Surviving

Chapter 12

Koba hissed in anger as he looked down at the broken spear in his hands. He had been repairing it since the sharpened rock that served as a spearhead had come loose, but his grip on the shift must have been too strong as the wood had splinted in his grasp. Blood dripped from the large splinters lodged in his hand but he felt nothing. Since you had left it was as if there were a stone lodged in his heart, it ached and his heart stuttered and failed as it tried to beat around the intrusion. It was as if you had taken the light with you when you left, the sun didn’t shine as brightly-well the sun didn’t shine at all since it hadn’t stopped raining in the last two days. It was strange that someone as gloomy as you had seemed to light up his life. He grudgingly found he missed seeing you about the village. He missed your sad eyes and the flashes of your hair in the sunlight. He missed the way you would scowl at him whenever he said something cutting and the way you would snap right back, your eyes losing that deep sadness and flashing with a fury that left him feeling tingly in a way he had never felt before.

He missed you, a human.

The thought was abhorrent, he had tried so hard to tamp down whatever it was that he felt when you were around, had hoped that by driving you away, he would be able to forget about you and the way you had felt in his arms as he held you after your nightmare. The way your trembling had died down as you relaxed against him, that you trusted him though he could snap your neck in a heartbeat. His heart flinched painfully at the thought of him hurting you. You were so fragile despite the way you held yourself, head high and neck exposed as if daring the world to strike you down.

With a dizzying wave of realisation, Koba knew what drew him to you so much. The way you hid your vulnerability through anger and a devil-may-care attitude. You reminded him of himself. The way he protected himself by striking first, sometimes before a threat had even presented itself. You were reckless in a way only someone who had stared death in the face and welcomed it could be. He had made a mistake by forcing you out. He knew that even before he did it. He knew you were no soldier, you had none of the mannerism that he had observed on the uniformed guards that had patrolled the halls at his second laboratory. He had used the dogtags simply as a way to turn the village against you. He had thought these strange feelings would go away with your absence but it seemed they had only grown stronger. His heart ached painfully in his chest at the thought that he would never see you again.

With a roar of anger he threw the useless spear against the ground, these feelings were driving him insane. He knew they wouldn’t stop until he saw you again. He couldn’t bring you back though, he reasoned, that would mean admitting that he was wrong and that was something he couldn’t face. You didn’t even have to see him, he would just check that you were okay and then he would come back. With a plan now firmly in his mind, he quietly snuck out from his hut, disappearing into the forest silently.

From the shadows of a rock, Maurice watched him go, grunting approvingly low in his throat. “Took the stubborn idiot long enough” he thought, rolling his eyes. The drama was far from over though. Just because Koba had finally admitted he felt something towards you didn’t mean he would suddenly be able to admit that to you. “Stars give me strength” Maurice thought, rubbing his forehead where he could feel a headache coalescing.