Valentine's Day

Rachel Lindt/Bitch
???

“You need to go.”

Even with my eyes closed, I know instinctively that when I open them, the world won’t be colorful.

“Why?” he asks, voice full of fear and confusion. The sound makes me feel sick to my stomach, knowing that he needs me, that he’s so damn nervous he’s willing to show it if it means he can put an end to it . “Did I miss a spot, am I not doing a good enough job? Do you need me to do something else—”

I put my arm up to quiet him and I know that the satisfaction I feel when he shuts up shouldn’t be mine.

“No, you did a good job.” I tell him but I know it doesn’t mean shit. He sounds so goddamn afraid, afraid that I won’t let him help with picking up shit. And I can’t keep the growl out of my voice as I open my eyes. “But you have to go.”

He’s looking up at me with eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them and though the world might be in black and white, they’re still just as blue as the early morning sky. His face is tight with terror and all I want to do is wrap my arms around and pet his hair in the way he loves, I want to run my fingers though his black curls and tell him that everything’s going to be alright.

But that isn’t what I do. That isn’t what I did.

All I do is point a thumb over my shoulder, to all my dogs that are backing away from him like he’s poison. They’re squeezing against each other, backed into a corner and whimpering softly, terrified that if they get any louder, Alec might do something to them.

I know it isn’t right, I know that a lot of the dogs love Alec more than they love me. But then, they didn’t love him, they hated him, they were afraid of him and I never thought about why. At the time, it made sense.

A dog can ignore the stink of shit for a while but eventually, all that shit piles up and they can’t take it anymore. That’s what I thought had happened, that’s what made sense then. But it didn’t really make sense, it might’ve worked for me but I know it’s not true.

And Alec was the only one who said anything about it.

“They’re just dogs!” he shouts and the dogs behind me flinch, the metal loops of their collars jangling as my knuckles clench. “They’re fucking dogs Rachel, two months ago they fucking loved me, who gives a shit if they hate me now? Tomorrow they’ll—”

He stops talking and I know it’s because of me, because of my face. I was so damn angry then, I didn’t think about what he said, about how the dogs used to love him. All I could think about then was the dismissal, saying that they were ‘just’ dogs pissed me off more than anything else.

And I’m not like Brian or Taylor, when they get mad, they can keep it in, they can make themselves look calm. But I’m angry, I’m angry almost all the time and sometimes that anger just needs a fucking excuse to come out.

Alec stares up at me like he’s looking down the barrel of a gun, like I’m about to hurt him. And the idea of that hurts me, that by that point, I was so far gone that he might’ve actually thought… I could hurt him.

“Get out,” I told him, my lip curling into a snarl. “Get the fuck out of here.”

My voice doesn’t sound right to me, I can tell that now. The growl in it… it isn’t me, not really, it’s a part of me that’s been ripped up and put out but I didn’t do it.

“Rachel…” he tries to take the words back, his voice filled with something raw. It’s not supposed to sound like that, Alec doesn’t get sad often and he shows it even less. But here, his voice… It’s wet and cold and I can tell he’s sorry even when he shouldn’t be, even when he didn’t do anything wrong.

The blisters on his hands pop as I wrench the scooper away from him, it’s such a stupid fucking thing and I can’t believe I got this fucking mad over nothing.

“Just shut up,” I repeat, turning away from him and going back to my dogs, the dogs that cower and whimper at the person they used to love. “Fucking…” I flexed my arms out, trying to get the itchiness out of my knuckles and I want to throw up knowing that I wanted to hit him, all because he was just trying to help.“Just fucking get your head on straight.”

Those last words make me so fucking angry I want to rip my own head off. That’s the exact same shit the bitch at the foster home would say, stupid fucking things that would make things my fault when they weren’t.

It’s a load of horse shit, it’s a lie but… Alec doesn’t hear that.

I’ve got my back turned to him so all I can hear is him walking away, his footsteps light on the turf and then turning loud when he gets to the metal staircase. I remember knowing that he was walking slow, I remember thinking that he was just doing it to be annoying but I know better now.

He was slowing down because he wanted me to be myself again, he wanted me to stop him and I didn’t.

All I did was check on the dogs but this time, when I go to see if Jesse, a husky mix, is alright, he and all the other dogs turn to statues as the elevator dings open. The sound finally wakes me up, lets me take control of my own body and lets me turn back to stop him.

The doors to the elevator open in slow motion and Alec looks over his shoulder at me like he’s saying goodbye, his bright blue eyes wet with tears as I try to run towards him. I can’t reach him though, I run as fast as I can but I can’t reach him, I can’t even move from that spot.

And as the doors finally open up, I can see that there’s already someone inside.

He’s tall, lanky, and the clothes he’s wearing must be expensive. His hair falls down his shoulders and back in a long dark wave, black enough that they blend into the shadows of the box around him.

A smile crawls up his face as Alec steps towards him, his hands wrapping around Alec’s shoulders as my friend turns to face me. Alec looks like he knows he’s going to die in there and he knows there’s nothing he can do about it.

The doors start to close again and Nikos Vasil looks up from his son’s hair to stare at me, his eyes just as blue as Alec’s. He mouths ‘thank you’ just as the doors close shut.

With him gone, I can finally move.

I rush up the stairs two at a time, I nearly eat shit on the last step but I catch myself on the railing. I slam my fist into the elevator’s call button and when that doesn’t do anything, I try to jam my fingers into the slit between the doors.

The damn thing doesn’t budge and just as I start to scream in rage, the thing finally opens itself and sends me to the floor in a heap.

I get up on my knees and that’s when I see what’s in front of me.

A pair of shoes… hanging there.

My eyes follow them up to his slender calves and then even further to his thin torso and all I can think about is how thin he is, how thin he shouldn't be. I used to be better with him, I used to make sure he was eating enough… when did I stop doing that? When did I stop giving a damn?

The thoughts are cut off when I look up even further.

Alec looks down at me, his face bloated and pale in a way that’s different than usual, before he looked like snow somedays, so pale he could blend in with the paint on the walls. But this is a different kind of pale and that’s because of the rope around his neck.

There’s no ceiling to the elevator, the rope just stretches on and on, there’s no walls either, just a dark void on every side. Even the door I came through is gone, there’s no way out and all I can do is look at what I helped cause.

I don’t want to believe it, I try to lift him up, try to relieve the strain on his neck but I can’t do it. The moment I lift him up, the rope just pulls him tighter, everything I try to do just makes it worse and I… and—

Alec is dead and I… I pushed him to—

“I just wanted to love you.”

His words make me shiver and the light in his eyes, the blue of them, they start to go away as he speaks, his lips staying perfectly dead and still.

“Was it too much to love me back?”

His eyes change, the pupils being squished into a pair of hearts.

Rachel Lindt

February 3rd, 2013

I wake up and it’s only because of how many nightmares I’ve had that I don’t jolt. My head’s leaning against something cool and it takes me a second to remember where I am. We’re in the back of some shitty van we stole on the outskirts of Brockton, one with a big enough back to hold Atlas.

My legs hurt, I slept too long and my knees are killing me.

But that’s not the reason my heart is beating in my ears.

Angelica looks up at me and blinks slowly. She was having a good nap on my lap and she’s mad I woke her up. I start scratching behind her ears and that helps me calm down a little. She yawns and I gulp as my heart starts to slow down.

Alec is gonna be okay, he might be hurt but he isn’t dead. Heartbreaker wouldn’t have taken him away just to kill him and that psycho wouldn’t let him kill himself. He’s going to be fine, we’re going to get him home.

Lisa rests her head against my shoulder and I look down into her bloodshot eyes. I don’t know how long we’ve been driving but Lisa looks like she’s been awake for days. She blinks at me just as slowly and her voice comes out in a hoarse mumble.

“We’re…” she blinks again, even slower this time. “We’re taking a roundabout way to get there.”

She yawns and when a bang falls in front of her face, she doesn’t bother to move it out of the way.

“Why the fuck are we—” I try to ask but Taylor shuts me down from the driver’s seat, shushing me.

“Brian’s sleeping,” she jerks her head to her right and though I can’t see him from here, I can just about hear his snoring in the passenger seat. I try to meet Taylor’s eyes in the rearview mirror but she keeps them on the road.

“Because…” Lisa speaks up again after a second, getting my attention. “he’s probably got people at the border that know all nearby capes, if we go the most direct route, he’ll have time to prepare or evacuate.”

I nod and she closes her eyes for longer this time, almost like she’s going to sleep before they bolt open. She’s tired.

I mean, we’re all tired, none of us have had more than maybe three hours of sleep since Fullstop hit us. Thinking about that makes my guts wiggle, we spent a whole day like that, crying and terrified and… we’d do it again if it meant not going back to before.

We should send her something, being a hero gets you paid but she deserves something for fixing us, at least a few thousand dollars. I shake my head when my thoughts try to take me back to before her, back when I kicked Alec out of my shelter and felt frustrated that he was even there to begin with.

I try to do what Taylor does, I try to keep my head busy thinking about other shit, the shit we need to do, but I can’t stop thinking about all the crap I did. I kicked him out of my shelter, I yelled at him for getting hurt with the Adepts, I said that he wasn’t a real person, that he couldn’t be a real person.

I helped kick him out of our— out of his home.

I hate that, I hate that a week ago, I remember looking back at that shit and being proud. Like when we got rid of the Empire or killed Mannequin, I looked back on making Alec cry like it was something worth doing.

And I fucking hate myself for feeling that way, one of my best friend’s crying, with bruises on his neck and face and I’m— I was… happy.

“Are you okay?”

My arm tightens around Lisa and I shake my head, I’m not okay and I’m not gonna be okay until we get him back, until we cut the fucker that took him from us.

“How much longer?” I ask back, both to Lisa and to the girl driving.

Taylor looks at me through the rearview mirror, her eyes are even redder than Lisa’s and the tracks on her face have just barely dried. Her lips open up to answer me but she swallows the words as her eyes dart back to the road.

“It’s gonna be a while.” She finally tells me, her knuckles squeezing white on the steering wheel. “We’re driving up through Maine first, spend the night in… I forgot the name but when Brian wakes up to take over, he’ll stop us in some town near the border.”

“Okay,” I nod and let my head rest back against the window, the glass cool on my skin as Angelica hops off my lap and to the floor. “What are we doing tomorrow?”

“Buying some snow gear,” Lisa answers. “We’ll be crossing the border through the woods, away from any of the main roads.”

She laughs a bit at the end there but it breaks off into a cry that makes her put her hand over her mouth.

“What’s a matter?” I ask, rocking her just a bit before her head starts to fall down into my lap.

“Nothing,” she sniffles, rubbing at her eyes. “Just… I think Alec would’ve made a joke there, ‘we’re driving in Maine, we’re already taking the Maine roads.’”

The joke makes me huff a bit but I can feel my chest tighten as the words sink in. Alec would’ve made that joke. I don’t know if we’d have ever been in Maine with him before all this and I don’t know if we’ll ever be here again, but I know Alec would’ve made that stupid joke.

He loved those stupid fucking jokes, the jokes I stopped finding funny in March, the ones I started to get mad at in April. The jokes that he stopped making.

Lisa’s shoulders shake with a cry and on an old instinct, my hand rests on her head, the nails just above her left ear as I begin to scratch. Almost as soon as I start, Lisa starts to quiet down, the cries petering off as I scratch there.

“You need to sleep,” I tell her, watching as she tries to keep her eyes open.

“I’ve been telling her to do that since you dozed off,” Taylor says, her voice calm and steady as she makes a wide turn left. “Hasn’t worked yet.”

“It’ll work for me,” I tell her, watching as Lisa yawns again before rolling over onto her back. Her green eyes are dull and she shakes her head softly as she puts her feet up on the door on our left.

“Can’t…” she yawns again, “Sleep… I’ve got too much to think about, I need to… I…”

“It’s gonna be okay.” I tell her, smoothing her hair back and scratching at the top of her head. “We’ve got it alright? I’ll wake you if we need you.”

She tries to say something else but then my fingers remember that sweet spot she likes where she parts her hair. She moans as her eyes shut a final time and with them closed, I can finally think about what I’m doing.

Lisa loves when I— when any of us pet her hair. It makes her feel happy and after a long day, I remember she used to show up at my base just to lay her head in my lap. She tried to talk at first, make up excuses, but after a few minutes, she always forgot to keep talking.

I remember there was a time me or Taylor or Brian or… or Alec would do this almost every single day. And remembering that just makes me remember when we stopped doing it. When we moved into the Tower, when he…

The thought hits me like Glory Girl and my fingers stop just long enough that Lisa can whine about it and shove her head into them. I start scratching again and I wait until her breathing evens out before I let myself think about why I stopped doing this for her, why she stopped laying her head down so freely.

I don’t think she knows it yet, she might be smart, might be… I can’t remember the word, the one that means you pick shit up and connect it easier. Whatever that word is, sometimes I’m more of it.

People don’t think I can do that, think that just because I might not know some words that I’m dumb but I’m not. I’m not dumb enough not to see the other shit he did to us.

He fucked with our heads when it came to Alec and he might’ve fucked with our heads when it came to our teammates, but one thing he definitely fucked around with… was how we feel about each other. 

Thinking about it takes my breath away, knowing that Lisa used to like me enough to lay her head down with me and that she… just one day didn’t. And that same day, I didn’t like her enough to wonder about it.

“We’re gonna be okay.”

I look up from the girl sleeping in my lap to the one driving the van. She didn’t say it very loudly, barely said it loud enough that I could hear her over the engine and Brian’s snoring. She isn’t saying it to me. “We’re gonna get him back, we’re going to apologize and… and we’re gonna be okay.”

I know what this is, Taylor doesn’t get nervous anymore, at least, she doesn’t get nervous like she used to. Before Leviathan, she was always nervous and it wasn’t till after that that I realized why. But then, after he fucked up the Bay, the Nine came to fuck it up even more and after them came Dragon and Coil and Echidna and all sorts of shit.

By the end of all that, Taylor didn’t get nervous anymore, not in that shuffley way she used to. Now she just does it in a different way. She started it after Mannequin tried to fuck her up and she’s been doing it ever since, saying shit like ‘it’s gonna be okay’ or ‘we can get through this’ just under her breath, quiet enough that sometimes, I don’t think even she realizes it.

It’s been a while since I was able to help her with this, some shit has gone down since Alec left but… I didn’t help her through it like I should’ve, like I did when Ubermensch came to hurt us or when Uppercrust tried to move in.

“We’re gonna be okay,” I repeat her words as closely as I can, that’s the best thing I can do for her. I shouldn’t make any real promises, she’ll just take them apart and I shouldn’t bring up other times we’ve pulled through, that’ll just remind her of how close those times were.

Keeping Lisa's head steady with one hand, I reach my other arm out to squeeze Taylor’s shoulder as I repeat her again. “We’re gonna be alright, we’re gonna get him back.”

Taylor’s shoulder feels as stiff as a rock at first but also tight and wound up like a spring, but then my thumb makes a circle right above her collarbone and she starts to sag just a little bit, enough that she might listen to me.

“Pull over” I tell her and the shock of what I’m saying makes her turn her head back to face me. Getting a full look at it just makes me want to drive more, the bags under her eyes are deep enough that they look bruises, purple and heavy.

She gets at what I mean without me having to say it and she shakes her head as she turns her head back to the road.

“No,” she answers, leaning her head forward but not her shoulders. “I can drive until we get to… to wherever we’re going, I know it’s only a few more hours away and I can—”

“You can,” I interrupt her, “Same way I could decide I don’t like blinking anymore.”

Taylor acts like she didn’t hear me but right as I’m about to tell her to pull over again, she speaks up.

“It’s fine, I’ve been driving for… eight hours I think, I can do another eight and I don’t even have to do that! Besides you can’t—”

“I can follow the GPS just fine,” I point at the little screen in the dash. “I know lefts, rights, u-turns, all that. I’ve been asleep this whole time, we can do it in shifts.”

Taylor looks at me through the mirror and her chin shivers a bit before she closes her eyes. It’s a long blink but when it’s over, she’s slowing down and pulling off to the side of the road. I know that saying thanks would just make her mad and so without any words, I carefully lift Lisa’s head off my lap and set it down on the seats as I get out of the car.

The cold up here is a lot worse than in Brockton. Back home, the snow had just melted but up here it’s still a few feet high on either side of the road, cold enough that it’s hard to think anything could be alive out there.

The little bits of snow on the side of the road crunch underneath my feet as I walk around to the driver’s side of the car. Taylor meets me at the back corner by our left blinker and before she can brush past me, I put both my arms out and squeeze her as tightly as I can manage.

For a second, she doesn’t know what to do about me hugging her and that hurts. We’ve hugged a lot since she got on the team, although I didn’t start making them until the Nine fucked off. We’ve done this plenty of times even after Alec left but somehow, all those hugs before felt fake, especially the ones after he fucked with my head.

This hug is different, warm and soft and after that one second of not knowing what to do, Taylor finally hugs me back, her thin arms holding me as tightly as they can as she buries her head into my shoulder.

Her shoulders shake and she waits until the car behind us zooms by before she lets out a cry. There aren’t any bugs this far in the cold, there’s barely a swarm in the back with Atlas and they aren’t enough to put her emotions into.

To be honest, I’m kinda glad they’re not enough to do that.

Taylor started pushing her emotions into the bugs when Jack tried fucking with her, back then it was fine, that guy’s probably a Thinker or something and it’s best not to give those fucks anything to go off of. But Taylor’s been using it for too much shit lately and now that I think about it… it used to not bother me.

The past eight months have been a long stretch and now that I’m thinking about it, I doubt there was a day that went by when she didn’t push her thoughts into the bugs. She didn’t do it always, sometimes she would let herself cry, like last month with the fucking locker coming back up. But those times didn’t come much and it was only because of big dates.

I don’t like that and it’s weird to know that before Heartbreaker came to town, I didn’t like it enough to tell her not to do it. I used to get on to her about it, me and the others and… I close my eyes tight as I hold her as close as I can. Another car comes by and Taylor’s hair whips with the wind it brings.

My shoulders shake and we can both pretend it’s because of the cold when Taylor’s legs start to give out. She’s a lot more tired than she wanted me to think and without a word, I bend down and move my arms behind her back and knees.

She’s got her eyes closed when I turn around and she’s limp in my arms by the time I’ve made it back to my door. Lisa wakes up enough to look at me and sleepily raises her arms up to take Taylor. I don’t give her to her though, even if she weren’t tired, she’s too scrawny to hold Taylor up.

Lisa gets what I want and she scoots up against the back of the seats and gives enough room that I can awkwardly fit Taylor besides her. The both of them are wrapped up in each other and asleep by the time I get behind the wheel.

I pet Judas when he lifts his head up from the passenger floor and when he goes back to sleep at Brian’s feet, I put the car in drive. The little screen says to keep going on this road for fifty miles and then make a u-turn and circle back. I know it wouldn’t normally say that if we just put in a destination but I know Lisa’s put all kinds of checkpoints in there to fuck with whatever network Heartbreaker’s got.

Taylor starts snoring just as I get the car back on the road and I try my best to focus on that sound instead of what’s going on in my head. It works for a little bit but it’s barely five miles before my head starts to think again.

I know we’re going to get Alec back, I know we’re gonna kill his dad, that shit is set in stone for me. The thing that isn’t though, the thing that I can’t stop thinking about is… what if he doesn’t want to come back?

Part of me thinks that’s stupid, Alec hated— hates his dad more than anyone else and last June he begged us to go anywhere else than back to Montreal with that sick fuck. I know that if you gave him the choice, he’d pick fucking Ellisburg over him.

But that was before Heartbreaker had him. Lisa says the guy’s dangerous, dangerous in a way that’s worse than anything we’ve seen before. He’s a Master, the worst one on the planet but worse than that, he’s Alec’s dad and the way Lisa talks about it, he knows exactly what to do to keep his kids in line.

And it’s been eight months. Alec’s spent eight fucking months with that piece of shit and I know Alec’s… what’s the word? Resistant to his dad’s power but he’s had most of a year to hurt him, both with and without his power. And there’s no fucking way he told Alec that what we did wasn’t real.

No, that’s not right. What we did was real, we yelled at him, hit him, we made him feel like shit but we weren’t ourselves

That last thought keeps replaying even as the sun starts to set over the snow. I make the u-turn and then make the next left and right and all the while, all I can think about is that he doesn’t know.

To him, it must’ve seemed real— realer than it was and… he thinks we don’t love him. Worse than that, he must think we hate him.

The steering wheel creaks under my hands and when I look down, I see that my nails have grown out into long points. With a deep breath, I try to push that hate back down but it wants to come out.

All that hate Heartbreaker made up for me, all that rage and anger, I’m gonna show it to him and I’m gonna use it to rip his fucking jaw off. The thought calms me a bit and my nails start to fall off as I replay all the fucking things I’m gonna do to him.

The sun’s gone completely but the sky here is different than it is in the bay, the stars above are shining bright and there’s almost enough of them that I don’t need the headlights. Although, I think that’s just the upgrades Amy gave me a few weeks ago.

The bad thoughts are starting to come back when there’s a groan on my right.

Brian is trying to sit up straighter but the effort of that just makes his neck turn gunny and he groans in pain as his eyes blink open. He stares blankly out the window for a second and I can feel his eyes on me as I turn back to the road.

“Rachel?” he asks, voice groggy. “Where are we?”

I’m about to answer him when his stomach growls sharply and after a second, I realize the ache in mine. I can’t remember the last time I ate, I think it might’ve been before Fullstop or maybe even the night before that but I’m not sure.

Thankfully, I saw plenty of fast food signs in the town I just drove us out of and with a quick glance in the rearview mirror, I make a u-turn.

“Where are we going?” Brian asks again, this time a little more awake. I spare a glance at him and see that he’s rubbing at his eyes just as Judas lays his chin on Brian’s thigh, asking for more pets. Brian rests his hand on Judas’ snout and I answer.

“Food, saw a Mcdonald’s and I’m hungry.”

“Do we even have any money?” He asks, stretching and sitting up straighter in his seat. “I left my wallet back home.”

“The pants I stole had three twenties in it,” I answer and point at the glovebox. “See if they left us anything in there.”

Brian nods and starts looking through the glovebox, flipping through some papers quietly as Lisa starts to stir from the backseat. I watch her through the rearview mirror and see that Angelica is resting on her side, completely asleep even as Lisa starts to wake up.

No one says anything on the ride back to the small town, barely big enough for a Mcdonald’s, and I’m so tired that when we pull up to it, I almost get in the drive thru before Brian speaks up.

“Hand me the money,” he orders and when I open my mouth to speak, he shakes his head. “People know your face but they don’t know mine. I’ll be in and out in few minutes.”

With that said, I hand him the cash and find a spot just close enough to the door that if we need to bolt, Brian won’t have trouble getting back to us. He leaves the car just as Lisa and Taylor sit up and I sigh as I let my head rest on the steering wheel.

I hate being so well known, back when we were just thieves, some people knew my face but most didn’t. It made it easier to buy shit or go places and not get recognized, all I had to watch out for then were cops and capes.

But then the Undersiders got bigger, started taking territory and eventually taking the whole damn city. I bet everyone knows what I look like now, even people up here, in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Things use to be so much easier, it used to just be us and a job, Coil told us what to do and we did it and though I’m happy the fucker’s dead and gone, I can still say I miss how easy we had it. How easy we had it, the five of us.

The four of us now

I don’t know where the thought comes from and I fucking hate it. It might be the four of us right now but we’re going to get him back, we’re going to get him home, we’re gonna say we’re sorry, we’re going to do whatever it takes to prove that and—

But what if he doesn’t want to come back?

This time the thought doesn't come alone. With my eyes closed, all I can see is the day he left, on his knees and telling us that he loved us. 

I remember being disgusted by it, I remember thinking that it was pathetic, that it was weak and ugly and— it makes me want to throw up. Knowing that I was forced to feel like that doesn’t make the memory go down any easier.

He loved us so damn much and we turned it on him, used it like a fucking weapon, Lisa made us draw fucking straws to see who would get him into that fucking diner for crying out loud!

We hated him, whether or not we were forced to doesn’t fucking matter.

And— Fuck, he just wanted to be loved and we… we took that away from him, we turned it into a weapon and— what if it isn’t true anymore? What if we go up to get him and he hates us just as much as we were forced to hate him?

I don’t… I don’t know if I could be okay with that, I don’t know what I’d do if— if—

I don’t know when I started crying, I don’t know when Brian got back with the food, all I remember is being wrapped up in three sets of arms and all of them were crying just as much as me.

It’s then that I make a promise to myself, it doesn’t matter if he still loves us, it doesn’t matter if he hates us, we’re getting him away from that fucking stain that calls him a son and we’re murdering that cunt for what he did to us.

We owe him that at least.