Page 5 of Equilibrium
I thought I was making them proud.
“Are you finished?” Atlas asked impatiently as I played with the last piece of bacon on the plate. No, I wasn’t finished, because I didn’t want to stop this peacefulness we were in. He wasn’t my friend, but some fucked-up part of me wanted him to be.
I saw how all these guys behaved back in the church. They protected each other; they would die for each other. It was something I haven’t seen before. During the years I’d spent with the Syndicate, it was obvious that each of us were on our own. Missions we went on were always done in pairs, not because we needed the other person, but because we knew one of us was going to die.
It was like modern Rome, and we were the gladiators. One of us always died, and my father always rewarded the one that came back. No, wait, let me rephrase that whole sentence. Everybody else went in pairs, but he always sent me alone. But there was no reward for me to reap. My only reward was the gracious gift of him keeping me alive, or that’s what I thought.
The truth was, he couldn’t kill me. Not wouldn’t but couldn’t, because we both knew that the person he would send after me would end up dead and he would be the next one on my list.
“Ophelia?”
“No, I’m not done.”
“It seems like you are.” He smirked, “Or are you planning on running around the room with that piece of bacon?”
“Fuck off, Atlas,” I gritted through my teeth. I didn’t have to tell him that my knees still wobbled, and that my head pounded. I hated showing any kind of weakness, even more so when I was in the lair of the enemy, in their territory.
I was too weak to fight, I was too weak to run, and if they wanted to, they could kill me in a blink of an eye. I couldn’t even find the strength to fight with him verbally, and that wasn’t me.
“No need to get feisty, sweetheart. I was only asking.” He stood up and walked toward the window. “You know, I never actually thought that I would see you again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he turned to me, “you were more like a ghost that haunted Storm’s life. Hell, you haunted all of us, even the ones that never saw you. He never got your name that day, but he spent the last four years searching for you.”
Lies. They were all lies carefully packed to sway me. They were sweet nothings that were supposed to make me feel better, because people like us, we loved to play games and lies were just one of them. It would’ve been easy for them to break me physically. They could beat me, they could torture me, but they knew that if they didn’t break through the wall I erected around my soul, they would never get what they wanted.
I still didn’t know what it was, but I was going to find out.
“I don’t wanna hear it, Atlas.” I shoved the last remaining piece of bacon in my mouth. His words irked me because while I knew they weren’t true, I wanted them to be. Why wouldn’t I? Even monsters needed somebody to share their burden with, and I thought Storm would be the one for me.
“I’m just saying—”
“No,” I interrupted. “I. Don’t. Wanna. Hear. It.”
I thought he was going to argue with me, try to persuade me that Storm cared about me, but he kept quiet instead. When I looked at him, he was already staring at me as if he were trying to figure something out.
“What happened to you, Ophelia?”
His words felt like a spear through my chest. The things that happened to me... they weren’t the fairy tales girls so often dreamed of. They were the nightmares you never wanted to think of. I didn’t want to think about it. The pain, regrets, suffering, betrayal—the list was far too long for me to even start.
“Life happened.” I looked at him. “And it kept happening, kicking me from all sides.”
“Sweethe—”
“Save it.”
I stood up and walked toward him. In my weakened state, Atlas’s energy felt like he could eradicate me if he wanted to. But something told me that he didn’t. Something told me that whatever they were planning, they needed me intact.
“Why am I here, Atlas?”
“I can’t tell you that.” He grimaced. “I’m not the one with all the answers. I know you’re angry, I would be too, but you are safe here.”
“I am not safe anywhere.” I snickered. “I will never be safe.”
He stared at me for a minute too long, as if he wanted to say something. His promises of safety were stories for little kids who didn’t know better. I did. No matter where I went, no matter what I did, I would never be safe. I didn’t exactly make a lot of friends in the last couple of years, and the amount of people that didn’t want to see me dead could be counted on one hand.
For the first time, I felt all alone. There was nobody out there who would want to see me, who would want to feel my touch. There was not one person who craved my touch, my warmth, my love. And I had it.
