I turned towards him without thought, even though he was on my left and all that side of my vision was screwed. I had to use the full rotation of my neck to find him properly and when I did, I saw him pushing against a thick, steel door. It didn’t budge, so he tried using his shoulder, barging into it once, twice, three times before eventually giving up and stepping back. Moose didn’t even wait to ask what he should do. He was a silent type, a man of war. He acted first and thought later. He rarely spoke. Aiming his gun right at the three different joining points, he fired over and over again and I watched as small sparks flew off against the metal.
He charged at it, barging it with his shoulder another four times before it eventually broke and creaked open.
“It’s too dark. Can’t see nothin’,” he groaned, but I didn’t give a shit about that. I pushed past him as fast as I could. I only prayed I found her screaming because of her actions rather than her fate.
“Ayda? Ayda, where are you?”
There was nothing for a while, only the sounds of my panicked breaths. The place was full of old machinery. Shit I wouldn’t be able to figure out even if this place was lit up like a Christmas tree. Every turn I took, I stumbled into something, until I heard the one sound that had me releasing the breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding.
Her whimper was small, but it was enough. It gave me the direction I needed to move in, and when I turned a corner andfound her backed up against the wall with her knees pulled against her chest, the rest faded away.
She was alive.
Moving carefully, I came to a stop beside her, unable to ignore the dead body that lay at her feet surrounded by blood and other parts that needed no description. The light in there was dim. It reminded me of the night in the forest with the girl and her dead boyfriend. The moon barely shone through any of the old, grimy windows. All there was were shadows and outlines. I guess nobody wanted to witness the first time an innocent girl killed a guilty man that night.
Bending down, I swallowed the massive lump of pain and regret that had formed in my throat and gently placed a hand on her knee.
“It’s me. I’m here.”
Ayda pulled her knees tighter to her chest. The only acknowledgement that I was there at all was her hands covering mine, clawing at my skin until she was practically folded around it, a small sob breaking quietly from her.
The first kill was always the hardest.
Seeing her that way had me wanting to close my eyes to wash the image away, but instead, I did what she needed me to do. I turned my palm in her grip, curling my hands even tighter around hers until we were both left squeezing life back into one another, even though it sent a searing pain into my shot shoulder.
The back of my other hand found the edge of her jaw, moving slowly along to show her I was there and I was on her side. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I wasn’t going to be rough. I wasn’t an enemy. I was the other half of her. I washerman. The one who should have been here doing the killing onher behalf while she remained ignorant to this world I lived in. When my fingers grazed the edge of her hair, I tucked it behind her ear and waited, holding her head in my palm for as long as she needed me to be still this way.
“Come back to me, darlin’.”
Her head lifted from her knees, her blank eyes finding mine as she tried to blink some coherence back into herself. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she gave up and shook her head.
“I had to,” she finally whispered. “I had to. He was going to kill me.”
“I know,” I whispered back. “You did the right thing. You did what I told you to do. You kept yourself alive for me. We’re together now. We’re together because of you.”
My face creased up as the pain of seeing her this way eclipsed anything that was going on on the surface of my body. I would never forget that moment for as long as I lived. There was no going back for her now.
She didn’t so much lean as fall forward, landing on her knees as her arms moved slowly and gently around my shoulders until she buried her face in the crook of my neck and her body began to tremble like a tuning fork.
I didn’t think to avoid touching her back, but the moment I reached around to bring her closer, I felt the wet and warmth of blood across the obvious tears in her flesh and my body stiffened. My hand froze, all my fingers lifting themselves away, even though she didn’t cry out in pain. Between my little finger and my thumb, a small dance was performed, inspecting the edges of the ripped flesh before realizing it was everywhere.
She was a mess.
Moving my hand to the back of her hair, I pulled her to my lips and kissed her head as gently but as passionately as I could.
“I love you,” I said quietly, needing her to feel those words. “I love you and you’re safe now. You’re with me, but I need to get you out of here.”
She didn’t say much. She didn’t have to. Her rapid, panicked breaths spoke volumes to everyone standing around us.
“Take me home,” she whispered in my ear, her voice pleading.
I wished I could. I wished it was that simple, that I could just sweep her off her feet, lift her out of her worst nightmare and take her home. But that wasn’t the reality. The truth was that her safety was no longer in question, but in order for us to live together after what had just happened, the heroics and romantics would have to wait until a debt had been paid. There was no way I was going back to a world where neither one of us slept at night.
It all ended then.
Calling Moose over, I held her against me before asking him to do what my beat up body couldn’t. I somehow managed to get her to stand, ignoring the way my skin tore even further every time she pressed against it or I had to stretch to hold her in my arms. When Moose eventually swept her up like a newborn child and cradled her to him, I swallowed and limped on pathetically behind them.
For as long as I lived, I knew I wouldn’t get the image of her and that night out of my mind. There was only one thing that was going to make the bitterness slightly less offensive.
