Receeding Tides (mcyt)

Chapter 6

Tommy guided the beaten-up truck into a long-abandoned grocery store parking lot. The glass windows and doors were coated in Ash and grime, and various rotten fruits spilled out from the front doors. Posters advertising deals on meat and canned goods hung inside the windows by thin strips of overused tape. Torn and faded. Broken glass littered the lot leaving dozens of cars deflated and stationary. Tommy drove in circles around the parking lot attempting to park. He'd seen his parents doing it hundreds of times.  How hard could it be? Turns out, being the one driving made everything more difficult.

"You don't need to make it nice or anything," Dream spoke clutching the overhead handle. "Just close to the entrance."

Pulling into one spot a little to false, Tommy knocked the side mirror of the minivan beside them clean off. He pulled back out and tried again this time driving straight through the next row of parking spots.

"Goddamit, why is parking- why does- ugh, fuck," he muttered. "How do you even drive this bitch?"

"Parking doesn't matter," Dream repeated himself.

"Why did you let me drive in circles for the last half hour then?"

"I told you parking didn't really matter but you kept driving."

That wasn't the whole reasoning, and Tommy knew it. He stuck his tongue out at Dream and blew a raspberry. Dream laughed.

"Okay, okay. It was funny listening to you narrate your shitty driving."

Tommy groaned and face planted on the wheel. His body shivered in the heat, and barely audible whimpers left his mouth as he began processing everything that had happened in the last few hours.

He drove over a man who was still alive and breathing. He killed someone. Sure, there was nothing Tommy could've done that would have saved them both, but holy shit, the truth hit hard. He didn't need a weapon to kill someone. He did just that without even so much as a knife. Easily. He killed two people if you count indirectly getting Minx shot.

What if that guy had friends, and they came after him for revenge? And Minx? He left her alone bleeding out in a random motel parking lot in the middle of British nowhere, and nobody would ever know what happened to her. If her family was still alive and out there, they would never know. They'd live on waiting for someone who couldn't return. Tommy's mind rushed with so many thoughts that the colours in front of him blurred, and the tears in his eyes didn't help.

It all seemed so real now. The state of the world. The trauma he forgot was traumatic. A few days ago, Tommy was waiting for someone to kill him in his sleep, and here he was with two kills to his name. Holy fuck, what had happened to him? Dream rubbed the boy's back in comfort until he calmed down.

"Hey, you're okay now. We're safe. No one's after us."

Tommy nodded against the wheel giving Dream an awkward thumbs up, "Yep, just uh... give- gimme a second, Big Man."

He shook quietly as he let soft breaths leave his mouth. He leaned against the seat and ran his hands down his face. Dream pulled him into a hug.

"I just killed a man, Dream..." Tommy breathed, "I, I didn't even use a weapon and... I killed him. I didn't even know I could do that. And Minx, I-I fucking killed her too and she's back there and we could've done something. We could've-"

Dream tightened his arms around the boy and pressed his head into his shoulder. Tommy's breathing hastened, and his sobs involuntarily shook his body. He thought survivor's guilt hit him after the Waves, and he coped with that. He thought he did at least. Tommy couldn't have been more wrong though. It never went away. Each day he woke up was a day he managed to see than others didn't.