Okay, so, um, hey :) My apology is at the end...
"I know what you are."
"Shut up."
"Your skin is pale and ice cold; your eyes are hard and lifeless."
"Gee, thanks."
"You're kinda strong."
"Shut up."
"You're dangerous."
"Shut up."
"Everything about you draws me in."
"Shut up."
"Your face. Your hair. Your scent. That amazing figure you've got goin' on."
"Oh my God, please."
"How old are you?"
"Surprisingly older than you."
"C'mon..."
"You know how old I am."
"Just go with it; indulge me."
I sighed. "Seventeen."
"How long have you been seventeen?"
"Freaking four thousand years; will you stop now?"
"I know what you are..."
"Not your girlfriend anymore?"
"Do you want me to say it out loud?"
"I want you to shut up."
Shane leaned closer, so close that his lips brushed my ear and I wanted to shiver. "Nerd."
I grabbed the pillow off my bed and threw it at his head, laughing when he dramatically clutched his heart and fell backwards to the floor.
"Jerk," I returned, oh-so-wittily.
"Feelin' frisky today, darling?" Shane asked, popping his head up from the floor. Leaning back on his elbows, hair mussed and sticking up everywhere, with just that sliver of stomach showing...
Maybe I was feeling frisky after all.
"Don't call me darling, sugar hunny."
Shane grunted as he pushed himself up off the floor before flopping himself onto my bed, crunching up my copy of Kauffman and Freedman's Universe. Great.
"I'm a sugar daddy, not a sugar hunny."
"Clearly," I laughed, shoving him on his shoulder. He caught a hold of my hand on its way back down and kissed it gently, sending away all thoughts of irritation.
I hated it when he did that.
We were silent for a few minutes more, as I wrote down notes for an upcoming physics test. The end of the semester was coming, and I couldn't wait for time to sit down and actually recuperate.
From fighting. From being emotionally drained.
From Dean.
He hadn't shown his face yet. Yet. But, somewhere, he was out there. The silence was deafening, and every shadow was so bright I had to turn away. That night, the night when the battle ended, he was here, at the house. I saw him. And he knows I did.
So he's watching, waiting. But I won't let it break me.
I won't let him break me.
Not again.
"Do you really have to go?" Shane groaned, still lying sprawled across my bed. He hadn't moved off of my copy of Universe, but I found myself not caring. Books could be replaced; Shane couldn't.
That was an awfully sentimental thought.
Ignoring my odd sense of wistfulness, I nodded and stood up off the bed. I had to meet with Amelie and Myrnin.
Shane stood up with me, and picked my back-pack up off the floor. He winced as he did, and I noticed that he had to stand still for a bit afterwards. His jaw was clenched.
"Shane..."
"I'm fine," he said, though he clearly wasn't.
Ever since fighting Dean, something hadn't been right. I mean, dying generally takes its toll on you. Not many people come back from death, so Shane had already done pretty well in that respect. But he'd never really healed. That small bubble world that Amelie had kept him in had done the brunt of keeping him alive; he had burst from it too soon, and now you could see that he wasn't fully healed. Of course, he wasn't a zombie, so that was one thing.
But he wasn't wholly human either, and you could tell that none of us – not even Michael, the personification of "not wholly human" – were comfortable with this fact.
But what were we supposed to do? Scream and run away from him? Exile him? Shove him out of the door and not look back?
He was still Shane. I loved him; we all did. He was fighting a battle within himself, and me bringing attention to it would only be cause for him to doubt himself more.
I studied him while he tried to compose himself. I could see a scar poking out from underneath his t-shirt, and a bruise was still prominent on his jaw. He needed a shave; he needed a haircut. He needed to sleep, and he needed to stop thinking for just five minutes.
But most of all, he needed the people he loved to stop questioning him and start supporting him.
I walked over to him and took my back-pack from him, standing on my tip-toes to give him a gentle kiss on the cheek. When I pulled away, I covered the same spot with my hand. Shane had his eyes closed and his jaw clenched. He knew something was wrong, and he was trying so hard to will it away.
What hurt the most was that I couldn't help him do just that.
"I'll be home soon," I promised, moving my hand down to grip his.
He nodded, once, before kissing me on the forehead.
Dying had made us really touchy-feely.
Myrnin had his fears. He believed something was coming, something big enough that Dean, ever the psychopath, wouldn't be powerful enough to fight it.
Powerful enough that he thought we should all break down the barriers of the town and run.
Sometimes, I feel like he's right. That this town has faced its fair share of battles, and is too weak to face any more. We're tired. Everyone is. Our fighters are dead, if not too exhausted to continue fighting. Our brains are confused. Our instinct has disappeared, all because we had to use them at the same time for too long.
And this was against Dean. If what's coming is stronger than him, how are we supposed to survive?
That fight had its toll on everyone and everything.
Even Morganville itself.
The streets looked different. Not different as in they were suddenly tinted in colour, or silent.
But not good different, either. They seemed...tainted. Like they were against us.
Traitorous. They seemed traitorous.
I guess it's hard to not feel like that when you know that they're caring for something that wants to kill you. Like: Would you trust a friend that had been telling your most embarrassing stories to your enemy?
It's a pretty crappy comparison, but my point has been made.
They just didn't seem the same. It's hard walking down a street, when you can stare at its corner and remember someone dying there. It's hard to cross a road when all you can remember is rain and clouds and crowds and death.
Morganville is tainted. Walking to town square, when you see boarded up windows, blood stains on the cobblestone streets, and huge branches ripped off even bigger trees, it's difficult to remember any good times. It's difficult to feel safe.
Mostly, it's difficult to walk through the town square and not feel eyes on you.
And when I turn around, there he is.
So I know it's short, and I know that I should be giving you a massive chapter after the horrible, horrible hiatus (I'm reallllyyyy sorry about that, by the way :S). But I have great ideas for the next chapter, and this is just the natural cut-off point for this one. So what I need to do is re-read Valentine's Day (because, me, being the amazingly tentative author I am, has forgotten some of the details that I'm sure I have mentioned in VD, but just need to check that I actually have...) and then re-write the next chapter.
If today is Tuesday, then I'll read VD tomorrow and upload on Friday. And that's a promise. I understand that the people who've been with me from the start have most likely forgotten about me, and that NONE of you have any reason to take me on my word after this really inexcusable lack of updating, but I'll update Saturday, if not Friday.
I've suddenly got big plans for this fic, but I've not written in a while, so I kinda need to cruiissseee back into it :P
I don't have any solid excuses for waiting two years to update this fic. It was exams; but then I finished. Then it was just relief of being able to write, that I actually forgot to write anything and just thought about it. Then it was exams again, and then birthdays, and then revision, and then exams, and now I've just finished volunteering abroad, and I'm like, "Niki, get yo ass together, biatch."
So I listened to me, and here I am.
So I'm very, very sorry. You can all send me virtual hate glares, or shove sticks up my arse, but just know that I'm sorry, and very, very thankful to anyone still waiting around for me to update. You deserve way more than what I can give you.
God, this note is longer than the chapter. So here's the first chapter, and though it's short, I hope you all enjoyed. The next one will be much, much better. I can get into it and write my freaking brains out :P
~Nikita
