Hurricane Heart

Hurricane

We found a flight of steps up to the surface and I headed up, my heart colder and number than even I liked, into the warm, starlit night. Streetlamps burned orange all around us and I leapt out of the road to avoid a loudly honking car. Desperately, Arjan and I ran until I dragged him round a corner and into the shadows of an alleyway. I sunk down to the floor against the brick wall in anguish.

He looked like there were a thousand things he wanted to say, but there were no words to describe it. Finally, though, after I had sat there long enough for my heart rate and breathing to return to normal speed, he spoke the words we both wanted to know the answer to.

‘Was that Felix who they shot?’

I looked up at him, still standing, leaning his back against the wall beside me with his hands curled behind him. I could see his face in the dim, orange city lighting; blotched and carved into a mask of silent sadness, and his eyes were watery; little, iridescent fiery shimmers dancing off his wide pupils.

‘This is why I left it all behind,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t take this.’ An abrupt and irrational surge of anger shot through me. ‘And you went and brought it all back!’ I raised my voice; I was shouting; rough and cold. I didn’t care who heard me. Arjan looked taken aback, but he was neither scared nor defensive. He merely seemed to accept what I was saying after a moment’s contemplation, his expression hollow.

‘What do you mean?’ he whispered, staring blankly back out into the street.

‘I said so many times that I wanted to leave,’ I said, my voice more full of emotion than I had heard it in recent memory. ‘All I wanted was to run away; run away from my life; run away from emotion; run away from everything. And I did. And then you came along, and you—you, with your questions and your begging and your emotive speeches and your bullshit about trying to understand me made it all come flooding back!’ Tears of anger were welling up in my eyes and I could feel my body’s temperature rising as my blood began to boil with rage.

He said nothing for a long moment, accepting that he had, in my eyes, done wrong.

‘Wouldn’t you rather it this way, though?’ he asked in a low whisper after I had a chance to calm down. Carefully, I locked all this sudden emotion back up in the deepest recesses of my mind. I had known Felix for just a few hours, and Jay for just a few minutes; why should I feel sad about either of their potential demises?

‘What do you mean?’ I asked bluntly.

‘Wouldn’t you rather feel?’ he asked gently. He offered out a hand to me, still crouched on the ground, and I took it, using it to pull myself back to my feet where I swayed unsteadily and leant against the wall, taking deep breath after deep breath to try and calm myself. ‘Wouldn’t you rather it was this way than any other? At least if you feel sadness it means you’ve loved. If you feel nothing, it just means your heart contains no love at all.’

I didn’t answer, which I knew he would hold against me, but I didn’t care right now.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he asked, but his voice was not accusing, but surprisingly soft. ‘Whatever you say; no matter how many times you wanted to run away; no matter how many times you couldn’t sleep for everything wrong in this world; no matter what imagination you possess, emotion is the one thing you can’t be human without. You need it; everyone does.’

‘But what’s the use in it?’ I asked contemplatively. ‘What’s the use in loving, only to lose it all? Because it all falls, Arjan.’ I looked him straight in the eyes, and I could feel how mine clouded over with darkness. ‘Everything slips away sooner or later. Everything you love now, you will lose one day. And that is a promise. And if you want to do the job I want to do, you have no choice but to leave it all behind. Nothing to love means nothing to lose, and that puts me in the most powerful position of all.’

‘But it doesn’t!’ he said in passionate, shouted exasperation, clutching at my hand. I didn’t flinch away. ‘Because what you don’t understand is that there’s no use in saving the world if, once it’s all saved, you have no one to enjoy it with. That’s not a life; that’s just a survival, and that makes you just as bad as all the blind, ignorant followers of the government!’

I slapped him without warning, and he staggered back, clutching at his face in shock. I could see from the apology in his eyes that he knew he had gone too far, but I wasn’t ready to accept his pleading guilt. Sometimes saying sorry just wasn’t good enough.

‘What was that for?’ he cried.

‘You know what,’ I muttered.

‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—‘ he stammered. ‘You know that’s not what I’m saying!’ Already, he was practically begging for my forgiveness.

‘You still said it.’

He turned away, looking deeper into the darkness of the alleyway, clutching at his hair in frustration. I turned away too, looking back out the mouth of the little road into the light of the high street.

‘Come on,’ I muttered.

‘Hurricane, I’m sorry,’ he begged once again. I cut him off.

‘Arjan, shut up, get a move on, run when I say run, and get to the goddamn car!’ I snapped, whirling round to glare at him. He looked uncomfortable, but followed me at a running pace as we headed through the dark, quiet streets.

***

Sometime around midnight, still without either of us having spoken, we arrived at the little Dreamer outbuilding that I was pleased to see was there, even though I hadn’t known about it for certain. Where it was, I could drive the car right up to the side, where I hurriedly grabbed anything I could reach from the boot and ushered Arjan inside at a run, slamming the door behind us, finding the lights and heading downstairs. There, I dumped my bag in the corner, walking to the sofa and flopping down on it dramatically, so I was staring up at the grey ceiling.

Most of my anger had waned now—I was not happy about Arjan saying what he had said, but I knew how it felt to say something you then regretted in the heat of an intense moment, and he seemed genuinely apologetic. Instead, that rage had been replaced with a splitting headache. I wasn’t usually one for getting ill, but with my continual lack of sleep and constant intense thinking, never switching off, never having a moment of calm, headaches were, sadly, more frequent.

Arjan sensed that I was no longer about to kill him so, instead of going to bed like I was sure he wanted to, he moved tentatively to the end of the sofa and looked at me. I pushed my chin against my chest so that, from my lying down position, I could see him.

‘Are you alright?’ He sounded concerned for me. ‘You look really pale and shaky.’

‘It’s fine,’ I muttered, never one to complain needlessly. That, after all, encouraged unnecessary emotion. ‘It’s just a headache. I’ll go find some pills in a minute.’

The outbuilding was cold, late at night, and evidently having been uninhabited for at least a few weeks now, but I shivered with more than just the low temperature.

Arjan seemed to have read my mind. Cautiously, realising that I was still unresponsive and in a bad mood, heightened further by the throbbing in my temple, he asked, ‘does this place have any heating?’

‘Maybe,’ I murmured. ‘Go have a look if you want.’

He did, and came back two minutes later with success.

‘There was a switch upstairs,’ he muttered. As he sat down on the chair on the far side of the room, I rolled over and got up, slightly dazed, shuffling off towards the bathroom. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head as I shut the door, running the tap and pouring some of the water into a glass. It was silent; far too silent.

I glanced into the dusty, cracked mirror, pushing my lank hair out of my face. Arjan was right: I did look terrible. I was white as a ghost, with deep, purple rings under my eyes and my hair looked as though I had just walked through a storm. Perhaps I should have some sleep, although that was hard to say now, considering it was already long gone midnight and I was determined to be up first thing in the morning so we could get out of this area. I wasn’t sure I could stay in Hanover any longer. This place already held too many unwanted memories.

I watched goosebumps ripple up my bare arms as I reached for the cupboard to the left of the mirror, opening it with a click and glancing around for painkillers. Thankfully, whilst the shelves didn’t contain a lot—no one really brought much medication in, as people rarely spent more than a couple of days here at a time—there was some paracetamol in there, which I took with a glass of water gladly.

I shut the cupboard and, watching this shadow of myself in the dim mirror, I sank down onto the toilet seat, curling up and clutching at my temple as dark locks of hair fell across my face.

And for only the second time in three years, I cried.

A knock on the door, about two minutes later, made me jump with a start.

‘Are you alright?’ Arjan called through the wood.

My voice was too hoarse and fragile to speak now, if I could even talk at all with my throat knotting and burning tightly as it was, so I wiped the tears away. Nevertheless, I had left the door unlocked, so Arjan nudged it open and walked in.

‘I didn’t invite you in,’ I mumbled, pulling hair across my face to hide its dampness and my puffy eyes, though we both knew I wasn’t up for fighting right now.

There was nowhere else to sit in here, so he just stood beside me and put an arm around my shoulder. I didn’t shake it off. However much I hated the idea; however much I didn’t want to be this close to him; it was comforting. I liked having an arm round me for the first time in what was probably far too long.

‘It’s all about to fall apart,’ I whispered melodramatically.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Arjan said, and his voice contained strength and conviction that made a chill run through even my desolate heart. ‘I don’t know what you’re looking for; I don’t know how long we’re going to be running, but I have the feeling that you’ll find the answers soon enough.’

I glanced up at him, my eyes glassy and shining with the unshed tears.

‘You can’t promise anything.’

‘No,’ he agreed in a light, soft tone, ‘but I still have instinct.’