Hurricane Heart

Hurricane

There were a thousand things I could have responded with, but I said nothing. I could have argued; I could have fought for Arjan’s very right to live, but I didn’t.

(Running, running, always running.)

Instead, after a long and intense silence, I merely nodded.

‘If it comes down to it,’ I murmured curtly, totally emotionless, my head held high so that I looked across at the others down my nose.

‘No one wants to kill anyone,’ Jonas said, ‘but he’s only a prisoner. Don’t worry about it.’

Again, I could have said something. I could have responded that he was still a human, regardless of whether he was a Dreamer or not, but I said nothing. I was running from life; running from emotion; running from love. Arjan had never said a truer word than the night he confronted me with these revelations.

‘We may be able to sort out something amnesia-related,’ Carl said cheerily, as though this was a promising alternative. ‘Of course we’ll try, if we even let him go in the first place, but there’s always a chance that he’ll remember things over time, and that the Soulless will continue following him and either wait for the day he remembers these things or kill him straight out.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed, keeping as collected as I could, as though none of this affected me.

It seemed that Arjan’s time was up. Either way, if we didn’t succeed in the next few weeks, it was death. Either, I would have to kill him myself—and I didn’t want to admit it, but there was absolutely no way I could do that—or one of the other Dreamers would do it, or we’d let him go and the Soulless would do it as punishment for not going to them instead of us.

Carl moved onto a new conversation then, something that, thankfully, had little to do with the Dreamers, and absolutely nothing to do with Arjan. They stayed for another half an hour or so, and for a moment we were almost just three old friends catching up with each others’ lives again, but it was never really like that. We were all on some mission or another, and tonight was no exception. And however many jokes Carl made, and however many entertaining anecdotes Jonas told, I just wasn’t in the mood. I wanted nothing more than to switch off from Arjan related topics, but it was simply impossible. People always said I was constantly alert, but normally that was a good thing. Tonight, however, I would have given anything to be normal for ten minutes.

Finally, I heard Jonas announcing that they should leave.

‘The Master wanted us back by three am or so,’ he said as I came round from my little reverie.

‘What, is that your curfew?’ I teased, though it didn’t come across as light-hearted and condescending as I’d hoped.

‘Kinda,’ Jonas replied, his cheer considerably more genuine. ‘I don’t know why—Soulless watch perhaps. Either way, I don’t imagine we’re going to be getting much sleep tonight.’

‘I’m used to it by now,’ Carl said. ‘It seems he’s had me sat at the computer for longer every day. It’s dead boring.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said, hoping I sounded sufficiently sympathetic. I got up and followed them towards the downstairs door. ‘Anyway, I’ll see you, hopefully soon.’

‘Hopefully soon,’ Carl agreed. ‘Work on your ‘relationship’ with Arjan.’ I could hear the implied quotation marks around the word ‘relationship.’

‘But don’t let him get ahead of himself,’ Jonas reminded me. ‘He’s still our prisoner.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed a little absent-mindedly, only half listening to what they were saying. ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’

Carl began to head off up the stairs. ‘Bye, Hurricane.’

‘See you,’ Jonas added.

They disappeared off, and I closed the door softly behind them, walking across the room and sinking back into the armchair. I should at least wait until they would have reached their car before going in to see Arjan. It seemed that this visit had gone marginally better than the one with Tobias, though only marginally, and it had certainly opened up a thousand more questions than it had answered.

Arjan

Hurricane came and unlocked my door about five or ten minutes after I’d faintly heard the others leaving. From in here, I’d been able to hear voices the whole time, but it was only when there had been raised tones that I could work out what they were saying. I did pick out the silences, though, which were far more unnerving than any shouts or swearing. Only when Hurricane was lost for words did I know that things were really bad.

She looked nowhere near as bad as when she’d come in to see me last time, but I could still detect some evidently unwanted emotion behind her eyes. However much she pretended, not just to others, but even to herself, that it wasn’t there, I could still see it. I knew it would kill her to know this, so I kept quiet as she unlocked my chains and I shook them off vigorously, moving away from the wall.

‘Anything happened?’ I asked.

She glanced upwards in despair and put a hand to her forehead. ‘Confusion. One hell of a lot of confusion.’

Hurricane

I walked out and slumped down in the chair. After all, what could I tell Arjan? I didn’t know what I could tell him about my meeting with Carl and Jonas, because I didn’t know what was supposed to be real and what was supposed to be an act. And I didn’t know which bits he was meant to think were real. And I didn’t know what he thought about us. I didn’t know what side he was on. I didn’t even know what side I was on. I had no idea what he thought about us—our trust, our relationship, whether it even existed or not—

‘Sometimes I really need to get out of my own head,’ I mumbled into my hands.

Oh God, did I just say that? I wasn’t even meant to be thinking those sorts of things, let alone saying them.

Arjan was much more forgiving than I was towards the slip up that was so rare it was possibly unique.

He came and stood beside me, leaning on the arm of the chair, but not quite sitting on it.

‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to say I understand, because we both know I don’t really, but I know that life isn’t straightforward. Everyone needs to get out of their heads sometime or another, and I see why you might—remember what I said about running?’

‘How could I forget?’ I mumbled. ‘I’ve never heard a truer word spoken about me.’

Arjan was momentarily silent. It was only now that I realised that, whilst I’d admitted to ‘running and hiding from myself’ inside my own head, I hadn’t exactly said it to him.

‘I can help you though,’ he said, his voice soft in the silent underground. ‘I can help you learn to use emotion again...’ his words trailed off into insignificance. Suddenly he was so close. His eyes were gazing into mine and he was here, here right in front of me, watching me, touching me. And I didn’t care if this was real or pretend because I didn’t want it to be happening regardless of which one it was, although maybe this was good—maybe this was what Arjan should think was happening between us. But either way, I was feeling emotion again—I was feeling close to him, drawn to him, and that was not good, oh God that was really, really bad, and I couldn’t do this—

‘No,’ I said, softly but firmly. ‘No, I can’t do this.’ He moved away from me ever so slightly, but I jumped up without hesitation and ran towards the bedroom. I didn’t know or care if this was the only bedroom in the place; I slammed the door behind me and fell onto the bed by the wall, face down on the musty smelling quilt.

I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t care what the Master wanted me to do, I simply couldn’t get close to Arjan. I couldn’t do it, because as soon as it began I couldn’t tell in my messed up head whether it was an act or reality. I couldn’t tell whether I was pretending to love him, or whether I loved him for real. Both would have implications, but those from the former would be so much more positive and useful than those from the latter. I had given up emotion for three years, in the last year even more so than ever before, and I couldn’t let it back into my life again. I didn’t care if I was running from who I really was; hiding from my true potential; cowering in fear from the reality of life; there was no other way of doing it. If I wanted to make it through these dark times alive and useful, then I couldn’t get close to anyone. It was the sad life of a so-called hero.