Chapter Text
PROLOUGE
It was September 19th. The weather was slowly cooling down to that frigidness I hated, but I still enjoyed the near-fall temperature. That beautiful balance of warm and cold was excellent.
Too bad it was pretty hard for me to find balance anywhere else in my life, or any happiness. All I wanted was just to fit in, have an actual identity for myself, and just be me. And it was such a pain because of who I was! Leander Belenus Papadopoulos (but I use Lester, less of a mouthful), extreme mandork, depressed as hell, bullied like no tomorrow by my moron classmates, and probably going to die a virgin. It’s fun being me.
Not really.
It was a tough day for me. Everyone was soooo excited about the upcoming homecoming game and the accompanying dance that Saturday. Obviously, I wasn’t, since I barely had any friends, and Clay, my greatest tormentor, was enjoying pointing out that I had no date and no interest. (Thanks a lot, man.) I decided to clear my head by taking a walk around the city and perhaps grab a small something to eat. Being born in Greece, I absolutely love to chow down, though it doesn’t really help my weight. I had a bit of a gut, but it wasn’t like I was fat, more like skinny-fat.
I wasn’t looking where I was walking and smacked my shoulder on a lightpost. I hissed out a Greek curse that would’ve made my mom faint. “Ow,” I grumbled. “Stupid pole.” Though I guess stupid me, too, I thought. Rubbing my bruised shoulder, I pulled out my phone to check the time and almost fell over. I’d been gone way too long. It was almost 9 PM! No wonder the sky was getting dark. With New York the way it was, I had to hurry home now!
While I retraced my steps, I called my dad to let him know I was on the way home, but he didn’t pick up. With him being overworked as he currently was, I couldn’t blame him. I tried with my mom, and got the same result. My little brother didn’t have a phone, and Cassidy… well, we haven’t had contact with her since we came to America. Weeks after we moved, she just suddenly disappeared from our lives. I suspected that our parents knew something, but they weren’t willing to share with me and Alex.
Annoyed, I could only hope they saw that I had tried to call, and that I didn’t encounter any street thugs. That would be the perfect ending to my already crappy day. As I passed a storefront window, I took a glimpse of myself in the glass to assure myself that I was here and that I would be fine. Of course, my reflection wasn’t the prettiest boy in the world, but it worked. My hair was dark brown and curly, a bit ruffled from the day’s events. My eyes were a vivid blue color that everyone thought were contacts, but weren’t. My skin was olive and my face pock marked with acne (thank god I found that one product, just a few little bumps now!) I wasn’t really that attractive, but one of the few things that don’t bug me is my appearance.
I really didn’t like walking around in the dark, and the sky went black so much faster than I expected. I held my hoodie tight around me, fiddling with the strings as I increased my pace. New York had plenty of light to it, but that didn’t stop hoodlums from screwing around. I had no desire to be a victim. Yet as I hurried, I kept getting that paranoid feeling, the one that says don’t look behind you. I did exactly that, being an idiot that disregards their own gut.
And two men, looking like stereotypical thugs in all black and heavy amounts of tattoos and piercings, were following me.
Okay, Lester, chill, I told myself. Maybe they’re just going the same way as you. I mean, you don’t really have anything they could beat you up for. So I tried my best to ignore them and keep going, hoping they would turn a corner or something. Every now and then I looked back at them, clearly still intent on going my direction. They’re totally following me.
Without hesitation I broke into a sprint, my brain scrambling to figure out how to lose the two thugs before they caught me. I could hear their footsteps quicken to match mine, which proved they were set on catching me. I saw an alley up ahead and, with my stamina very quickly going down, ran into it, only to be faced with another huge problem.
It was a dead end. There was a dumpster on the left, and a fire escape on the right. What do I do, jump in the dumpster and hope I’m not seen, or climb up the fire escape with what strength I had left and hide up there, out of reach? I was about to settle for going up when something slammed into me from behind, knocking me to the ground. My heart slamming against my ribs, I twisted onto my back and saw with terror that the thugs were, in fact, armed. One had a knife, while the one closer to me had a gun aimed at me. “Ey, punk,” he snarled. “All you’ve got. Now.”
I whimpered, crawling backward. “I-I don’t have anything,” I stuttered out, trying to stall. “Please. Leave me alone.”
Gunman took a step forward, not taking his irritated glare off of me. “I want something to make this damn errand worth it. I’m not asking you again, ya twink.”
Knife Guy had been looking around the alley’s entrance, but then turned to face his buddy. “Hey, man,” he said in a bored tone, “Eliza isn’t even here yet. Boss said to wait if she ain’t here.”
The name made me sit up. “Eliza? As in, Eliza Snow?”
Gunman smacked the barrel of his gun against my face, making me fall back down. “Shut it!” he snapped. He turned to his partner. “The boss wants him out and wants her to see. It doesn’t matter.”
Knife Guy and Guman got into an argument, but I couldn’t focus with half my face throbbing on what they said. I could’ve used the chance to escape, but I was worried more about Eliza. If it was the one I was thinking about, then… I couldn’t bear to think about that. Why was she involved? Who was their boss? Why did they have matching snake tattoos on their necks? I needed answers, then I’d make my great getaway. Somehow.
I braced myself to get up, questions and fear mingling in my head when I saw Gunman do a double take at me. I raised my hands and was about to say something to keep stalling, but he got over excited and fired his weapon.
The impact was awful enough. My entire left side felt as if it had been stabbed open with a hot poker, then molten lava poured into my chest cavity. The pain brought me back down to my knees. My eyesight swam from the agony. I pressed my hand on the wound to put pressure on it, soaking it with my blood. Judging from how hard it was to breathe, the bullet must have punched through my lung. Shit.
I could only taste blood when I tried to speak. Jeez, I couldn’t even hear myself with my ears still ringing from the shot. Knife Guy and Gunman had more heated words before Knife Guy crouched beside me, brandishing his weapon. “Let’s just get it over with then.”
A few things happened in about five seconds. In a last ditch effort to save myself, I lunged forward to push Knife Guy away from me, but at the same time he went to jab his knife into my neck. The result has him making a small cut on the worst place you can get: my jugular. Suddenly I was choking on my own blood, and it gushed out of the wound and onto my clothes, Knife Guy, and the concrete. I fell back against the wall, the world spinning and fading all around me.
I slumped over, watching the thugs walks away like nothing even happened. But I noticed a third figure in their midst, a girl with long, dark hair. Her coppery eyes went wide upon seeing me, and I thought she yelled my name in terror. I knew her. It really was her, Eliza Snow… but why…
The world…going dark…
Hard to think… hard to breathe…
Can’t move… so tired… but I have to get up…
Get up, Leander, get up…
Let it be a dream… let me live…
I…
Can’t…
Breathe
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You will live, my chosen. But this is only the beginning.