The Overwoods.

--XVII--

--XVII--

The Everglades Hospital emergency room was black and gray. Either that or my eyes still hadn't recovered.
"Chris." Caleb's voice.
I was facing a wall, which had some kind of painting of some sunflowers. I liked sunflowers.
But they were black and gray.
"Danny," said Caleb. "Come on, it's me."
The second I turned around, he folded me in his huge caucasian arms. Remember when all I wanted was an embrace? Hurray. I got one.
I broke his little prison of muscle and hair and walked toward the exit. "I fucked up your jacket, I know."
He let me take two steps further.
"Does it ever occur to you that people need you?" said Caleb.
The light on the ceiling was gray. The nurses' desk was black. There were chairs on the plain tile floor and they were black. But not black- not a color, but a void. The new tears that wet my face were the color of ash. I turned around despite them.
"Can you make that make sense to me?" I said.
He walked toward me slowly. His gaze met mine- I was staring daggers at him without meaning to. About half an hour ago, he telepathically told me to "stay where you are." Behind a gray curtain, fifteen feet in front of me and to my left, were the amazing people that wore gray gloves and masks, trying to fix the exact same damage that was inflicted on me, years ago. I saw no shade of blue in Caleb's eyes. Just gray, everything was black and gray. I automatically wondered how Crayon was doing, how Skittles was doing. Naturally and out of habit, I felt excitement- imagining me hugging the big white dogs with fluffy tails that wagged whenever I would go to Malcolm's house again, imagining me getting to pet the lovable, cute things that manipulated no one. Then I coughed, the pain from the poison in my chest digging a frozen hook through my spine and dragging me back into reality.
"Hey," said Caleb. He put his hands on my arms, gently. "Are you all right?"
That was literally the dumbest question someone could have possibly asked me.
"I'm so sorry," Caleb said, telepathically this time. "Stay with me, Chris."
That was the same exact thought I had myself, less than two hours ago. My head pounded. I wanted to just crumble. To crumble and to let someone else take care of me, maybe for once.
I cleared my throat.
"I'm sorry about your jacket," I said. The words were barely audible; I spoke physically and the gas from the canister was still on my throat. "I'll get you another one."
"Naw," said Caleb. "Don't. I'll give you another one. Mine."
I didn't want another jacket. I wanted the warm fluffy things that made up half my family. I wanted not to be in a world where the young were manipulated, or murdered for refusing to be manipulated. I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to lie down. I thought about the experiments, and then I started remembering Nightingale. I wished that the jump off Century Spire killed me; that the Experiment took my life.
Caleb yelled at me. "Chris!" His voice was heated, fuming. Something enraged was taking over the sound of what he normally always sounded like when he talked to me. I didn't realize his hands were on my shoulders and shaking me until he spoke the next words. "Don't think like that!"
I double-flipped backwards with a two twists, whipping back on the first landing, taking the perpetrator's kunai-like dagger out of my black jeans' pocket and arming myself as I did on the second.
I looked Caleb in the eye- the exact same way I did on my last night with the unnamed man from the Lowdown, the unnamed evil creature that used me as nothing but a source of income for his abuse chain.
"Hands off, mind off," I said, my voice still sounding like broken rocks scraping sandpaper. "I have an SRA I have to fight in."
I sounded like a subtly croaking marshmallow- but behind it, now a growl instead of a faint whimper.
I flexed my fingers and wrists; glanced over at the blood on them- some of it fresh, blood which the rain hadn't managed to wash away at all. There were cuts on the sides of my face and shoulders from smashing through walls and through glass. I was almost fascinated- earlier on the same day, they were still some shade reminiscent of red; now everything was gray.
I cleared my throat, then continued.
"An SRA I have to fight in injured," I said, "and I'd really like to regain color vision before then."