Chapter Six
***Savanah***
Savanah could feel her cheeks turning red hot at the way the mayor had dismissed her. She would have fought, would have screamed and cried had it done any good, but he stood up and instantly kicked her out of his office unceremoniously. The droid from before was called to escort her out as she felt a new hatred for the place she once thought she would call home boil up inside her stomach.
The acid churned, an acrid taste filling her mouth as she stormed out of the mansion, making sure it was clear she was at least mentally protesting the lack of belief in one of his citizens. And the insinuation that it was the pirates, like those she stayed around, that were causing all the trouble like rogue outlaws and that none of what she had experienced could be real made her want to hurl herself from a ship into the depths of space. She already felt crazy for all she had been through, and she didn’t need that judgment from someone else.
She heard her name being called and vaguely recognized the voice as belonging to the man who opened the door: boyish, where the mayor’s was coarse and harsh. But she didn’t turn around to look as she approached her land skimmer. Something in her heart told her it couldn’t take any more heat right now for what had happened to her. No one else was going to tell her that they couldn’t help her or that she was a liar.
“Wait, please!” he called again as she mounted the stolen land skimmer, much closer than she imagined. But then she remembered those long, muscular legs of his. He could catch up to her in a millisecond any day.
“What do you want? Aren’t you his son? Shouldn’t you go be shut in and blind to the issues around him just like him?” she asked harshly, causing him to glare at her.
“I heard everything, and I will have you know I was not raised by that man in there. I was called here for some reason just days ago. I may have invented much of what you all use, but I am getting the feeling I know very little about what goes on here, or what Thomas does.” He cocked his head back, pointing back towards the house and the mayor. Savanah found it odd he referred to his father by his first name, but then again, he said the man hadn’t raised him.
“I didn’t know if I can talk about this with anyone else. I am sorry I bothered you both. I have been humiliated, and I doubt you believe anything I say either.” She tried to remain calm, but her body was heaving, trying to get her to give more tears, even though she had been sure there were none left in her. Nor did any of those who had done this to her deserve a tear from her eyes. But there were days when being strong and stoic was hard, even though that is what she preferred. To be hardened.
“I can’t say I agree with how your complaint was handled; can you please tell me what happened to you?” he asked, and it sounded so sincere. But that was exactly why she couldn’t tell him. She didn’t want to rehash any of it. She needed to get back before her sister or anyone else realized she had left. It might already be too late. And she couldn’t allow herself to slip and trust someone who could easily get wrapped up in the mess of the corruptness so easily.
“I just can’t. I don’t even know you, and I need to get back home. I am sorry I bothered you.” Savanah started the land skimmer back up and took off without looking back, afraid that the sky would soon be light, and her cover would be blown. She ignored any speed limits or stops as she took her anger out on the machine below her, blowing off steam until she glided right up to the guard currently on duty. At this point, she would have to show herself and hope they would keep quiet. But it didn’t matter, she saw, as her sister appeared to greet her. Savanah rolled her eyes and prepared herself for what was next.
Irene yanked at Savanah’s arms, tugging her towards her home. Savanah felt her arm bruising from how tight her worried and frantic sister was holding her. Savanah knew that she had a right to feel this way on some level, but Irene also didn’t understand that she was suffocating her. Even just being there for her was suffocating because she was treating her as delicate and more worried about her than she was about the task at hand: saving the others.
The worst part was that Irene knew how Savanah was feeling. She was an empath, after all, but it did no good because she was good with emotion but bad with the motivations behind it. She assumed everyone felt and thought like her. Maybe Savanah used to, but now that she had been locked under a casino and hypnotized to be used for men’s pleasures, she couldn’t see anything the same way ever again.
“What were you thinking?” Irene screeched. “Where did you go?” she asked, finally letting go and apologizing for the pains she knew Savanah was in. “I am sorry for dragging you, but please, you can’t just run off like that. Something bad could have happened. It still can.”
Savanah shook her head at her sister. “I did what I had to do. You never would have let me go had I told you, and I couldn’t go in broad daylight. That would have been worse. Don’t worry, nothing came of it anyway,” Savanah said bitterly, walking away.
"You are not going to just walk away from me. Why don’t you tell me why you left? We have search parties out looking for you: pirates risking their location and risking getting caught and blamed for the things that happened to you to make sure you are safe. You owe us an explanation," Irene scolded her sister. Savanah twirled a piece of golden hair around her finger, cutting off the circulation in her nervousness with this confrontation. She wanted so badly to go about her business and keep her secrets, but if her sister knew her emotional state, that would never happen.
"I can feel confusion, anger, self-loathing; please, talk to me," Irene begged, a little more calmly. Savanah’s eyes softened as she looked at the women who should have been enjoying her life as a newlywed, and instead her annoying little sister with the poor me attitude was holding her back from that and keeping her up at night.
"I don’t want to be a burden on you anymore, Irene," she sighed.
"You know you are no burden to me; I love you. Why can’t you let me help you?"
"Because you don’t want to help me!" Savanah shot back instantly regretting her seething, but not being able to stop it from regurgitating: all the pain and the self-loathing, it was just pouring out. "For your information, I went to see if I could talk some sense into the mayor. To see if I could offer the aid of the Nagas to get him his power back so he could squash this trafficking business. I want those girls saved, and I seem to be the only one who cares about it. You don’t want to help me; you want to keep me alive and fix me."
Savanah calmed herself, her voice turning dark as she knew she had said some awful things. Deep down, she knew that Irene and her new husband were trying to do what they thought was best for Savanah. That they truly cared and loved her; it just wasn’t coming across right.
“Maybe I do want to fix you a little, heal your wounds, but I am not trying to make you feel as stifled as I can tell you feel. I know you are hurting and you want help. You want to help others. If that is your way to heal, I get it, but what you did could lead the space force and the mayor and everyone, not just right to you, but to all the derelicts that have been helping us and giving us a place to live. They could come and raid and ruin everything. They could kill everyone. I don’t know if we could fight them off. No one would be safe. Let’s figure this out together. Sit down with me. Come to my room and tell me what’s on your mind. I hate feeling what you feel and not being allowed to say or do anything about it. Married or not, I am still your sister.”
Irene’s speech was compelling, almost to the point of making Savanah cave, but the truth was that her sister would never understand what it was like to feel that way and relive everything she had gone through while knowing other women were still going through it. That the monster was still out there, and no one was safe.
“I don’t think you are understanding why I feel how I do, Irene, and I don’t know if any amount of explaining will ever replace an experience I’d never wish on anyone. Certainly not on you. But that does mean a lot of this burden I have to bare alone or with those that were down there with me. And I feel a responsibility since I got out to get them all out too and end this. If not me, then who?”
Irene shrugged, looking dumbfounded at the question. Savanah knew that while she still didn’t get it, she was convinced of what Savanah was saying. They had a duty to do something about it since they were the only ones who knew.
“It kills me that I couldn’t keep you safe. That I still can’t,” Irene whispered, and Savanah could hear her voice break in sadness. Savanah wished she could make her sister feel better, but she couldn’t without lying. She placed her hand on her sister’s shoulder in the best gesture of comfort she could before walking away.
“I will get some sleep and then come apologize to the others for worrying and endangering them. I agree, I owe them that,” she called back to her sister, who said nothing more.
Savanah made it to her small room, the quiet enveloping her again, and hoped that she might get some sleep, even if only an hour or so. She couldn’t keep going like this, on no sleep. If she could sleep more, maybe those episodes she had would stop entirely.
Instead of staring up at the ceiling, she closed her eyes, forced to look at the blackness behind her lids and hummed an old tune she remembered from childhood, though she no longer knew the words to.
The lullaby served to take her into dreamland: that and the exhaustion of her middle of the night adventure. But it could never be dreamless. Never peaceful. Not with the memories that her brain still tried to work out. It was the only kind of sleep she thought she would ever get again.
