These characters have a mind of their own, I swear. I'm on winter break and have plenty of time to write so I should get a couple of chapters of this story, hopefully.
Chapter 9: Conversations
The days passed slowly as the absence of her parents became noticeable as time wore on. She had to fetch her own meals which only consisted of soft foods like mushy applesauce, and chocolate pudding. But she found that it wasn't enough, and after she ate, she was more hungry. The guards kept her entertained, but they were also keeping watch on her so she wouldn't see them unless she called on them.
On the third day, with no sign of her parents being back, she found the uncomfortable feeling in her mouth was starting to recede, and her stitches weren't pulling so tightly against her cheeks anymore. Yet, she still looked like a chipmunk, but at least there was a small hope of her possibly eating something solid, but also something that was quite soft- so it was easy to swallow, and didn't require much chewing.
Maia grabbed two eggs from the refrigerator, and cracked them open in another bowl. She grabbed a red pan from one of the cupboards, and put the stove on medium, putting some olive oil in and a small stick of butter. She then poured the eggs into the red pan, and watched it shimmer.
She was about to whisk it, before someone placed her arms around her and said something right next to her ear,
"Are you sure you should be doing that?"
She jumped. The voice sounded oddly familiar, but she couldn't quite put a name to it. She hadn't heard any footsteps in the house- she hadn't heard the loud footsteps that would belong to her mom, or the boot footsteps when her dad would walk around the house. She turned around, a whisk in her right hand and looked at the intruder.
Her brown eyes met the milky, crimson eyes that belonged to Aro. His black hair hung at his shoulders, much like when she first met him about a week ago. She questioned why he was here, but that also meant that his brothers were probably also here.
She cocked her head to the side, and sure enough, she saw the pale blonde that belonged to Caius and the brown haired that belonged to Marcus sitting on the couch. She returned her attention back to Aro and asked him,
"What are you doing here?"
.She didn't mean for her question to sound rude, but it came out that way. Aro looked unbothered by her question, and had a smile on his face.
"Last time I checked, I was under the impression that we weren't communicating with each other at the moment," she murmured.
The smile faded from his face and he had a such worry expression on his face.
"Mia cara, we felt the pain in the bond and we haven't heard from you in days. The guard updated us about you, but then they mentioned that you weren't well and just had surgery- with no one there to take care of you…" Aro explained, "Let us take care of you at least until you're fully well enough."
"I could do it myself," She protested. Her gripped around the whisk tightened, until she gave up the fight.
She really wasn't in the mood to argue with anyone, and as much as she didn't want them around. She had to admit, it was probably a good thing they were around. It would get her a break. Maia passed the whisk on to Aro, and she made her way on the couch, sitting between Caius and Marcus. She noticed that Caius was staring at the TV, probably wondering what she was watching which was Spiderman, and Marcus had picked up the book, The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, that she set down on the coffee table when she went to make herself something to eat, and flipped through its page.
She leaned her head on Marcus, as she looked at the book Marcus was holding. He ignored the bookmark- a sky-blue bookmark that had several white, puffy clouds on it- as he flipped through the pages, reading at a pace that she could barely comprehend. She noticed a small smile Marcus had, when he realized that she was leaning on him, being careful of the extraction site, and the bruise that felt like it was right there.
"Can you read to me?" She asked quietly.
Marcus didn't say anything and instead began to read, right where she had left on. Her eyelids started to droop as his voice began reading through the next couple of pages of the book.
"Tesoro?" Maia heard Aro say.
She opened her eyes, and noticed Aro standing in front of her. She sat up a little bit, and noticed that he was carrying a blue ice pack with a paper towel covering it, and a pink bowl that had to be her scrambled eggs. She noticed the steam that was rising towards the ceiling, and knew that it wasn't quite room temperature and if she ate it now, possibly could worsen the extraction sites.
She grabbed the ice-pack eagerly, and placed it against her right cheek, where the puffiness lingered the most, and also where a bruise might possibly be forming. She looked at the bowl, and then to Aro, and asked,
"Can you put this in the freezer for a few? At least until it's cool enough to eat?" She asked.
Aro didn't respond and quickly flitted to put the pink bowl in the freezer and came back in front of her.
"Are you okay? Are you in pain?" Aro inquired. "Do you need any painkillers?"
"I'm fine…" Maia replied. "I'm barely in pain, and I don't think I need any."
Within a couple of seconds, Aro disappeared and reappeared, holding a blue cup with some sort of mysterious liquid in it, and the orange prescription bottle that contained her 600 mg of ibuprofen. She grabbed both of them once she put down the icepack on her lap, popped open the white lid off the prescription bottle, grabbed two white and rather large pills, placed them in her mouth, and took a drink out of the cup that turned out to be water. It felt good, soothing the extraction site a little bit and the surrounding pain in her teeth. She set them down, and picked the ice pack that lay forgotten on her lap and placed it on the jaw.
"What are you three doing here, anyways?" She murmured. "Look I'm really sorry for desperately overreacting…"
"Shush… We can talk more after you finish eating."
That was that.
It was only a couple of minutes before Aro flitted to the freezer and reappeared with the pink bowl that held her scrambled eggs in it. She picked up the metal fork, and poked at the yellow eggs that had small bits of ham in it, and little black specks that she assumed to be pepper in it. Her stomach churned the more she looked at the eggs, but she ignored and simply grabbed a little bit of the eggs, and took a small bite of it.
Maia could taste the fluffiness of the eggs, the odd taste of the eggs, but she noticed that it was slightly cold to the touch, which was a good thing. Of course, when her tongue pushed it to the back of her mouth, she noticed that she couldn't quite chew it. Her jaw refused to even chew the little bit of egg, and she quickly found herself spitting it out on her bowl. Tears blurred her vision, the helplessness, and when she had the attacks that left her jaw unable to get anything from the pressure and now nothing had changed!
She blinked the tears away rapidly, taking her hand to clear the rest of the tears that managed to escape. Of course, these actions didn't go unnoticed and she soon found three pairs of milky, crimson eyes on her and hands gently rubbing her back.
"What's wrong, tesoro?" She heard Marcus say, when she leaned forward to set the bowl down on the table that looked oddly untouched.
"It's nothing… I just didn't know how hard it was going to be to eat," She heard herself say, as she focused on the hollowness in her mouth as it felt like there was something missing, the hands rubbing circles around her, as she helped ground herself and help compose herself from the onset of tears.
"It takes time," Aro offered. "You still have fresh wounds in your mouth."
"It's day three and I'm still rejecting food…" Maia murmured, her hands formed fists, creating little crescent moons on the palm of her hands as her nails dug into the skin. "I just thought I would be able to chew something." She looked down at her lap, wondering why her mouth was refusing to do this.
She looked up, her brown eyes glistening with tears that weren't falling, and she asked the one question that she really wanted to know, "Why are you three here? I know you mentioned the bond and it's been quiet, but I still don't find that much of an excuse."
"We were worried something happened and then we heard that you had surgery and were by yourself in taking care of yourself, despite having stitches and not feeling up to anything," Marcus explained.
"I could have handled myself," Maia offered. "I've done it before, a lot of times actually."
"Have you ever had someone to care for you?" Caius asked.
Maia shook her head, "No…"
"And you're expected to take care of yourself, despite having surgery when you could aggravate your condition even more and create more complications?" Caius pressed on. "We're not leaving our mate struggling, especially when you're like this."
"I'm fine-"
"You're struggling to eat," Aro pointed. "You get in tears more if you can't do anything right now."
"Because I feel useless and weak!"
It was so quiet that you could probably hear a pin drop in the room. If all three of them weren't looking at her before, she knew they would be and she had all their attention.
"You're not weak!" Marcus said, breaking the silence in the room.
Maia laughed which turned more to be more like a sob than anything. She pressed her knees to the chest, feeling the icepack on her stomach, but ignored the cold feeling that soaked through her shirt.
"Then why isn't that I can't do anything right… Why is it that if I can't do something right, someone has to leave me? Or the fact that I am treated like a burden to everyone… Hell, my family fucking left me right after I just got home because apparantly my dad's health is more important than mine."
Apparently, that was a bad thing to say. She hadn't realized out of the small confession that it made her mates stop for a few minutes, and Caius stood up faster than her mind could comprehend.
"I'll kill them!" Caius seethed. "They can't even treat our mate right!"
He was about to open the front door, before Maia finally found the courage to speak,
"Don't!" Maia practically screamed. "Caius, please… They're my parents."
"They don't treat you right, mia amore… We don't want to see something bad happen to you after we just got you," Aro explained to her, running circles with his thumbs on her hands.
She didn't have to look up to tell that Aro was already seething, probably after finding out more and more acts that her parents have done- just harmless yelling, arguments, and the hitting that was involved. But even then she still couldn't fault her parents, all of those were her fault because she made a slight mistake.
"I could handle it…" She said.
"They're treating you like you're unworthy. They need to pay," She heard Caius say.
"By killing them? How is that going to solve anything? I'm still underage, so I'll be sent to my closest relatives… Besides, I'll be turning eighteen in eight months, and by then, I'm considered an adult and could make my own experiences."
"There is a such thing as emancipation of minors," Marcus told her. "It won't be hard to forge the papers."
"I know.. It's too much of a hassle… Like I said, I'll be turning eighteen in eight months, and you could use the papers to help let my parents let me leave the country for the summer."
"A month and a half is too long. Something might happen in the meantime," Caius protested.
"I also have the elite guard and besides, I know how to make myself small, too not to be quite seen or heard… I've learned survival skills when it comes to my family. It's not hard," Maia pointed out.
Caius grumbled something in response, but Maia couldn't quite catch it. It was probably something that really wasn't meant for her to hear.
…
After the conversation they've had, Maia found herself curled up arond Caius after Aro scooted her over to where he was busy sulking, after she had to let him not murder her parents or do anything to harm her parents, even if what they did wasn't good. She finished watching the rest of Spiderman, and Aro put in Spiderman 2.
It was only barely in the beginning of the movie, where Maia found herself yawning a lot. Her body was beginning to shut down, and her eyes started to droop. Her hand grabbed Caius's shirt before she found herself, closing her eyes, and fell asleep.
Her mind barely registered when she felt the cold fingers pry her hands off, and was being lifted from the couch. She found herself in the arms of someone for a few seconds before she was set down on a bed, on her back, and something being placed on her, that she could assume to be her blanket.
"Sweet dreams, cara mia," She heard Aro say.
She opened her eyes for a few seconds and looked at the three in front of her and she whispered, "Stay."
Her eyes closed once more, and she felt a few presence other than her on the bed, and slept peacefully when someone strummed their fingers through her hair, and fell asleep.
Not going to lie, this chapter was pretty cute to write and honestly, had no idea what to write which is why this took so long, but luckily these characters knew what they were doing and helped me. Let me know what you think and I'll see you next chapter!