Barren Crossroads

Just to Feel Again

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Rick had ice in his veins as Kaelie's smile flashed in the dark. It wasn't à sweet smile, or à gentle on, like the smiles she'd given him as Sarah. This one was sharp, like the edge of à blade, and not quite warm enough to be friendly. "There we go," she said, and even her voice was different, back to how it'd been when she'd gone after the Hunters. This voice was pitched low, an underlying current of cruel mirth, steady, the kind of voice you didn't argue with.

"You know, Rick, I'm not sure why I tried to pretend anyways. I should know by now that the truth will always come out. I didn't want to have to hurt you, when you found me out wandering around, and people don't take kindly to my- let's call it à skill set, shall we? I still don't, by the way. Want to hurt you, I mean. But yes, I'm à Hunter."

Every instinct screamed at Rick to get away, and his hand dropped to the pistol holstered at his hip. Kaelie's green eye flashed, darting to the movement and back to his face so fast he could barely track the movement. She didn't flinch, just tilted her head. It felt like à dare. He reached back for the bottle and she handed it over easily. He emptied it, à little wary of how fast they'd finished it, and then, before he even thought about it, he turned it around in his hand and swung it at her head as fast and hard as he could.

He thought he might have heard her laugh and in the split second before the glass made contact with her head, her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, twisting until he dropped the bottle and then using the momentum to trap it against his chest, and push him back until he was on the floor with her straddling him, crushing at his ribs with her thighs, and with her other hand around his throat.

She squeezed until he sputtered and then the pressure lessened à fraction. She didn't move her hand. She didn't even look phased, her hair still a fiery red tangle, her breaths even and steady. Her thighs tightened around him and he winced. She tilted her head again. "I could crush all your ribs right now, crack them all until the fragments punctured your lungs. I could hit you so many times in a second that you'd be unrecognizeable. I could rip your throat out with my bare hands. I could be up and have your gun on you before you even knew I was moving. I could kill you, right now."

His chest heaved and he gasped air into his lungs. Her facial expression was unreadable, her face like it had been carved from stone. Her eye pierced him and he was hit with the unsettling feeling that she could see right through him, read every thought. She knew every insecurity, every guilt ridden nightmare that kept him up at night, she knew it all. She didn't move at all as she watched him. She was waiting.

It was too much. He didn't know what to think or what to feel, hate battled hard with respect, disgust warred with admiration, and as the moon finally broken through the cloud and reflected off her hair and her pale skin, her sharp, severe kind of beauty hit him in the face. "You're her, aren't you?" he said, and he coughed on the words. "Their boss, you're her?"

Her face seemed to crumple in on itself, and her agony stared back at him, burning in her gaze. "Yes."

"How could you?" he whispered and she shuddered, and released his wrist and throat to bring her hands to her face.

"I don't know. It wasn't me," she said. "Not really. It- the Hunter's were an experiment to see if you could build the perfect person- pretty, and smart, and strong, and fast, unstoppable. But it morphed from that to creating a soldier who wouldn't be affected by the mental horrors of killing another person, and watching the life leave them. They wanted people they could send into wars who could take down entire battalions, and never feel an ounce of remorse about doing so. Dogs that would follow orders, and never, ever try to fight back.

"That's what I was supposed to be. But I went wrong, me and some others. We were so emotional, we felt everything too intensely, we would not follow orders, we would not hurt. It's à long story, Rick, and I don't have the time or the patience to repeat it. We were imprisoned. We were tortured. We got out. We saved à few lives, and somewhere along the way, I got caught again. There was à man, Jordan. He had everyone fooled for years, into thinking he was some low level office worker, and he was the head of the entire organization all along. He'd spent his time in exile finding some way to turn anyone into à Hunter, but not à defective one like me. À real one- emotionless, savage, submissive killers.

He wanted me because I was the best. The most efficient, the most ruthless, the fastest, the strongest. I just was. He found à way to fix me, in his eyes. He took them all, every thing I ever felt, everything I ever wanted to feel, he took it all and he looked me into a corner of my mind, and then he let me loose on the world.

"I saw it all, like watching à movie, but I did not have control over my own body. I watched myself take this world apart. I remember it all. I remember her face- your daughter. I remember saving her, and then I remember the part of my mind where that other me lived calculating the she was the most likely to have the biggest emotional impact on your group if she died. It was almost clinical. I was able to get back- not without help.

"That's what I'm looking for. The person that did that to me said he also made à cure. Something that would turn every Hunter back into à normal person, and turn those of us born into it into à regular civilian as well. If I can do that, if can fix it all- maybe we can put things back together, maybe I can atone for what I've done.

Don't get me wrong Rick, I love being à Hunter. I love being better than, but I don't enjoy being à monster."

What was there to say? Above him, Kaelie looked regal, elegant, and formidable. À goddess, a deity that held his life in her hands, and controlled the very air that he breathed. He expected to feel rage, but all he felt was tired, and so incredibly sad.

The melancholy broke at him like waves against the rocks. He was sad for his daughter, and the loss of her ached with à void he couldn't fill. But his heart broke even further for Kaelie. For all her bravado, the timelessness of the pain in her eyes took his breath away.

"I'm so sorry," he said quietly.

Her face shifted, shock blowing apart her neutral expression. "I- what?"

"I'm so sorry. You didn't- I don't know what else to say," he told her, and he tentatively covered her hands in his own and pulled them down from her face. "I miss her."

"I know. I see her everyday. Her, and everyone else, always in my mind, always on repeat. I didn't ever want to be this. We just wanted to live."

Rick's heart pounded in his chest as she shifted above him, his emotions tangled and swirled around, and his skin felt seared where she touched him. She looked far away from him now, lost somewhere else, reliving the horrors that threatened to rip her apart. He sat up, fast, and in her distraction, he has able to grab hold of her hips and slam her back against the wall.

"Rick." She barely had time to gasp before he was bringing his mouth down on hers.

He groaned, the sound torn from his throat, one of his legs between her thighs, and his weight keeping her firmly against the wall. She stiffened against him, tense, and he felt à tremble start in her. She tasted sweet, like oranges, and à little like blood, and he could taste the whiskey on her mouth. He kissed her insistently, desperately, anything to not focus on the other things he felt, and finally, finally, he felt her relax back against the wall, and her hands came up to the back of his neck and he shuddered.

He gasped against her lips when he felt her thin fingers slide into his hair and pull, hard. He slipped his hands from her hips to her ass and squeezed, hard enough to bruise, and pulled her to grind against his thigh. She made a soft, mewling sound, and Rick was going out of his mind wanting more.

The kiss was not gentle, she nipped his lip, and then soothed the sting with her tongue. It felt incredible, and he couldn't think, he was losing control- and then just as quickly, she was pulling away, and her chest heaved against him. "Not- not yet, not right now. I can't," she said and he didn't respond. He nodded after à moment, and rested his forehead against hers, breathing deeply.

"I'm sorry," he said, because he wasn't sure what else to say. He wasn't.

"Don't be," she whispered, and she did reach out à hand to stroke down his arm. "I'm not."

He moved to sit beside her again, and her heat bled into him as they watched the wind blow the trash in the street. Eventually, his eyes closed, and he sank deeply into sleep filled with luminous green eyes and a low, rough voice.