Drastic Times (Book 3): Fierce Freedom

by Rock, R. A.

“The other way, where we attack. Kyle said we may lose a lot of people and still not get the Sipwesk people back. He said the location is just too good to win a battle. And I agree now that I know more about the place and the way he operates. This is the only way.”

  “So Matt and Nessa and the others, their fate depends on you two getting along?” Audrey said, still amused. “Man, this is almost as good as that whole shutting down Chad’s power to save him poetic justice thing you did back at the Wastelands.” She laughed again and slapped her hand down on the table top. “Damn, I’m glad I hang around with you guys. Just when I think there’s nothing funny in the world, you two provide me with a good belly laugh.”

  “Audrey,” Yumi said, a thunderous look on her face. “Don’t make me kick your ass. Again.”

  But Audrey was lost in laughter.

  “Marriage counselling instead of a battle. Who would have thought?” She giggled. “This is going to last me all day.”

  “Audrina,” I said, glowering at her. “Shut your mouth.”

  “Can I come with you?” she said, clapping her hands.

  Yumi gave me an exasperated look.

  “We have to go or we’re going to be late,” she said to the others, pulling on my arm.

  “But I’m not done,” I protested.

  Sure it was my third helping but who’s counting?

  “You’re done. See you…” She paused as if she were thinking of a good name to call them but then changed her mind. “…guys later.”

  “We’re going out picking herbs,” Grace said, as we began to walk away. “I mentioned I knew a bit about medicine last night and their healer asked me to show her some of the herbs I know and what to use them for.”

  I nodded.

  “Be careful. Take weapons.”

  “We will,” Grace said.

  Shiv studied us curiously, then just lifted his hand in farewell.

  “We’ll expect a full report, you two,” Audrey called after our retreating backs.

  Neither of us responded.

  WE LEFT THE great hall where we had just finished telling the others that the plan for saving Matt and Nessa was that we were going to get marriage counselling. Yumi walked fast, pulling ahead of me. Her footsteps made a lonely echo down the corridor that led to the counsellor’s office. There was unhappiness coming off of her like a cloud of black smoke, choking me.

  “Hey, Tanaka,” I called after her, increasing my speed. I broke into a run and finally caught up to her. “Yumi.”

  I took her arm, afraid she would run away from me again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  There were tears in her eyes.

  “You don’t want to do this.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  I dropped my eyes.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” She sounded like she was about to burst into tears.

  I just shook my head.

  “You’re all talk, Chad,” she said, angry. “Moaning about how you want us to get back together but when there’s a real chance that someone could help us do that, you don’t want to? What the hell?”

  “I just…”

  “What?”

  “I just think it’s stupid. I feel like a loser.”

  She gasped, ripped her arm out of my grasp, and strode away from me again.

  “Yumi, wait.”

  She didn’t stop. I caught up to her again and pulled on her shoulder, making her turn.

  “I suppose that makes me a stupid loser if I want to try this, then?” she said, her eyes mad at me but there was hurt behind it.

  I swallowed hard and admitted something I didn’t want to admit.

  “It’s just that I feel like I ought to be able to figure it out myself. Like I shouldn’t have broken things in the first place. Like I’m pathetic for needing someone to help with our marriage. This isn’t easy for me.”

  Her eyes got wide with outrage.

  “And you think it’s easy for me? You think this is something that comes naturally for me?”

  “No.”

  If I had thought of the last thing I would ever expect Yumi to do, this would be it.

  “Don’t you want us to get back together?” she said, her voice small. All the anger was gone and only the hurt, vulnerable Yumi was left.

  “More than anything,” I said, and even I could hear the desperate catch in my voice.

  “Then be brave,” she said, taking my hand.

  I looked down as the marking lined up, reminding me what was most important.

  “I’ve seen you face down an armed Mantin without a weapon. You’re the strongest man I know.” Those big dark eyes saw right through me. “You can do this.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling that this was the one thing I couldn’t do.

  Her eyes filled with sorrow.

  “Well, we don’t have to, I guess,” she said, letting go of my hand. She crossed her arms over her chest in the classic defensive posture. “Let’s just go home. At this point, I don’t care about helping Matt and Nessa anyway. Penny will survive. I’m sure she’s stronger than she looks.”

  Tears were spilling down her cheeks and she didn’t even bother to wipe them away. She turned and headed back down the hall toward our rooms.

  A booming voice suddenly rang out.

  “Ah, Chad and Yumi, there you are.”

  Yumi stopped in her tracks.

  I turned to see a mountain of a man standing behind me with a long salt and pepper beard holding out his hand to shake. I took his hand and he crushed mine in his iron grip.

  “Good to meet you, Chad. I’m Pastor Robinson. We have an appointment, right?”

  I FELT SHATTERED.

  The fact that Chad — a.k.a the feelings guy — didn’t want to sit down with this marriage counsellor and talk about his feelings to try and fix what was broken between us… well, it killed me. I felt broken to pieces.

  And as if this was easy for me, the woman without feelings. I was pretty sure it was going to be worse than the time those Mantins tortured me.

  And that was pretty bad.

  But still I was willing to try.

  I had never thought that Chad was a coward. He had never acted like this before. He was always open, willing… courageous. This wasn’t like him at all and I couldn’t help but think that maybe he didn’t want to get back together after all.

  Because if we was really willing to do anything like he said, then he would do this. He would suck it up and try. The fact that he wasn’t at all willing was disturbing and made me question everything I thought I knew about him and our relationship.

  “So, you two are going through a rough patch, eh?” Pastor Robinson said. He had told us to call him Bill but Pastor Robinson seemed to suit him better.

  “You could say that,” I answered him, since Chad was sitting on the other end of the couch, practically curled up in the fetal position.

  “Aha,” he said, studying us both. “Well, I’ve had worse and we got it sorted.”

  “Worse?” I said, not sure that was possible.

  “One couple came in here with weapons and actually tried to kill each other across my desk. So, yeah. Worse. They’re doing well now. Still together for the past five years, since we had our sessions.”

  I would have laughed if everything hadn’t been falling apart. Chad was as silent as the grave.

  “Chad?” Bill said. “How are you feeling?”

  Chad didn’t answer.

  “If this is going to work, you have to talk to me. I thought you agreed to these sessions,” Bill said, keeping his tone mild.

  “I’m feeling terrible,” Chad spat out. “I don’t want to be here.”

  “That’s understandable,” Bill said. “Many men feel threatened by this sort of thing.”

  “No,” Chad sat up and I was glad to see him engaging at least. “You don’t understand. I’m way better at this sort of thing than her.”

  He jerked his thumb at me.

&nbs
p; “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why the resistance?” Bill said, his eyes kindly under that Hulk exterior.

  “I don’t know,” Chad said, staring at his hands and rubbing his thumb over the marking.

  Bill nodded, looking wise.

  “What would it mean if you needed help to fix your relationship?” he said, his voice soft. “What would that make you?”

  Chad’s eyes grew stormy.

  “A failure,” he said and I was shocked. “Needing help with this makes me a complete and utter failure.”

  “There you go,” Bill said, pointing at him. “And why is that?”

  “Because I never should have broken it in the first place. I should have made a better decision about the baby.”

  Bill didn’t look surprised so I guess that he had already been briefed by Kyle about what had happened when we had lost the baby and everything had fallen apart. I had told him the whole story last night.

  “So, you should have let Yumi die?” Bill said, looking confused. “I do understand the story correctly, don’t I? That it was a choice between saving Yumi or the baby?”

  “That’s right,” I said, speaking up. And it hadn’t even really been that choice because the baby hadn’t died and we might still be able to have her someday — though at this point in my life, I couldn’t see how that might ever happen.

  “So what I’m hearing when you say is that you should have made a better decision by letting your wife die.”

  Chad only stared at the floor, seeming to be lost in the memory.

  “Chad, is that what you’re telling me? That you should have let her die?”

  Chad met his eyes then.

  “No.”

  “Look at her,” Bill said and Chad turned those stormy blue eyes on me, making my heart pound. “Would it have been a better decision to let her die?”

  “Of course not,” Chad said, glancing back at Bill and then going back to staring at his hands.

  I had never seen him like this. All the emotions from that day must only be coming up now. He must have pushed them all down, trying to be strong. I knew what that was like. I also knew that those pushed down feelings would eat you alive from the inside out if you didn’t deal with them.

  “Then you need to stop telling yourself that you made a mistake when you decided to save her.”

  “But I killed our child,” Chad suddenly burst out, his voice loud and rough. “She hates me for it. She blamed me for saving her. She didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  His jaw was tense, his teeth clenched tight.

  “I’m sure that Yumi had a lot of emotions over losing the baby. And I’m sure there was a lot of misplaced blame,” Bill said in the same calm tone, as if our entire world wasn’t imploding.

  “But we’re not talking about her right now,” he said. “We’re talking about you. How do you feel about yourself and what you did?”

  “I hate myself,” Chad said, abhorrence in his voice. He turned to look at Bill and then caught my eyes and held them — the fire there like nothing I had ever seen in mild, calm, peaceful Chad. “It makes me want to kill myself when I think of that moment when I made the decision. I wish it had been me lying on the ground bleeding to death. And I wish I had died.”

  LATER THAT NIGHT, I sat at the desk in our small underground room. I had no idea where Chad was. The page blurred as I stared at the homework questionnaire Bill had given me, tears filling my eyes as I remembered what Chad had said.

  He had stormed out and Bill and I had talked for a time about my own emotions around losing the baby. I had spent the rest of the day wandering the community and finding quiet corners to cry. I knew it was pathetic. But I was so sad about all this.

  Bill said that we each needed to deal with the trauma we carried from losing the baby. He told me that we needed to come for some individual sessions before we tried another couples session.

  Yeah, no kidding.

  What Chad had admitted today gutted me. I had had no idea what he had been going through. I was so wrapped up in my own pain that I hadn’t seen how much he had been hurting too. How much he had blamed himself.

  We both knew it had been an impossible situation and he had made the best choice he could. But that was in our heads. Our hearts said otherwise. We both had wanted an outcome that had saved both me and the baby.

  I wiped away the tears and tried to focus on the page but I got distracted by my negative thoughts again.

  I really didn’t know if this was going to work. Without Chad actually wanting to do this, I didn’t see how it could. Usually it was him helping me to do hard things to do with emotions. I didn’t know what to do when I was pushed into the position of having to help him.

  And then my thoughts crystallized with utter precision. I realized that this was what he needed from me. He needed me to help him get through this. And it wasn’t going to be easy. Our roles were reversed and I felt uncomfortable and incompetent. But I had to try.

  Because this is exactly what I had told him. That we had changed, but our relationship and the ways we interacted hadn’t. If he needed me to be the one that supported him through something difficult then that was what I needed to do. Even if I didn’t know how. Even if I might make mistakes.

  I slapped the papers down on the table and tuned in to the soul bond, following it slowly through the underground community until I found him in the gym pounding on a heavy bag.

  I stood in the doorway, watching him kill the thing over and over. I had never seen him fight so viciously.

  “Red?” I called softly, knowing he wouldn’t hear the physical sound but that my mental voice would reach him.

  He froze for an instant and then went back to pounding the heavy bag into submission. He had his shirt off and his hair was wet. Sweat poured down his body. I walked around until I was facing him. And there was such a ferocious expression on his face that if I was his opponent, I would know that I was going down.

  He threw a bunch of punches as I approached and then I saw him wind up for a roundhouse kick. I chose that minute to step between him and the bag, making him pull back or kick me.

  “What do you want?” he snarled at me. But I could see he was remembering that day back home at his parents’ house when he had done the same for me.

  “I want to help.”

  “You can’t,” he said, moving to the side and attempting to resume his workout. But I was too quick and I stayed between him and the punching bag.

  I took a deep breath.

  “I know I’m not good at it. You’re the one who always helps me with shit like this. But I want to try. I wasn’t there for you like I should have been. I see that now.”

  He dropped his hands that I noticed were bruised and cut. He hadn’t even bothered to put on wraps. He studied me, the confusion in his eyes almost obliterating the pain.

  “Two,” he said, holding up two bloody fingers.

  “Two what?” I said, glad that at least he was talking to me.

  “That’s two times now you’ve done something completely unexpected and supposedly out of character.”

  “I didn’t understand what you were going through, Red. I want to help.” I clenched my fists, wishing I could fight the pain in his eyes. If it was something exterior, I could beat it into submission. But this. I felt helpless against something like this.

  “I’m not sure you can,” he said and I understood that this time when he said that he was just being truthful, not trying to keep me away.

  I searched my mind for the right words. Words aren’t my strongest suit but I knew that those were the weapons I needed to use to fight this thing that was killing our relationship.

  “If I can’t help, then I want to be there beside you while you do what you have to do. The way you were there when I went into my subconscious and had to face those memories from my past. The way you’ve always been there for me.”

  He blinked at me. A bead of sweat ran down his chee
k and he wiped it away.

  I took his hand and showed him the marking.

  “I get it now. This isn’t something that just happens. Eternal love.” I tapped the marking with my other finger. “It’s something that we work at and create every moment of every day. And if we don’t recreate it anew all the time, then it won’t last forever. It can’t. Love isn’t something in our heads, in our minds, in our memories. It’s in our hands. In our words. In the actions that we take every day.”

  “Yumi,” he said, kissing the marking on my hand, his eyes unsure.

  “I know this isn’t going to be easy, but when has anything worthwhile that we’ve done ever been easy?”

  I thought of escaping The Agency and how we had then brought it down. I thought of building The Alliance. And all the battles and fights and everything we had been through along the way. None of it had been easy.

  But it had been worth it.

  “Impossible odds?” he said, a tiny shaft of light appearing in his eyes.

  I grinned, squeezing his hand.

  “My favourite kind.”

  THE NEXT DAY Yumi and I sat side by side on the bench in our bedroom in the Survivor community. Each of us had a clipboard with a sheaf of papers clipped to it and a pencil. Yumi was chewing on hers. I watched her out of the side of my eye, not knowing what to make of the woman she was becoming.

  I had been heading for a really dark place. A place I had never been and never wanted to go. But she had pulled me back.

  It made me want to try.

  Even if it was going to be hard.

  “How do you feel about public displays of affection?” she read. “I’ll take any physical affection I can get — in public or otherwise.”

  She said it as if I wasn’t there, then pretended to write.

  “Ha. Ha. How about this one? How do you usually resolve conflict?”

  “Beating my opponent to a pulp probably isn’t the correct answer,” she said and her eyes twinkled with a happy, hopeful look that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I suddenly wanted to see her smile. At me.

  “Bill said there are no wrong answers, Tanaka.”

  “True.”

  “Only inappropriate ones,” I added and her smile made an appearance. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it until I saw it directed at me once more.