Wanderlust

After only four weeks of the people who returned back to the safety of the hanger, there was already talk of another group going back out. I had largely ignored it, thinking that no one in their right mind would go and leave when it had just ended. But the people who were saved and rescued, they wanted to help. It wasn’t even fathomable to me at this time. People were still healing and adjusting. Things were warming up quickly and that meant that cropping would be in full swing. I felt like everyone needed normalcy but not everyone shared that feeling.

I had been sitting on my bed for most of the day, patching up some holes in my clothes and reading here and there. It had been quiet all day. Jaden had been doing monumentally better and Millie had relaxed, she was smiling all the time again. Everything was just right at the moment until Mila rushed into the door, Jaden walking slowly with Jay’s help into the room. At first I was relieved to see that he was being released from the infirmary but I then turned and saw Mila’s face beet red.

“I’ll deal with you later,” she pointedly snapped at Jay, who quickly turned to leave with his tail between his legs.

I opened my mouth to ask what had happened but Mila was on a roll with her words. She was talking so fast and furiously that I could barely gather what has her in such an upset. Jaden just stood there, taking in her words with a turned cheek.

“What is going on?” I spoke up but Mila didn’t paused until I raised my voice a little higher.

“Dahlia, have you told any of the guys how you were when you were gone?” I shook my head, wondering why she would ask that.

“That has nothing to do with this,” Jaden told her with a low and testy voice.

“If it does have something to do with it, I haven’t had any serious hallucinations since the Marcus fiasco.”

“Marcus fiasco?” Jaden questioned curiously, checking out of Mila’s ranting.

“It’s nothing,” I sighed, leaning against the wall as Mila started to speak more clearly.

“You all are idiots, morons, dumbasses, twits, imbecile’s,” she heaved, pausing for a breath, “do I need to illustrate any more synonyms for you to understand how completely stupid this is?”

“How stupid what is?” I cut in, becoming concerned.

“Superman over here wants to go back at it, along with all the other buffoons.” Mila clicked her tongue against her cheek, turning away. “I’m going to go talk to, Jay.”

“What is she talking about?” I felt the tension that had been in the air around them envelope me, my stomach crawling with a tingling static of nervousness.

“The talk that you must be hearing is true. We want to get another run out there, try and do more.” Jaden told this to me like he had said it a hundred times, not caring what anyone thought about it.

“You’re joking,” I smiled, thinking he had to be but he wasn’t, I saw that quickly.

“No, I’m not.”

“I don’t get why you would want to go back out there—for heaven’s sake you were almost killed last time, Jaden! I mean, sure, the first time it was warranted. But this time? You’re just vengeful.”

“You’re being a little dramatic. You all are. What all of you think matters but it won’t change the minds of the others,” he scoffed, ever so slowly lowering himself down into his bed.

“You want me to tell you that it’s okay to go back out there again?” I tossed my shoulders up in disbelief at his audacity.

“I want at least one person’s support in this! We left and we came back. I’m over it and you should be too. I have to go back, I need too. We all survived the first time and we will again. We know what we’re doing this time, we will do this better this time. Besides, it’s partially my responsibility to do something.” He looked at me like he was scolding a child who didn’t understand a simple theory or meaning. It was insulting to me.

“Oh, don’t you dare do that thing where you go full speed ahead into this idiotic notion that you can actually change something! You are who you are, Jaden. I am who I am and Millie is who Millie is and so on! If you don’t want the fact of you being Kruger’s bastard son defining you, then stop setting out to define it in the most gigantic way possible! You are not responsible for your father’s actions.”

“You know that’s not fair—,”

“I’m not finished,” I cut him off, my hands balling into tight fists. “And during all this, after you leaving and how you’re over it? Oh, heaven forbid that Millie, your only blood family left is still adjusting to the notion that you’re alive after she had accepted the fact that you had to be dead after you didn’t return for months. And now you’re asking her to adjust back to that and to abandon the feeling of happiness that she has just regained? Fuck you, Jaden. You’re being selfish and ignorant towards others for even thinking that anyone would be okay with you going back out there.”

“What the hell happened to you when we were gone? Why can’t you at least of all people understand why I have to do this? You were tortured by him, you were stripped of your humanity Dahlia! Don’t you want to get it back?”

“What happened to me, Jaden? I’m losing my goddamn mind!” I cried, feeling a panic rise in me. “I tore myself up psychically and mentally. Night terrors night in and out, hallucinations of Marcus killing me. You’re father hovering over me in my last moments of clarity telling me that I am scum, that I am a side effect of his grand façade and the delusional vision to keep reaching until he holds the world in his hands! I don’t want the humanity I was birthed with if it came from any spawn of an idea from Kruger. And you never came back, this isn’t you. You wouldn’t leave Millie, Jaden. You could do it the first time but not the second, you know it will kill her if you do.”

“And what about you? Are you better now that we’re—that I’m back?” He stood up, leaning a little closer and I flicked my eyes to the wall, turning away from him.

“Of course I am. I was stressed and scared for all of you. Millie, Mila, and I had to take care of each other but I was the only one who could take care of me the best I could. If you leave again, yes I will get bad again. But don’t think for a second that it’s about you Jaden, it’s about all of us.”

“I never thought it was. I just always wanted to think that I’m helping you in some way, Dahlia. I was scared for all of you too. You think that I don’t care about leaving you again? That I don’t care or think about what would it be like if I left Millie? I know that it isn’t reasonable to you. But my life isn’t anything if I can’t settle this urge to revenge the person who gave my life in the first place.”

He moved closer. Close enough for me to see deep into his eyes, his hand leaving the beds support in confidence. “I don’t want to leave again. I need to. It’s calling me back, even on the brink of death. Even now that I can just barely handle myself on my own I want to run out there and do something, anything.”

“Jaden, you’re being delusional.” I watched his face scrunch up in irritation, but I placed my hands on his shoulders to make sure that he heard me loud and clear. “I will never give you a blessing to leave your sister like that again. Not unless she is with you, or me and Mila as well. I can’t—we can’t,” I covered my words carefully, “go through thinking that you weren’t going to come back to us. We care about you too much to send you back out there with the way you returned. You’re blinded by your plan of revenge but it is a nasty thing and Jaden you’re going to go in to deep. The thought of it scares me.”

“I can see clearly enough, Dahlia. I’m not the only one who feels that way. Go ask half the guys that returned with me. Go ask, Marcus. Ask anyone, I can bet that they at least have a slither of desire to go back and help. I want to go and eradicate the person who did this to do, the person who has done something awful directly or indirectly to almost everyone here. Who else is going to do it, Dahlia? Because so far since the moment I’ve learned who was, no one has.”

“There’s a reason for that too. You haven’t been inside those walls, Jaden. I can’t remember it but I can almost feel what it was like and I can tell you it’s a feeling of fear. I feel like a caged animal when I think of it. And if you need any more proof for how horrible the conditions are, ask Mila. You can’t penetrate those walls and you can’t get in secretly. Leave it to someone else, he can’t last forever.”

“You really have no need to see him hanging in the middle of his metropolis? To know that you don’t have to worry anymore? After all that he did to you? Dahlia, please have an ounce of anger in you for what he did.” His eyes pleaded with me as he clutched the base of my neck lightly.

“Of course I would but I can’t. There’s always going to be someone else that is either worse or not as worse as him. There’s always going to be someone trying to do some awful thing. There’s always that person. And you can talk about how you’re wasting your life but you’re not Jaden. You have a life, you have Millie and all of us. What life would it be for you to be killed the next time you go out there and never see how Kruger’s reign ends?”

“I plan on being if possible the person ending it or being a part of it.” Determination leaked into his eyes, replacing the coolness of them.

“Then I guess there’s no reasoning with you.” I stepped back from him once more when I realized there was nothing I could say it seemed like that would convince him to stay. “You want my blessing, Jaden? Fine, you have it and you don’t deserve it. It’s an empty blessing because I know you were going to leave anyways. So this time when you leave, you better not come back. You either die out there or find someone else to drag through the mud with because I’m not letting me or Millie or anyone else seeing you about to die again. So go, live your glorious life that you so desperately want.”

“I won’t leave on terms like this.” A small amount of him looked hurt by what I said and he carefully reached for me, “I’m not doing this for me. I doing it for everyone, for the good of everyone.”

“There’s no good if there’s no good virtue behind it, Jaden!” I shouted in a snap of anger, “yours is based off hatred, pure hatred. If you want to roll with that, fine. But I’m not repeating myself but I’ll add this.” I let the words slip through my lips, revealing my harbored feelings out in the open for the first time.

“I love you, Jaden. I love you as a friend, as someone that I can feed off of. But I barely love you on terms more than that. And when you leave, you’re taking all of that with you. I don’t need any more negativity in my life. So you’re taking that with you and you’ll carry it around with you with a full mind that I rarely break my promises and I promise you Jaden, that as soon as you leave, I will be all but numb to you.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time and when I realized that he was thinking this over more deeply than I was willing to wait, I left.

I ran my hands through my shortened hair, the tears hiding under my eyes and the ache in my stomach felt like it knew something I didn’t. My shoes stomped hard against the ground, walking purposefully to where ever I could find Marcus. I would check his room first and then every corner of the godforsaken place until I found him.

I pounded on his door, not waiting for an answer before barging in. He was on his bed, his shirt off as I saw a knife digging into the outward slope of his shoulder. His hair was messy, his face red and blotchy. I knew he had been quiet the past few weeks but I felt like this was the reason why.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hissed, quickly shutting the door behind me and going for the knife but he quickly jumped to his feet and back up.

“Please, stay back.” He looked guilty, remorse watering up his eyes in the form of tears.

“Marcus, what is it?” I reached for him once more but he backed away defensively once more.

He abruptly knelled over in pain, grabbing his arm as he yelled at me to leave. I wouldn’t even think of it though. I ran over to him, desperately wanting to help. I was trying to think of something to say when I felt the hanger shutter, an erupting reverberation shifting the air around us.

Marcus was sobbing as he fell to the ground. The knife dropping through his fingers as he gripped his head, pulling his hair roughly. I grabbed his hands, feeling as if I was in one of my hallucinations.

“I’m too late,” he wept loudly. “Oh god, what have I done!”

“Marcus!” I grabbed his face, my eyes wide with fright, “what did you do, Marcus? Just tell me what you did.”

He continued to shake with his sobbing as he reached down for the knife. I tried to stop him but he told me to just watch. So I did. I watched as he cut his skin, the blood rushing down his arm as he blubbered in pain. I watched for whatever it was that I was supposed to be watching for. I looked intensely until I saw it. I knew what it was even though I couldn’t remember it. I just knew because there was a nightmare living under his skin. The spindled wrapping of thin wires, the chip that he was yanking out of his tissue.

“Oh, Marcus.” I stared at the tracker like it had the power to kill me with each pulse it must have been sending out. I felt another blast vibrate under my feet as I pieced together what was happening. “What have you done?”