“Hey!” Spider exclaimed.
There was a short pause of startled silence, in which I felt the person inside the room thinking over the implications of hearing my voice. There was doubt and shock mingled in with the silence. Then, without any heed to dignity Alex ran from the room and tackled me. I fell back from her weight and landed on the floor hard. She ignored my pain and hugged me tight. As she clung to me on the floor, she started crying.
“You’re not dead!” she said in my ear.
“You’re not, either!” I said.
She hugged me tighter, crying into my shirt. I rubbed at her back, amazed to see her cry. I was so used to seeing her be the strong one, and now I was the one comforting her.
“Alex, you do know we’re on the floor and that Spider is probably having some really bad daydreams right about now, don’t you?” I asked finally.
She sniffed and wiped her tears off on my borrowed shirt. She pulled away from me and looked at my face.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make him pay.” She touched my face in a sisterly gesture. “Where ya been?”
“She wants to tell us all at once…” Spider answered for me.
“Right,” Alex agreed. “I have so much to tell you…so many things…I don’t know where to start…are you okay? Do you need anything? Oh! Daniel…you should go see Daniel. Oh, he is going to freak!”
“Daniel?” Reaper asked sharply.
I realized that I hadn’t mentioned Daniel’s name to Reaper. I wasn’t sure if it was to protect him, or because I had been having trouble saying his name.
“Yes…Daniel.” I reveled in saying his name. Daniel. Daniel. Daniel.
Alex turned to look at Reaper, finally catching on to the fact that she wasn’t just in front of family. She blushed and moved off of me, helping me stand in the process. Around her blush, she surveyed Reaper’s face with her x-ray eyes, searching for an explanation for his presence.
“Hi,” she said.
“Reaper, this is Alex. She’s my very best friend in the whole world,” I said.
“Your father is very worried about you,” Reaper said in a polite tone reserved for strangers.
“You saw Dad?” she asked me. “He’s okay?!”
“We just came from visiting him. Sam and Ellen are in Santa Monica. Safe,” I said.
Tension I hadn’t noticed before dissolved from her face. She smiled, her eyes brimming with her happiness. “That’s wonderful! We were worried they had been taken, like Han and Beatrice.”
“Taken?” I asked, daring to hope she knew for a fact that Han and Beatrice weren’t dead.
“Oh…that’s another reason we thought Marcus had you. Nguyen tricked you and Daniel into leaving King’s Cross. He hadn’t been trying to kill Daniel on that road…He just wanted to force you to run. They figured they’d catch you later, though I think they wouldn’t have minded catching you then. His real target was Han and Beatrice…for their research. Margaret and Jackson tracked them to here, but we’re having trouble locating them for certain. We thought you were in the same building with them,” Alex said.
“Margaret and Jackson are alive?” I asked to be sure, feeling as if the day was trying to overwhelm me with good news.
“Yep. And Margaret is pissed. I’ve never seen her so mad,” Alex said.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
“She wanted to storm Marcus’ building…literally, but Jackson talked her out of it. After the fire, they thought we were dead and got the message Beatrice left for Daniel. They went to go check on them, and have been hunting them down ever since.”
“Explains why they didn’t come looking for us. They thought we were dead and Han and Beatrice were in trouble,” I said.
“Yeah…Jackson felt really bad about it. He feels he let Daniel down. They’ve been going through a rough patch. Well, Daniel has been going through a rough patch with everyone, really. He’s, uh, not been himself.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Withdrawn…irritable…you know, worried about you. I don’t think I’ve seen him more unraveled,” she said.
Her words made me more anxious to see him. I wanted to take away his worry.
“Is he here?” I asked.
“He’s on the roof. It’s where he does all his planning.”
I was already moving toward the door. Alex hurried to step in front of me.
“There’s something else,” she said.
“What?” I asked impatiently.
“They forced some drug on him when he was in the nest. He had a hard time coming down off of it. He hasn’t been the same since. It’s like he’s afraid of himself. He’s still Daniel, but there’s a fragility that wasn’t there before.”
I put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “It’s something he and I share, then,” I told her.
Her eyes widened at my words, and I was sure in that instant she understood the magnitude of my pain. She knew I had been faced with pain beyond words, and knew my newfound weaknesses; my fear that pain would one day be my master again. Her face changed to reflect her newfound knowledge, but she didn’t say anything. Her eyes switched to Reaper and the mystery he presented to her.
“I think you have some stories to tell…interesting ones, I’ll bet. How’d you meet Clare?” she asked him.
She pulled Spider on to the couch and gestured for Reaper to sit. I knew she was giving me space to meet Daniel in private. I gave her grateful look, then, scared out of my mind – terrified my expectations would somehow disappoint me, would somehow disappoint him – I went back to the elevator.
The elevator didn’t go to the roof, but I found some stairs near the elevator that did. I had to climb three more flights to get to the roof. I took the steps as slow as I could take them. A part of me was terrified I was imaging all this, that when I got up there he would be nothing more than a New York skyline. Another part of me was terrified he wouldn’t love me in the same way. So much had happened…so much to pull us away from each other. Had too much time passed?
The stairs dead-ended at a door that read ‘Roof: Authorized Access Only.’ I tested the handle and found it unlocked. I took a deep breath to prepare myself and, feeling as if it were the most important door I would ever open, I turned the handle.
Daniel had his back to me. He was standing on the ledge and looking out over the city as if he were trying to understand how and why the people going about their daily lives managed so easily. He wore a simple black t-shirt and blue jeans; he had sneakers on as if he were preparing to go on a run, though his clothes suggested otherwise. His hair had started to grow out again. It was down to his ears now, blowing in the wicked wind billowing around the roof. He tapped impatiently with his foot against the hard stone of the ledge, a gesture I knew all too well. What was bothering him now? The fact that those people below him managed their lives at all? A table with a laptop on it and a simple, hard chair were the only other things on the roof.
Some of the darkness I had been carrying around with me dropped away at seeing him. His body was tense, a coiled spring, the darkness surrounding him palpable, but he was alive. I hadn’t lost him.
“I told you I didn’t want to be bothered,” he said quietly as I let the door swing shut behind me.
“Don’t jump! You’ll just dent the pavement if you do,” I teased him.
“Oh…It’s you again…” he whispered without turning.
“Me, again?” I asked.
“I keep seeing you, but you’re never really there. Shadow and illusion. Why can’t you leave me alone?” he asked.
“Isn’t an illusion of something good better than not seeing it all?” I asked him.
“Not when you want that illusion more than you want air,” he replied.
“Now that’s just ridiculous,” I told him. “I would rather see a picture of you then not remember you at all. You need to stop being so dramatic.”
“Is my illusion really scolding me?” he asked a small smile pulling
at his lips. It was a smile he quickly stifled. “That’s a first.”
“Well, you are being stupid. I always point out stupidity when I see it,” I said.
“True.” He still refused to look at me, his eyes lost in the clouds starting to march across the horizon. “Why can’t you be true?”
I crossed the space between us and joined him on the ledge, so close our shoulders were touching. I watched the clouds as well, my eyes picking out shapes from the marching mists.
“What is the truth, Daniel? What does that word even mean?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” he asked, curious despite his doubt I was real.
“The truth is defined by our perceptions, our way of interpreting things. Why can’t a vision of me be as true as that building over there or those storm clouds? If we see it as true, it is true. That’s the beauty of human expression.”
“It is also the sin we face. We twist things into a truth that can never be,” he said. “We lie and distort things to suit our own selfish ends.”
“But having the hope that our personal truths are real is more than beautiful. It’s perfect,” I decided.
“Now who’s being an idiot?” he asked.
“I believe I called you stupid. Your word is just hurtful,” I said.
He turned to me; his green eyes were full of emotion he dared not let go. I turned to face him as well, urging him to see I wasn’t an illusion. My eyes told him that it was okay to believe in the truth of me. His eyes started to fill with the emotions swarming his chest, and he reached out with one hand. The hand hovered over my shoulder as if he were afraid that touching me would make the illusion end; that I would fade to mist and shadow with the contact.
I grabbed his hand and put it to my cheek, willing him to see the truth. He gasped in wonder as his hand connected to my skin. I let him into my thoughts, the barrier I had kept up since my time in hell falling down as easily as breathing, and showed him the depth of my emotions: my love, my happiness, my eagerness to see him so very much alive.
I missed you, I told him in my thoughts, not able to speak the words out loud.
The words erased all doubt in his mind. His smile was the first light in a dark world, the moon appearing on the horizon, love finding a home. He put his arms around me, pulled me in close and kissed me fiercely. His lips moving in time to mine, he picked me up and swirled me around. He started laughing, a pure, boyish laugh I had missed.
In between kisses he asked, “How…” kiss “…is this…” kiss “possible?” kiss.
I was laughing as well. I pulled away from him, so I could speak. “That is a very long story. One I only want to tell once.”
He nodded and kissed me again, more interested in the present and the reality of me standing in front of him than my story. His kiss lasted an eternity. Finally, he held me at arm’s length, so he could look at me. His green eyes pierced into my soul.
“I have so much I want to say to you…so much we left unsaid…I’m sorry…I am so sorry for letting you down…for lying to you about Odette and the reason I was in King’s Cross…everything,” he said.
“Daniel…please don’t apologize. You…” The emotion choked back the words. “Truth is bendable, our love is not. You understand?”
“I’m still going to make it up to you,” he promised.
“How about another kiss?” I asked.
He laughed, happy to oblige. I held him tight, telling him through our touch all the things I couldn’t express in words. Lost in the emotion, the love, the moment we had come to accept as reality, we kissed until we couldn’t kiss anymore.
Chapter 8
We spent a long time on the roof, coming to terms with the idea that we weren’t separated…and that neither of us was dead.
As we caught up, I realized that our love had, in fact, changed. It was stronger…tougher. Being separated had made us realize what we were missing, what we had undervalued and ultimately taken for granted. It would take a lot to make our love crumble…like the world ending. Even then, I was certain we would find a way to make it work.
Finally, holding hands – afraid the other would disappear if we stopped touching – we made our way back downstairs to our waiting friends. Daniel kept up a stream of silent emotional dialogue between us, our thoughts linked by our touch. It made it hard to focus on anything beyond him.
When I stepped into the large room living room again, I saw that everyone was there; Alex had called home the others. Some of my friends were lounging on the furniture – namely the kids – and others were pacing the length of the room in agitated impatience – namely Margaret and Jackson. Alex was the focal point of the room as she kept the fun going and distractions working. Her face was still red from crying, but her mood had improved considerably. Reaper was next to her on the couch; he was looking at her as if he had never someone so confusing in his life.
The room went silent when I stepped through the door.
“Don’t everybody say ‘hi’ at once,” I said.
Tears were in Sprint’s and Cora’s eyes; Ethan looked as if he had been slapped in the face. Twitch, however, smiled. He got up from the chair he had been in, shut his book of poetry, and crossed the room. He took my free hand, the same smile on his face, and held it tight.
We missed you.
“I missed you, too,” I told him. I pulled him in for a sideways hug. “You’ve gotten taller, I think,” I told him.
Maybe, a little, he admitted.
Our words broke the kid’s shock and set their emotions free. They stood and circled around Daniel and me, touching me on my shoulders, my arms, anywhere they could reach, in affirmation I was really there. Their minds were full of love and happiness. Cora’s tears had leaked over to spill on her face. Ethan fought against the tears as tried to look tough in front of the others, though no one would have mocked him had he cried. The kids started asking me questions, talking over each other in their excitement. I answered them as best I could, glad to see them again.
They finally gave me some space, finding their seats again, though they kept their eyes on me, to make sure I didn’t disappear when they weren’t looking. I looked at Jackson and Margaret. Jackson had been watching Daniel, but his eyes returned to me as the kids sat. The normal smirk I had come to associate with him was gone, and gravity I had never seen before dominated his face. He stepped in front me, his tall frame forcing me to crane my neck to look him in the eyes. His blond hair spilled over his broad shoulders; it framed his square face and made him look like a Viking warrior come to tell me bad news.
“I let you down,” he said.
“Yep,” I said.
He eyes widened in shock.
“Daniel told me you’ve never seen ‘Lost Boys.’ I’m very disappointed,” I added.
He smiled and shook his head; some of his gravity disappeared with my words. He was amused, but he was obviously not in the mood for jokes. His emotions were too real for him to be distracted. He looked at me, searching for a way to express his doubt.
“You did what you thought was right at the time,” I continued more seriously. “I would never hold that against you. I’m just glad I didn’t get you killed.”
He accepted my forgiveness, though I sensed he still felt as if he owed me. The smirk was back on his face. “I’m glad, too.”
He eyed Daniel with cautiously optimistic hope. I sensed there had been words between them, an argument about me and about Jackson’s inability to protect me. They were words Daniel regretted; words he couldn’t undo. They were words Jackson was eager to forgive him for.
“Did Daniel ever tell you he’s never actually seen ‘Lost Boys’?” Jackson asked.
“What?!” I demanded of Daniel.
“Man! Come on!” Daniel complained to his friend.
Before I could take Daniel to task for his lack of awesome, Margaret surprised me. She lunged out with the skill of a trained warrior and pulled me into her arms. The hug was brief, but so out of char
acter that I was speechless; all of my sarcasm was gone. Snow started to fall from the ceiling at her hug. I stared at her as she released me; the snow continued to fall like lace on my shoulders. She avoided my eyes as she took Jackson’s hand. The room had gone silent again.
“Check your pockets,” Jackson joked. “Her hug might have been a diversionary tactic. Make sure there’s not a bomb or something.”
Margaret wacked Jackson on the shoulder and laughter resonated around the room again. The snow stopped falling with her hit.
I looked around the room again, finally noticing that someone was missing from the group. I had been too distracted to account for everyone. I knew he would be where the kids were. They were his life.
“Where’s Eli?” I asked.
Everyone, suddenly, was not looking at Alex. It wasn’t on purpose, but it was enough to know she had something to do with him not being around. I turned to her for an explanation. She sighed.
“He’s with Serenity. Went with her after the dust died down in New Orleans. He said it was to help, but it was really to get away from me.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you later…” Alex said, eyeing Reaper uncomfortably.
“Okay…” I agreed.
“What happened to you, Clare?” Ethan asked around the awkward moment. “Where have you been?”
His question put me on the spot. I knew I couldn’t put off the story any longer. They were all here; they had come all the way to New York to look for me…they deserved the truth. I took a deep breath and, using Daniel’s touch for encouragement, started telling them my story. I left out things that I didn’t want the kids to hear, but I wasn’t shy on the details. I knew they were eager to know as much as they possibly could.
Through our touch, Daniel experienced more of the story. My mind was unable to hide the truth from him, though he also didn’t get the full story. Some things were hard to even think about. Several times, I felt his anger and his overwhelming desire to find that house on the hill and kill everyone inside. It was a desire he had trouble repressing. It was a desire I reciprocated.
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