Thank you all for the wonderful reviews and favorites - it encouraged me to read them; if only I wasn't so goshdarn busy all the time. Thankyou, and please continue to send me your thoughts and criticisms!
Sorry for the lateness and the shortness!
Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name belongs to the fantasmic, the extaordinary, the divine Tessa Stone. Totally not me.
They found themselves once more approaching the abused looking house. Mr. Tibenoch's old, black car was parked out front.
This time Hanna knocked on the front door, guilt and anxiety churning away in his stomach. Tiberius' presence was both a gift and a curse; he felt protected with his zombie nearby, but also extremely jittery.
And then there was the regret and guilt weighing him down like a lead balloon.
Mr. Cinders had run a tidy prison-hospital. Paranormal creatures go in, but some of them did not come out. Hanna assumed Cinders was a collector of the supernatural, attempting to gain power and knowledge from observing or experimenting on them.
Hanna knew, without a doubt, that Mr. Cinders could have beaten him and killed him if he hadn't used his own unstable powers. They were something that not even Cinders could possible foresee.
He thought he'd done what was right; Hanna had freed those still alive, and evaporated all that was left. No loose ends, no bodies that could come back to haunt him.
But the four human corpses they found…Hanna was fairly convinced that Mr. Cinders had promised to bring them back to life. He thought of their still hoping families; what their expressions would be when all they found of Cinders' house was a crater, and the body of their loved-one gone forever.
Hanna knew that resurrections were point-blank taboo. Bringing people back was extremely dangerous. The consequences for failure, and even success, were usually fatal. He was thankful Mrs. Galen had interrupted his own vain attempt at –
Hanna ended the thought before it could progress any further.
Mr. Tibenoch opened the front door, and upon realizing it was that kid from earlier, sighed exasperatedly. "Why do you insist on annoying me, young man? I thought I made it abundantly clear that I do not wish to be disturbed."
"Mr. Tibenoch, I have bad news." Hanna's voice was solemn. "May I please come in? It's not something to be talked about in doorways."
Mr. Tibenoch shifted his irritated glare from Hanna to the red head's companion.
He recoiled in surprise at the sight of the zombie.
"Very well." He muttered, still sounding extremely reluctant and looking at them suspiciously. Hanna noticed Mr. Tibenoch dart a hand into his vest pocket.
They entered, and Mr. Tibenoch led them to the living room where he sat down and gestured at them to do the same.
"Explain quickly. Please begin with your name, and why you persist in following me."
"I'm Hanna Cross, and this is Meyer." Hanna began, he tried to think of how to carefully explain it. "'Bout a week ago a friend of my client disappeared. We found him: he was murdered, but it was made to look like a suicide. This piece of paper was left at the scene."
Hanna handed it over to Mr. Tibenoch. He also handed over the two gears that had been taped to it. "These were taped onto the front side." He added.
Mr. Tibenoch stared in awe at the note.
I have a witness
2176 Bradford St
7pm Fridays
tick tock
He turned it over and recognized the familiar handwriting once more:
It wasn't his to begin with, come get what is yours, then.
"That handwriting belongs to Mr. Aaron Cinders." Hanna stated the fact. "Mr. Cinders dragged you into this as a stepping stone for me to find him."
Mr. Tibenoch reached into his vest pocket once more, looking more fearful and worried now than ever.
"Mr. Tibenoch, I'm sorry, but Mr. Cinders wasn't going to bring him back."
"That's ridiculous! Of course he is!" Mr. Tibenoch sent a deathly, accusing glare at Hanna, "What have you done?" he demanded.
"I went to Mr. Cinders' prison, and I defeated him. Then I destroyed all the evidence."
Tibenoch stared at the red head, looking surprised and infinitely doubtful.
"Those gears," Hanna gestured to the gears he'd handed to Mr. Tibenoch, "were taped to the paper. And they didn't come from your watch, did they? They came from his." Hanna pulled out the pocket watch they'd found in Mr. Cinders' morbid closet.
Mr. Tibenoch gasped and grabbed the watch from Hanna's hands, staring at it in shock.
"This isn't possible. Mr. Cinders would not…this is inconceivable!"
"Mr. Tibenoch, you know that watch better than anyone. Tell me if I'm lying." Hanna solemnly gestured to the gears and the pocket watch.
Mr. Tibenoch only needed to glance at it to confirm its identity. It was eerily silent; he opened its back casing to see the still, lifeless form of the gears inside. There were two gaping holes where the two gears should've been. He deftly fixed the pocket watch by replacing the two gears. But still it would not tick. It was horrifically silent. That meant…
With tear-blurred eyes he removed his own watch from his vest pocket.
It had sounded even more different this last week. He hoped it was a sign that Mr. Cinders was making progress, but apparently not.
And earlier that day his watch had slowed down; its' ticking-tocking noises coming only once every minute or so.
And he knew what that meant…
"Mr. Tibenoch, I'm sorry, but he's gone. I evaporated the entire building; there's nothing left of Mr. Cinders or his victims."
"Victims?" he managed to ask, blinking away tears.
"Mr. Cinders was trying to steal your friend's mastery of time through the watch, but eventually he gave up and was just leading you on. He probably meant to take care of you too when you realized that he couldn't bring your friend back." Hanna took a deep breath, but plunged onwards, "And I know you were keeping your friend's soul and body intact and frozen, but, but I evaporated the body. He's gone, Mr. Tibenoch, he can't be resurrected. And it's time for you to let go."
Mr. Tibenoch stared at Hanna like he was a madman. "You evaporated? – you couldn't even let me mourn his body, or a funeral even?" Sorrow mixed with rage as Mr. Tibenoch's glare intensified.
"He was tainted, Mr. Tibenoch, Cinders had corrupted his blood."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"I know because I taint my own blood frequently, but because you froze your friend in time, he couldn't recover. He was dead on the inside."
Mr. Tibenoch stared anew at the young man before him. How could he possibly believe everything he'd just been told? And yet…the evidence was resting in his hands.
His pocket watch: silent. His own watch: wearily ticking slower and less frequently. His soul was fading slowly away, and only Mr. Tibenoch's control of time kept its remnants frozen in place.
"Mr. Tibenoch, it's time to let him go."
Hanna's tone made Mr. Tibenoch look up. The red head looked extremely regretful, but also honest and understanding.
So it was over, then. There was no hope left. His beloved had left him behind. Alone, terribly alone, once more.
He clenched his hand around his watch: the ticking stopped. The hands stopped. Unmoving silence. Dead.
"I'm sorry." Hanna apologized, looking somber and genuinely repentant.
"Leave. Get out. Frankly, I've had enough of you." Mr. Tibenoch sent a despairing glare to them both and abruptly pointed towards his front door.
"If you have any questions or need to talk…" Hanna offered, still looking guilty, but he and his zombie exited slowly anyways, hesitantly escaping the sorrowful confines of Mr. Tibenoch's rundown property.
Hanna's depressed stupor set Bud's protective nature into full gear. He had no idea what could be said at this point. And he was always a corpse of few words, so instead he rested an arm around Hanna's shoulders, trying to comfort the young man.
The contact was so platonic and bromantic that Hanna nearly choked on his bittersweet chuckle.
"Heh. This situation is shit. What do you think, Osvaldo? Think I made the right decision to just destroy the whole place?" Hanna questioned drearily, looking hopeless.
Amodias did not like Hanna's melancholy, guilt-ridden expression: not one bit.
"Yes." He assured, "We couldn't just leave that place there for someone else to find."
"I s'pose." Hanna lapsed into silence; the weight of Tone's arm wasn't comforting like it should've been, but suffocating. It was the arm Adelaide had torn off when Hanna had been too much of a coward to use his powers. Just another stupid, easily avoidable mistake resting on his shoulders.
Hanna stopped suddenly, thus swiftly ducking out of Myron's hold, and clenched his fists in front of him. "Okay, enough moping! Everyone makes mistakes – what's important is learning from them! Earthell, what's the moral of this story?"
Jerry faced Hanna, looking perplexed. He thought over the whole terrible incident. Veser and him had been kidnapped; Mr. Hatch had been torn apart by zombies right in front of him; Conrad, Toni, and Worth had taken down a monster through teamwork; Hanna had been stabbed by a sword and miraculously lived; a mysterious white light had suddenly knocked them all unconscious, and although he suspected Hanna was the cause, his friend did not trust him enough to tell him anything. The moral?
"Trust your friends." Marlin finally replied.
Hanna sighed, looking a little less sad, and a little more sheepish. "Yeaahh. S'pose. C'mon, let's get home, I'm exhausted." His question from earlier finally came back to him.
"Oh yeah, Buse, last time on the way back from Tibenoch's I sort of, well, fell-asleep-and-anyways how did I get home that time?"
Snyder turned a warm, concerned orange gaze towards his friend. "I carried you."
"Oh." Pause. "Thanks."
Lester had been carrying him home? And so when he'd achieved that wonderful void of relaxation and safety, that had been because Miguel had been protecting him in his meditation?
Hanna wilted at the implications. So he would never gain that state again unless Enrique was holding him? He might as well give up on that hopeless dream.
With another weary sigh he continued to walk home to a not-really-restorative meditation besides the zombie he loved but would never see him as more than a hyperactive little brother.
But hey, Hanna smiled genuinely at the thought, it could be worse.
Wow, I update even less then our beloved Tessa! Please enjoy this short little update.
As a small update on my personal situation, I risked watching Glee with my parents. They were amazing. My mom even said she admired the show because it tackles the tough issue of homosexuality. And then, during the Regionals episode in season one, she asked, "Kurt doesn't have a solo?" I was so proud! It feels good to let my inner Klaine fangirl out a teeny tiny bit around them. I'm relieved that my parents seem to be mildly accepting of both Kurt and Blaine.
Wish me luck on my SAT this weekend!
[insert closing remark here]
{insert plea for faithful reviews here}