Page 70 of Equilibrium
I wanted to tell her it was going to be okay. I wanted to tell her that this pain she was drowning in now was a good thing. It meant she was alive, she was breathing, living, and she was finally free of the restraints the Syndicate put on her. I wanted to reassure her, but it wouldn’t be enough. I always hated it when people told me everything was going to be okay because none of us knew if it really was going to be okay. I had no idea if this thing could break her or make her stronger.
I didn’t know if she could live with it all and not drown under the waves crashing against her, so I did the only thing I could in that moment. I stood up, sat next to her, and pulled her in my lap, hugging her to me. I held her, trying to comfort her in the only way I knew how.
I held her because I wasn’t a man of many words. I didn’t know how to tell her that whatever she felt right now wasn’t going to break her. I dragged my hand over her hair, over her shoulder, her back, as she clung to me like a kid. I wiped away the tears coating her cheeks, dragging my thumb over her bottom lip, soothing her with my touch.
Nobody ever taught me what to do or what to say. My parents didn’t give a shit about me and later... Well, later the only thing I was good at was physical touch. I wasn’t allowed to feel anything, to express my opinion, to behave like a human being, so just like her, I shoved it all down.
But I was happy she was finally letting it out. I was happy to feel her trembling in my arms because that meant she was healing. It hurt right now, but we couldn’t run away from everything we felt. Us humans, we were such peculiar creatures. Some of us could handle it all, while others—the broken ones—couldn’t stand feeling anything.
The broken ones taught themselves not to feel, because we knew that even the smallest emotion could destroy the carefully crafted façade around us. Believe it or not, happiness was the toughest emotion for all of us, because we thought we didn’t deserve it. So, we tried to avoid it.
We drowned it with alcohol, with drugs, with sex and we hid behind walls higher than the Chinese wall. We don’t want to feel. We don’t want to see what we’d become, and before you know it, years have passed and we are unrecognizable and far away from the people we wanted to be.
All these words, everything I felt was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t tell her that. I couldn’t show her everything inside my head, inside my chest, because I didn’t want to scare her. I didn’t want her to see where my demons were hiding. Knowing her, she would poke them, she would wake them up, she would try to fix what was broken, because that’s what she did.
She didn’t know it, but she always tried to fix what was broken. With Ava, she tried to take her away from that life, even though it wasn’t her place to do so. With her sister, she was trying to save her, but was there anybody that could save Ophelia?
“Listen,” I started slowly, trying to find the right words. “I might not know what to say to you right now, because I truly suck at these things.” She started laughing at that. “But I know what might help.”
As if woken from the trance, she perked up, lifting her head, and looking at me. “What?”
“That idiot, Sam.” Anger blazed over her face at the mention of his name. “I know where he is, and I think we should pay him a visit.”
If I wasn’t feeling the same anger she did or if I was a different man, I might have been terrified of the look on her face. The vengeful look, bloodthirsty and ready to hunt the one that wronged her. But I wasn’t a different man. I was me and this thing, this was what I could give her.
I could help her get her revenge.
A weird kindof energy buzzed through my veins as I packed my things to move them from the room Atlas found for me to Storm’s. Not that there were too many things, but ZoZo went out of her way to bring me clothes and toiletries, and it was more than I had after I left Croyford Bay. But right now, I couldn’t give a fuck about the amount of clothes, or even the fact that Storm all but ordered me to move my shit, as he called it, to his room. We were going out and I was going to have fun.
I itched to get my hands on knives, not even caring that they weren’t my usual knives. As soon as he mentioned going out, my whole body woke up, switching me from the misery I was pushing myself further into, to feeling alive for the first time in days. I didn’t know where all those things came from, but some part of me felt that I could tell him everything. I believed that he needed to know, because I truly didn’t know how to do this thing.
I didn’t know how to turn off one part of me in order to turn the other one on. I didn’t know how to stop running away, but maybe I could try. Maybe it was good that all these feelings started flooding through me. Ava always said that keeping everything to yourself wasn’t healthy, and maybe I should take her advice.
But all of that would have to wait. That feeling from when I used to go on missions started coming back. It wasn’t hatred, it wasn’t just pure adrenaline, it was purpose. I had a purpose again, even if it was a fucked-up one. All these years, I believed that Storm didn’t want me. These last couple of days, I couldn’t allow myself to fully fall into his embrace because I believed he turned me away when I needed him the most. Sometimes I felt that my life was just one big lie or a nightmare, and any second now I would wake up in an empty room, realizing it was all just that, a nightmare. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I pinched myself, shut my eyes and willed my mind to wake up, it never happened.
This was my life. I could cry and moan about it or I could finally stop blaming other people and take my destiny into my own hands. I was the only one that could create the future I wanted to have, and what I wanted was right here. I could save my sister with Storm’s help. I didn’t have to do everything by myself. I didn’t have to walk through this life all alone, constantly looking over my shoulder. My father constantly talked about us being dragons, but he failed to realize that dragons weren’t lonely creatures. They needed partners, they needed family, and I was going to create one.
As I exited the room I’d been staying in for the last few days, I bumped into Atlas, almost falling along with the two bags I carried with me.
“Shit,” I muttered, before a strong pair of hands steadied me.
His laughter echoed against the walls of the hallway, and maybe in another lifetime I would be instantly pissed off, but not today. I started laughing with him, dropping the bags at our feet.
“Where’s the rush?” His blue eyes twinkled underneath the lights, but what occupied my attention wasn’t the carefree smile on his face, but something else.
“Why the fuck did you cut your hair?” His usually long hair that he wore in a high bun was nowhere to be seen. The top part was still longer, but the sides were shaved almost all the way to his skull, and I didn’t like it. Okay, I did like it. He still looked awesome with shorter hair, but I also hated it. “Noooo!” I wailed as if it were my hair he cut off. “Now you’re no longer one of the girls.”
He almost choked from the force of his laughter and I started smiling again. “You’re really good for my ego, you know?”
“Your ego is already more than any of us could handle. Somebody needs to knock it down a notch.”
“And that somebody needs to be you?”
I shrugged. “It’s not like you’re keeping me around for my cooking skills. Besides,” I bent down, picking up the bags, “someone needs to tell you the truth.”
“Which is?”
“Now I can’t pull your hair when you’re a naughty boy.”
