by Lucy Smoke
Kida’s Goodbye
“Is it really that bad to see me again?” I open my eyes and realize that it has already started.
My heart aches at the mere sight of her. She doesn’t look how she last did. She’s neither drenched in blood nor pale and wan. No, this is my real Kida. The one that looks like the strong, independent, warrior that I fell in love with.
“It is,” I answer her honestly, “especially since I know when I wake up you won’t be there.”
Kida tilts her head to the side, scowling as she folds her arms across her chest. The fabric of her tight black top stretches over her healthy skin. She looks like she did before the Tanks, before the rest. “Who says I won’t be there?”
I sigh. “Kida,” I begin, “you’re dead.”
“Says who?”
“Says the universe.”
She scoffs. “You know you can’t trust that,” she replies with a wave of her hand.
I shake my head and take a step towards her. “I don’t want to fight,” I say, “I just want to be with you while I can.”
When I reach out to her, Kida frowns and takes a step back. A tiny fissure forms in the already damaged organ that is my heart. “Oh no,” she says in true Kida form, “we’re gonna talk about this.”
“Please, I just need to hold you,” I practically beg, moving closer still. Kida’s eyes flash—the golden-brown color, a melting pot of irritation—and her arms shoot out, hands grabbing onto me. She twists her upper body, keeping her legs planted and then I’m airborne, flying. I land with a jarring thump on the cold hard ground of my dream’s reality. The pain that ricochets up my spine feels so real.
Anger flashes through me and I’m back on my feet in an instant. “What the hell was that for?!” I snap.
Kida refolds her arms. “You need to wake the fuck up.” My mouth gapes as she glares at me. Her eyes, so slender and illuminating—long and thin in the paper clay color of her skin—are harsh as they meet mine. “You think I’m not there?” she snaps. “That I what? Just left you? You’re a fucking idiot, Cassie. I expected better from you.”
“Well, I’m sorry, then, that I’m such a raging disappointment to you.” Despite my ire, or maybe because of it, hot, scalding tears rush to the forefront of my eyes and fall down my cheeks. “I’m doing the best I can right now. I’m lost, don’t you see that?! You were it for me! We were a fucking team. We were partners! And now you’re gone. What am I supposed to do?”
Kida’s face doesn’t soften, but I see it—in her eyes—where my words have hit her. When she speaks, her tone is only slightly gentler, just enough that I know she hears me. “We were more than partners, Cassie.”
“I loved you.” The tears feel like liquid fire on my skin.
“You did,” she emphasizes, and I realize what I’ve said.
I shake my head. “No, I still love you.”
After a beat, Kida sighs. “I knew we were too close,” she says quietly. “I knew I should have pushed you more to make friends. A part of me, I think, wanted to monopolize you. I loved having you near. I loved being with you. I loved… you.”
My breath catches as she unfolds her arms and moves closer to me. Her hand reaches out. Soft like a whisper on the breeze, Kida brushes away stray tears. When I cry, it’s not pretty. I know my face is blotchy. My eyes burn. The tears have made their paths over my cheeks, dripping from my jaw to my neck and my shirt. Kida doesn’t care. She cups my cheeks in her hands and I find my fingers gripping her arms as more tears spring forth.
“It’s not healthy for you, Cassie. You have to let go.” I start to shake my head, but she stops me with her firm hands. “No, you listen to me,” she demands, “I will always be with you. You’re not alone, never that, my sweet girl.” I hiccup even as I try to hold my breath and keep it in. “You’re so strong and brave, Cassie. I know it hurts to be weak in these moments.”
“I was only strong because of you,” I argue.
“That’s not true.” Kida’s hands drop to my shoulders and she shakes me. “You have absolutely no idea, do you?” she asks. “I fell in love with you because of your strength. That fire in you has always been there. You could have ended up taking a thousand different paths in your life. But you took the one that led to me. No one made you fight. In fact, so many tried to make it impossible.”
I step back, breaking her hold. “No,” I say. Despite my pain, a small smile touches my lips as I look at her in all of her righteous and incensed glory—so like my Kida. All bite and morality. Who knew someone so strong could be mortal? “You’re trying to make my choices into something grandiose and they weren’t. I was just a kid trying to survive until you found me. Don’t make me into anything special, because I wasn’t. I’m still not.”
“You think not?” Kida’s lips pull into a thin line. “You’re wrong, Cassie, but I won’t have to prove it to you. They will.”
I don’t have to ask who she’s talking about; I know she means the guys. I almost flinch, and my smile drops away just as one appears on her face. “Let them help you, sweet girl,” she orders. Always with the orders.
“I love you, Kida, that’s all there is to it. Without you, nothing can help me.”
She rolls her delicate looking, but impenetrable eyes. “Oh, stop with the angsty bullshit already.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. Even in death, she’s still a bitch.
Her mouth opens again, likely preparing to hurl another insult when the world around us quakes. The seemingly endless ground and sky of smoke and white clouds shifts, and the clouds turn dark gray. Kida’s eyes grow worried, and instead of insulting me as I’m sure she was about to, she reaches out instead.
“Don’t–” she tries to warn me, but before she can make out another syllable, I’m launched backward as if someone has sucker punched me in the chest. Gasping from the frissons of pain that splinter through my body, I land somewhere in a cavern. The very moment I hear the familiar timbre of my brother’s voice, taunting me from the shadows, I know the true torture is about to begin.
“Cass! Cassie! Dammit. Come on, Angel face, open those gorgeous eyes for us.” Is that… Haze? My whole body feels like it’s been hit by a flying zipcar. There are aches on top of aches. But when I do finally manage to open my eyes and look down, there isn’t a bruise in sight. What is in sight are Penny and Haze, both looking down at me in my bed with equally concerned expressions.
“What is it?” My voice, when it escapes, comes out on a rasp. My throat feels raw.
“You were screaming in your sleep,” Penny informs me.
I want to feel embarrassed. I know I probably should be, or I would be if I could feel much of anything at all. Somehow, though, there’s this blanket of apathy surrounding me. I can feel my emotions just on the other side of the curtain. I can’t seem to find my way around it, though. Perhaps I’m just not trying hard enough, but instead of trying harder, I just stop. Why even bother? I think.
“Cass?” Haze’s voice jars me out of my internal thoughts.
“I can’t sleep here,” I say. The truth is much worse. I can’t sleep alone. With the others around, I can wind myself up and watch me go. It’s all pretend, anyway. I’m just a windup toy. It’s why I’ve been spending so much time with the guys. The only time these dreams seem to haunt me is when I’m alone and vulnerable. If I’m not alone, though, they can’t hurt me. Maybe I’m just so broken that I can’t play by myself anymore.
“Okay,” Haze says. “Come on. Why don’t I take you to my room?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before he lifts me into his arms and carries me out of the room. When I glance over Haze’s shoulder, I catch sight of Penny and she, too, watches us go with a sad look in her eyes.
I hate this. This isn’t me. I’m not a wilting flower. I’m not weak. I’m not this broken, sad little girl. That’s not who Kida made. That’s not who Kida loved. Halfway back to Haze’s room, I struggle to be let down, wiggling about in his arms.
“No,” I say fi
nally, when he doesn’t seem to get the idea—or perhaps he’s ignoring my desire to be let down—I grunt and push at his chest. “Put me down.” He stops in the middle of the hallway and looks down at me, his eyes curious. He looks partially confused and partially irritated. I’ll take the confusion and irritation over pity any day. He sets me down.
“What’s going on with you, Angel?” Haze asks.
“I’m angry,” I say. More than angry, I’m pissed. There’s all this rage swelling deep inside me. I have to wonder if it’s normal for a human volcano to be walking around like there isn’t lava boiling in her veins.
“You don’t seem angry,” he replies. “You seem sad. You’re not moving on—you’re stuck in the past and you keep yourself locked there.”
“It’s hard!” I snap. “Would you be able to move on if Thayer and Noaz just up and died on you? Would you be able to do it if the rest of them did?” Chest heaving, I take a few steps away before turning on my heel to glare at him. “Don’t you think I want to get better?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t.” Haze steps closer until his chest brushes mine and I have to crane my head back to look up at him. Damn these men and their height. “I think,” his breath whispers across my face, “that you want to be stuck in the past because that’s the only place you know.”
I shove at him. He doesn’t even move an inch, but dammit, I fucking tried. “What do you know?”
“About pain?” he grabs my wrist and pulls me until I’m flush against him, pressed to him from my hips to my shoulders. “I know a lot about it, Angel. I know about loss and I know about sacrifice.” Haze bends down a little until his lips are so close to my face, I can practically make out the little creases in them as he puckers them and talks. “And you know what else I know?” he asks quietly. “I know that unless you let go of the past you’re trying so hard to hold onto, you’re going to keep having those nightmares of yours, and you’ll just be another dead girl walking.”
He releases me so abruptly that I nearly fall on my ass. He sidesteps me and starts walking.
“I’m not dead!” I scream at his back, eyes burning, chest aching. I’m not dead but… am I living? Haze doesn’t respond as he disappears around the corner. I don’t know how he can go from carrying me back to his room—all understanding and caring—to cold and indifferent as he walks away. A part of me wants that ability to detach, craves it even.
I don’t recall how long I spend just standing there in the hallway, but when I finally start to move, I find myself heading directly for Thayer’s room. I’m so bone-deep weary that I just want some decent sleep and the only way to get it is if I’m in bed with someone else. He answers the door on the first knock.
“Hey, Cass–”
“Can I sleep with you?” The words are out of my mouth before I even realize what I’ve said. Is there really any need to ask? I’ve been doing it for days now. Hopping between beds. But this is the first time I’ve asked. Plus… Thayer is a heartbreaker—at least—that’s what I call him. With his pretty boy good looks. Asking to sleep with him is like asking–
“Uh, sure?” he interrupts my internal monologue of rambling by holding the door open a little wider. I hesitate for just a moment before slipping through, and he closes it behind me. I stop and stare at the rumpled bed.
“You okay, Firecracker?”
No, I’m not. There’s something wrong with me. Just moments ago, I was angry—full of boiling fury—and now, as I stare at Thayer’s bed, and he puts a hand on my shoulder, I can feel tears pricking my eyelids. Why am I flip-flopping between emotions? Why am I ready to burn Tartarus down one moment and then crying into a pillow the next? Who am I? What is wrong with me?
I don’t realize that I’ve asked the last question out loud until Thayer turns me around and crushes me to his warm chest. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Firecracker,” he says quietly. “It’s just the grief.”
Grief. A selfish, monstrous, beast. He’s right. It’s got me held captive like a goddamn princess locked in a tower; like in the fairytale stories Kida used to read to me from her tablets. They’re so old that they come from before the sky cities even existed. Right now, I would give anything to have her hold me and read me stories again. Maybe it’s a childish desire, but I want to push my face into her neck like I am with Thayer right now. I want to smell her brand of soap like I can smell the motor oil and leather on Thayer.
Hot tears leak out of my eyes and Thayer squeezes me tighter, until it’s hard to breathe. But that’s okay. In fact, I prefer it. I want him to hold me as tight as possible. Maybe if he squeezes me until I break, I won’t feel like I’m going to drift away—back into my nightmares.
“You’re going to be okay, Cass,” he whispers, leading me to the bed. “I promise.”
We crawl into his bed, and he wraps me up in his embrace. I relish in it. I melt into him, hoping and wishing that I could just disappear inside of him. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so lost. I’d have someone to hold onto, something to connect to.
“We’re going to take care of you. You’re with us.” Every sentence is punctuated with a long stroke against my head as he trails his fingers through my matted hair. “You’re not alone. You’re one of us.”
I didn’t even know how much I needed to hear those words.
Holding On
“You need to hold on for a bit longer.”
“I am holding on,” I snap through clenched teeth.
Sweat drips down my forehead into my eyes. My arms are screaming from the strain, but I hold my lower half up higher. My muscles start to shake, and all of my promises of holding on are ruined as they collapse. I fall backwards between the pole railings that I had been clutching. My breath leaves me in a rush.
Noaz scribbles something on a clipboard before shaking his head at me. “You’re not even close to being ready.”
“I don’t see you training.” I scowl as I scramble back to my feet. My legs feel like limp, wet rags attached to my body and every step is agonizing. But I take a step and then another and another, until I’m standing nose to nose with Noaz, practically breathing fire. “You have been pushing me to go harder and longer–” if I was feeling up to it, I might have even inserted a sex joke, but Noaz doesn’t seem the type to appreciate that. “–and yet, I haven’t seen you do any of the exercises.”
He lifts an immaculately arched eyebrow. “You want to see me run your obstacle course?” he asks, nodding to the ring of death—as I’ve been calling the indoor training area Vincent and the guys had set up. I glance away from where we are on the “exercise” portion of the course to the actual “training” portion.
It’s a wide circular ring of various tasks: climbing walls, ropes hanging from the metal rafters, and even spikes jutting out from one side of an incredibly large pole. I haven’t even been allowed to go near the ring of death yet. But I’ve seen the guys do it. And they’ve all fallen… again and again. I squint back at Noaz. The only people I haven’t yet seen on it are Vincent and Noaz.
“Yeah,” I challenge, pointing toward the ring of death. “Why don’t you give it a try?”
Noaz sets his clipboard aside. “Alright then.”
I smile smugly, until I realize what he said. “Wait, what?” I didn’t expect him to agree so readily. But Noaz is already striding over to the beginning of the ring of death as Thayer and Aaron both amble over to me. Haze pauses mid-pushup and then lowers himself to the floor, propping his chin on his hands as he proceeds to watch. Even Levi seems surprised as Noaz approaches the ring of death. As he’s climbing one of the tall, slanted walls, he slips and grunts before swiftly sliding down and landing on his side. We all watch him expectantly now, curious.
One second, Noaz is there and the next he’s gone. My mouth hangs open as I watch him quickly scale the ginormous wall of spikes, only to catapult himself over the other side, land on his feet and take off for the rope. He doesn’t stop at the rope but leaps halfway up with a p
owerful jump. Thayer laughs and cheers.
I slowly turn to the others as Haze sighs. “Did you know he could do this?” I ask them.
Aaron nods. “He’s showing off a bit, but it might also be because he wants to get his point across. Noaz has trained far longer and far harder than most of us. This course is nothing to him. He’s more of a technology genius, but because of his family, he was required to build up a certain image back in Arawn.”
I blink. “His family?”
Aaron stiffens and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, turning away.
But now I have to wonder, who is Noaz? A tech genius like Aaron said, but what was that bit about his family? And how the hell can he move like a goddamn wraith?
I watch as Noaz sprints around the course, climbing, pumping, jumping—and even when he does make a mistake, like on the last climbing wall, he uses his slip to adjust and slide completely down the other side of the wall even faster than if he were climbing it. It’s amazing. It’s mind-boggling. It’s… hot.
Once that thought rams into my brain, I short circuit. No. I can’t think that. I have no right to think that. Kida was my one chance at love, and she’s dead. I don’t get another one, and I certainly don’t get to have sex. As Noaz breaks into the final obstacle, I turn around. I can’t watch anymore. My breathing is irregular, heart pumping in my chest as if I’m the one in the ring of death instead of him. The slow claps of the others let me know when Noaz is done.
Instead of staying to see the impassive expression on his face as he orders me to do more exercises, I just do them. I get back on the railing, I lift my feet, and then I start to count to a thousand. When he approaches and picks up his clipboard, I close my eyes and ignore him. His speed and skill are not attractive, I tell myself.
