Author's Note: Rose, this story takes place a few years before the series started, so Zack is 19 and Jondy is somewhere on the brink of 16 and 17.
Disclaimer: Don't own a thing.
Family Relations
By Be Boring
Chapter 17: To Live and Love
In the car ride on the way to Maine, neither Zack nor Jondy said a word to each other. They were both perfectly content with sitting quietly together, because they knew it would be a long time before they had this chance again. When he visited her, Shayna would be there, and if they called each other, it would be pretty pointless to just sit quietly on the phone. Right now they just wanted to enjoy the simple pleasure of each other's quiet company. The silence didn't last the entire time, however. As they turned onto the extremely long, lonely road that led to the cabin, Zack finally turned to her.
"I realize you may not want to talk about this, but I was curious. Just how did they cure you of your seizures and heat cycles? If there was a way we could get rid of them, I'm sure everyone would be getting into line."
She shrugged, gazing out the window. "I'm not really sure how they cured them. They gave me an injection of some kind, but I don't know what was in it. They made my seizures and heat cycle come back full force for a little while, but once that faded I guess I was cured. I haven't had a seizure ever since, but it's not soon enough to tell if I'll have another heat cycle. I don't expect to get one though, I think they really wanted to get rid of those things. That's a relief, I really didn't want to have another heat cycle. The seizures were manageable, I've never had them as bad as some of the others, but not having them at all will be nice. Does anyone else have really bad seizures?"
"Blake's and Syl's get out of control every now and then, and from the few times I've checked on Max from a distance, I think she has some pretty serious seizures every now and then. I just think it will help us blend in better if we're not shaking like bobble heads and if the girls aren't jumping every man in sight."
Jondy couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to her before, but what had happened when the other girls first discovered they had heat cycles? She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she couldn't hold herself back. "How did you first find out about heat cycles? What did the girls do when they started? I had Tinga there to explain things to me, but I'm sure not everyone had that luxury. Who was the first to get one?"
Zack looked like he would rather go back and have another go at an escape from Manticore. "Well, Tinga was the first to go into heat, which of course scared her shitless. Syl and Kiera were next, then by the time that Brin and Shayna started, we knew what was going on and were prepared for it."
Did she really want to keep going with this? "What happened with Tinga? How did she handle it?"
Even though she had suspected it, Zack's answer still hit like a rock. He hesitated for long time, and then finally mumbled, "She called me. She didn't know what was going on, and she didn't tell me nearly enough about what she was feeling. I went over there with no idea what I was going to find, and I really don't think I need to continue."
No, he didn't. She had been close enough to jumping him during her own cycle, even when she knew what was going on. "That must have been so hard for her. Did the same thing happen with Syl and Kiera?"
"Yeah." He refused to look in her direction, staring determinedly out the windshield at the cabin that apparently wasn't getting closer soon enough for him. When he finally sensed that she didn't want it to end there, he added, "It wasn't as uncomfortable as you think. We all understood that it was Manticore's fault for making us the way we are, and we agreed to put it behind us. Things weren't awkward too long, but maybe that's because we were so young. The younger you are, the easier it is to bounce back from things and put them behind you. No more accidents have happened since then. I've kept track of where they are in their cycles, so I don't end up popping in at a bad time. We've never talked about it, and as far as I'm concerned, it's ancient history. Why are you so curious about this anyway?"
She shrugged. "I don't know, it just occurred to me." Now the silence was no longer comfortable. Awkward wasn't even a strong enough word for it. She knew he didn't like to be reminded of past mistakes, not that she blamed him. He must have beat himself up about not being able to control himself. No wonder he had thrown her into a counter during her first cycle. He just didn't want it to happen again.
Zack pulled in front of cabin and immediately climbed out of the car. Jondy wondered if he regretted suggesting this outing. It sure hadn't started very well. "How long do you think we'll stay?"
He glanced at the cabin and shrugged. "I don't know, I haven't decided yet. I guess it depends if anything comes up. If someone calls, our trip will really be cut short."
At least he hadn't automatically said "not long." He had hinted at it though. If she hadn't unsettled him, she was sure he would have said a definite amount of time. That's just the way he was. "I hope it's for a while, I've spent too much time with Shayna for the last couple months to want to go straight back for some more."
He smiled briefly as he pulled their bags out of the backseat. Well, that's a relief. I don't want him to cut this trip short just because I started up a stupid conversation. She followed him inside with the last bag, finally deciding that maybe she needed to give him some space. Did she really want to do that on their last chance to be alone? He'll be no fun to be alone with if I don't let him relax and realize I didn't mean any harm. As soon as they had set their things down, she said, "I think I'm going to go for a walk. I want to go out to the pond." He merely nodded, not even looking up as he took his bags off to his room. Now she was starting to get pissed at him. If he didn't loosen up soon, she was going to smack him.
Jondy practically stomped the entire way to the pond, but once she was there, a lot of her anger had drained away. She climbed up into a nearby tree and watched the breeze send gentle ripples across the surface of the water. Despite being the middle of autumn, it was fairly warm out. It took her awhile to make up her mind, but she finally decided to go for a swim. Zack had told her once that he didn't think anyone else knew about this place, so who would see? She dropped down to the ground and peered around furtively. Once she was convinced nobody was spying, she started taking off her clothes and piled them at the base of the tree she'd been sitting in. Before the breeze could cool her off too much, she dove straight into the water. The shock made her breath catch for a moment, but soon she was cutting through the water with ease. This was something she rarely had the chance to do. The Casteau's had a pool, but she didn't stand a chance of using it, and the last time she and Zack had been out here, she hadn't been comfortable enough around him to go swimming without a swimsuit. She thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of the chilly water gliding between her fingers and toes, reveling in the weightless feeling it gave her.
As they had been so prone to do lately, more things occurred to her as she swam. Back at the house in Osage, would Kiera feel sympathetic towards Ben after the short time they had spent killing and let him run off with Shayna? She knew he wanted to be a part of his baby's life, which wasn't in Zack's plan, so would he try to make a run for it? Even if Kiera didn't help them, would they be able to overpower her? Jondy didn't think so, Kiera was even tougher than she looked, which was pretty considerable. Besides, she didn't think Ben would attack her after he knew she had shown tendencies toward killing like him.
This was only at the far back of her mind, however. The front running issue was this trip. She had been grateful to take a break before she went back to taking care of Shayna, but what exactly were Zack's intentions? They had both revealed their more-than-sibling-like feelings the other day, so had that incident encouraged him to take her out here with him? What was he expecting? The question made her stop swimming immediately, she simply remained in the middle of the pond, treading water. The snap of a twig behind her made her spin around, and her stomach dropped uncomfortably when she saw Zack standing there. He was holding a large towel in his hands, which he held up so she could see it clearly.
"I knew you would eventually take a swim, so I thought I'd bring this out for you. I'll leave it here by your clothes." He placed the towel on top of her jeans, then started to make his way back down the path.
Jondy stared after him, grateful that he hadn't been able to see anything clearly. What if he had come out while she was floating? "Wait, just stand behind a tree until I'm dressed again, okay? I'll walk back with you." She slipped out of the water as soon as she was sure he couldn't see anything, and started drying off and pulling her clothes on as fast as she could. When she was finished, she walked up beside him and tapped his shoulder. "Okay, I'm ready."
They started walking back quietly, but Jondy couldn't leave her thoughts alone. She needed to know what had been going through his mind when he'd planned this trip. "Um, I'm just curious, but when did you decide to come out here?"
He shrugged and looked down at her, obviously without a clue of what she was implying. "I thought of it pretty much as soon as I woke up for the first time and was talking with Kiera. She said she thought you could use a break. I mean, I went in there to get you out, but you ended up running the operation. After spending so long back at Manticore and pushing away your own memories, you took charge of the group and got everybody out of there safely. It was no wonder you slept so long once we were back. I had been going to suggest it to you right away, but you started asking me questions about the things you couldn't remember, and I didn't get a chance to bring it up until later."
She knew he wasn't lying, she would have been able to tell. Besides, when had he ever lied to her? "Look, about that topic I started earlier, I'm really sor—"
He held up a hand and cut her off before she could finish her apology. "Don't worry about it, it's natural you would be curious, and I shouldn't have walled up like I did. None of it was your fault, and it certainly wasn't theirs or mine. I guess I just didn't expect to have that conversation with you. To tell you the truth, I'm proud of you. I'm sure you suspected it before, but asking the questions left out all doubt. What's more, you didn't freak out. Brin found out once by accident, and she flipped on me."
"How did Brin find out?"
He hesitated, then apparently decided that she would find out from Brin later anyway if he didn't tell her. "It wasn't even a week after my, um, run-in, with Syl, and she wasn't handling it quite as well as Tinga and Kiera had. According to her, she felt disgusting and hated herself every time she saw me. She always was a little bit more emotional. Eventually, she managed to find out Brin's number and called her. She told me later that she felt then like she just had to tell somebody or it would tear her apart. Brin showed up a little bit later, much to my surprise, and started chewing me out. That sure didn't help Syl, she couldn't stop crying while we were fighting. The fight turned physical eventually, but as soon as we were too tired to continue, I got my chance to explain. It wasn't like Tinga and Kiera, Syl didn't call me and say she wasn't feeling well. I had showed up to get her out of a hostile foster home, and she came into heat while I was finding her a new place to live. Once everything was out in the open, Brin decided it wasn't my fault and she helped Syl work through her feelings. Needless to say, Brin was much more prepared when her cycles started. She didn't even call me, she let me know later that they had started. I passed on everything I knew to Shayna so that she could be ready too, and once I had everyone's schedule down, we didn't have to worry about more mistakes." He paused, as if surprised that he had said so much. "What is it about you that makes me talk until there's nothing more to say?"
"I don't know, but I'm glad you told me. It lets me know you're human." He looked down at her dubiously, but she smiled to let him know she was teasing. After that, he loosened up noticeably.
They spent the rest of the day in complete leisure, sometimes having a senseless conversation, otherwise keeping complete silence. When they started making supper, which would actually be good this time because of the fresh food they had picked up on the way here, she listened with a grin as he shared horror stories of cooking with her, both his own experiences and those of some of the others. It didn't come as a surprise that Krit had managed to blow up an oven once, but it shocked her more when she found out that Tinga had worked at a restaurant when she was younger, and when Zack had decided to relocate her, she stole every last bit of food she could take with her from it. She even ran off with the frosting tubes that they used to decorate cakes. According to Zack, she had squeezed a little bit into her mouth every so often along their road trip as a snack. He didn't tell her many of his own tales, although he did share the time when he had wanted to use cinnamon and sugar on his French toast and picked up the saltshaker rather than the sugar container by accident. Apparently he liked a lot of sugar on his French toast, because the salty version made him think he was dying.
Despite the X5 tradition of disastrous meals, their simple menu of pork chops and potatoes with corn turned out extremely well. They cleaned up quickly and sat down by the fire as the night air became increasingly colder, more like the middle of winter than the middle of fall, even after the earlier warmth of the day. The fire warmed both of them, though, and soon they were talking contentedly about their early teenage years, when they were first adjusting to the real world. It wasn't until Jondy noticed that Zack was starting to doze off that they brought things to an end and retired to their bedrooms. With her stomach full and the warmth of the fire still lingering on her, Jondy curled up on her bed and pulled the quilt as close around her as she could, drifting off to a very light sleep.
She was sitting back at Manticore, staring at the wall of her cell with Shayna. Even though she could hear her sister's grunts of pain, she didn't even glance down. "Jondy, help me, the baby's coming!" Shayna gasped, clutching her stomach and suppressing a scream as another contraction hit her. "Why won't you look at me?"
"Don't worry," Jondy replied in a monotone, "the doctors will take care of everything." As though they had heard her words, the door to their cell opened and several people in white body suits rushed in and forced Shayna onto a stretcher. Even without looking at them, Jondy knew they were the faces she had looked up at whenever she had been studied as a child. A crowd of faces above her, mostly hidden by the white cloth of their outfits, staring down at her without mercy. Yes, those eyes, only visible through their plastic visors, were the ones that were now looking down at Shayna. She finally looked over into where the hallway used to be, but which had now changed into a doctor's office. Shayna was on her back, lying on a table with her feet in stirrups, now letting her screams out as the contractions increased. There were no doctors in there, however, only Lydecker. He was standing between Shayna's legs, hands held out to take the baby when it came. Shayna's final shriek of pain signaled the child's arrival, and Lydecker held it up to the light.
Rather than being wet, and without its umbilical cord, the baby looked as though it was at least a few days old. Jondy gasped when its features hit the light. Instead of looking like Shayna or Ben, it looked nearly identical to Lydecker. It was a little boy, with a soft tuft of dark blonde hair and sharp blue eyes. It even had some of Lydecker's sharp features in its cheeks, although softened by the gentle roundness of baby fat. Before her eyes, the boy grew until he appeared to be around nine years old, still looking just like a younger Lydecker. He reached out and grabbed a scalpel from a nearby table, and proceeded to move to the head of the table and cut his own mother's throat.
A hand landed on Jondy's shoulder, and she turned to see Zack, gesturing wildly for her to follow him. She nodded, still horrified by what she had seen, but when they had stood up, she looked down to see the boy standing right next to Zack. Zack didn't seem to see him though, for he turned to face in that direction and started trying to pull her along after him. "Zack, stop!" she shouted, pulling on his hand as hard as she could. "They'll get you!"
"Of course we will," the boy hissed, grinning maliciously in her direction. Before she could do anything to stop it, he reached up and sliced Zack's throat. Zack turned to face her, his eyes wide with panic as he tried to stem the blood flow with his hands. He reached out for her, smearing blood on her arms as he clutched wildly at her. She choked back a scream of horror as blood spurted from the wound, covering her much faster than it should have.
"Why did you let me down?" Zack whispered, sinking to his knees, continuing to lose blood at an impossible rate. "I trusted you, why didn't you help me?" As he started to collapse, she finally let loose the scream she'd been holding back. It echoed around the cell, overpowered only by the young Lydecker's laughter. "Jondy!" a distant voice called out. "Jondy!"
"Jondy!" She was snapped back into reality by Zack kneeling on her bed, shaking her shoulders gently as he called out her name. She gasped and sat bolt upright, nearly colliding with his head. Her entire body was shaking uncontrollably, sweat was rolling off of her, but eventually she started taking deeper breaths and began to relax. Zack was still sitting next to her, as white as a sheet. When she had finally calmed down enough to be concerned about the fear on his face, he managed to spit out, "I thought something had happened to you when you screamed, and when I got in here I thought you were having a seizure. Was it a nightmare?"
She nodded, unable to speak. She was still trembling slightly, and now the chill was mixing with her sweat, causing her shaking to increase a little. Absentmindedly she reached out for him, needing to feel him completely alive and well. When he moved closer and held her, rocking her back and forth slowly as he repeated soothingly that it had all just been a dream, she chanced a glance at his throat. Nope, no cut there. The skin was as smooth as it ever was. He rocked her for several minutes, then finally stepped back and tucked her in, much like she knew a mother did for her own children.
When he turned to leave, she called out, "Could you stay here for a little while? At least until I fall asleep? And could you turn the lamp on?"
He smiled, returning to her bedside and obediently turning on the light. He pulled over a crooked old wooden chair that hardly looked as though it could support his weight, and sat down stiffly. She closed her eyes again, comforted by the knowledge that he was right there and perfectly healthy. She listened to his breathing, which was light but alert, showing that he was wide awake. Without giving it a second thought, she scooted closer to the edge of the bed, not allowing the little blanket-nest Zack had created for her to pull away from her body, and reached out her hand to grab his. With the warmth of his hand on hers, she finally let herself fall asleep again.
The warmth on her hand was the first thing she noticed when she woke up, and she smiled when she opened her eyes to see Zack sound asleep in the chair, his head flopped over the back of it. He had never let go of her hand, which was obvious by the sticky warmth caused by sweat. The part of her arm that had been sticking out of the blanket was covered in goosebumps, but the rest of her was pleasantly warm under the blanket. That's when she noticed Zack shivering lightly as he slept. She pulled her hand out of his to bring her arm under the blanket and allow it to warm up, but the change woke him up. His head jerked forward, and she saw him wince when his sore neck was forced back into an upright position. He still smiled though when he saw only her eyes poking out of the blanket as she attempted to keep herself trapped within the warmth of her blanket.
"Cozy?"
"Snug as a bug in a rug," she replied in a muffled voice, refusing to lift her mouth out of the blanket to talk clearly to him. "Aren't you cold?"
"Freezing. How did you sleep?"
"Not bad. Are you really that cold?"
"I would be warmer inside a snowman. Any nightmares?"
"Nope, slept like a baby. Now get your ass under this blanket before you freeze to death over there." She slid back on the bed, frowning as she moved onto a cool section of the sheet beneath her. His are-you-serious expression only lasted for a moment, he was too cold to care whether she was serious or not. He drew the quilt quickly against himself, a look of relief coming over his face as the chill left his body. He rolled onto his side to face her, his breath waving gently over her face. Praise the Lord X5s don't get morning breath, she thought with some amusement. The thought made her smile, which made him look at her curiously.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing important. Thank you for staying in here last night, I probably wouldn't have gotten back to sleep without you."
"What was that nightmare about?"
"Just something to do with Manticore."
"What made you scream?"
She sighed, reluctantly answering, "You had just died. You have no idea how much that dream scared me."
Zack reached forward and squeezed her shoulder. "You don't have to worry, I'm not going anywhere, even when you finally get sick of my pushiness and want me to leave. I'm staying right here."
She smiled again, feeling relaxed now that the dream wasn't so vivid in her mind. "I know. And just for the record, I'll never get sick of your pushiness, just like I don't think you'll get sick of me ignoring it." He laughed, the first real laugh he had given since the escape. Tentatively, she leaned forward and pulled herself against him, attaching herself like a leech to get warmer. The sudden closeness made her breath catch in her throat, and she heard his do the same. Even though it hadn't been her original intention, she knew they were both considering the same thing, and she knew which direction she was leaning in. She tilted her head back and looked up at him, wondering if she was making a wise decision. They weren't going to see each other very much for months, did she really want to do this now? Would it just make things harder? He didn't let her think about it long, he leaned down and kissed her very gently. It wasn't long, and when he pulled back, she knew a little bit of her fear was showing in her eyes. "Zack, I…"
"I know," he whispered, reflecting some of her own fear back at her with his eyes. "Me too." For some reason, that seemed to settle it. She pulled him down to her, giving him the most intense kiss they had shared yet. She knew she was starting something that she wouldn't be able to stop, opening feelings that she may never be able to hold back again, but she didn't care anymore. She was sick of running, hiding, worrying, looking over her shoulder. She was sick of all of it. For now, she just wanted to live and love.