A/N: Haha! I strike again with Chapter Trois! And for those of you who do not know how to count or for those who do not know simple French (not judging, just clarifying; promise), trois means three. So, Chapter Three. I want to thank everyone who has read this story. 80 something is pretty good for a book not many people seem to know exists. And thank you to swidler for your review. It means a lot and I'm sorry I didn't get around to personally thanking you, but here you go. For the world to see. Or for eighty pairs of eyes to see. Thank you, really. And I guess we'll have to wait and find out what happens to Lena. You and me both. Kind of. Because I already know the answer to your question, even though it wasn't so much a question as a thought you typed out. But then this entire story is just my thoughts typed out. Ah well. Thank you all (again) and please, above anything, above reviewing and reading and favouriting and following, please ENJOY!
She Had the World
"Who goes there?" A man, thick and burly, steps through the trees a gun jutting out from his loose-fitting jeans. My shoulders will have marks from where Alex is digging his fingernails in. I desperately want to see his face, to ask for reassurance, but he holds me in place. His breath comes out lightly, dancing on the wind before being carried away through the whistling trees. I listen to it now and try to calm myself.
"I asked 'who goes there'?" The man speaks again, his voice drawling with southern blood. His skin glows a dark ebony, wet from the same rain Alex and I experienced just moments before. It feels like days ago. The mans eyes are dark, but shine in the sudden onset of sunlight. I know fear should riddle my bones, but a thrill, so new and unfamiliar, courses through me.
What I find amazing in this moment is Alex. Time seems to stand still as I feel his heartbeat speed up. But I can sense that on the outside, he looks calm. It's like the night of that fateful raid, when he bandaged up my leg and kissed me for the first time. His voice and his movements were swift and planned, but I could hear his heartbeat through his chest betraying his calm exterior.
Now, the life-giving thing pumps against my back, connecting me more to the young man behind me, allowing me to see deeper into this stone faced creature. I reach my hand around his waist as the man walks slowly towards us. I grapple slightly, but find his hand and squeeze.
"Hands where I can see them!" The man yells at us. He approaches us now, quickly, pulling his gun out. Before my mind connects with my feet, Alex has pulled me behind him, grabbing onto my hips from in front me. I hear a click, loud against the silence. A branch cracks in the distance and I whip my head around, searching blindly for the source.
"Stay back," I have never heard Alex's voice so full of venom that I almost don't believe it was him who talked. And yet I feel his skin vibrate with his voice.
"Names, then," the man takes another footfall towards us. Alex digs into me, his hand gripping me so firmly I want to giggle and complain that it hurts at the same time. I stare at the gun from behind Alex's back, hiding like a scared child peaking a head around their mother's waist to get a better look at the strange object in front of them. Guns are unfamiliar to me. They fascinate me. And then I remember when that dog was shot. How it lay in the night, panting as its life came to an end.
I choke back bile and stare at the man instead. Lines crease his face, forcing him to appear older than I actually believe him to be. His eyes are dark, nearly black in the glaring sun. I cannot tell the sweat from the water as liquid drips from his bushy eyebrows. Harmless. This man is harmless.
Reckless. I am reckless.
"Alex and Lena." I step forward easily, Alex too startled by my movements to stop me. He grabs my arm roughly after his moment of confusion passes, but I yank free and glare at him. He glares back.
"Alex and Lena. Where're you two comin' from?" He looks down at me, frowning like I imagine Alex is right now, behind my back. His stare burns into me and I imagine eye shaped scars on the skin underneath my shirt.
"Portland. Where are we?" My hands automatically go to my hips as if some animalistic pride has taken over. I stand defiantly. I am Lena, a survivor.
"How'd you find this place?"
"I don't even know where this place is. Where are we?" My voice gurgles and I try to imitate Alex's voice from before, when he scared me. I worry that this is ruining me for Alex. But he hasn't stopped me from speaking.
"New Mexico. Not entirely sure where, though," the man's face softens and years wash away from his features like water.
"New Mexico?" It's a rhetorical question.
"New Mexico." He affirms.
I try and recover. I swallow and blink a thousand times and look anywhere but down. The sun hurts everything. It is as if I am only noticing now how incredibly tired I am. Like running through however many states it takes to get from the north to the south isn't really all that difficult. But it is. And all I want is a bed.
My memory blanks after this. I catch the man's name, Charles, and then I am following him to the campsite. He shows us a trailer that no one is using and says to make ourselves comfortable. We will talk with the "woman in charge" tomorrow to figure out a more permanent solution to our traveling woes. If there is one.
Alex does not touch me until we crawl into the tiny bed in the tiny trailer and even then the contact is accidental and forced.
"Lena," I hear my voice, but my feet refuse to stop their quick movements. Trees scrape my arms and legs, slicing deep into my fragile flesh. Blood bubbles, spilling over like a waterfall. I stop to catch my breath. I notice a shadow blowing past, cackling. "Lena!" It calls again, a low rumble of a voice. The noise jerks me into motion once more.
The sky turns black with terror, screaming and wailing with wind. It rushes through the trees, calling after me as I run. Something trips me and I fly into the dried leaves of golden autumn. My name echoes through the woods, taunting me with its malicious laughter.
"Lena. Lena. Lena."
And then the darkness surrounds me, engulfing me in its inescapable grasp, choking me from the inside out. Hands grip my sides, holding me tightly, aiding in the slow suffocation.
"Lena," the voice is riddled with worry now, no longer harsh but tired and groggy. Slowly, I register light filtering through a slitted plastic wall and push myself up, rubbing at my eyes. A sob engulfs me and the hands leave my body momentarily, finding a new position at my shoulders.
Alex.
Relief floods my brain. Everything goes out of focus except for the warm heat radiating from the fingers loosely holding onto me. I bury my head in my hands and eventually calm myself down.
Alex's fingers spread across my sweaty back, lifting my shirt up to better acquire a feel of my skin. I succumb to the relaxing motions, listening lightly to soft words of love spilling from his lips. I lift my head and wipe my eyes, willing myself to shut up because this is not the time nor the place to have a meltdown. Silence buries itself deep in the core of this safe house and I need to accommodate.
A light kiss on my neck spreads warmth throughout the entirety of my body, awakening a flame in my chest. I turn now to look at the boy patient enough to lie with me through my nightmares. The moonlight glimmers off of his skin and I can see his anxious-ridden expression as it scrunches his features.
"I'm okay," I say quietly, bowing my head. He fits a hand underneath my jaw, lifting my head with ease using his thumb. He smiles the smile that I fell in love with, leaning in to kiss me lightly on the corner of my mouth. I think, this is the first time you have touched me in weeks.
We fall asleep again. Or maybe it's just me and Alex stays awake, thinking like the hundred-year-old he stuck in his brain. But either way, I don't stir until a light kiss burns my temple and I catch the faint glimpse of my only friend abandoning me for work.
Because that was their rule. "You can stay here if you can work." So we work. And we work hard. And in different places. I never see him during the day and when he gets home, always after I do, his body aches and his mind hurts too much to register my existence aside from a shoulder tap and a whisper of "I'm going to sleep."
I try hard to make sure this doesn't get in my head, but I don't think he understands how much it hurts to be ignored by the only person I need right now. He left his family a long time ago. This is new to me. I want to be brave and prove to him that I am strong, but I am not. I simply am not. And I hate it. I never needed bravery and strength back in Portland. I believed everything that was said to me. I believed that life gave you nothing in return for all you gave to it and I believed that falling in love would kill me.
I'm still young, though, I suppose. I've got time to die yet.
These thoughts wake me up and I swing my legs over the bed and allow them to touch the rough, plastic floor of the stationary RV we've taken over. The space reigns small. Room extends itself to fit about three people if those three people do not mind being squished and there is one toilet. It flushes only due to the kind and hardworking man I share a bed with. Although I find myself wishing to call him a child more and more these days.
Weariness bores my bones most mornings and this one is no exception. I open the door with a raggedy towel and a change of clothes in my arms. The ground crackles beneath my light footsteps and I spot a few children playing with a dog. It barks and the sound startles me. I graze my eyes over in the direction where I know Alex is working and attempt to push him from my thoughts. Very unsuccessfully.
The water that I splash over myself from the creek nearby our campsite chills me in the late September air. The leaves have started to change colour and my birthday has long passed. They say birthday's aren't as important here, but they were never important back home.
Except September 3rd was my eighteenth birthday. When I was supposed to be lying on a cold, metal slab, needles and knives sticking into my brain. When I was supposed to be cured. That thought makes me want to throw up, but I hold myself down and tell myself to breathe. Alex didn't say anything, so I can only assume it doesn't matter. Which stings, because it does.
I hear someone approaching me from behind and I twist my head around quickly. It's Molly, the "mama" of this camp. She runs the place, built it up from the ground. Her hair sparks grey in more places than not and her skin sags in certain areas, but her eyes, a vibrant green, hold young life.
"Hello, dear," her voice comes out soft, but I hear her screams and shouts bursting into the night sometimes as she chastises one of the workers. I have decided to try to keep on her good side.
"Hi, Molly," I stand up, wiping the crumpled leaves off of my too big jeans. Clothes come from the Insiders in random and odd intervals, meaning there were no clothes that fit me when we came and their may not be anything for a while because summer decided to leave early. Though Molly has told me that down here, summer never truly abandons us. I never travelled outside of Portland except for when Alex and I went to his part of the Wilds and geography was never my strong suit in school, so I trust the southern native.
"Nice day out, don't ya think?" Her southern drawl fascinates me. Hers is the thickest out here. Well, from the minimal amount of people I've talked to, I can assume hers is the strongest.
I nod my head in response to her question and she holds out her arm for me to take. I oblige and she leads me to the abandoned church that stands as our "home base." During the Blitz, Molly told me, the government bombed everything. Fire stretched for miles, and in a place as dry and barren as New Mexico, it was difficult to find shelter from the raging planes. Molly ran from Alabama, having grown up in the wilds over there. She was thirty-something. She had a stint in the "Real World" like Alex, playing the role of an English teacher. But when her home, her true home, blew to smithereens, she decided to leave permanently.
Her feet took her here. After the fires died down, she found this place. Trees spread out for miles, except right smack dab in the center. And there was a church. It was old, already old. But now it was torn apart. So she recruited some people and they started this lodge up.
The church was made of stone. Some stones were wobbly and most were not put in properly due to it being reconstructed by not construction workers, but it did well enough to accommodate people. Nobody complained, at least.
Molly took me to the back, passed what was once the Sanctuary to where I was stationed. She leaned in to kiss my cheek as she left and I told myself not to pull away. It felt comforting if I ignored the uncomfortable ringing in my ears.
A grey wave covered the day as I began my job cooking. That was my assignment. Cooking. It never suited me back in Portland, but here, I seem to do well. Not like we can really cook much anyway, so what am I going to screw up? Molly says that people here don't care about cuisine so much as staying alive.
Today's menu: meat from three fat hares getting ready for their never-coming hibernation. Fit to feed the thirty-three people in this area. Sort of.
As I skin the hares, the other kitchen-worker, Michael, starts a fire using only flint and steel. I'm still not entirely used to the co-gender environment. I flinch whenever a male walks over to me, passed me, or with me. I want to scream when their skin comes into contact with mine. Alex giggles about it, but I find nothing funny in it. It means that my old life still has pull on me. I don't need it with me, my past, but it rides my back for everyone to see. I'm out of place. I left to find my place with Alex and here we are, him falling into step with these people like he's known them his whole entire life, and I am here, skinning a bloody rabbit and scared that Michael will try and strike up conversation just as he strikes the flint and steel into a blazing fire.
The hare's soft flesh feels cool and squishy and appetizing. It took less time than I realised to tell my stomach it needed to shut up and take the fact that real food was scarce. And I liked hares, also more than I ever thought I could. They like it here, hares. New Mexico seems to attract them, probably because of its dry heat and not too harsh winters.
I force myself to walk towards Michael at the "stove" in order to begin frying the squares of meat for lunch and dinner. I don't look at him, although I know exactly what he looks like: blonde hair shagging over a scarred forehead from a burn given by a regulator on his escape, blue eyes the same colour of sickly hospital walls, and stubble from lack of razor privileges due to threatening another person recently with one. I wasn't so much scared of him, although I would not like him and his big arms to come at me with a sharp object, as I was of his gender. It is so different from mine.
And I know because of what Alex and I did that night we escaped. Or however long after we escaped. Days or weeks after. I know we were running fast, but it takes longer than a night to run from Oregon to New Mexico and I know it. It makes it more difficult to look and speak to a man knowing what lay beneath the layers of clothing.
"Smells nice," he says, his accent drooling over his words. His teeth are shiny and I wonder how they stay that way. But it's not like Alex and I are the only one's they allowed to have toothbrushes and toothpaste. "Where's that boy o' yours?" He asks. And I would tell him, maybe, if I knew. Alex speaks not of his work. I know he helps the other men eligible here in their scavenging. Molly told me he's one of the people who goes and checks on the "DELIVERY TREES" deep in the forest, near the border. I decided after that, I didn't mind that Alex refused to clue me in about it.
"Guess you don't know?" It's a rhetorical question because he thinks I do know, I'm just too afraid to talk. Which is only half true. I chance a look at him and see his half-smile looming over me.
"Ye-ah, ye-ah," I say, stumbling over the one syllable word not once, but twice. Michael laughs and grabs at the spatula I have glued in my hands. I release it out of shock and watch, mouth slightly agape, as he slides it over and under the meat, allowing all the chunks to simmer equally.
A noise at the kitchen door startles my frozen body to life and I see the boy I fell in love with walking, bloody and weary, towards the sink. I freeze again, but only momentarily, and then approach him hesitantly.
"What happened?" My voice is smaller than I would have liked, but the words are out and I can't take them back. He looks at me, squarely in the eye, and says nothing.
Childish anger takes over and I spin around on my heels, stomping my way out of the door. I hear Michael's crackley voice, "back off her man," but it sounds distant and broken through the blood rushing in my ears. I take off running, something I haven't done since arriving.
My legs burn with laziness, angrily telling me they don't want to be used like this, but I ignore the pain just once more before I decide it is safe to snap.
When I, literally, stumble upon a patch of clear grass, I scream. I know I am far enough away from both the "Real World" and the campsite to not be heard, so I just scream and scream and scream until my voice breaks and I thirst for water.
I slam myself to the ground and flail my arms up and down, smacking the soft dirt repeatedly until satisfaction spreads through my body. I sit up, looking around.
The sun glows against the cloudy sky, trying to break free. I stare at it long enough that when I close my eyes, I see the yellow and green silhouette of the invisible energy ball.
And then I cry. Tears come fast and heavy. They trickle down my face and onto the grass which seemingly goes on for miles. Maybe I'll literally cry myself a river and float away. Away from this hurt and pain of abandonment. Away from Alex. Away from my potentially alive mother. Even further away from Hana.
Because I miss home. Not "home" as in Portland. But I miss the security of the word home. I have no home. And now that I think about it, I never have. Home was always just a word attributed to the place I lived in. It changed once when I was child and now it has changed another time. And I know it will keep changing. Home is not a place. It is a word. A word that flies with the wind. I need a home now. Whether it is an actual house with four walls, a roof, and a door; or whether it is with Alex, my only comfort in this damaged world who also refuses to speak in my direction.
Stubbornly, I want to stay in this field. I imagine myself riding one those horses I heard about as a kid through this field, feeling free and alive. Alex with me, trusting me, loving me. But I get up and walk in the direction that is "home." Molly told me, "If you ever want to go for some space (she meant from the overwhelming unfamiliarity of this place) promise me you'll go in a straight line." I promised and now I walk back in a straight line, taking my sweet time, praying that Alex is torn up about ignoring me and currently going over ways to apologise.
I skip lunch and then I skip dinner. He was not waiting for me at our trailer, as I suspected, and I will not be the first to break this silence. I'm not hungry. I feel sick. I feel alone and sick and tired. All the goddamned time. It's as if those are the only things I brought with me from Oregon. Sickness, weariness, and loneliness.
"The Police." I speak to the open air, remembering. "Seems I'm never lonely being alone." I could use a message in a bottle right about now, proving that I am not, in fact, alone. Because I sure as hell am lonely.
I drift off slowly, thinking of that song and what it means to not be lonely even though you are alone, and dream strange dreams full of happiness and laughter.
Sick.
Sick.
Sick.
I wake up in a flash, my stomach clenching. Alex is sitting at the little table, head bowed over his arms asleep. He is none of my concern, though, as I kick the covers off of myself.
I am drenched in sweat.
My stomach churns.
Lights dance in my vision.
I am sick.
I am dying.
A/N 2: I realise that the three chapters I have posted have been left at cliffhangers. And I apologise. I hate them myself, but writing them is so much more fun. Maybe I'm one of those people who likes to torture readers.
So I'm going to be putting the bits about the songs down here because I feel that if people don't care about music (YOU SHOULD!) then they are going to be turned off by it at the beginning. So down here it goes. I was torn between two titles for this chapter: "She Had the World" and "Englishman in New York." You guys know which one I decided on and now know that I am a Police/Sting fan. The Police, for example, wrote and performed "Message in a Bottle" (I hope you knew that already, though. It was, like, their most famous song) which I referenced to help in my description of poor Lena's lonely mind, and "Englishman in New York" is a Sting song. It's actually fascinating how he got the nickname Sting, but I'll let you look that up if you're interested. "She Had the World" was chosen for two reasons: 1, the song goes along well with what Lena is feeling. She seemingly has the world she wants, but doesn't have the thing she needs in order to keep that world together. (My favourite line(s) from that song is "But that girl had so much love/ she'd wanna kiss you all the time/ yeah she'd wanna kiss you all the time/ she said she'd won the world/ at a carnival/ but I'm sure I didn't ruin her/ I just made her more interesting. I imagine Alex feels like that. Lena has so much love to give him, but he's afraid that this world, his world, is ruining her. Because if you listen to the song, you'll hear the narrator is trying to convince himself that he didn't ruin her, even though he's sure he did.) And reason Number 2 is that I am seeing Panic! at the Disco (the dudes whose song that is) when they open for Fall Out Boy (my favourite "modern day" band) on Tuesday and feel I should pay them a homage. Try and figure out why I also thought "Englishman in New York" would work. Write to me about it. About your philosophies on the songs I choose. Why you think I chose them and maybe ones that I could have chosen. I'm all in for learning new artists.
This went on for a lot longer than I thought it would. Can you tell that I don't really have friends? But then who needs 'em when you've got a bunch of faceless usernames reading your stuff.
Thank you all one more time for reading and reviewing and whatnot. It means the world to me that my writing is getting recognized, even if it isn't liked. Enjoy the music project thingy I've given. Seriously, I love hearing about music and what people think about it. Tell me what you think!
Yours truly,
(insert name here)
