Bulletproof

“What the hell, Sasha?” I groaned through the pain of just having been socked in the stomach. I coughed a few times before standing up straight slowly, catching my breath since it’d been knocked out of me. Nic uncurled himself a minute later, looking close to tears. What a baby.

“No, what the hell yourself!” she hit my arm this time, making me wince as it immediately lost all feeling except a vague tingling in my fingers. I noticed that the other four men in the room were looking on wordlessly, occasionally exchanging bewildered glances.

“Sash, wait,” I held my hands up as she continued to beat on me. Tears had started to course down her face, but she continued to slap and punch at me with just as much vigor as when she started. “Sasha, listen to me. Ow, Sash, quit it! There are customers downstairs and they’re going to wonder what all the screaming is about. Calm down!”

That only seemed to make her angrier. I had a constant wince on my face as she pummeled my midsection and arms before she wore herself out between hitting me and crying. I caught her and held her against me as she was about to sink to her knees. I ran my left hand gently through her dark hair as she sobbed into my shirt without reserve, whispering to her gently to calm her down. Nic had gotten up and left the room by this point, apparently deciding that he no longer wanted anything to do with his homicidal older sister or his befuddled younger sister.

“Sash,” I whispered to her when her sobs had finally calmed to silent tears that occasionally fell from the corners of her eyes. “Sash, c’mon, let’s go sit in the bathroom and talk. We’ve got company, and they can’t exactly give us any private time since they can’t exactly go downstairs just yet,” I coaxed, dragging her easily towards the bathroom and she just nodded against my shirt. I shot the guys an apologetic look before closing the door behind us. I sat her down on the closed toilet, perching myself on the edge of the bathtub.

After a few minutes of silence, she looked at me with puffy, bloodshot blue eyes. “You just up and left. I thought you were dead.”

The lifelessness of her voice made me cringe and ache physically. I held my hand out to her, which she took without seeming to think about it. I ran my thumb over her knuckles soothingly before replying.

“I know, Sasha, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry that I left you all alone. I know what a hard time it’s been for you…” I wiped a tear away before it could fall from my eye. “I’m not sorry for getting out of that city, though. You should’ve come with me, but you were always saying that you couldn’t leave. You couldn’t, but I had to.”

The intensity behind her eyes startled me a little. “You didn’t have to leave,” she argued stubbornly. “You could’ve stayed and toughed it out. I know that you used to get in fights all the time, but it would’ve gotten better with time.”

“No, it wouldn’t have, Sasha, you know that. I didn’t like them and they didn’t like me. I did poorly in school, since I was always starting fights with the teachers. I never fit in and it never sat right with me how people were treated there. Treated like they were just a number with no actual identity or individuality. I didn’t like how any affliction under the sun could be treated with the rights meds. They sedated me at school once, did you know that?”

She flinched at the memory, but didn’t make any other movement. I sighed and pressed my right index finger to my right temple, which was twitching slightly. It always did that when I got stressed out.

“I didn’t want to live like that. I don’t want life to be planned out and easy. I wanted to get away from the place that housed so many bad memories. School, the fights, Mom, Dad… Lee.”

She flinched hard this time, curling in on herself as I mentioned the name of her fiancée. He’d been caught in the middle of a shootout between a group of Killjoys and some S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W officers. He was shot so many times that they had to use his dental records to identify him. The kicker was that they were due to be married in exactly a week after that, almost down to the minute.

It was also right before Mom and Dad were taken away. It was my turn to flinch.

Sasha reached a violently shaking hand into her purse, which she must’ve snatched off the floor somewhere between kicking Nic in his manly pride and beating me nearly to death. She pulled out a little bottle, fumbling with the cap. Her hands were shaking badly enough that she ended up dropping the bottle, which landed on the ground with a clatter. I glared at it when I read the label. The smiling face on the side told me everything I needed to know.

“Sasha, why do you have these?” I asked tensely, snatching the pills from the ground before she could reach them. She looked at me like I’d just kicked her favorite cat, so I stared back hard at her. The only thing on the bottle was her name in small, bolded print, the BLI logo, and instructions on when to take the pills.

“Answer me, Sasha!” I demanded when she remained silent, looking longingly at the bottle in my hands.

“I… I need those,” she stuttered weakly. I could feel a small fracture in my heart beginning to form.

“What for?” I demanded again, hiding the bottle behind my back so she could look at me instead. She did, and her eyes were screaming with desperation. I masked my sympathy with the cold and relentless fury that was bubbling in my stomach.

“I-I… I don’t know. I ju-just need them,” she hiccupped. I glared at her, and she seemed to wilt under the harsh gaze.

“When did you start taking these?”

“After you left.” I winced at the fact that there wasn’t even hesitation in her words.

“What happened?” I drilled, leaning forward slightly. I was eager to hear regardless of and discomfort it might’ve caused me.

“After you ran away, the Crows called me in for questioning. They were upset that one of their citizens was able to escape the safety of the city, and that they would help you if I told them where you were.”

The lifelessness hadn’t left her voice, so it made it hard for me to decide whether she had believed them or not. She frowned at the next part, twisting her hair between her middle and index finger, just like I did when I found myself deep in thought.

“I don’t think that’s what it was. I think they were mad because they lost control and their patrols were outsmarted by a thirteen-year-old girl,” she decided. “I told them the truth: I didn’t know where you were. I had no idea, since you’d just vanished without a word when I was out at work. I think I probably cried, and in the end they wound up believing me. They handed me a bottle like that one and told me that it would help.”

“Why didn’t you get rid of it?” I asked gently, biting my lip as I waited for an answer I knew I didn’t want to hear.

“Because I didn’t have anything else to fall back on. I felt so alone. Nic had gone off on his own, only seventeen. To young to be sure of what he wanted, but too old to listen to me. You ran away, and I thought for sure that you were going to wind up dead somewhere. Lee died, and Mom and Dad were taken away. I was alone.”

I cringed, and I knew immediately what she meant. Although I had left voluntarily, the first few months before I found Kindred had been the hardest of my life. I wanted badly to return to my sister or to run to Nic, but I couldn’t. I’d started something that I didn’t know would impact my life so much on a whim. I’d been a rebellious little girl who thought she could take care of herself in an unforgiving desert. I’d been alone.

“I took the first one later on that night. It was between that or the insufferable loneliness. I took what I could get. It helped to take the edge off.”

“You mean it helped to take you off the edge,” I corrected quietly, biting my lip harder than before.

“Well, yeah. When I took those, I felt nothing but content. Nothing that happened could make me upset, and I started to understand why BLI was doing it. They sold happiness to those who obeyed them, and it seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” she finished lamely, and I raised an eyebrow at her.

“You’d rather be forced to be happy than face reality?” I asked eventually, trying and failing to make my question not sound like an accusation. She looked up from her hands sharply, matching my wary gaze with her heated one.

“This coming from the girl who skipped off to the desert to join a bunch of colorful terrorists,” she snorted, contempt in her voice. She’d never forgotten that Lee wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for the fact that a group of Killjoys had been on a supply run in the city. In her eyes, Killjoys were just as much to blame for the unhappiness in the world as BLI.

“At least I’m happy. Really happy. I’ve suffered, yeah, but that makes being happy that much better,” I shot back heatedly, leaning away from her finally. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Besides, Sash, they’re not terrorists.”

“What are they, then? They go against the only thing holding this world together, trying to dismantle the only peace since the Bleaching.”

“The Bleaching was BLI’s fault!” I whisper-yelled at her, exasperated. I even threw my hands in the air for visual effect. This whole time, our conversation hadn’t risen above a hushed tone. It’d gotten pretty intense at parts, but we’d kept it quiet so none of the guys or customers downstairs would overhear.

“I think they more than made up for it by constructing the perfect society,” she argued, frowning at me. “They’ve done so much. The crime rate in Battery City is incredibly low, everyone gets along. There are no fights, and everyone smiles.”

“That’s not really living though, Sash! It’s a synthetic life, filled with fake people and fake emotions. Does anyone actually do anything other than work and pop pills in that city? Oh, and you can’t forget the subliminal messages in every little thing.”

I didn’t bother trying to see it her way, since I knew I couldn’t. How could she think BLI was anything more than an out of control, power-hungry corporation who wanted to more or less rule the world?

“Why does that sound like such a terrible thing, Harley? They keep us safe and happy. What more do you want from life?” she asked. I wondered if I could get her to see any sense after four years of being fed medication by BLI.

“I want actual life,” I stressed, my brows furrowing together. “I want to live and experience things. I want to feel sad when something bad happens. I want to be angry when some jerk does something rude. I want to be genuinely happy when things go right for a change. I want color. I want art. Do you know that since BLI took over, all the art and color have been drained from the damned city? I want expression, and that’s something BLI will not tolerate.”

“No art…?” she mumbled to herself quietly, trying to remember the last time she’d seen any works of art.

“Remember when you and I used to draw together when I was little? I’d always color the ocean orange, and I got sad when you told me that oceans were blue. Then, you’d tell me that it could be any color I wanted it to be, since I created it. Whatever happened to orange oceans, Sash?”

“You grow up and realize life doesn’t work that way. You can’t just draw an ocean orange and make that the right answer.”

“That’s right, since they’re black now,” I hissed bitterly. Nothing had been right since the Bleaching. “But you know what? I’d still draw that fucking ocean orange. It wouldn’t matter, since that’s the way I’ll always see it. You can do anything you want when you’re drawing or whatever. No one can tell you that you’re doing it wrong.”

“You can be wrong,” she argued, a line appearing between her eyes. “There are certain truths in the world that you just can’t deny.”

“Then why do you deny that people aren’t made to be happy all the time? Isn’t it a truth that people are complex creatures with complex emotions?” I shot back quickly, seeing my chance to try to convince her to see my side. “What happened to being free to feel how you want to? It’s not bad to get a reality check once in a while. There’s nothing right about feeling happy all of the fucking time. It’d be nice, but that’s not the way life is supposed to work. Mom always told us that it was okay to cry when we felt bad, because that’s what it took to feel better. She told us that we didn’t have to tough it out. She told us that it was okay to be human. People cry, people laugh, they scream and they fight. People are dynamic, not static.”

She sat quietly for a minute, probably thinking about Mom like I was. I missed her a lot, more so now because I could see her face in Sasha’s. They looked a lot alike.

“What do you think Mom would say if she saw us fighting like this?” she asked, almost silently, after a few minutes. I bit my lip and considered my answer.

“Do you remember that time when I was painting when I was like, nine? I worked on it so long to make it perfect, but I wasn’t happy with it. I asked Mom why, and she told me that sometimes perfect wasn’t what would make you happy. I cried and told her how much work I put into that painting. She kissed my head and told me that sometimes, you had to destroy something perfect in order to make it beautiful.”

She nodded, her eyes misty with the memories. “She’d be ashamed of me.”

“Not ashamed. Never ashamed,” I disagreed quietly, shaking my head. “Disappointed, maybe. She wouldn’t like that you’re trying to hide from how you really feel. She’d rather you just be sad and get it over with than hiding behind medication and pretending to be happy. She’d also probably tell me to stop making my sister cry, since you’re the only one I get,” I added, smiling a little. She gave a sad little smile of her own.

“I can’t believe I just spent half an hour losing an argument to my baby sister,” she shook her head wonderingly. “How did the little girl that colored oceans orange turn into such a determined young adult?”

“By not actually admitting to herself that she’s an adult now,” I replied, the small smile growing slightly bigger. “The key is to not take yourself so seriously.”

“Ah, I see the key component now,” she replied sarcastically. “It all makes sense.”

“Whatever. That’s just the talk of someone who takes themselves too seriously.”

“No, it’s just because you don’t ever take anything seriously.”

I carefully looked at the bottle in my hands, then to my sister as she eyed it as well.

“Can we please get rid of these?” I asked. When she looked a little dubious, I pleaded with her. “Please, Shasha?”

I even went as far as to use the name that I called her when I was little. Her gaze softened considerably.

“Alright,” she conceded finally, nodding. “Alright, yeah. Let’s get rid of them. Let me do it, though.”

I nodded and handed her the bottle. She opened them (with hands steady as a surgeon, I noticed) and turned them over after standing up and lifting the cover of the toilet. They all plunked into the water, making little splashes and splooshing noises. She gave them one last look, long and hard, before pushing the handle down and watching them swirl away to a watery grave. I put a hand on her petite shoulder and pulled her into a hug.

“I’m really proud of you,” I told her, burying my face in her hair. She embraced me for a few minutes before pushing me away. I looked at her questioningly, but she was smiling.

“You’re still a big softie,” she teased lightly, poking her tongue out at me. “Always were, always will be. Do the guys out there know you’re actually a useless pile of sentimental mush?”

“Probably,” I replied honestly. “They’re smart, and they’re good at reading people. They seem to like me despite the fact, though.”

“Someone has to,” she remarked, and I put a hand to my heart and pretended to look hurt. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“You are one mean midget,” I sighed sadly, and she looked irked. My eyes widened, and I dashed out of the bathroom before she could get a hold on me. I heard her make an aggravated noise in the back of her throat before rushing out after me. I dove over the back of the couch, between Ghoul and Kobra. They looked startled at my sudden entrance, and even more so when Sasha came barreling through, jumping in the same way I had and effectively landing on me. She wrestled me to the ground and slapped at me mercilessly.

“Take it back!” she demanded, laughing and I tried to squirm away.

“It’s only the truth! You’re a foul-tempered dwarf!” I returned, laughing as she scoffed and slapped at my arms as they protected my head. I could hear poorly muffled snickers coming from all around the room, but Sasha seemed preoccupied with beating me. “Okay, I give, I’m sorry!”

I had to gasp through my laughter, but she seemed to catch the meaning all the same. She slid to the side, letting me sit up and look at my arms, turning pink where she’d been slapping me repeatedly.

“Okay, super freak, time for you to actually introduce yourself to my friends,” I commented after catching my breath. She looked around and seemed to take in the four men watching us for the first time. She looked extremely embarrassed. “Seriously, how could you miss them?”

“Shut up,” she commanded, and I chuckled at her. When she didn’t say anything more, I rolled my eyes.

“Guys, this is my sister. Sasha, these are the guys. That’s Fun Ghoul, the Kobra Kid, Jet Star, and Party Poison,” I pointed to each of them in turn, and they gave us amused smiles and greetings.

“Sorry you got stuck with my freak show of a sister.”

I laughed at her choice of wording, looking triumphantly between Ghoul and Jet.

“I told you! I told you, and you guys thought it was dumb!” I cheered, and they just looked amused.

“Told them what?” Sasha demanded, glaring at them and me suspiciously.

“That the name Freak Show suits me. That’s my Killjoy name.”

“Definitely fitting,” she agreed.

The six of us sat and chatted for a while, until well after closing time. Nic and Christian joined us. After a while, we came to the decision that it wasn’t right for Sasha to return to Battery City, since they’d just try to pump her full of drugs again. She volunteered to help out at the restaurant until she could find somewhere else to stay. Christian and Nic agreed that they’d be glad to have her, and I agreed that it was good to get her out of Battery City. It was only a matter of time before BLI got suspicious as to where she was. We’d face that problem when it came along.