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Silence held heavy against my ears, something so utterly alien about the pressing, prodding lack of noise. Everything seemed so unnaturally quiet, like every sound on Earth had ceased to be.
The uncomfortably warm leather seat stuck to the exposed skin of my hip where my shirt rode up, legs tucked closely into my chest.
I hugged myself tighter, resting my chin over the scabbed, still-healing skin of my knees. The only sound that dared break the serenity was Zu and Chubs in the backseat. I could hear their faint rhythmic inhales and exhales, and I wondered if their dreams were good ones. Liam sat beside me in the driver's seat, head turned away, body facing the windshield—breaths coming in a slight stutter.
My mind was still racing from the conversation we had only minutes prior. The way he looked, almost anxiously at our hands and whispered, 'Is this okay?' when I had admitted my power's critical weakness. I recalled the soft stroke of his thumb across my knuckle—the worry that the attention was unwanted—with an almost embarrassing vividity.
I'm suddenly aware of the heat dusting my cheeks, and throw the thought away in a hurry. I shift to fit my face into my hands comfortably, staring instead at a dark splotch on the window.
The memory crawls right back into my mind.
"This is a place where we don't have to lie," he had said, so tenderly.
"You remember?"
"Of course I do... because I keep hoping that it goes both ways."
Liam had wanted me to tell him the truth. He had wanted me to finally, finally tell him everything. I had wanted the same.
And—perhaps selfishly... I didn't.
Why?
The answer is obvious.
My memories, especially those of my childhood, were the only things I had left. Everything else had been ripped out of me—tortured, abused, stained by the cold faces of PSFs or sacrificed at their uncaring boots—always "work faster," "be better." Logically, I knew that the life I had lived before Thurmond held no value. I wasn't the Ruby who lived in Salem - who grew up with a mom and a dad, who played in a yard with a white picket fence and went to school. I hadn't been that Ruby for a long time, and I never would be.
But Liam had said that his experiences felt too close to share, that they felt like they were his and his only.
A part of me agreed. A part of me wanted to hold my mind closer than my own skin—like a dog licking a wound that would never heal and biting anyone that got too close.
Another part of me, a more daring half, still whispered, "but what does it matter?"
"It's Liam. Chubs, Zu. Why wouldn't you trust them?"
The whisper was quiet, a barely audible murmur and I wouldn't have heard it if not for the silence coating me like a thick, suffocating blanket.
"Why wouldn't they trust you?"
Why wouldn't they trust me?
Hell. Why would they?
What if I tapped into his mind? What if I freaked? What if I pulled away too soon? Made him forget me? Or Chubs, or Zu... or...
...my hands tightened, as if instinctively pulling away from Liam as far as possible, breath picking up.
...or himself?
I clutched my hand impossibly closer to my chest and let out a quiet but too-loud sob in the darkness.
I blearily whip my head towards Liam, watching as he stirs and settles all in one second of terror.
Biting my lip to stifle any more cries, I expertly open and close the car door without a sound, dragging my backpack with me. The cold grass crunches beneath my shoes, frozen from the morning dew. I find myself breathing deeply, feeling like this was the first full breath I had taken in days.
Out in the early morning, my grief had space to flex its talons and stretch its limbs. Space to expand, stretch itself thin until it dissolved.
I fell into the side of Betty, hugging my backpack tightly for warmth. I hungrily chase the blooming horizon, searching for the rainbow of colour I knew the rising sun would bring.
It made me wonder if I really had done all I could. That my child counterpart couldn't have possibly known any better, lacking the six ample years of practice (although admittedly little because of Thurmond) adjusting to my growing power.
Maybe I could just disappear into the sunrise.
Leave before anybody knew I had gone.
I pondered the idea, knowing perfectly well that it was the opposite of what I wanted.
Of what he wanted.
Of what they all wanted.
"It's for their own good."
This I promised with my whole heart, but I didn't get up.
"It's for their own good."
I forced my limbs to retract and bring me into standing, doing without thinking.
I brought the straps of my backpack around my shoulders, securing it.
Am I really doing this?
It's for their own good.
"It's for their own good." My voice didn't sound like my own, cracked and hoarse and unexpectedly full of an emotion I hadn't known I possessed. "Leave. ...before anyone notices I'm gone."
I shifted, attempting to walk. It was like some invisible force was holding me, an unbreakable tether connecting me to them and them to me. I forced my right in front of my left, forcing myself a few inches further from Betty, from Lee, from Zu, from Chubs, from my life. It felt like everything was swooping around me, coming up behind my throat and tightening the leash.
"C'mon, Ruby. Before anyone notices I'm gone—"
"It might be too late for that."
"Lee?"
I startled, turning fast enough to make my head spin.
The signs of sleep were obvious. His eyes drooped, his mouth moved too fast for his words, and his body lacked the movements that made him so animated. Like a subdued Zu, that look didn't belong.
I didn't say anything more, but Liam's eyes found my pack and his features sagged from confused determination to painful sadness.
"You're… you're leaving, aren't you?"
A beat of silence.
"It's for the best," It comes as a whisper, and I want to pull the words right back into my throat when hurt flashes across his features.
"I thought I made it clear to you that you don't have to lie. At least, not to me." He steps closer, hand reaching for mine but stopping just before we touched. I stared at the movement, a burn settling low in my gut like fire.
Lee's next words come as a plea, "At least explain why you're going."
It made me pause. Why did I think leaving was the best option? It'd be easier to list reasons it wasn't.
My power was growing, even I could feel that. I could feel it when Liam's hand enveloped mine earlier, I could feel it when I reached into my own memories, I could feel it in the air right now—the incessant buzz of something meant to be, like a puzzle missing its last piece, a particularly difficult maths equation at its last step, the moment just before the itch in my head turned into a real, tangible, impossibly and undeniably powerful thing.
And as my ability thrived as an indomitable daisy growing through cement, I could feel my grip on it become less steady. Like trying to hold water in my hands, no matter how hard I twisted or squeezed, some always leaked through.
And if all it took was a particularly bad day... if I became angry, upset, or screamed through a night terror, and one of the three people I learned to love lost everything just by grazing my skin...
...because of me…
It wasn't worth it.
Nothing would ever make that worth it.
"I'm just not safe. I'm like a... a ticking time bomb. One wrong move and your life has slipped right through your fingers." Liam stared at me, incredulous.
"So this is about you being Orange, again? Ruby, I thought we talked about this, none of us care—"
"Nothing," I shout, unable to keep quiet, "nothing will ever make subjecting you to what I can do worth it."
How could he not understand? With all the risks, how could he still dare to want me?
"None of it is enough for me to risk your safety." I paused, trying to articulate what I needed him to understand. He just stares at me, speechless, a heated look on his face—something that mirrored anger. Something that made my core burn with the very same thing.
"And if the only way to make sure you guys are safe is leaving, then—"
"We want you. How hard is that for you to understand?"
Something about what that statement entailed stung, and it had everything to do with how right he was. I had spent nearly my entire life in Thurmond, my social intelligence was probably in the negatives. It burned, though—far more than it should have—and made my simmering, boiling pot overflow.
"Have you ever, and I mean ever cared to even consider that you were wrong about that? Are you that dense you can't see that keeping me was—is—a mistake?" I shouted, certain the commotion was enough to wake Chubs and Zu, but the anger flooding through me failed to make me care.
"I don't—"
"No, you don't understand. You don't—" I ran a stressed hand through my hair, and the decision was basically made for me. "I had a friend just like you. One touch, and I was gone. I erased myself from her life as easily as it would have been to actually reassure her, to apologise, to do anything but what I did."
Shock wrote its way into the curve of disbelief on his face, only for a flicker of a second but it was enough. Enough for me.
"And here you are, preaching about keeping me when I'm a walking death sentence—"
" Ruby, you're— You're overexaggerating this." But the look on his face had only fueled my drive.
"Look at yourself! You were afraid to touch me because of the chance I could—"
Suddenly, there were hands gripping my head and Liam was way too close. My head buzzed, and I flinched harshly as the feeling swept over me. Keeping my mental grasp away was making me wilt with the strain of it, but Liam didn't let go.
"I'm not afraid of you, Ruby."
I grit my teeth, "You should be."
"What did this, darling?" The pet name made me falter, allowing my mental talons to skim something solid.
"I— Lee— Liam, stop, I can't—"
"I trust you. Okay? Let yourself trust you, too."
I hesitate, but he was so damn insistent and I really would do anything to appease him, anything to make him keep looking at me like— like—
"Okay."
As soon as my power hooked, his mind, his thoughts, his emotions, his everything was so overpowering that I, against my better judgement, began to panic.
Then something went different. Not wrong—just... different.
It was almost like Lee could sense my turmoil because his mind instantly folded into memory. The edges were blurred, the centre crisp—and it was about me. I was leaning against the window in the passenger seat and Lee started talking, a distant sort of mumble like people talking in a different room. Maybe he'd forgotten?
It had caught my attention anyway, a blink and I was leaning across the dashboard—across him—to point at something out his window.
His head doesn't turn.
The memory zeroes in on my face, so close to his, and a velvety soft feeling blooms high in my chest, aching and throbbing and his eyes flick to my lips, and—
—I pull away from the memory, barely remembering to do it slowly— to gently pluck away my ability's talons until it all fell away.
Backwards, into the grass.
Liam's eyes flicked rapidly around, his face blank in pure shock. Dread damn-near consumes me whole.
"Lee?" It's barely audible, broken and desperate and hoping.
"I—" he crouches down to match me, lips pursed with everything he wasn't saying. Then he dropped his head and groaned into his hands, long and suffering. "You weren't supposed to see that."
"Lee." I felt like a broken record, repeating one thing over and over again, but—but what? What else could I say?
He doesn't remove his hands, and I can see the colour crawling past the barriers.
I don't know what I'm meant to do. There's an urgency filling my bones with honey, sweet and sticky and warm, and I've never felt this warm before, never had this sticky sort of feeling, I've never had someone want me, and I don't know what to do, don't know what to say, how to act, what—
All in one motion he springs up, hands reaching for me—my face, my shoulders, somewhere around there— before a thought passes behind his eyes and he shrinks back down into where he started. He's a bundle of movement, going through all sorts of different fidgeting, but his gaze is steady.
"Ruby?" He says it like it was his first time and he wanted to try it on his tongue. "Listen, I'm sorry—I'm really sorry—I didn't mean to… confuse you? No—confuse our relationship. Er—non-relationship. We aren't in a relationship. We don't have to be! I like being your friend. I like—I like you, and—well—I—"
I snort. "Take your time," I say, and let him breathe for a minute.
"Ruby. I… What we have is very important. To me. And…" his hand drifts up and pushes back my hair, making me wince because of the tender stitches beneath, "...and I can't help but think that, because of it, you're getting hurt."
"Liam..."
"It's selfish. I want you to stay, but I know you would be safer if you left."
I let myself laugh because of how wrong he is. "I have the League after me, Lee. Thurmond, PSFs, skip tracers—"
"—and you had Lady Jane. Because of me."
"And I brought the League back to you. We're both in the wrong."
He opens his mouth to retort, then closes it.
"As soon as I survived IAAN, my life was doomed to this fate. To always be chased from every corner on the planet, to never ever be safe. You being here doesn't change that."
He looks deeply distraught, and his head tilts and lands on my shoulder.
"...me being here doesn't change that."
Silence envelops us as the realization sinks in. Lee is the one to break it.
"I just want to put you someplace where no one will ever be able to hurt you. Is that so much to ask?"
I let a breathy laugh escape. "Me too. I want to protect all of you. You, Zu, Chubs, and everyone else."
"Even the gang from that Walmart?"
My nose wrinkles. "Maybe not everyone."
Lee laughs, and my heart warms at the sound. There's a beat of nice, comfortable quiet, and I let my arms drift up and rest against his back.
"About the memory you saw… I really am sorry. For what I was thinking."
"What were you thinking?" I ask, half genuinely curious because what happened had never happened before, half anxious because… because no one had ever wanted me like that. Ever.
He stills against me, and it takes an embarrassing amount of willpower to stop my hand from rubbing circles into his back. "I felt you start to panic, and I tried to think about something to… comfort you... I guess? But all I could think about was… was how much I wanted to kiss you."
The admission made me freeze. Liam took it as disgust rather than for what it was: shock. His head snaps up, and I barely avoid getting hit in the chin.
"But it's okay if you don't feel the same! I'm not forcing my stupid feelings onto y—"
"Don't feel the same?" I whisper, "Stupid?"
I take a breath and when I speak next, the words start gentle.
"I wish there was more time. I wish IAAN never happened, I wish we didn't have these abilities, I wish there were never camps or PSFs or skip tracers or the crash of the fucking government—" I take a sharp breath, restart. "I wish… I wish we had time to… to be us without worrying which conversation would be our last."
I'm not sure when, but at some point my voice choked with a thing like grief, and I'm surprised to see Lee in a similar state.
"What an inconvenient time to catch feelings, right?" Lee jokes, but it falls a bit flat.
"Yeah." I respond, standing on sore legs and helping him up. "Right."
And I can't help but wonder, if all of the world's chaos really didn't happen, if everything wasn't perfect but normal, if the sickness hadn't spread around, if I had never erased myself from my parent's lives, if there were no camps, no persecution, no fear of what the country had become…
I wonder what could have been.