Bulletproof Heart

He kissed me on the cheek, and I couldn’t help but blush, though no one would tell through the rainfall. To avoid the heat crawling up my face, I crawled out of the claustrophobic mud, finding the cool sensation it spread across my back clammy yet satisfying. The excitement I had at both the rain and my new score were the only things I had on my mind, for a moment anyways. I looked back at Party Poison more than a few times, he attempted to smile, but it only seemed like a grimace. When I finished helping Fierce save a few things from the rain and put up our new score, which was a whole minute faster than anything I’d done before, I returned to the end of the course. Party Poison wasn’t there. I walked around the training center for a minute before facing the reality that he had left, either out of fatigue or disgust with me. I should have taken his hand so that I did not abandon the only person who sought my own hand.

My feet found their way westward, the opposite direction of my own small home, and further towards Party Poison and his crew’s abode. In a moment of flustered klutziness I fell on the ground, not like it made any difference to my soaked and muddied attire. A slip of paper curled itself on the ground, soaked in the rain that propagated from the now navy sky. I squinted, and picked it up with a heavy hand. Narrowing my eyes, further, I attempt to read it.

Sing, see, and believe that they’ve got us, but I’m going to fight.

I knew immediately that the handwriting was Poison’s. I had seen this hasty scrawl before, somewhere on his person. I continued my directionality, instead diverting towards his gorgeous car, knowing somehow that it would be his only comfort, making it his own destination as well. Party Poison lolled on his car, prostrated on some sort of comfort the sky he looked up at offered him. I hailed him from his effective dreamland, noting that the stars weren’t even visible in the violet haze of violent storm clouds and the wetness that seeped through my clothes from above.

“Hey, Sewer Rat,” I jogged over to him, hoping he would suggest going into the car to talk, hoping he would offer me shelter, but he didn’t. It was as if that piece, the sentimental gentlemanly one, was burned away in the flash of time we spent in the Sad Man’s mysterious hideaway. I still tried to wrap my head around the flawed man’s utter cruelty, but only found broken shards of myself that freed themselves from his visage and buried themselves deep within my skin.

“Country Mouse.” It was an abrupt change from the silence that we had previously sat in. I smiled to see him talk, to see him at all, but his voice was monotone, as if he were letting go of something.

“We beat my old score by a whole minute. Good job.” I returned his peck on the cheek that he had given me, hoping that I would cause him the same discomfort that he had caused me. It seemed to have no effect, but he finally looked down, his eyes darting from side to side as if he were at internal war with himself. He placed his hand on mine, I clasped onto it to restrain myself from asking what he was doing. In a moment all of his thoughts seemed to converge on me, because his actions made me consider exactly what moved through his head in the previous.

He seemed to be… kissing me.

It wasn’t exactly a new sensation to me, but I couldn’t really pay attention to the feeling, just the decision I had to make. Kiss him back, or give up that hope he gave me of a normal… romance. Even the word made me shudder, but I made my decision the instant that his hand brushed the scar the Exterminator had left on my cheekbone. I kissed him back, because dying was inevitable here, but the possibilities a kiss could have were endless.

Why in the world it ended after a few moments, I didn’t know, but it did, and he didn’t run. I would have run if I was him, but… he didn’t. I attempted to restart the fire that once burned between our two mouths because the first had made me lust for the human contact, but I was pushed away. My strength wavered at this; he couldn’t just start something and then stop the chain reaction that followed. He began to speak in a whisper, barely a level above the white noise of the rain, but I couldn’t have missed a flagrant word if I tried to.

“We were equal shots,” He threw his ray gun to the ground, “I shot you in a fight to save you from an Exterminator,” his hands ran over one of the burn marks on my arm, “You punched me,” He brought my hand to his face, and let it stroke the cheekbone, my fingers twitching at the odd sensation. I continued, not giving him a chance to speak. My voice came out in the flash of a shutter and a rattled breath or two. The rain continued sopping over our wet skin, and my shoulders stuck to his arms as I huddled in closer for his warmth.

“We were sent into the woods, we were kidnapped,” No motions were necessary, it was too fresh in our minds to ignore the pressing scars, “You watched me die. I—I told you I loved you.” His hands brushed my back, and I reeled at the pin pricks it sent across my skin. Why I gave into this ephemeral weakness of emotion, I didn’t know, but it felt as if the pot had boiled over and now I was gas, free atoms of water expanding into the stars.

“I hated you.” I spoke out of my own emotional din, freeing myself from the blue skies in my head, returning to the reality of the rain that continued to fall, casting our shadows away, and piecing our hair in wet bedraggled pieces.

“I wanted to, so badly. I couldn’t have hated you if I tried.” Guilt tugged on the broken strings that kept my heart in tune, and I felt bad for fiery emotions that I could have never controlled.

“And now that I’m broken, you want me more?” I responded, doubting his sudden care for me.

“Now that we can see each other without the fog of competition, I can act on what I think… what I’ve always wanted.” I was lost for words at his response because now I even doubted my own emotions. There had always been a physical wish for him, but never… A kiss interrupted my train of confusion, and I couldn’t help but focus on the sure dancing of tongues that now occurred. The confidence this kiss exuded was far more now that he had sorted out his emotions. I had yet to sort mine out, so I broke it for talk.

“There was a reason why the Sad Man did what he did, why he made you watch me die. He knew. He knew what you felt, even if you didn’t. What if you have to watch me die again… what if I have to watch you die? How am I supposed to move on if you open me up and then leave me?” Now I was just looking for excuses, but this couldn’t be real. Love wasn’t real.

“I’m alive, aren’t I? I didn’t go crazy.” That wasn’t a valid response.

“I saved you!” He looked at me as if what I were supposing was preposterous. Well, I did save him!

“Then I saved you. We’re even and I want to be with you so that there is no score card. We don’t need it.” He made a point, though I ignored it. The pit of my stomach was telling me that what I was about to say was wrong, but I was so scared of being with him. Being with anyone.

“Stop saying ‘we’ as if there is an us, Poison.” He chuckled, to stave off whatever hurt he held from my contemptuous remark.

“You know very well that Party Poison isn’t my name…” I clapped my hand over his mouth, interrupting him.

“If you cross that line, you can’t go back…” He spat on my hand, and I couldn’t help but remove it in disgust.

“Gerard.” He whispered before I could stop him. Before I could stop myself, not even a millisecond after he spoke his, I made my decision…

“Anna.” With a half-smile we resigned ourselves to trusting each other. I refused another kiss, however, because that was something that had to develop over time. Romance had to wait for closure from our traumas. The Sad Man broke us; we needed to repair ourselves, no matter what the cost, because we could never leave now that we gave each other our biggest secrets.

“We need to find the Sad Man. We need to find out what he’s done and make him pay. I don’t care if we can never come back here, I don’t care if we die; I need to get answers. I have a feeling you do too…” I handed him the paper I found on the ground, his paper, I had nearly forgotten it in the roller coaster we just experienced. I choked on a silent sob, not even able to cry, knowing what I was getting myself into.

“We can’t say goodbye. They’ll try and stop us.” I nodded, knowing it was true. I just hoped they could forgive us. We formulated a quick plan, and began to work on our notes to those we would leave behind. I wrote two, one to Fierce and one to Kitty. Gerard wrote one but addressed everyone he met in it. We even wrote a quick blurb to Rayven Revenge, telling her to go for Fun Ghoul. We left all of our letters near the various recipients, knowing they would go straight for those places when we were found missing. They were all asleep and docile, thankfully.

It seemed odd to refer to people by their pseudonyms now that someone knew my name. After getting supplies and my own things Party Poison reciprocated my actions by leaving most of his things behind. He didn’t have a large finesse for material objects it seemed. He hadn’t been here as long as I had, though.

We weren’t riding into the sunset like the idyllic heroes; we were running in the middle of the night like bank robbers. I didn’t feel guilty though, the only wrong we had done was not saying goodbye, but there were reasons. There were always excuses. There would always be excuses for me not to be with Gerard, but someday we’d be able to get through the excuses to find ourselves.

To find us.