"She was pretty," the girl says, her voice thick with the sorrow Billy can see pooling in her eyes. He takes a deep breath and waits to hear what else she has to say: it is her words as much as the pain written on her face and sewn into the texture of her voice that holds him captive. He has traded one master for another, but this one is kind; she sees him and hurts for him in a way that no one has dared to in years.
"She was really pretty," she continues, and Billy feels tears begin to burn their way into his eyes. "And you – you were happy."
He can barely remember it, can barely remember being happy. He has only been under the General's command for a few days, and he is already floundering in hatred and fear and misery. But then, he has been drowning in the darkness for a long time. The General's thumb is not the first one he has ever been under; the General's is just the first one he's ever managed to escape, and he couldn't even do it on his own.
He stands, and his body is heavier than it has ever been before. He stands to face the General's form, trying to pretend that it doesn't bother him that it was his body that led all the others to their deaths. He tries to pretend that the scent of melted human flesh, however it came about, doesn't bother him. It does, but so do a great many things, and he has managed, for the most part, to keep his mouth shut; he has managed, for the most part, to convince himself that a great many things don't bother him.
He has been hiding beneath the cover of night for years, surrounded by the lies he has told himself and the secrets he has kept from everyone else; but this girl, with her eyes that see him, is like the sun, casting light on all the shadows of his life, and he decides that he's a dead man already: he might as well be truthful with himself, for once.
It bothers him that the General is trying to kill a child, that the General is tearing the world apart for her just to kill her.
It bothers him that his body sent other bodies to their deaths.
It bothers him that the last time he was happy is a bittersweet memory, that his mother, who he loved, who he adored, took him to the ocean one last time, and that time? That time, the wave was bigger than seven feet, and the riptide yanked at him, and when he finally trudged out from the swirling tides, his mother, with his father's fingerprints purpling on the side of her face, with fingerprints on her face that matched the ones on his, was gone.
It bothers him that the only person who saw him, who lived the same life he did, does, left him.
It bothers him when he hates her for it, and it bothers him when he doesn't.
It bothers him that the people who love him leave him behind. (It bothers him that he has to make them hate him for them to stay, and that their hatred can't keep him from loving them anyways.)
Billy knows that he was always a lovable child. He was only nine when his mother left, and after her was a string of women who came and went, one after another.
First there was Lucy Harmon, a tiny, dainty, beautiful brunette. Even though she lived in California, her skin was pale, and Billy always imagined that it was the color of snow. Lucy was winter in human form: she had cold fingers that danced across his cheeks, chilly lips that brushed snow-angel kisses against the slope of his forehead, slender arms bare of any decoration, like trees without leaves and just as strong as the roots that held them in the ground against the freezing storm of Neil's rage. She told Billy that she loved him with a soft smile on her lips, with cold fingers that tucked his sunny curls behind his ears, with huge eyes the color of the steaming mug of chocolate she set in his small hands, and though she wasn't his mother, he thought that maybe she loved him enough to be a new one.
But Lucy left the first time she felt the full force of Neil's icy, wintry rage; she left Billy behind, the words, "I love you," falling from her cold mouth even as her eyes froze over, and when she closed the door behind her, Billy felt like she'd shut him out in the cold, like she'd sucked all the warmth away from him.
Martha Wallis came after Lucy, and if Lucy was winter personified then Martha was summer. She was summer, though, in a different way than Billy's mother, who was all dark gold curls and ocean blue eyes. Martha had hair the color of sand on a sunny day, and eyes as vibrant as the leaves on the trees. She had a white sea-foam smile, and dimples that tattooed themselves into her cheeks, and her laugh was warm and breathy, like the breeze. Martha was tall and had a dip in her waist that Billy's father liked to rest his hand on. Martha was glamorous and lovely and kind, and she hugged Billy before sending him off to school in the morning, and when he came home in the afternoon, and before he went to bed at night. She kissed the freckles on his nose and tucked the blankets tight around him and whispered, "I love you," and Billy dared to hope.
But Neil was a whirlwind of fiery fury; he burned at the injustices of the world that dogged his footsteps; he spat ferocious words that burned like cigarettes on skin; his nails and fingers and palms left trails of fire that ignited in crimson and lemon and violet. And Martha left, and left Billy behind.
Alice Walker slipped easily into the footprints Martha left behind, and Billy told himself: Lucy was winter, and winter was when things slept; Martha was summer, and summer was when fire burned at the water's edge. Alice, though, was spring. She had clear blue eyes and dark brown hair, and a smile that split her face like the sun broke through the wintry clouds. Alice was always outside, always dragging Billy, or his father, or Billy and his father, along with her as she went to the beach, or admired the blooming flowers that lined the streets. Alice was spring, and spring was when things healed and grew and flourished.
Billy did. His father didn't. He raged and wept his fury. He was a tsunami, a monsoon, a riptide, and he dragged the things that were growing and repairing themselves beneath himself, and he drowned them with his lightning-bolt words and thundering fists. Alice's sweet, young, growing things could not withstand the tempest, and though she, too, had told Billy, "I love you," it was him who was left behind while she tried to escape the flood of his father's wrath.
After Alice was Elizabeth Ball, and she - with her scarlet hair and amber eyes - was autumn, and Billy lost hope. In places other than California, he knew, autumn was the season when life died. Even so, he accepted her love, and relished in it, though he knew it could not last.
And it didn't. His father grew angry and began to negotiate with his fists instead of his words, and Elizabeth left her love behind, left Billy behind, just like Alice and Martha and Lucy and his mother did, and Billy realized…
The only person who had stayed through it all was his father, who did not love Billy, though Billy loved him, and made sure he knew it. The people who loved Billy left, and the one who hated him stayed.
And so Billy discarded his soft, loving skin, and traded it for sharp, barbed, caustic words. He traded smiles for fists, exchanged words for growls, and he projected hate, hate, hate, while love swirled beneath the surface. He wanted to let it out, wanted to love and be loved, wanted to stay for people who stayed for him.
He especially wanted it when Susan and Maxine came along, because Susan was soft, and Max was fiery; Susan had a spine of steel, and Max had shoulders like Atlas; Susan was a mother, and Max was a sister, and Billy desperately wanted both.
But Billy had learned his lesson. He knew that if he wanted the people he loved to stay, they had to hate him. So he snapped and snarled and swore; he spat in their faces and growled at their kindness and hurt them because he loved them. He loved them, and he wanted them to stay, and so they could never love him back.
He has done his job well, he thinks now. Max and Susan hate him, and he loves them, and he knows that he is a dead man walking. He is a dead man walking to face the General, and he loves them, and this time it is his turn to leave the people he loves. Maybe, when he is involved, love is only real if someone is getting left behind.
Billy stands, facing the General, and lets himself feel the love that has stolen everything from him, and when the General lashes out at him, he screams.
Billy has monster arms biting into his sides, squeezing tight enough to break his ribs. He has monster arms crushing him, and ribs digging at his lungs, and the memory of a beach at the forefront of his mind. There is a monster ahead of him, inside him; Max and the girl are behind him. The monster lunges for him – for his chest – with the intent to kill, and then, suddenly, it crashes toward the ground. The forward momentum of the arm continues, even as the others drag him down, and it hits him in the sternum, knocks the wind out of him (knocks the consciousness out of him, really), and it hurts – the broken ribs, the punctured lungs, the punch to the chest, the guilt… But it doesn't hurt more than anything he's used to living with under his father's thumb.
It hurts, but Billy has learned to expect that of the things that go bump in the night; monsters don't just hide under the bed, after all (they hide in people, too. There has been a monster called hatred, or love, he's not sure which, anymore, hiding in him for ages, far longer than the one he acquired when his car spun out and he was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the unknown). It hurts, and his vision goes spotty around the edges. He collapses to the ground, and the sound of his name – torn around the edges, cracked in the center, stained with tears – is swallowed with him by the darkness.