Retrouvailles | Beretta

What am I doing?

I know it's a bad idea, and I keep on telling myself that, even as I put one foot in front of the other, one hand on Decant, the other pulling a cigarette from between my lips. Smoke falters from my lips. My mother stares disappointed at me from across the street. She never liked cigarettes. My father used to smoke a pipe, but there wasn't much my mother could do to stop him for that. She usually said that it was his set of lungs and he'd do what he liked. Apparently my lungs belong to her. I only let the guilt settle around me for a small amount of time before I scare it off and it flies away. Fingers pull at mine, lifting them from my gun, and entwine themselves through them. It feels safe, like a knot holding me to the earth, so that I won't float away. I don't think it'll be enough. I glance beside me, and there's height and not very much width. There's brown curls, and that snark of a smile. I glance down at our entwined hands and my fingers still rest on Descant, unmoved. When I glance up again, he is gone.

I wish he wouldn't do that.

Silently, I let rage flow through me, forcing open up my drawer that holds Aurora. It's so angry, the shock of her bruised face in my head. Looking inside, I see her broken body, how close to death she looks, and who I know put her there. "It was Baretta Scarborough and her gang, Colt," her words echo through my head, bouncing off the walls and coming back to my like a broken record. That's what I'm doing. I have a purpose. That is why I am walking through the streets of District One at this time of night. I am doing this because I have to protect Aurora. I am doing this because she is my best friend and she was attacked. I must avenge her. Of course I know how that will go, I've read enough books. Either I will die, or I will be successful, leading to my death anyway. That could be my saving grace.

"Oh come off it Colt, you don't want that," a thirteen year old Gage Hanlon says, keeping pace with me. I allow myself to look at him, as I seriously think about it. Is that what I want? I am in the deepest hole and waves of hopelessness begin to bury me. What is left? I miss my brother. I miss my Dempsey. What is left to me? I was not my own, I don't think. When I left, I got myself, a poor gift. When I left, Kaelen wasn't alone, he had his family. I let the small bites of jealousy eat away at my collarbones, stretching the skin there. Where is my family? When I look beside me, Gage has been replaced with a small black cat. It yowls at me and dashes off into the night. Where did they go? Why didn't they take me with them?

I feel like I've been ground into dust and put back together again. I keep losing pieces of myself, and I need to go back. I need to water the flowers because at least they need me, they rely on me. At least for them I am important and wanted. For them I have not harmed them yet. I wonder how long that will last. I can be so terribly mean without meaning it. Why do I do that? I used to be something, I can't remember just what or who. I used to be something, I remember that. Or was I just imaginary, like my uncle's hand ruffling my hair just now? Or was he really just there?

I am not what I once was. I sound pathetic. Then again, maybe I always did and I'm only realizing it now? What if? I feel like a pumpkin. My aunt Winny used to carve them for all Hallows eve. She'd turn it into an art, scooping them out to be pristine and making each one so detailed and lovely. We always ran out of things to give to the kids in minutes. They were always so attracted to out jack o'lanterns. I used to love the sound it made when her spoon scraped away at the inside of the pumpkin. I loved the seeds my mom would spice and bake in the oven. I hear the crunch of dead autumn leaves under my boots as I walk through this spring night, nothing below me but pavement. Nothing but pavement, and all that's inside me is rage. I feel the slow burn in the soles of my feet. Let it take me. I feed the flame, letting it crawl up my ankles into my rib cage to fester. I let it consume me.

I am in an alley. There are stones beneath my feet, nothing but. There is brick wall to either side. There is air around me, no one holds my hand. I don't want anyone too. I feel sick, like a broken piece of pottery held together by crazy glue. Or am I crazy glue holding together a piece of pottery? It feels useless either way. It feels pointless and like I should just let go. I have a purpose though, to hold flowers in my neck, to let them bloom. Maybe into roses, with thorns along the stem. If you try to hold me, I want you to bleed, I want to bite you with my fangs and taste your pain. I want to hit someone until they scream, and I want to see pain, I want to taste it on the tip of my tongue. I want to laugh, I want to scream. But, I cannot climb those mountains anymore, I lost the strength in my legs that maybe I never had in the first place. There was always somebody to carry me, to protect me.

Not this time.

This time, I ahve to be the one to carry myself, to support the weight of my best friend. This time it's me who has to step forward. I have never shot another human before. But this slow drip of rage moving through my body like poison conveniently seems to forget that. I can be ruthless. I can cause pain, and anguish. I have, I've done it before. Recently too, I can be the reason for someone's suffering. I can do it with little remorse. I am radioactive, a poison, an annoyance, a loose stone in the street. I am here to be stepped on, to cause twisted ankles. To be a nuisance. I should have figured that out long ago, my purpose. Don't know why it took so long.

I hear a sound down the alleyway, and stepping into shadow, I pull Crescendo from it's bed with a silken move. It occurs to me that it could be anyone coming towards me in this dark alleyway. It could even be Kaelen Dempsey himself coming to haunt me again. I grip the gun too tightly, and my dad gives me advice, carefully pointing at where my fingers should rest. I pull the cigarette from my mouth and stub it out on the brick with one foot. Mom looks unimpressed and points in annoyance at the garbage bag in her hands. The foot steps come closer. they pass me by, and my body reacts, pushing me from the wall. I slip into a stream of moonlight, my arm lifting without my consent, and my mouth opens. With an audible click in the relative silence, I release Crescendo's safety, and my voice seems to boom across the void between the mouth of my gun and the back of her head.

"D-don't move."