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Zayne Knows Caleb
As a child, you don’t notice things like adults do. You don’t think about the subtext of a person’s actions or their words. Things just are when you’re a child.
Growing up after the Chronoshift Catastrophe was an odd experience, but only from the outside, because to the children it was just the new normal. Adults did their best to shelter the youth from the truth and protect their fragile innocence, regardless of how scared they might be.
Everyone had lost someone, some had lost more than others. Zayne’s parents had pulled him aside one evening to speak candidly about how while he still had his mother and father, the other children might not and he should be sensitive of that.
You were one of those children. One of the many left without a family or a home. His parent’s had noticed the two of you interacting more in the neighborhood, and thought it prudent to warn him.
After that talk, he remembers looking at you a little differently. In that, he actually looked at you. Before you were just another child in the sandbox, or climbing a tree. You weren’t really a face or a name. Not until then. Then is when he really looked at you. At your carefree smile. At the ease with which you talked to others. And he remembers thinking, surely his parents must be wrong. You were so happy.
Caleb was another of those children, but when Zayne was warned about him things began to make sense. Caleb was quieter than you were but not by much, and he always had something to say in regards to the way things were done or how they were executed. Like an irritated parent telling the children how to behave.
Maybe Caleb had stepped into place for you, and that’s why you still smiled so easily. Or maybe you just were stronger than other children. Zayne wasn’t sure which to think.
As a child, the behavior was inexplicable. As an adult, Zayne could decipher the signs.
You were sweet because you didn’t know anyway else to be, and you knew that your smile made others smile. You were kind. Honest. Brilliant.
Perhaps, even then, Zayne had loved you. In that innocent, shimmery way that children loved. He orbited you like a star, and he was but a dwarf planet. Too small to be recognized, and too nervous to speak his mind.
Though, maybe if he had…if he had made it clearer how important you were to him back then, then Caleb wouldn’t have been so bold.
As a child, Caleb had just been annoying. Bossy and too controlling. He had to tell Zayne and the other kids what to do and how to do it. The worst was his claim on you.
“I’m like her brother now!” Caleb would bark at the others, “So it’s my job to make sure she’s safe!”
Infantile, truly. But a warning sign that someone should have seen. Certainly no child would have been able to recognize the budding obsession your pseudo-brother was forming for you.
“No! You can't tag her!” Caleb had shouted more than once during a simple game of tag. “She doesn’t count! Go after someone else!”
OTher adults probably thought it was sweet. Zayne, looking back, would have thought so too, but other times…
“You can’t be on anyone else’s team, ok?” Zayne caught Caleb whispering to you one day. “You’re only really safe with me, and so we have to stick together.”
You nodded happily to him, and Zayne, for the first time in his life, felt the corrosiveness of jealousy. Why couldn’t he get you to smile like that? Why did Caleb make it look so easy?
When they were getting close to their teenage years, the memories are clearer and perhaps Caleb learned to be more subtle.
“I don’t want to live here when I’m older,” Caleb said to you as the three of you sat in a tree at the edge of the neighborhood, “We should find a place quieter than this. The city makes my head hurt.”
Zayne knew he wasn’t talking to him. Only to you. You just laughed and mentioned your fondness for Linkon, and your desire to become a hunter.
They were twelve and Zayne was finally old enough to realize that his heart racing when you were around wasn’t just a coincidence. He’d gotten a hang oof his evol by that point, and would use it to show off sometimes. Snow in the summer. Freezing your drink. Leaving you a seal made of snow.
It was that last gift that must have been too far. Caleb caught him alone, fire in his violet eyes.
“I heard you lost control of your evol.” Caleb said with his arms crossed. His juvenile brow furrowed.
Zayne was surprised and ashamed. It’d been a few days ago. A slip up where his evol got out of control and he left half the park covered in ice. There hadn’t been many people there– you weren’t there, and Caleb wasn’t either. How did he find out?
Caleb must have seen the confusion on Zayne’s face and scoffed, “Stay away from her. It’s my job to make sure she stays safe, and you’ll put her in danger if you can’t control yourself.”
Zayne opened his mouth to argue, Caleb’s possession over you having finally gone too far. But Caleb stopped him.
“Do you want to kill her?” Caleb hissed, taking a step forward to step into Zayne’s space. “You know what she’s like! She’ll go running to help you and you’ll end up– ugh. Just– just, stay away.”
Caleb turned on his heel and left, not giving Zayne even a moment to argue. And the longer he thought about it, maybe Caleb was right.
Was he too dangerous to be around you? Your heart condition was already scary enough, but what if you were around when his evol lost control? What if you– perfect and compassionate– tried to help him.
Zayne decided that day he wouldn’t go back to your side until he could control it. Until there wasn’t a question whether or not you were safe.
Because if he hurt you, he’d never forgive himself. But now, as an adult, Zayne would neither forgive Caleb either.