Summary: Before Earth, before his change of heart and before his family, there had been a son he'd never wanted, made from Frieza's seed and born from his body. Then he was dead, and Vegeta made sure to forget he had ever been there at all. Only, he isn't dead. He is alive. Tormented and abused, but alive, and now Vegeta will do what he couldn't have done the first time. He will save him.
Warnings: Rated M for language, abuse, sexual violence, depictions of rape, mpreg, etc.
Every Eye Will See
Chapter Seventeen: The Eyes
The growing severity of the heat inside their enclosure—cut off from properly circulating air as it was—was doing no favors for the infection brewing in Chill's body.
He could not be one hundred percent certain as he was no medic, but he was quite sure that was what this was. There was no other reason for him to be this bothered by the heat. It was stifling, yes, but it was no hotter than the mines were, and that was not even taking in account the strenuous work he would be doing at the same time. Like this, not even required to so much as stand, he ought to be downright comfortable.
He was not. His headache banged to a steady, agonizing beat. Nausea sat dangerously in his gut, contracting his abdomen every now and then to mimic the vomiting he would be doing if he had anything inside of him to vomit up. Furthermore, somehow despite the heat, his core felt chilled (not a good chill either, nothing like that blissful temperature back on Earth) enough to make his muscles shiver. If not for the distressed noises Neeila made every time he nodded off, he would have let his exhaustion take him under by now.
Yes, it was most definitely an infection. He certainly had a long enough list of poorly treated injuries for that to be true. Was it the shoddily stitched knife wound along his leg? Was it the mangled remains of the soles of his feet? Was it the burns along his back that he could feel sticking wetly to the bandages that had been on for far too long? That was not even considering the odd small scraps and cuts on his body that could become fatally infected just as well.
Or it could just be you. It could always just be you.
The others did not seem to be doing well either, but he thought that it might not simply be the heat doing them all in. It had taken them a long time to finally give up on finding a way out. Neeila had laid her head down on his shoulder and had not moved since, complaining of how light-headed she felt and the aching of her loosened tooth.
Chill thought it must have been adrenaline that kept them going then for how sluggish they all were now. At least, for Herio and Neeila. The old man might just be tired because he was old.
"Chill," he heard Neeila say. Her voice sounded considerably less miserable than it had the last time she had tried to speak. She was very insistent on speaking, even when no one answered her.
He thought that she was trying to take her mind off their impending deaths, coming closer to fruition with each minute that passed. It was a hard reality to ignore with the rocks above them grumbling every now and then, having no qualms against making their unstable nature known, voicing to them that their peace would end soon, but Chill let her do it.
If deluding herself brought her comfort in the face of their mortality, then he would not be the one to deny her it. And if she wanted him awake and interacting with her up until the end, then he would do that too.
He waited, and eventually she spoke again. Her voice was neutral, casual even, not at all the tone worthy of the words she said, "Have I ever told you why I'm a prisoner here?"
That was... an odd question to ask. A stupid one, too, because she already knew the answer to it.
He dipped his chin in a nod anyway. She had told him, in between the melancholy stories she would tell of her home. He knew as much as she knew: that the planet her people saw as beautiful, others saw as rich in resources, from the sap of their trees to the soil that grew vibrant life no matter the season. He knew that her people—who had apparently been ignorant of life in the universe beyond their own—stood no chance against an army they had never even known to fear. He knew that more than half of her people were slaughtered in the assault and that the other half were spared because Tene'mareen was willing to trade much of their own goods essentially in exchange for pretty faces its guards could take their liberties with.
Chill had wondered more than once if Neeila had ever experienced something like that. He had never seen it, but then again, she had never seen the times he spent with the Warden, either. He never asked. He thought probably not, because she had mentioned more than once that apparently living and growing up as a prison slave meant she was not as pretty as she ought to be. He knew, though, that that might not necessarily have made her safe.
He knew with even more certainty that it was not something he ever wanted to know.
The thought of a guard doing something like that to her made him feel... wrong inside. Very wrong. He never wanted anything like that to happen to her. For him, it was different—what he did with the Warden was not the same. For a faceless, merciless guard, one who would not know her name or care about the tears that would no doubt be on her face to do such a thing to her, it would just be something... something Neeila did not deserve.
"No, I mean," she breathed out hard from her nose, and he remembered that she had been telling him something. "I mean the whole reason why."
"You haven't told him yet?" Herio called, his voice nasty. "You haven't told him that his tyra—"
"Stop," she said, hard.
Herio huffed but dutifully closed his mouth.
Chill's brow furrowed. He was confused—not an uncommon emotion during his talks with her—but still very inconveniencing.
"I remember that day like it was yesterday," she said, her voice small and distant, like she was talking to someone else. Or someone else was talking for her. "I've tried to forget, I've tried so hard, but I never will—"
The rocks shifted abruptly beneath their bodies. When the rocks stilled again, Herio's voice called out, "Neeila?"
"Fine!" she called back. "I'm fine."
The moment was short but frightening enough that Neeila's nails dug into his forearm, frightening enough that his own heart still pounds even after the moment had passed.
Still fearing death, little one?
No. No, he didn't. He could not help his body's instincts, but he was ready.
"Chill," she said. "I need to tell you. I need to tell you why I'm here."
So, tell me, he thought.
Without further preamble, she said, "The person who sent my people here was Frieza."
Chill jolted upright. The motion sent a wave of pain through his body, but the tension did not leave. He should not be surprised, truly, but he had not expected her to say that name. Not so abruptly, so matter-of-factly.
His heart was pounding again just as it was before, pounding with fear.
Fear of what? What right did he have to be afraid of the truth?
"I remember so much. I remember the fire, and the screaming. I remember being so scared."
Her hands were curling tightly around the fabric of her pants covering her knees. She was going to cry, Chill knew. He could hear it in her voice, sense it in the way she held her body. He wanted to tell her she could stop, that she did not need to put herself through this. But his throat would not comply, so he could only let her continue.
"I remember him," she said. Chill could hear in her voice the moment tears began to fall. "I remember the horns on his head and the shade of his skin. I remember the awful sound of his voice and his—I remember his eyes."
"No!" she said around her screams when her eyes locked with his. "No, no, no! Get away from me—get away!"
"I saw him, Chill," she said around a sob. "He was there, right in front of me, and he was a monster."
Herio put his arms around her then, seeming not to care that his skin brushed Chill's as a result. Chill could hear him whispering soothingly to her, but she did not stop. You could not stop a flood once the dam had been broken.
"He cut us down like we were nothing!" she cries, her voice reaching the point of hysteria "Like we were just-just-just some nuisances in his way. The screaming was so loud, but I could still hear him laughing. Laughing, Chill! He was laughing! And the look in his eyes..."
She screamed and screamed and screamed...
He ought to have known that her response then, when he had dared to gaze upon her face, had not been simply of hive minded hatred. No, it was something far more personal.
"He took my father from me before I even had a chance to memorize his face," she told him, the pain of years and years all combined at once. "He damned us here and I'll never see the trees or the water or the stars ever again. All I will ever see is this horrible place that took my mother from me and it's all because of him! He took everything from me! I hate him. I hate him and I hope he rots in Hell forever!"
The Tyrant was probably the most important person to Chill.
He did not mean that positively, just factually. His actions in life had determined Chill's life sentence before he had even been born. His reputation had dictated the way the universe would always see Chill. His blood gave Chill the awful color of his eyes.
Yet, despite how important the Tyrant was to his life, the man had always been something of an enigma to him; a secret that everyone knew but him. He knew the Tyrant was a conqueror, who subjugated more worlds in the universe than any other man combined. He knew the Tyrant was a monster, who destroyed countless lives and laughed while doing so. He had heard it all more times than he could count.
Yet hearing and knowing were not the same thing. Like a history student reading out of a textbook—you could memorize facts and dates and testimonies of long-dead strangers, but you could never truly understand, not if you did not hear the agony yourself, feel the pain yourself, see the hell of it all yourself.
Yet here, now, under the weight of Neeila's words, he felt that he did, for once, understand. He could hear the sound of explosions underneath a thousand screams. He could feel the heat of fire billowing around his face, flickering against his skin. He could see the sight of a world so beautiful falling to flames and ash; he could see the man that had caused it all.
He could understand why the sight of his eyes was truly so terrible.
A monster, indeed.
It was very quiet in the enclosure after that, only the sound of Neeila's tears filling the space. The crying stops eventually, but the rant took a lot out of her it seemed, for it required several more minutes of deep breathing before she was finally calm once more.
Like before, she was the one to break the silence. "I'm sorry, Chill."
He turned to her, helplessly startled. It must show on his face because she went on, "I am. I'm not... this wasn't the way I wanted to tell you."
Chill wondered how else she could possibly have told him. By mincing the truth, perhaps, but coating bitterness with sweetness did not make the ugly any less real.
"I'm also sorry because I totally didn't get my point across. Like, at all," she said with a weak laugh.
He could not imagine what point she was trying to make other than what he had already deduced. All he could think about was the fact that he was still here, leaning against the girl his sire had wronged so terribly. He did not deserve to be here. He should be far away from her, repenting for the sins committed against her, reminding himself why he did not deserve to have such a nice thing like her in his life.
But she did not want him to leave. She wanted him here, and he would never understand why, but it was enough of a reason for him not to go.
"There was a saying back on my planet. 'Goddess will not forgive a daughter bound by the steps of her mother'," she recited. "To be honest, I never liked that saying. Why would I not emulate my mother, who was the one teaching me the way to live? Was that not the point of her being my mother—to teach me how to make decisions for myself?"
Her voice had sounded almost wistful then. Chill wondered if she was thinking of her own mother.
"But then I realized—that was the point," she said, and he could hear some of the lightness return to her voice, though why she was telling him this at all was still unclear. "There's a bit of grey area in the quote, you see. Of course, the mother is still very important to the daughter in her youth. The point is that the child, as she grows, is supposed to become her own person, because the child is the only one truly responsible for her life. In turn, that means she cannot be responsible for any life but her own."
He could feel her eyes on him then, piercing him deeper than any blade would as she said, "There is a similar phrase in patrilineal cultures. 'The sins of the father are not the sins of the son'."
Almost on cue, the rocks ahead, the physical manifestation of his final punishment, shifted forebodingly. Neeila's arms tensed around him, but, again, the moment passed. Death chose not to claim them just yet, and instead of indifference or even fear, he felt the burn of impatience. Now, Neeila had more time to speak these lies.
"I know you don't believe me, but it's true. The sins of your father are not yours. They never have been, and they never will be."
No, he thought, using all the strength he had inside of him to pull away from her, to pull away from the falsities she would dare try and tell him.
She held fast. "You aren't Frieza. You can't be anyone but who you are. You are Chill, and that's who you're always going to be."
He could use the Mind Power, he thought desperately. He could—he could just—just push her back without even bothering with his weakened muscles.
No, he thought before he could even try. He could not use such a thing against her. Never against her.
"And those eyes of yours?" She went on, uncaring that he did not want to hear it. "I was scared when you showed me, because... because I was still letting a dead man haunt the living. I let night terrors and bad memories take over until all I could see was him. I didn't let myself see you. I let myself forget how much you meant to me. I let myself forget and I hurt you because of it.
"I know better now," she said, sounding so insistent that he wanted to believe her but there was nothing to believe. "You inherited them from him, but they are yours now. They belong to you, the real you. Not Chill, of Emperor Frieza, of Prince Vegeta. Not D3-24455. Not boy or thing or monster. Just Chill—the one who loves to climb and eat rice porridge, and the one I call my friend. Just you."
He could feel her hand on his face then. He flinched at the touch, yet he could not pull away. The pads of her fingers ran slowly over his skin. The edge of her thumb brushed against the fabric of his blindfold.
"Those eyes are yours and yours alone," she told him, "and I'm sorry I hadn't realized it then. I'm sorry I ever allowed myself to be afraid of any part of you."
And just like that, he froze. He did not know what to do, what to think, what to feel. How could he possibly react to that? How could he just—just accept those words?
He couldn't. He just couldn't.
He could feel her sigh against him, sounding almost disappointed. "You deserve so much. You are worthy of even more. Maybe one day, you'll understand"
He relaxed at that. There would be no more days beyond this one. He would die here, surely sometime this very hour. He would be crushed between rocks that have waited so long to send him to the other side.
He would not need to ponder on Neeila's words, would not need to let them sink down into his soul and taint everything he knew as truth.
Deserving... worthy...
No greater lies had ever been told.
The fear of death had addled her mind, he told himself, because he knew Neeila would never intentionally lie to him. He would not disrespect the care she had for him—however misplaced it was—by naming her a liar.
She was mistaken. She just had to be mistaken.
She allowed for a moment of silence then. Not one that was truly silent, mind, not with the world still raging on the other side of the stone cage. It seemed that Tene'mareen would never know true silence again.
He wondered what it all looked like. The end of the world must truly be a sight to behold.
He would never know. If he looked, he would only see the darkness of his stone prison. Even more so, he had already promised, after seeing the beautifully forbidden sight of blonde hair and green eyes, he would never open his eyes again.
"This place is ugly, and dark, and cruel," she said, and he remembered that Neeila was never one to simply let silence be for long. He listened, though, because that is simply what he does. Never mind if he did not want to hear it, never mind that he would hardly ever say anything back; when Neeila gifted him with words, he hung off each one like a dying man would a lifeline.
"It has swallowed my people whole and we will never be free of it, and that is because Frieza put us here," she said, and he could hear the way she struggled to not let the pain taint her voice. "He has sins against me, against my people, against my home. Sins that I will never forgive him for, not for as long as I live."
He could feel her eyes on him again, the gaze so heavy he was nearly crushed beneath it.
"Even so, because of him I have you, and I will always be grateful for that."
The air stopped. Then his throat went tight. He should not believe her, not when she was already telling him so many lies but he... he...
"'In the darkness is where the light shines its brightest'. That's another saying we have," she said. He could hear the smile back in her voice. "It's the saying I think is most true of all. I know it's true, because even in this ugly, cruel, dark place, there is light."
Her arms squeezed around him for a moment, then loosened. It was such an odd action. It was not like her grips of fear at all. Even he could see it was much different. Somehow, despite everything warring inside of him, the places where her arms touched his skin felt nice.
She said, "I've looked away sometimes, even closed my eyes once, but in my heart, I've always seen where the light was."
He did not know what she meant by that. He did not think he would ever have a chance to figure out.
"I'm glad that I met you," she told him, her voice full of nothing but the truth. "Please, don't ever forget that."
I'm glad I met you too, he wanted to say, should say, had to say.
He said nothing.
Vegeta could not find him.
He had known he would not have so easily, even if he had not wished to acknowledge it. Acknowledged or not, though, it was true. He had no idea where the boy was.
In the areas he had searched that were populated—two towns, and one prison sector—there was complete chaos. Damaged remains of houses and buildings decorated the ground, and frantic, terrified people ran about like headless chickens. Where there was not chaos, there was nothing—only the bodies of those whose fate brought them where the destruction was the worst.
(He did not allow himself to think that the boy was already one of those bodies.)
He was not familiar enough with the planet to be able to tell where he was; every place looked the same as the last to him. The planet was too big. There could be billions of people here; there was no way he was going to find one small boy.
He liked to think that he would sense the boy when he was near, but the reality was that there was no guarantee that he would. He could fly right over the boy and not even know it. All he was doing now was wasting his time.
He tried to ignore the panic that was starting to climb up his spine. He was so close. He was so close. He couldn't fail now, not when he was so close...
Somehow, despite the haze the hysteria was beginning to paint over his eyes, Vegeta's sight caught on a person down below. He was a guard, if his clothes were anything to go by, but he did not have the same stoic demeanor that the guards on Earth had. Though it was worth noting that his planet was falling apart beneath his feet, so perhaps he was entitled to a little unprofessionalism.
The man was relevant, however, because of the device in his hands that he was frantically tapping on. It was rectangular with a bright screen and Vegeta had no idea what it was, but he knew it was a chance.
Vegeta was on the man before he even had a chance to realize he was being targeted. Just as swiftly, he had a hold of the man's shirt and flew back until he was slammed up against the nearest wall, rock surrounding where the fences did not cover. While the man recovered from his sudden daze, Vegeta snatched the device from his fingers.
He inspected it, but all he was met with was a series of symbols that he could not read. "What is this?" he demanded.
"You—You're—" the man tried to speak, his eyes wide in recognition. It would seem that even after over ten years of inactivity, the Prince of all Saiyans was still a face to remember and fear.
"The device," Vegeta interrupted, his words nearly a growl. "Tell me what it is. Now."
"I—I, no," the man said, the defiance worthy of his post beginning to return. "I'm not going to—"
Vegeta grabbed his stony wrist and squeezed.
The man howled and Vegeta tightened his grip even further. He squeezed until the man fell to his knees. He squeezed until he could feel the bones cracking against the callouses of his palm.
The man was really howling then, jerking back and forth as if he would ever possess the strength necessary to break free. Vegeta had thought that the guards of this planet had to be made of some thicker skin, if they were going to torture and terrorize people as their day job. Maybe he just got lucky and found a particularly pathetic one.
"Tell me what it is."
"A tablet!" the man hollered. Vegeta sneered at the tears he saw beading at the corners of his eyes. Pathetic, indeed. "A Division-issued tablet! Every Division official is issued one."
"Can it locate a specific person? A prisoner?" Vegeta asked near frantically, only belatedly remembering that this fool ought not see him act so panicked.
The guard did not even seem to notice. It also seemed that the ongoing pain in his shattered wrists compels him to keep being truthful. "Yes, it can locate any being who has been formally entered into the database after birth if they are a civilian or transferred if they are an inmate. To find a civilian would be harder, as they don't wear—"
"Tell me where my son is."
"You—you mean—you're here for Chill?"
Vegeta's blood stopped cold.
Chill. His name was Chill.
He felt many things in that moment. At first, he felt astonishment, because that name was quite clearly an Ice-jin one. He could not quite wrap his head around why Frieza would give his illegitimate, half-breed spawn a name of his origin. That was almost as good as claiming him, was it not? Why would Frieza lay claim to a boy that, while sharing his blood, passed for saiyan in all other manners?
After the disbelief was the anger. How dare Frieza name his son such a thing? It was not enough to steal the boy right from his arms, was it? No, he had to take him and make him his in every way he possibly could.
It must have been to spite Vegeta. Yes, he thought, that must be it. There was no other explanation.
Vegeta shoved the device into the man's chest. He flexed his grip around his wrist in warning and the man whimpered. "Enter what you need to pin down his locator."
"Okay, okay," the man hastened to say, scrambling to begin typing with his good hand. He was slow, and Vegeta growled more than once—which Vegeta knew was pointless, for it really just made the man's movements even slower in his fumbling fear—before eventually the man was handing the device back to him.
On the screen was a map. There were a few landmarks, but the focal point was one red dot, connected to a long yellow line, which in turn is connected to a pulsing blue dot.
The blue dot was the boy. Vegeta stared at it for a moment. He stared until he could feel the swelling of emotion begin to tighten his chest. He looked away.
"There," the man said, "You've got his location. Now—"
Vegeta gathered his energy to his palm and raised his hand. A moment later, the top half of the man's body was nothing but ash.
He breathed out a sudden, rough breath. He was shocked at himself. He hardly even realized his own intentions until the man was already dead.
That was unnecessary, he knew.
Even so, the heat of his blood pumping in his chest made no room for remorse. It had been so long since he had last taken a life simply for the sake of taking it. Years, surely.
He had nearly forgotten how good it felt.
Armed with his device, Vegeta took to the sky again.
It was sudden, how it all ended.
The moment came sometime after his ankle locater started to flash and burn. He barely had a second to think about the Warden trying to find him when the rocks began to tremble once more. It was different this time. Different, Chill thought, because it made him realize the graduality of it all, of each shift and rumble, how intense it grew with each and every wave. He noticed now how the stones beneath them nearly gave out, how the stones above them do away with their taunts from before. There was only a promise now.
It scared Neeila. She did not quite scream, but she did bury her head in his chest and wrap her arms tightly around his waist, as if anchoring her grip will save either of them from what was to come. Behind her, Herio clung to her as well, his tipped head so close Chill could feel his hair brushing his cheek.
The wave passed, but the tension stayed. There shall be no more waiting. Time has run out—
"Look!" she said, unnecessarily. Chill could not 'look' at anything and as for the others—eyes accustomed to darkness will always be drawn to light. Chill did not see it, the hole that had suddenly opened in the last wave underneath them, but he could feel it. He felt it, because like the light, those accustomed to stagnation will always notice change. He could feel the sudden gust of air flowing through, bringing life back to the air that had long gone static.
He could also feel the shift in the atmosphere—the shift of attitude, of sentiment, of emotion.
That was what happened, after all, when one found hope again.
The force of the others regained hope was so astounding he nearly buckled under it. Chill heard them clamber about, stretching their bodies through the space down to what might be freedom just as much as it could be a lethal drop. Chill did not know what to feel. He tried to feel nothing.
He was thankful for it, when their hope dimmed to disappointment—no, to utter devastation. The hole, apparently, was large enough at a glance to raise their spirits, but not large enough to deliver. None of them could fit.
He did not think on their shared despair, did not let it swallow him whole.
Neeila slumped back down next to him, and this time she was crying. He did not grab her hand, did not pat her back. He did nothing but she leaned against him, anyway, letting his shirt catch her tears.
"I don't want to die," she said with a voice so small and miserable against his shoulder. The words make his stomach twist and burn—anguished and so painfully beyond guilty all at once—in a way so badly that his eyes prick with tears, but still he said nothing.
The end did not come then, but he felt it. He could feel it in the way Neeila's body suddenly stiffened, suddenly straightened. He could feel it in the way her tears suddenly ceased. He could feel it in the air, the goodbye that was coming.
It was not the end that he expected. It was not the end that he prepared himself for.
It was an end that was so much worse.
"You're smaller than me. I think you'll fit," she said.
Herio spoke where Chill is unable. "No."
"Why not?" she shot back.
"Because—because—" Herio floundered, but not because he was too perplexed to come up with an answer, but rather he was so angry that he could not get the words out. "Because that thing doesn't deserve—"
"Yes," the old man said.
"Excuse me?"
Simply, the old man said, "There is no reason for all of us to die here."
Herio said something in response to that, and Neeila says something back. Chill heard, "This is your sister's dying wish. Will you really deny her?" but even the words he caught mean nothing to him. Every single word flowed over him like water in a river, slipping through his fingers before he even got a chance to grasp them.
Neeila wanted him to leave, he managed to put together after a fashion. Leave without her, he realized a moment after that.
Why? He did not understand. Why would she want such a thing? Why would she want him to live when she would die? What did she gain from that? What did he gain from a life without her in it?
He had never thought of that before, he realized. Neeila had been there since the day Chill left the grand building and had never left. There were occasions, of course, when time would pass, and he would not see her. Their assignments were not always aligned, and more than once had they been loaned out to other Divisions when extra manpower was needed. Then of course, the time he had built the distance himself when he had frightened her. Aside from those times, whenever she was able, she was never far. Why wonder such a thing when she would always be there?
Perhaps he should have wondered, because now, with time running out and decisions he did not understand being made, he did not know what his life would be like without her.
He did not know, and he did not want to know. He did not want to live and leave her here to die.
"Chill," he heard her voice, and he belatedly realized that he was pulling away from where she was gripping his arms. "Come on, there isn't time."
No, he thought. He wouldn't do it.
She sighed, loud and heavy and sounding so very tired. Even so, he did not stop pulling away until she finally let him go. He knew her, though. He knew that she would not give up until she had gotten her way.
Not this time, he thought. This time he would win, and he would stay where he was meant to be, and her side would not be empty when the true end comes.
Neeila was grabbing at a rock—Chill could feel her pulling it free from where it was trapped underneath the weight of his thigh—a small one, the perfect size to fit in her hand. Chill was confused, until he wasn't, when the sound of the rock smashing into her face and her cry of pain was suddenly all his ears could hear.
He made a belated sound in protest, but it was drowned out by Herio's distressed call of, "Neeila!"
"I'm fine," she mumbled, her voice wet around her mouthful of blood, and Chill realized that the rock had not quite struck her face, but rather her mouth. "Got it... in one... shot, too."
He heard her spit, heard her rub her hand against her shirt, then felt her hand press against his.
"It's my tooth," she said, and Chill could feel it, small and smooth, ever so slightly pointed.
"You would take their tooth and never rid of it, because you could no longer have a future with that person..."
"Don't let it go," she said, but he barely heard her. He fought her attempt to curl his fingers around the tooth, pushed it back into her possession. She took it away and in the next moment, her fingers were prying his lips open and before he could lock his jaw, she was shoving it inside, nestling it against his cheek.
"... They were only a part of the past and it was a part that you could never forget."
"Chill," he heard her say, her voice right in front of him. "Chill, please, you have to live. I need you to live."
Suddenly, he felt angry. He felt betrayed. How could Neeila do this? How could she do this? Friend, she called him, care, she said she felt for him, and yet she does this?
"I'll remind you just who exactly cares for you."
He fought her, scratched and kicked at her like the beast he was. He did not register the scrapes his flailing arms gained from the rocks around him. He did not listen to her pleas, or her cries of pain when he hit her too hard. He kept hitting because she kept coming, kept trying to grab him and drag him away and he won't let her.
And then there were other sets of hands on him.
No, he thought, would scream it if he could. No!
It was futile. He was desperate—a wild, mad thing, but he was also weak. He could not fight them off.
"I wish things were different," he heard her say over the sound of his own snarling. "I wish I wasn't brought here. I wish my home was still a place I could ever return to."
He felt their hands manipulating one leg, then the other through the hole. It was a tight fit, but not an impossible one.
"When everything got bad, I would think about going home. I know I can't, I know there isn't anything worth returning to by now, but I still would think about it," she said, sounding so desperate for him to hear her.
His hips slipped through easily enough, and while his shoulders were the widest part of his body, he could already tell that if the hands holding him let him go and he just lifted his arms the right way...
"Every time I would think about it, you'd be there with me."
He was crying. Were friends supposed to make their friends cry?
"I will not forsake you," she had said.
You're a liar, Neeila, he wanted to say.
He tried to speak, to plead with her, but the words had been gone for so long and they would not return even now. He tried to scream but all he managed were croaks. He shook his head back and forth—it was all his so-called desperation could manage.
You've always been so weak, and he wondered whose voice he was hearing then. Perhaps every voice he had ever heard in his life.
"I wondered a lot of things," she said while his feet kicked uselessly in the open air. He was completely at their mercy now, and it was only so she could speak these final words that they continue to hold him. "I wondered what your hair would look like all clean and damp from rain. I wondered what you would look like in our clothes, and if your skin would still be so pale in the light of my sun. I wondered if the sun could make you glow too, even without crystals in your skin. I wondered if you would think the stars were as pretty as I did."
Her hands were on him, halting his motions. Her touch was so gentle, like there was something precious in her grasp and he did not deserve it. He never deserved her, certainly didn't deserve this chance at life. He deserved to die here, crushed under unforgiving stones until his bones broke and his breath gave out. He deserved this death because it was meant for him, never her, and now she will die wrapped up in his destruction and none of this was right—
"I'll never know. I'll never know any of those things and so much more," she said, and despite her gentleness, her touch was also firm, grounding, stubborn like the rest of her. "There are so many things I wish I could have shown you, so many things I wish we could've done together. But you'll experience it all. I know you will. I feel it."
Then she leaned in close and pressed her lips to his cheek, so very close to the corner of his lips.
She had explained to him once before that kisses could mean several things. It could be a parent showing affection for their child; it could be friends expressing fondness for each other; it could be for those whose love melded their two lives into one.
Chill knew nothing of that kind of love, did not think she did either. He did feel her tenderness, the intimacy, the aching of her heart just as truly as he felt the wetness of her tears.
"This isn't goodbye Chill. I know we will meet again. In heaven, or the next life—wherever you believe, I will be there," Neeila said and he knew that they wouldn't. When his time came, he would not go where she was going. He would never see her again.
All you've ever done is lie to me.
The hands beneath him lifted his arms up and he tried the last thing he could think of. He needed her to know what monster she was trying to save. Maybe it would remind her why he must stay.
He bent his arm and pulled the blindfold off.
Herio hissed, but Chill did not hear it. He heard nothing, only saw. His view was limited—he did not see the stones trembling around them, or the way Herio turned away or the way the old man's jaw tightened. He only saw her, visible because the light coming from the cracks and openings in the rocks above allowed it. He saw her pale, gaunt face smudged with dirt and tears and the blood that trailed from the cut on her temple and from her mouth. He saw her blonde hair, far stringier than he remembered. He saw her bright green eyes staring back at him.
He saw her smile. It was small, just the slightest creases at the corners of her lips. It was gentle, and all for him.
"Just like I thought," she said. "All I see is you."
The rocks above fell in time with the pearls of new tears falling from her eyes.
The hands let him go, but he still heard her screaming and screaming and screaming.
He fell and fell and fell.
TBC