Dean cleaned up around the campfire, burying the trash and wrapping up the uneaten food. The image of Laura sitting next to Nathan as she placed a hand in his raced through his mind. Laura chose him, Dean thought angrily, I've always been there for her, but she chose him. I was the one who had fought the Whitecoats, just to give her a little more time to chance to rest. What does she see in him?
Dean threw a bag on the ground, a little too hard, and the contents spilt out. He beamed down to pick up the spilled contents of the bag, grabbing them to stick them back in the bag before Nathan and Laura returned.
"Need any help?" Nathan asked from behind him.
"I don't need help," Dean replied, "especially from cold-hearted killers like you. You're no better than the whitecoats. I used to fight them to keep her safe. She doesn't deserve someone like you!"
Tears had begun to form in his eyes as he let loose. He had started this and he was going to finish it. Tears began to fall from his face when he spoke again.
"I secretly watch her for years," Dean said, "protecting her, causing divisions to give her a few extra minutes of rest before they experimented on her again. It's tore me up what they did to her, they slowly made the girl I knew disappear. The kind, happy, smiling girl I fell for was replaced by an unfeeling killer. I don't know what happened, but that girl, the one I knew, finally came back. AND YOU TOOK HER AWAY FROM ME!"
Dean swung a fist at Nathan. It connected with his cheek and Nathan stumbled back, but stayed standing.
"The truth comes out," Nathan replied. "Dean, I never knew the extent of your feelings for, you never want to talk about it. You always kept to yourself."
Dean ran at Nathan again, readying himself for another punch, the pain in his face obvious. He wasn't angry and Nathan, but at himself. He had been too weak to tell her how he felt and he lost her. He stopped mere centimetres away from Nathan, first raised, tears falling down his face. Nathan and Dean just stood there, frozen, not moving, until Dean dropped his fist and began to break down and cry, finally giving in to his heartbreak.
"Dean," Nathan said after a while, kneeling down beside him, "Dean look at me. I know it huts. I know how…"
"No, you don't," Dean interrupted, now calmer that he had let things get off his chest, "You wouldn't have the first idea."
"I do," Nathan replied, "More than you know."
"Yeah right," Dean replied, "You have Laura, why would you have felt heartache and betrayal?"
Dean looked up at Nathan's face and began to think it might have been a bad decision to say that to him. The shadows on Nathan's face scared him; the pain in his eyes was obvious.
"What happened?" Dean asked…
Chapter 46
The memories of when I was fourteen rushed into my mind when I saw Dean on the ground in pain. There are things I hated about my father before he staged his death. Staging his death just made me hate him more and finding out he ran Haven...? That was the last straw. I was beyond forgiving him.
"You know how adults say at around the age of thirteen; we are too young to know love?" I replied to Dean, "That rule doesn't always apply. I grew up in a household where I had to mature faster than most because I had to look after myself and my younger brother and sister."
"So what happened?" Dean asked.
"It was my father," I replied, "He ended up in a partnership with some other scientist. They were working on all the experimentation that lead to where we are now. I don't know much of the details about what they were doing, but my dad kept telling me I would find out when I was older and ready to take over the business. But id had known one thing; part of their agreement was an arranged marriage between the two families. The daughter of my father's friend was who I was supposedly marrying. I refused to do it, but my father… well you've met him haven't you?"
Dean nodded when I asked that. He knew exactly how controlling and manipulative my father could be, he'd seen it first hand.
"Anyway I proved to be stubborn about it and he decided to try for a compromise," I continued, "He said they could arrange something else, but I was to meet the daughter first, so I agreed to it, I wasn't happy about having my future planned for me, but I agreed. We met a couple of weeks later and found out it wasn't as bad as we expected. Neither of us knew what our parents work was, but we got along quite well, eventually we ended up falling for each other."
"Love works in strange ways," Dean said, "Don't you think so Nathan?"
"Fate works in strange ways," I replied bitterly, "It was a month after my fourteenth birthday, before my father staged his death, that she was killed. It was a street racer; he ran a red light and slammed into the side of the car. I was there when it happened, I tried to protect her from the impact, but wasn't able to. She died in my arms while waiting for the paramedics, internal bleeding was what they said. The racer didn't survive the crash either, he went flying through the windscreen, but if he had survived, I probably would have killed him then and there."
"I suppose I should be jealous then," Laura said, walking into the clearing, "That you had someone before me, but I can't say that I am, because I have you now. If you don't mind me asking, what was she like?"
"A lot like you actually," I replied, "Except without the messed up past, although hers was a bit messed up it wasn't as bad as yours. Also let's not forget the fact she didn't have wings. It was too much having her taken away from me at the time, and then dad died, well supposedly died, and I just couldn't handle it. I just sort of shut down and can't remember much of the time afterwards, but recently it's just started coming back to me, but I don't feel it as much as I used to."
"A lot like me?" Laura repeated, "Well then maybe I should be jealous."
"Don't be," I replied, "You're way much more fun than she was."
Laura smiled and kissed me on the cheek at that comment, but I didn't kiss her back. I didn't want to make Dean feel like I was rubbing it in his face. Laura must have guessed because she left it alone. We sat in silence again for a little while then, as the fire slowly shrank into embers we went to bed. Dean slept on the opposite side to the campfire as we did. Cass was nowhere to be seen and I was slightly worried, but she could have been getting cleaned up at the stream for all I know. I didn't enquire. Laura and I snuggled up to one another near the campfire's embers and eventually fell asleep in each others arms.