The Lost

43- Gone

Lucius

They're gone.

No, I refused to believe that. After the shit took to get them back here, this wasn't happening. There was no way in hell.
They're gone and it's your fault.
Gone? No— taken. They had been taken. But because of me? That thought was a bad one. Jesus, just thinking about it made my stomach turn. They had been right there, right there in front of me. Then I turned and they were... gone. Disappeared. But it couldn't be my fault, it couldn't!
The bad thoughts seemed to only intensify with every scrap of moss I ran past. Every bird that took off shrieking when it saw me coming gave me a damn heart attack. I ran without knowing where I was going; desperately searching for something, anything, praying that I would find some trace of them. But there was no figure in the lines of trees. No colours stood out from the natural green of the forest. Why had I never realised how big this damn forest was?! It took an entire hour just to walk half the length of that lake, from Mike's tents to Wren Agraulis' tribe. The word gone was becoming more prominent in my head by the second. How could I have let this happen? Why hadn't I stopped him?! With every inch of empty woodland that I scoured, the panic only swelled. Lucius- what the hell are you even doing? Where are you going?! Lines of hair all over my face, I collapsed against the scratchy trunk of one of the trees, gasping for breath.

All it had taken was a moment for me to react... a second. But I had already been too late.
Before I or Mike had realised what he was doing, Sam had crept backwards and taken them. And where had I been? Not even three steps away, too busy arguing with that blonde idiot to notice what was happening. Without particularly wanting to, I shook my head back and forth, as if doing so would somehow change what had just happened. That beast hadn't even taken them, he'd kidnapped them! This wasn't like when Edward had found Lyn back at the house— he'd at least been surprised when he found her! But this bastard knew exactly what he was doing. He had deliberately caught the two of them! And in those seconds I had wasted, standing so stupidly by those tents and not knowing what to do with Rosin or Lyn, he had disappeared. Him... Azure and Aspen.

It is your fault! My entire mind was screaming it at me, an accusation on loop. And you know it. How badly I wanted to deny it- to insist that it wasn't! Of course I didn't mean for this to happen! But I could have stopped him... I should have! And what good would arguing with myself about something I couldn't change do now?
Nothing, is what it would do. And right now, 'nothing' was exactly what I was doing.

No more than a push was all it took to get me back on my feet and staring at the mess of colours around me. Blame yourself all you want, but it won't bring them back. I had to find them. There was no other option— I had to find them. If I didn't...

The forest seemed to be rising all around me, taunting me with its size. All the different colours, all the paths you could take that splayed out in every possible direction— a labyrinth was what this place was, and not one that I could navigate.
I mopped back some of the black from my eyes as I forced myself to focus. Sure, it all looked impossibly confusing, but they found their way around, didn't they? Did I not remember how Aspen had so cleverly pointed us towards his home? He had been far from a stable state of mind and yet he had managed it, so surely I could too. Right? Aspen— My breathing stalled his name in my head. All I could think about was that tiny green body inside of a cage, cowering against the bars. The absolute horror in the boy's face when we had met for the very first time, with the scream and the tearful pleading that had followed.
Fear. That's all it had been for Aspen when we met. A fear that I would do something unthinkable to him. That even after getting away from his torturous captor, he still wasn't free from humans.