CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: TEARS AND RAIN
4
Sometimes, when I'm watching her, it makes me wonder if angels might actually exist after all.
The way the faded daylight highlights all the beautiful facets of her face; or the way her golden hair gently swings from side to side in the wind, like her own little halo; even just the way she makes every single moment I spend at her side so unbelievingly precious – it's just… supernatural.
She can't be just an ordinary human being. It can't be. No, she'd have to be an angel, there's just no other explanation.
I wouldn't be surprised if she'd just spread her wings and fly back to the heavens she came from. They must be missing her dearly up there. And who wouldn't? Who wouldn't want to have a being of such perfection and beauty around at all times?
She can't be just an ordinary human being.
She's something else.
Something more.
"John," Sarah says through the stormy wind and the pouring rain, softly grabbing my shoulder.
"Hm?" I mumble absent-mindedly, still staring at her graceful face, those deep blue eyes, those high cheekbones.
"Weren't you listening?" she asks urgently, giving me a concerned glance.
"Not…listening?" I repeat in a muffled voice, my thoughts still occupied with the whole angel thing.
"John, are you okay?" she asks in a worried tone, looking me right in the eyes and ripping me out of my rapturous thoughts.
"Yeah," I nod numbly. "Yeah, sorry, I'm fine. Just a little tired, that's all. What were you saying?"
She gives me a short, worried look, then she decides to drop the matter.
"I was saying that it doesn't look like that Mog army is trying to follow us," she points out, motioning behind us with her thumb.
I glance over my shoulder. The two red backlights of the train are hardly visible in the distance. No signs of any Mogs. No signs of anyone but us at all, actually. Just the hills, the rain and the train tracks.
"Maybe they were afraid you'd beat them up if they did," I say and poke her in the side.
She doesn't laugh, not even a bit of a smile, she just frowns at me and shrugs. The look of concern on her face is quickly replaced with a fierce, hardened expression.
I raise an eyebrow. Definitely not the expected reaction.
"Or maybe they were just afraid of the jump," I silently add.
"So was I," Sarah says in a dismissive tone, giving me another upset look.
"Yeah, but you are not a seven foot tall, bloodthirsty monster," I give back, trying to cheer her up.
She purses her lips and looks down at the ground, not even bothering to answer.
I open my mouth, but before I can crack another silly joke, she cuts me off.
"Just leave it, John," she says with a hoarse, bitter voice.
I gulp. Boy, that escalated quickly. One moment she's all worried about me, and the next second she's pissed off for some unknown reason.
Doesn't really sound like the Sarah I know.
In troubled silence, we continue our march along the railways. Flurries of rain keep pouring down on us from a dark grey sky. It's impossible to tell when the storm is going to end, every time it looks like the wind is finally going to split the clouds apart, another thick, bulky layer just replaces the other one. The last time I saw the sun must have been back in the US, before we crossed the Canadian border. Before we walked into that Mog trap.
Before we walked into just another one of those Mog traps. I sigh.
Guess that's the Mogadorians way of fighting wars. Preparing all kinds of traps for their enemies and then chase them into each and every one of them. Most of those traps aren't even designed to kill the victims, only to ensure thy run right into the next one.
Just like the trap in that park where we lost Six, Nine and Ella. The Mogs had no intention of killing us all right there, they just wanted to split our group apart, so that the rest of us would eventually run straight into their next ambush. They already knew right then that we'd try to cross the Canadian border, I'm sure of it. All they had to do was wait for us to show up at that border station and then let the trap spring.
It really makes me wonder how. How do the Mogadorians keep anticipating every single one of our moves? It's like they always know exactly where we are, just to strike right when we expect it the least.
A cold shiver runs down my neck as I realize what this could mean. We may not have lost our pursuers after all.
What if this is all just another one of their traps? What if they wanted us to escape the train? What if they wanted us to blindly follow those two stranger Mogs that blew up the train's back wall? What if they're just trying to make us believe we're safe?
Well, if their plan was to split us apart into even smaller groups, we made it way too easy for them to succeed. I definitely shouldn't have let Marina go out looking for Eight all by herself. When it comes to fighting Mogs, she's the least experienced of all of us, and even though she really stepped it up in the few days I got to know her, I can tell she's not ready to handle situations like these all alone. I mean, those two Mogs from the train really did look tough. Extraordinarily tough.
The guy probably was one of the biggest, most muscular Mogs I've seen so far, way more intimidating than your usual Mog soldier. Definitely not someone you want to mess with.
The girl on the other hand was a different kind of Mog, that's for sure. There was something odd about her, I could feel it. Something dark, almost devouring. A deep and fascinating but deadly intelligence, ready to lull you in and eat you alive.
Seriously creepy, even for a Mogadorian.
I honestly have no idea how Eight didn't realize this when he decided to just leap after them the second the jumped off the train. If he doesn't stop pulling stunts like these, it's going to get him killed sooner or later.
We'll have to sit down and have a chat about that sometime, provided Marina actually finds him.
I would have gone after Eight myself right away, if it hadn't been for Sarah. I know it was not really what you'd call responsible to let Marina go alone, but Sarah had been so terrified of jumping off the train, I just couldn't get myself to force her to do it quickly. As much as I hate the idea of having Marina wandering around these hills all by herself, I still prefer that to having Sarah to overcome her fears without me. Marina is an alien with superpowers, she has her telekinesis and the ability to see in the dark – which might just come in handy with all those clouds blocking out the sun – whereas Sarah has nothing but me.
Even now, she still seems kind of shaken from the jump. Walking through the pouring rain, her clothes are soaking wet to the point that water sprays to all directions with each movement she makes. Shivering from the cold wind she suddenly looks so vulnerable. I'd give her my coat, but it's just as drenched as hers.
Her shoes are covered in muddy silt and the wind keeps blowing her long, blonde hair into her face, making her blink every few seconds.
She's walking a few feet away from me, her hands buried deep inside her trousers' pockets wit her shoulders lowered to a crestfallen posture. She appears so sad and lonely like that, it makes my heart ache. She's stubbornly staring at the railways to our feet, her face frozen in an unusually cold expression.
I wonder what could have suddenly upset like that. Sarah usually never snaps, definitely not this easily. So what happened that could abruptly chang her mood from being worried about me to being deeply offended? Was it something I said? Something I've done? Is it because I forced her to make the jump off the train, even though she obviously was scared to death about it?
Whatever it is, I can't stand seeing her like this.
I step closer to her and lay one arm around her shoulders, pulling her in towards me. She tenses up and I can see her expression hardening even more, but she lets it happen without a word.
We keep walking in this protective embrace, but it's obvious that Sarah is still somewhat mad at me. She hardly pays me any attention as I try to shield her from the rain, and she slowly backs away from me every time I move closer.
In the end, I just can't take this obsessing silence anymore. I think about the best way to talk about whatever issue is bothering her, but don't really find anything to start the conversation
Follow the gut feeling it is, then.
"Is everything okay?" I cautiously ask as we start climbing just another hill. She turns away and pretends she didn't hear me.
"Come on, Sarah, you know you can talk to me about anything," I urge her. "Whatever you got on your mind, let it out."
She lets out a loud snort and pulls away from me, so that my arm slides off her shoulders and smacks against my side.
"What if I were?" she says without any recognizable context, slowing down her pace.
"Were what?" I say with visible confusion.
"You said I was not a monster like them,' she nods towards the disappearing train and the Mog army inside it. "But what if I were? What if I were a monster, John?"
I raise an eyebrow, not really knowing what to say, but before I can reply, she fully stops walking and finally turns around to me.
"No, John. I don't mean the seven foot tall, bloodthirsty monster type," she whiffs, her voice oozing with anger and frustration for some reason I just can't seem to understand.
"You're an angel, Sarah, not a monster," I give back, trying to find the right thing to say. Or much rather trying not to say the wrong thing. To be honest, I have no clue what she is talking about.
"Sometimes, angels and monsters are the same," she whispers, her eyes filling with tears. Or is it just the rain? At this point, I can't even tell.
"Listen, Sarah, whatever I did, I am sorry. I didn't mean for you to get hurt."
She doesn't even react.
I shake my head, feverishly looking for an explanation for her sudden downbeat behaviour. Then, a possible explanation suddenly strikes me.
"Is it because I forced you to jump off that train?" I say and she looks up. I take that as a yes.
"Oh, god, I'm such an idiot. I definitely shouldn't have pushed you to do it when you so obviously didn't want to," I curse through my clenched teeth, more to myself than to her.
"That's not it…" she says again, but I hardly notice.
"What sort of person would do such a thing?" I hiss at my own ignorance.
"No, John, I…" she weakly begins, but I go on anyway.
"There must have been another solution, maybe if I would have…"
"IT'S NOT ABOUT THE GOD DAMN TRAIN, OKAY?" Sarah screams in such an infuriated voice I stop in the middle of the sentence and just stare at her with my mouth open.
Breathing heavily, her whole body rocks back and forth. She clenches her fists so fiercely, her knuckles are visible as small, white stripes on the back of her hands. Her eyes are closed while she struggles to keep her composure, and I can tell she's really close to actually losing it.
Nearly half a minute passes before Sarah speaks again.
"It's not about the train," she finally repeats in a strained, forcedly calm tone. With her eyes still closed, I can tell she's still focusing on keeping halfway calm. "It has nothing to do with the train."
I wait in impatient anticipation while she takes one last deep breath and then finally opens her eyes. She fixes her gaze at some point in the distance and clears her throat.
"Did Six talk to you about the time she and I were locked up in that prison cell?" she says, her voice still a bit shaky.
"Not much, she just said you really helped her get through that rough time."
"I tried," she says with a shrug, wiping a tear away from the corner of her eyes. Then her expression hardens again.
"But you see, all this time before she was put in my cell, there was no one around to help me. Every moment I spent in that dark cell was torment, every hour was agony, every day was insanity creeping a little bit closer. And I was so alone…" she says, lowering her voice as she speaks until it is no more than just a silent whisper in the wind. I stare at her in captivated tension, soaking in every single word she speaks while trying to make sense of what she's actually trying to say.
"But the time kept passing, and things just kept getting worse. I was hungry and exhausted and didn't know if I'd ever even get out of that hole. The only thing keeping me from just giving up was the very thought of you, my knight in shiny armour, storming in through that door and rescuing me. I just kept believing you'd get me out of that hole.
But as one dragging day followed the other and you just didn't show up, I slowly gave up on hope. And then…"
Her voice cracks as she suddenly stops herself from saying any more. She bites her lip as if to keep any further words from escaping her mouth, but I know she's keeping something from me.
I can see it in her eyes.
"Who are you, when you do bad things with good intentions?" she says in an exhausted but dead serious tone, more to herself than to me.
I feel a lump forming in my throat. Something definitely happened to her when the Mogs had her locked up in that cell, I know it. The girl standing in front of me just doesn't seem like the Sarah I used to know back in Paradise.
Minutes pass in silence as we just stare at each other without moving. I keep wondering if I should push her to tell me whatever she was about to say, if I should her into doing something she may not want to, if I should do the same mistake I did on the train.
I know the answer to that question is probably yes. Yes, I should urge her to spill it out. Whatever she's keeping from me, it has something to do with the Mogs, which means it's dangerous. And we can't handle any additional risks right now.
But looking at this beautiful girl in front of me, into this angel face, those beautiful but so sad blue eyes, I just can't. I can't do it.
So, instead of doing the right thing, I just sigh and put my arm back around Sarah's shoulders. She shoots me another quick glance, and I can't really tell if she's disappointed or glad that I decided to drop the matter.
Maybe a little bit of both. Who knows…
"Go on?" I ask and she numbly nods.
Without any further words, we start marching on again. Silent, side by side, with our steps synchronized.
And always following the rail tracks, as if they could lead us into a brighter future.
Hey there everybody!
Been a while, but here's the next chapter :)
Some of you asked for a John POV, so I decided to try and fit one in, even though I actually didn't intend it to be there, which you may notice, as this chapter has no actual point. Hope you liked it anyways ;P
REVIEW ANSWER THING!
ZazzyZ: Thanks, appreciated :)
I-wish-I-coud-be-Number-Five: Thank you, there you go :)
Alyssa: I am really glad you had the guts to say that, I totally understand your point. Seeing as some of the other readers don't seem to mind the 'slow' pace in 11's chapters and I personally enjoy writing those the most, I thought we could solve this issue by me making some sort of summary at the end of every 11 POV chapter from now on, so that people who don't like the 'slow' pace don't have to read through the entire thing.
That's all I got for today, no major announcements.
See you next chapter, have a lovely time 'til then and as always, thanks so much for reading my story =)