The Federation

By the time Zacky pulled me back through the concert hall towards the stage, CompleteAnnihilation had finished their concert and the audience was dispersing. Zacky shoved me at Carter the instant he stepped offstage, and I fell against his chest, throwing my arms around his neck to keep from falling. Carter stood me upright, looking questioningly at Zacky.

“Just...get her away,” Zacky sighed, motioning back the way we’d just came. Carter still looked confused, but didn’t ask anymore questions. He coiled a long arm tightly around my waist, dragging me against his side, and started back down the hallway. I walked alongside him, not resisting.

“So, what happened?” Carter asked casually several moments later. I sighed, leaning my head against his shoulder and feeling a ten-ton weight settle delicately on my shoulders. I felt suddenly exhausted. Would this tour ever end? It would be easier to avoid Jimmy at the Legion.

“Jimmy,” I answered simply. “I’m beginning to believe that his very conception was an epic fail. If I could, I would go back in time and barge in on his parents doing the dirty and scream at them to wear a freaking condom, the sick bastards.”

“What if they wanted to have a kid?” Carter asked, humoring me and following this strange train of thought of mine.

“I would tell them to try again later, because the kid they were about to conceive would be a Cyclops with three feet, two toes, a deformed head, and several nostrils. His mother would die in labor and his father would get gonorrhea from the local whore,” I explained.

“What did Jimmy do this time?” Carter asked patiently, steering the conversation back on course.

I gave him a brief description of the scuffle between Jimmy and me, going into extra detail in the parts where I totally kicked his ass. Just as I was finishing up the tale, we stepped out into the open night air. Rage boiled in my blood when I saw Jimmy still being dragged across the parking lot by Brian. That odd red haze gathered at the edges of my vision, and I felt Carter’s arm clamp down over my torso as I struggled harder against him. I felt his arms around me from a distance, my main focus being on Jimmy. Brian practically threw Jimmy up the steps onto their bus, and once he was out of my sight again, I relaxed and my vision cleared.

We eventually got to my bus without any other complications. Carter assumed it was safe to release me, and did so before sinking onto the couch. I walked over and slipped the blinds down over the windows so I wouldn’t have to look at Avenged Sevenfold’s bus. Once that little task was done, I turned on my heel and began to pace back and forth in front of the couch.

“That man is so dead to me,” I ranted viciously, my fists clenching and unclenching until my knuckles began to hurt. “And I told him so. And you know what? He actually looked hurt. I think I was seeing things. He couldn’t have been hurt. He wasn’t hurt. He doesn’t care. He was going on and on about how you’re untrustworthy and all this other stuff. None of it was even remotely true. I think he’s just jealous that you caught my affections so quickly. That’s got to be it. As I grew farther from Jimmy, I grew closer to you, and he hated that, I know he did, and this is his way of getting back at me. But nothing will—”

Suddenly, Carter was standing directly in front of me. I walked right into his chest and rebounded off, but he grabbed my shoulders. His hands slid toward my neck as he slammed his lips hard against mine. He broke away after several moments, peering into my caramel brown eyes.

I took a deep breath and continued to ramble, “But nothing will break us up. I won’t let anything Jimmy does break us up. What we have is too important and strong. He doesn’t realize that.”

As I rambled, Carter steered me over to the couch. He pushed me down into the cushions, but as I started to rise again to my feet to continue my pacing and ranting, he sat down on my lap. I abruptly stopped speaking, and we both sat in silence.

My brain began to slow and digest exactly what had just happened. Every snapshot slid across my mind’s inner eye, and my brain worked to piece it all together and draw some sort of conclusion from the whole ordeal. My brain reached the conclusion it had been striving for. Remember that ten-ton weight resting on my shoulders that I mentioned earlier? Well, now it felt as though that weight lifted from my shoulders before slamming back down twice as hard, crushing me beneath it. Everything came crashing down like poorly-built buildings in the middle of an earthquake. My relationship with Jimmy was completely gone and over. Whatever hope there might have been for us making up was gone.

I turned my face into Carter’s chest and coiled my arms tightly around his waist. Then, I inhaled deeply and let the tears pour out. Jimmy and I had escaped the Jonas/Cyrus Operation with each other. We’d saved each others’ asses several times. We excelled in the Legion together. He taught me how to shoot correctly. We’d become steadfast friends quickly. But now...now it was all over. No more light-hearted jokes in the back of the van on the way to a mission. No messing around in the gym together. Nothing. It was over. Over and done for. Why did it have to be this way? Hadn’t we been happy before?

Carter didn’t help, some inner voice whispered. I ignored it, drowned it with my sobs. Carter stretched us out on the couch and stroked my hair as I cried. He understood.

I didn’t remember exactly when I fell asleep, but I knew it was before I’d finished crying.