A/N: Requested by a fan on my Facebook fanpage. So here ya go! Another chapter of "Prisoners of the Void". I was putting off this chapter because I wasn't sure how I wanted to write it XP
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Idea is by Crushed Hale.x and it's in Gwen's POV.
I was feeling so good for a while. It was going perfect. I was with my parents again. My heart was soaring, I was totally in Heaven, loving every second of this new freedom. Freedom, family, a blue sky, trees, grass, dirt, bunnies, butterflies, picket fences, rose gardens. This was the place I had wanted to be in all along. Here. Here was home. Here.
My mom had ushered me into the house and my dad had come home, not bothering to shut off the car or even put it in park. As soon as he had pulled in and seen my red mane through the doorway, he had leapt out of the driver's seat and flung himself up the sidewalk to get to me.
My dad had almost the same reaction as my mom, but he was much more emotional. His tears were staining the shirt that hung too tightly to my frame, and his eyes quickly became blotchy and red with the crying. He was clinging to me as if for dear life. His glasses were mashed up against my shoulder, the corner of the black frames digging into my skin. He held me like I was the only precious thing in the world.
I had almost always felt that my dad cared about me more as a person than my mother did. She just wanted that perfect child that she could gloat about to all her book club buddies. Not my dad. He talked about me like I was a person and like I was the apple of his eye. Maybe because I was. I'm not sure. But he treated me more like a human being more than my mother ever could.
But my dad clung to me so tightly that I almost felt suffocated. Part of me was desperate to have him hold me like that forever, but the instincts that the Null Void had drilled into me seemed to kick in; I was instantly edgy after more than a few minutes of having him latched onto me. I had to eventually ask him to back off because I still had a little personal space issue from being a prisoner of the Void for so long.
"Gwen," he breathed, his brown eyes boring into my green ones, "where in the world were you?" My dad's voice was breathless, desperate, ecstatic. I mean, I would've been the same way too had I lost my kid for four years and never hoped to see her again. Just saying. I totally understand where he's coming from with this insanely dominant paternal instinct. It's almost scary. The Mama Bear thick that everyone references to? Yeah, I have Papa Bear.
"I was in an interdimensional prison," I told him. Yeah, like he would understand that. I was just kind of hoping that maybe Ben had explained the Null Void somewhere along the line and that maybe there was a possibility that my dad would be able to comprehend the notion of there being multiple dimensions instead of just the three we saw and then the other planets. There's an entire universe out there. To think that I've only seen snippets of it... "The Null Void."
His mouth gaped open for a long moment as he tried to fathom this thought. Dimensions and stuff like that never exactly settled well with people who hadn't been living there for years. I had picked it up after being there for so long. You learn what you live through. Live and learn, that's what the saying is. I blanked on it for a minute there.
Maybe it was the word prison that threw him off, but he stared at me like I was insane until his eyes finally cleared of the clouded confusion, and he just seemed to accept this explanation. Accepting isn't necessarily believing nor is it understanding, but it's recognizing that there might be something beyond explanation. But my dad seemed to get it well enough to move onto his next question. "How did you get out?"
"I made a portal with my mana." Because that answer made as much sense as the Null Void. "I'm an alien called an Anodite. I can control the life energy of organisms and turn it into pink portals and big blasts of energy and stuff. It's like a super power." I gave him my biggest, most innocent smile and tried to pretend like this answer made sense to him too. He wouldn't understand, would he? He didn't know. I had been trained to be alien savvy in four years under a crimson sky. Now I had blue overhead and I was ready to take on the world.
"Yes, your grandmother was an Anodite too," he said, fixing his glasses and giving me a little look that said "Sorry we didn't tell you earlier". My dad's face softened. "Are you hurt? Are you hungry? Do you need anything?"
And he was back in concerned parent mode. Which I was perfectly fine with. "I got hurt a lot, but Kevin always patched me up." I rolled up a little bit of my sleeve to show him the scar I had gotten on my forearm in my first few days living in that Hell. "He always took good care of me." I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see his dark form standing there in the shadows or to see him still lurking outside the front door.
Kevin wasn't there.
"Who are you looking for?" asked my dad as my mom looked on, not caring, oblivious to the fact that the guy who had saved my life more than once, the guy who had brought me back to them, was gone. She didn't want a criminal hanging out with me. He had been in the same Hell as I was, but he was no criminal. Not anymore.
"Kevin," I whispered, knowing that he had left. Tears stung at my eyes as pain nagged on my heart. He left me. After all we'd been through, after all the shit he went through to save my sorry ass... After being alone together for so long, he had left me... "Kevin..." My voice had turned into a pitiful whimper.
He was my life when we were hiding out underground. He was the one who had put in the effort to keep my alive all those years. I couldn't provide food. I couldn't get us firewood. I couldn't do anything. For four years, he had taken care of me like he actually cared. But did he ever really truly care? Now he had left me. Was I just a tool? Was I his escape? Was that all he had wanted me for? To get back home so he could get his revenge?
Now that we were back on Earth... Now that we were back in Bellwood...
"Kevin." My tone was fierce. Because I had led the lion right to his prey. I tried to ignore the pain that clenched my chest tightly. "Does Ben still live on the other side of town?" I asked, turning my attention back to my parents as they stood there with worried looks. They just wanted me to stay with them. Now that I was already asking about Ben and considering leaving, it was no wonder that they were worried about keeping me close.
I was lucky that my dad was the first to answer; my mother would've dodged the question and found an excuse to keep me here. "Yes, he still lives over there. Why?"
Him and his questions...
"I have to… I have to go…" And after taking a few steps away from my parents and out of my house, I sprinted out of there as fast as I could, adrenaline coursing through my system. I could only hope that maybe I could make it to the other side of town fast enough. I could only hope. Odds were good that Kevin was going to get himself killed, and I had to stop him.
But the only way to get to the other side of town fast enough to stop him with his hour head start was to make a portal. I needed a portal to save Kevin from himself.
A/N: Well, now we've got some problems now don't we, Gwen? Review and you'll find out what happens next sooner!
~Sky