I ever said about you, I front of your face or behind your back. I am sorry for ever hurting. I am so sorry for my misguidance and judgement, and for trying to kill you in the bathing room. You personally never did anything to hurt me. I tried to take out all the anger I have against your kind out on you, all the anger from them taking Jodi and taking Dylan and James and Charlotte. You didn't deserve any of that."
"I completely misjudged your kind. I mean, even when I tried to kill you, you saved my life. You saved me. At the tribunal, you told them to let me off the hook. You were kind, to a point where it put you in danger. I am so sorry for anything bad I have ever done to you. You are the kindest creature I have ever met, and I'm so sorry." He squeezed my tiny hand. His practically swallowed mine.
"It's alright now Kyle. I forgive you for everything." I smiled softly.
"Iif someone had told me a year ago that we would be family, I never would have believed them. If I had known that you would end up being my only family, I would have done things a hell of a lot differently."
"The world is just mixed up that way."
"Damn right it is."
