Chapter Fourteen: The New Watermaster
“I didn’t know,” Paige whispered over and over again.
Pierce wrapped her in his arms and she leaned into him, crying. He did so in a way I wished I dared to with Fisher. I wanted her to lean into me and sob. I had expected a rain of torment as soon as she was inside, but instead she was eerily silent and still.
“Fisher made quite the mess, didn’t she?” Ali whispered to me.
I saw it from where I stood, staring out the open front door.
“Nothing any of us haven’t seen before,” I managed tersely. “I’ve made bigger messes than that.”
“But she’s a Deviant.”
For the first time, the hypocrisy of this logic rang loudly in my ears.
“She just killed her best friend to protect us!” Pierce whispered fiercely, glancing empathetically at Fisher. “Show a little decorum or leave!”
She left, and it was silent again.
As much as Fisher couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe. For some reason, the event brought on memories that I had long since buried deep under mountains of self-loathing and carefully orchestrated checks and balances. These fail-safes dissipated now, and the one thing I’d ever done that I thought would haunt me forever stumbled into my conscious mind. They seeped into my mind’s eye like blood from a fresh wound, and the stale taste of misery rapidly filled my mouth.
The last Deviant I’d ever killed. A female. I’d made her bleed. A lot. The blood. My tears. I’d been overwhelmed then, much like I was now, and it hurt so awfully that just to recollect it caused me to breathe heavily with the pain of it. I remembered not wanting to kill her, in the end, but feeling the need to in order to protect her from getting treatment for someone else.
This was the heart of the worm that was self-loathing and guilt. It normally existed under mountains of steel and calculated precision. It wriggled now, free from its cage, and I remembered everything.
I killed somebody that meant somebody to me, and not by accident. For the first time, the kill had been personal, and it was nothing short of murder. I turned down a path from which I could never return, and while it was not my fault for going that way, I’d decided to stay on it.
This brought me to another conclusion. Fisher had finally and actually committed the atrocity that I had damned her for. She had just done everything I’d done to hate myself, everything that influenced me to hate her to begin with at all.
And yet, she had saved us all.
Pierce and Paige whispered softly in a corner when Fisher whimpered. When she did, I was sucked back into the present so fast that it was both painful and disorienting.
“Hey…” I said to her quietly.
I wanted to reach a hand out to her, but she always twitched away. I couldn’t take that. Not then. There was no reason to cause her any more pain.
“Hey there…” I tried again in whisper.
I sounded so gentle, so quiet, but even the change in my tone did not move her. She did not even appear to have heard me. This allowed me time to think on the shift in my personality, my warming to her. I realized that, though I’d stored away my rage for weeks, I could not hate her. Not even when she’d done the exact thing I had anticipated she would do.
Because she was me, but just a little better. She dealt with consequences better. She was a leader, strong and independent. She was nobody’s plaything, not like me, and she seemed to exist outside of reality. She wasn’t part of people. She was fierce and tough and resilient. She learned quickly, and adapted faster.
And – in a dark, hidden away place in my soul – it broke my heart to know another living thing, especially someone as special and rare as Fisher, could ever know even part of what I felt for myself and for others.
Suddenly, the beautiful woman I recognized as Iris floated into the room.
The way Fisher spoke of her caused me to recognize the woman as an interloper immediately. I glowered at her until she finally spoke.
“Where is Foot?” Iris demanded, looking around at us all.
Her mouth upturned in disgust, and I saw what Fisher meant about her looking down her nose at us. Her eyes found Fisher, and a cruel gleam began to shine in her eyes.
“You need a bath, girl,” Iris said with a sneer.
“How dare you –!” Paige began, but Ali cut her off.
“Foot isn’t here, Iris,” I snapped.
“Oh,” Iris said mildly. “I just thought…the stupid man enjoys this little bitch’s company, and I could have sworn he’d gone outside today to see her.”
“He did…” Fisher muttered aloud.
We all looked at her in surprise, but it was clear by the look in her eyes that she wasn’t really around with us. Her body replied, but her mind was elsewhere. She did not really hear or feel or see anything.
And I was glad because it would have hurt Fisher’s feelings, despite how readily she attested to the fact that she didn’t care.
The disrespect made me want to punch Iris’ teeth down her throat.
“You should get out!” I said edgily.
So, unfazed, she left.
And Pierce, Paige, and I turned back to Fisher silently. She hadn’t heard the exchange. She was, yet again, immobile and mute.
I ached for her to be in my arms. Chess had hoisted her up. I’d moved forward, limping, and he brought her over to me. His eyes were solemn and spoke of fires that he wanted to start so that he could burn places to the ground with it if it only meant she would recover, and the depth of his affection for her was made instantly clear.
He loved her.
It didn’t matter as much as it might have even a week before then. It didn’t matter because of the things I’d witnessed in the first minutes after she collapse from fatigue.
Nothing happened. Long minutes passed and nobody else thought it was worthy of them to claim her or move the unconscious woman from the clearing, nobody but Chess. And, instantly, the man earned my respect. When he handed her off to me, we met eyes, and something in both of us agreed. We fostered indignant, righteous rage that we were the only two to have the decency to help her out.
She deserved better than this.
I’d hoisted her up with that same gentleness we’d all heard in my voice, even as she began to rouse slightly, and I’d placed her tentatively onto her mat in the front room, making soft shushing noises.
Abruptly, Fisher sucked in a breath, ripping me into the present again. She breathed heavily, like she’d just emerged from a pool of cold water. Her eyes grew wide as she looked in our faces, unseeing, and she looked so desperate, so hopelessly confused and lost and frightened. I felt cold as her limbs began to shake, as sobs consumed her. Paige moved to her, wrapping Fisher in her arms like I wanted her to be in mine.
“Relax, Myth,” Paige said, and Fisher obliged out of what seemed like desperation for a hand to hold. “Cry it out. It’ll be okay once you cry it out.”
“His blood is on my hands!” Fisher finally wailed.
I felt winded, but couldn’t look away.
“No…” Paige whispered, rocking Fisher slowly. “No, Myth, don’t say that. It isn’t.”
“It’s on my hands, and I don’t even know why!” she shrieked, yanking away from Paige violently. “Do not try to take that away! I am a murderer!”
“It isn’t your fault,” Paige tried again, but Fisher wailed louder.
Paige pulled her in again, and Fisher let her. She just cried and cried, thrashing like a frightened animal.
We sat like that for one hour. Then two. The tears faded to small hiccupping noises. Then, shaky, unsteady intakes of breath. Then, worst, utter silence.
Darkness had fallen outside, and Paige was the one to turn on the lamp. She found a piece of bread outside somewhere. She tried to hand one to us all, but I shook my head. Pierce had fallen asleep, and Ali was still gone. Paige went to lie beside her husband, and I was left to stare at Fisher, who’d fallen into a restless slumber.
She appeared to be more drained in sleep than in life, and even then, I drew energy from her as much as I wished I could lend her some of mine.
I heard Paige fall asleep beside her husband just as Fisher sat forward at lightning speeds, her hand to her chest, her chest moving up and down, up and down. She looked around, lost again, when her eyes fell into mine. For the briefest of moments, she begged me for mercy, for me to put her out of her misery. It was a sacred moment, frightening and enlightening and beautiful all at once. Her eyes were letting me in. The placid, normally emotionless eyes were conveying to me everything they always did in an outburst. There was no cautious tempering of raw emotions. There was no hiding behind excuses or lies.
She wanted me to see it all. And I bore witness to all of the most intimate, secretive, hidden flickers of emotion in her vibrantly expressive eyes for just a moment. And I realized that it was impossible to be around her and not care for her. It was impossible for me to do what her eyes begged me to do.
Now and forever. I would never be able to kill Fisher.
Because she felt just like me, but better.
When I thought this, Fisher stood. I scrambled after her desperately as I felt the need to keep her near. If she didn’t really need to be, it almost felt like if I let my guard down that she would get swallowed like the rest of them, and where would that have left me? I would have no one to understand my grief. Even if she didn’t know she understood, I knew that she did. She understood what it was like to lose everything – our love for the world and our hate for its people.
With that thought, I had to keep her alive. I had to. She would get attacked by an Undead and turn otherwise. I had never seen one turn before Skate. It was horrifying. Skate turning was disgusting – his legs bent within themselves, mutated. His arms turned forwards, long and jointed. The face changed into a thing with teeth, jaws, and eyes that were so sunken that they were nearly invisible if looked at from any angle but directly.
I couldn’t let that happen. Never to her.
“Where are we going?” I asked her.
She didn’t answer, but the look in her eyes was determined. Even after she had given nearly everything of herself in a rush of adrenaline, she still emanated a powerful, inspiring glow that inundated my very being. She took my breath away, and I scurried in her shadow as she moved wordlessly outside.
She walked numbly to the side of the clearing and grabbed a gas can. Fisher pulled a match from her pocket and stared at it for a moment. Her eyes moved to the body then to the match. It was a slow process for her, trying to coherently decide if the match would kill or just sleep in its box.
Fisher lit it and threw it onto his body, her face cold, her eyes steely. They weren’t cruel, not necessarily, but they held a look of such unattached rage that I took a step back in surprise. The body meant nothing to her, only the cause for the body’s death, the person within that body. That it was just a body left was cause for disgust, disdain.
Skate burned immediately but silently, crackling only occasionally as the skin turned to ash before our eyes. I stared down at the flames as they quickly consumed their victim, uncaring as to what they were devouring and more concerned simply with the fact that they were.
And Fisher began to walk.
I didn’t know what to do other than to move with immediate compliance.
“Where are we going?” I asked again.
“Gun…” was all she said, not stopping, and she raised a straight finger to point at the gun across the clearing near Skate’s ashes. I obeyed, her willing servant, the gun heavy in my tired hands. We climbed up through the doors to a ladder, which we used to climb up. She lifted a hatch at the top and the outside was revealed. She exited first, and then paused a moment to wait for me. When I was out too, I glanced around in confusion. It was the place we’d been ambushed by the wolves, where she’d saved us. The Skyway was in the ground to the left, but Fisher walked right.
It was dark but both of us knew that there would be little danger. The Undead frenzied to action, blood, excitement, and noise. We were quiet, alone, armed, and subdued. They would not have us that night. Not for all the bullets in the world. Of that, I would make certain.
I couldn’t stop looking at her. I even tried to look away because she made me sick to look at. It was the familiarity of her pain that did it. I wanted to help not just because I owed her but also because I knew that pain. I didn’t want to hate her. I knew she understood me in a way nobody had ever even come close to doing. And that floored me. She bothered to listen, to understand, dared to allow herself to feel the tumult of emotions that I also felt within myself
A Deviant – my Deviant – was making me feel that way. She was making me feel sadness and anger and other emotions that I honestly didn’t know I could feel anymore.
I didn’t know what to say to her, so I decided that I wouldn’t say anything. I felt that she appreciated that I was with her though. I felt it without knowing how. And I felt that I wanted to protect her from everything. Especially from herself. I recognized the need for self-destruction in her eyes. I recognized it and felt responsible for it.
I had leeched her real emotions, replacing them with worse, bitter ones. I was making her see the world in the worst way that I could make her see it. That was my fault. It was totally on me. And it made Skate’s death all that much harder.
A dead highway up ahead revealed a pool of water in its shadow. It was deep and dark. Cars surrounded it as if to fence it off from everything else, creating a peaceful and quiet atmosphere. When the dead were in their rightful graves, it was intensely quiet, and I could only just barely hear the world moan as the wind whispered death to my ears. It shouldn’t have been so quiet anywhere.
Fisher walked quietly past me and into the water, making soft splashing noises. She began to remove her clothes, and I flipped around, suddenly breathless, feeling dizzy and foolishly hot in the night air. Even as I closed my eyes, I saw that glimpse of flesh, as toned as I had imagined. I couldn’t help but wish that I could run to her and suck on her bottom lip like I’d dreamt about for so many weeks, run my hands over her flesh until she moaned, bring my hands into the thick of her hair and thrust and thrust until she drowned in the feeling, all troubles forgotten.
She made some kind of noise, and my arousal was drowned in liquid guilt. I was repulsed by my base lusts. She needed me, and all I could think about was having my way with her.
I felt her behind me, heard her splash, as if falling.
And then, I heard her cry. It grew in volume until she sobbed into the pool, and I grunted.
“Fisher, can I turn around?” I asked loudly, squeezing the gun in my hands.
She just cried louder, and I exhaled. I dared not turn around to risk my prying eyes seeing what they should not, but the noise of her in agony was almost too much for my wavering willpower.
Physical urges were rising out of me in ways I found difficult to control, not all erotic. Just a need for contact, to help. But I couldn’t. I felt so helpless, so powerless. I wanted to help. What option did I have? What could I do? What did people do to comfort one another?
Speak. That was my only option.
“I am here,” I found myself saying, my head tilted slightly over my shoulder.
This seemed to give her pause.
“I know what it’s like,” I said further, voice shaking now, and to that she was silent.
I swallowed nervously. I was out of my element, and we both knew it.
“I feel lost sometimes, too,” I said from over my shoulder. “And I know it’s hard, but…I’m here.”
I immediately feared repudiation for my little speech, but she was silent. My Masters had always punished self-expression of this sort. I was a tool, not a brain, they’d say. Deviants would punish this weakness, and so must they. But she did not.
Her tears had fled, and I was left to ponder another lie my Masters had told me.
Fisher knew about so many of my dark feelings
. I felt mortification as much as gratification. She knew everything about the way I felt in a way no one had before, and she didn’t even have to say it. I didn’t even have to say it. I heard it in her words beyond words, her movements and sobs.
What was it she had said to me?
“I am now more familiar with you than you are, Mr. Dark.”
Was she right?
It terrified me.
I wanted to do nothing but run to that pool and take her, possess her so totally that my body ached for it. I could peel any of the clothes off that remained, if there were any, and separate her legs, part them so that I could gain entry to her center. I could take the pain away the only way I knew how, with the closest thing I had to intimacy. It was all I’d ever had. Before, this had felt like a huge act. Even sex with random strangers could be meaningful because I knew of no alternative.
With her, I’d want it to be different. It would be different. I wanted it to be different.
But, worse, I realized that I wanted it.
I felt the feeling that came with that so suddenly that I almost cried with it. The emotion that had overcome me was so overwhelming that I couldn’t breathe. If she could just see it, know it, recognize it, help me through it, I could kiss the sobs from her lips, mop up her tears with my mouth and tongue, whisper soft, warm, reassuring things in her ears. She would not despair like this. I could help her the only way I knew how.
But I couldn’t. Of course, I couldn’t. Once more, I checked my carried-away fantasies, and I felt shame as another sob erupted from the area behind me where she stood, so close and so naked, so broken in the water that had been Skate’s to watch.
And I waited silently, albeit impatiently, until she finally emerged at my side. I took her in.
Her black hair dripped onto her neck, whiter, paler, and softer than I remembered it looking. She shivered a little bit. My jacket was suddenly on her shoulders and she sighed with a very whispered,
“Thank you.”
Her words shook me. I hadn’t remembered offering her my jacket.
I followed her again to a building frame. She climbed to the top and sat. I followed suit.
“You look different,” was all I could say.
“I am clean,” she whispered emotionlessly.
I opened my mouth to say something, but she cut me off.
“I wish you would look away,” she whispered, a hint of desperation filtering through her tone.
I was consumed by the need to say something in the still, and I cleared my throat. The noise was a sacrilege of something unspoken and alive that clung to her in the air. I opened my mouth to say something. Nothing came out. What I saw in her face…It took me a few times to finally utter,
“I…”
And then I stopped. It was new, the inability to compute or think, so I treated it with caution, letting the confusion take me once again.
When I looked at her, though she gave me strength, she also took my words away. I was caught. If it was any other time I would have said something witty that she would have laughed at, rolled her eyes over, and then hated me for. It was always like that with us. But it was different after Skate, after the way she cried, after the things I saw. I had never cared as much before that moment. I wished she would look back at me.
I reminded myself that I had to speak.
“I’m…sorry,” I said.
It was lame, and I felt inadequate. There was a long silence.
I had never seen anyone die like that, I wanted to say.
Probe had special divisions for Necrosis. I fought a different battle on a different playing ground, and I could offer her nothing of consolation. I knew nothing of viruses or the pain and terror it could cause. I had never wondered what it looked like. I didn’t have friends, after all. Not like she did. Not like Skate was to her.
But I was there. I wanted to say it, and I had to literally bite the side of my cheek not to. I was right there next to her, and I would be until she didn’t need me to be.
“Skate’s dead,” she whispered harshly, “and all you can do is ogle me.”
“I’m not ogling you,” I said automatically, sure my face was growing flush.
“You’re staring at me,” she said coldly. “It is an attention I do not need.”
Anger came then, but it was distant. I was angry that she didn’t recognize that I was right there beside her, proving that I was worthy. How could she not see that? I was trying my best. I saw in the way she looked at me that she was aware of how stilted my reality had been, how unfamiliar all of this was to me.
I was trying. Wasn’t that enough?
“I’m right here,” I snapped. “What more do you want from me?”
“What I said!” she said into the darkness. “Look away from me! The look in your eyes pains me!”
“What look?”
“Just the look of your eyes…hurts.”
I complied, closing my eyes to rip them from her and then diverting them to my lap to keep them that way. I felt self-loathing like I hadn’t in a very long time. I knew the way I looked at her. It had been my job to communicate fear to others, to instill hatred so much that loyalty was inherently necessary.
I’d made a point to look at her like this, and I regretted it now.
“I am sorry,” I said honestly. “I’ve just never seen that…happen before. I am amazed that you lived through it.”
Her lip quivered again, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. I hated it. The fact surprised me somewhat. I had not been bothered in a long time – especially by the pain of others. I seemed immune to sympathy and suffering, obviously unless it was my own. Even then it felt only like numbness. But her tears caused that to unravel within me.
“I…hurt, Ollie,” she whispered breathlessly beside me.
I tried – unsuccessfully – to remember that I hated her. She was my target. She would be dead soon. She would hurt me later. Deviants did that. She would make me like her, admire her even, and then tear my heart out just so I could pummel it in front of her by killing her slowly. They always knew too – when you loved them. They always used that against you. They used your own human nature against you.
I tried to find an angle that Fisher could be using to draw secrets out of me, but I failed. She was just a grieving cousin who needed a hand to hold.
“I know,” I finally said back to her.
“It is all my fault,” she whispered.
“I…”
My voice cracked. I cleared my throat a little. I sounded like a pubescent boy.
She nodded at this out into the darkness, amazingly blank to me. She was like an empty book, one I had read before but one that no longer had words that I could read, one that had words in a language I couldn’t even begin to understand. The worst part was that I still wanted to read it.
A wave of emotions shot through me so painfully, I actually grunted. The familiar shield was coming back around my resolve, and I knew what would come. I wanted to stop it, but with fear in control, autopilot took over. There was no stopping it.
“What?” she snapped at the noise, looking at me fiercely.
I couldn’t stop the cruelty. I felt it bubbling up my throat into my consciousness, like a monster that guarded my heart from all friends who grew too closely to my inner workings.
“You did shoot him in the head!” I shot at her. “What did you think was going to happen?”
I instantly regretted it. For the first time ever, I hacked at the little protection mechanism that was cruelty. I beat it down so hard that the guilt that was left brought tears to my eyes.
“No,” I began. “No, I didn’t mean that, I–”
And Fisher’s eyes silenced my tongue. As blank as they’d been in the previous moment, they were in the next so teemed with hatred and pure, barely constrained rage that she didn’t even look human.
“Go. Away.”
“No,” I pleaded, actually pleaded. “Listen, I can’t help it when it – I??
?m really sorry! It’s…I don’t know how to talk to people like this. I’m – I’m sorry!”
“I said go!” she shouted, shoving me.
I fell back to the ground off the ledge, landing hard on my side, but I wasn’t angry. She hopped down over me, and I felt unfamiliar fear as I scurried to stand. But she was upon me before I could even sit up, leaning down on her knees over me, her hair dripping into my face.
“You have no right to speak to me this way!” she shrieked in my face.
I winced away, eyes closed. I’d never been yelled at like that. I’d yelled like that at others, but the receiving end was so much worse, especially when the person doing it actually mattered to me.
“I’m sorry!” I said brokenly. “I didn’t…I’m sorry!”
“You’re sorry you let it slip, not sorry about thinking it!”
She was silent for a long time, and I just looked at her, wanting to sit up and kiss her on the lips. Convince her I should be there.
I’d lost my chance, my right to be there.
“You do not belong here,” she whispered, standing next to me. “Now, go.”
“You need me to protect you,” I tried to reason. “You’re emotionally compromised, and I –”
“I have your pistol!” she said, putting her hand to her hip. “Remember? You gave it to me like it was a piece of trash you didn’t want anymore!”
I felt the barb deep down. I’d given it to her as a gift, a gesture that had been meaningful to me. She thought I’d been mocking her. Like all the other times.
I hated what I’d made her believe.
“It wasn’t trash,” I said softly, in an effort to explain, but the words died in my mouth.
Fisher’s face had changed. Tears welled in her eyes, and she backed away from me, lips fighting the sobs, quivering, unable to see. I scrambled to my feet after her. She was backing away from me. I wanted to look away from her, but I couldn’t.
“Just go…” she whispered as I approached, waving her hands.
She started crying again. It hurt me. This time, the tears were for me. I think, if she let me, I would have told her everything right then. She still took away my words, so I hesitated for a moment. I decided to let my feelings take it away. They were unraveling everywhere else.
“If I’m not here, you’ll be in danger,” I said desperately. “This isn’t what you want.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” she snapped.
“You’ll be in danger. Please, let me stay.”
The request was there. My desires were in the open.
“No, Ollie, you…you’re lying. This is all a lie. I don’t need a liar.”
“It’s not though,” I said, taking a step closer. “Not a lie. I’m here. I want to be here.”
“No…” she denied, shaking her head.
She backed into the ledge we’d just been sitting on with a small “oof.”
“It’s wrong. You’re wrong. I see the way you look at me. I need…a friend. I need support.”
“But I can do those things,” I whispered fervently.
“But you won’t,” she said, whimpering. “Just leave…just go…”
I touched her arm. She twitched away. She always twitched away. And I felt pain. I wanted her to know that she didn’t have to wince away from me. That I wasn’t like everyone else if she didn’t want me to be. That I was not like the person I’d been before who wouldn’t have hesitated to hurt her. That I was not like her uncle. And I found, with that same moment of emotional clarity, that I would never be. I couldn’t be.
I tried to tell her. My words became more intense.
“Listen, please, just –”
“I’m done listening. I know what you feel.”
“But I can explain everything…”
My face crumpled into itself.
“If you could just…”
I lost my words. I was terrified and exhilarated. I’d never tried so hard to communicate and failed.
“Just –”
“I can’t do this right now…” she whispered to me.
I began to struggle even more, breathing heavier and faster without retaining any air.
“I don’t want to do anything,” I defended weakly.
“You hate me,” she whispered, and the words hung in the air.
I felt an invisible sharp object pierce my stomach slowly.
“I…can’t!” I finally yelled.
“But you want to.”
“Yes…”
“That’s bad enough,” she said.
She collapsed, and I ran to her, collapsing beside her.
She was so close to me, so wonderfully close. I felt one of her tears on my hand and it burned where it hit. Her silver eyes looked up into mine. What she saw made her cry.
“Why do you hate me?” she asked.
I looked away, yelling in frustration.
“I…can’t!” I shouted. “I can’t tell you!”
“Why not?” she asked with a high pitched voice.
“I don’t know!” I shouted louder.
I grunted in frustration, my struggles in the air, and she took my hand.
It was too much.
“Fisher, stop,” I begged, but she squeezed it.
I looked to the sky. I was in such physical distress that the preventing of release was torturous. But my willpower held fast, and she released my hand dejectedly. Again, I’d done the wrong thing. I yelled out again, wanting to know what I was supposed to do. I’d never felt like this before.
“You want to kill me, don’t you?” she whispered quickly, like it took a burst of courage to wonder it aloud.
“No!” I said vehemently.
I was terrified because I wasn’t lying.
“You want to want to kill me?”
“Yes!” I shouted. “No! I don’t know!”
“Maybe you could…” she said softly, like she was presenting me with an enticing offer.
My breath left me.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice low. “Fisher, you don’t mean that, you don’t –”
“We’re out here alone. It could be easy.”
“Fisher, shut up, you –”
“I deserve to be punished for my crimes,” she whispered. “I’ve seen your eyes. I’ve heard you say it. You want to punish me.”
“I don’t know what I want!”
“Then end me!” she suggested, taking the pistol and flipping the handle towards me. “You can do it! I deserve it!”
I didn’t take the gun from her, though she tried to shove it into my hands. We both shook, but I resisted weakly, my heart breaking at what she was asking.
“Ollie…”
I shifted back, feeling the pressure of pain crush my lung capacity. It was the first time she’d really said my name. The despondency there was so real.
“You want me to punish you?” I asked.
She nodded.
“You don’t hate me?” I asked her, the hysterics there in the very fabric of my tone.
“How am I to hate your nature?” she whispered back. “I hate your Masters…not you.”
I clenched my eyes shut tight.
I could relate to her again for the second time that I could consciously remember, and I felt remorse for hurting her. I felt bad that I had treated her poorly when she so didn’t deserve it. I felt horrible that she took it like I was complimenting her, loving her, instead of treating her like trash. She coveted me. She respected me. She helped me because she understood. She understood a lot more than I’d given her credit for.
I was scum.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Her face crumpled.
“No, you’re not…”
My words increased in urgency with the pain in hers.
“Please, I can’t –”
“Make a decision, Ollie, or…”
Her words broke.
“Let me die…” she pleaded, hands together.
I couldn’t. I wanted to protect her. I owed her, and I wanted to make good on my oath to myself. I needed her to trust me for that to happen. Instead, she was ashamed of everything that she was. She was ashamed of being a Deviant because I hated her, and she didn’t even know she was one. She thought my opinion was worth that much. It made me irrational with guilt and admiration and an explosion of other feelings that made me sink and swim all at the same time. I couldn’t move for it.
“Ollie, just go…” she whispered.
“Just listen – please! If you just let me explain what I –”
“Get out of here!” she finally yelled, her rage coming full circle so much that I had to obey.
As I walked back to the town, as I entered through the gate, as I laid on my mat in the backroom, I felt strange. I hated myself for what I could allow myself to think, and I didn’t know why God made me interact with people like Fisher – like that – if I wasn’t going to learn anything from it.