Her Dark Angels

Truth

Kason; 3 days earlier

We've all been taking shifts sitting with Sawyer, hoping she'd wake up soon. It's already been three days of waiting. Asher has been staying with her the most. Yesterday when he came home from visiting her, he told us his plan for when Sawyer wakes up.

"Are you serious? You want her to stay here, with us?" Jayden asked as Asher paced the living room.

"You haven't seen it, Jay. She's covered in scars and bruises... the scar on her stomach..." Asher's jaw clenched in anger. "Ariel did that to her."

"Asher, I get how you're feeling. But Sawyer would never stay with us... not after how we treated her the past three years." Logan said sadly falling back onto the couch.

My mind drifted back to that day as the others bickered over Sawyer...

Flashback; 5 days ago

Sawyer was standing in front of us with tears falling and a gun pointed at me. I loved her once, maybe I still did. I wanted as she moved the gun off of me, moving it towards her head. My whole world stopped, everything we did to her flashed though my mind, breaking my heart. It made me realize we all led her to this point. My feet were moving before I knew it, rushing towards her. I tried reaching for the gun before she could pull the trigger, I barely grabbed her arm, when I heard the shot ring out. I looked up in horror as I watched her body start to fall, before she could hit the ground I caught her limp body. There was blood everywhere and I started to panic. Asher ran over to us, helping me lay her gently on to the floor, so we could examine her. My ears were ringing as I looked down at my bloody hands, then back to her beautiful face. Asher gently brushed her hair aside carefully trying to check the bullet wound, but there was so much blood.

"She's still breathing!" I hear Asher yell. That was enough to snap me out of the fog I was in, realizing Logan was on the phone talking with I assume 911.

"An ambulance is on it's way! They said to keep pressure on the wound." Logan explained, his voice frantic as he stared down at Sawyer.

I looked at each of the guys, wondering what was going through their minds. Were they blaming themselves, like I was doing? We had led her to this, she could die from this. She wanted to get away from us so bad, she was willing to take her own life. I saw Logan pacing the room, pulling at his hair as we waited for the ambulance. Asher was kneeling next to Sawyer holding pressure on her bullet wound, watching her carefully. Jayden stood by the desk with his hands clenched into fists, his eyes squeezed shut. He out of all of us, has seen so much death in his life, I'm hoping this won't send him to his dark place; we barely got him back the last time. We had no idea what we were walking into when we followed Sawyer home. If we would've known, maybe we could've tried to stop her sooner. Now Jayden was reliving his past, as Sawyer was bleeding out in front of us. Time was passing by so slow as we stood by not being able to help her.

Just then the paramedics rushed into the room, all 3 of us stepping away. Asher wouldn't leave her, "sir, we need you to move aside so we can help your girlfriend, okay?" Asher looked up at him with wide eyes, and moved out of their way.

Everything started to move so quick as they put her on the gurney, rushing her to the ambulance. We all loaded into our cars, following right behind them, driving as fast as we could to the hospital.

They rolled her into emergency room, even though we were pretty sure we weren't allowed in those doors; no one dared to stop us. All we were focused on was Sawyer, a nurse took us to the ER waiting room once they took Sawyer back to surgery.

Time was slowing again, passing by painfully as we waited to hear any news on Sawyer's condition. We all collectively took in a breath once we seen the doctor emerge from the door.

"How is Sawyer Grace?" I asked rushing toward him. He turned to look at me, "Are you her family?" He asked.

"Her father hasn't come yet, but I'm her boyfriend." I hear Asher say as he stepped forward. What the hell was he doing.

The doctor looked at us all, then turned to Asher. "Well, your girlfriend is stable for now, but she is still unconscious. We had to put her in a medically induced coma, until some of the swelling on her brain goes down. The gun shot did a good amount of trauma to her skull, but thankfully we were able to repair the damages. She'll be in the medical coma for a few days, but there is still a chance she won't wake up after we wean her off the sedation medication."

"Thank you, doctor." Asher said.

"There is another matter I must bring up..." by the look on his face and his body language, I could tell this wasn't good. "It's the matter of her previous injuries. I need to ask if you know how she acquired such extensive bruising and a worrisome amount of scaring." We all looked at him like, he had two heads.

"What do you mean?" Asher asked cautiously.

"You weren't aware of her scars?" The doctor questioned.

"No, she's quite shy when it comes to her body." Asher lied.

"I can understand why she would be. Well, she has scaring covering almost her entire back and along the tops of her arms. I imagine they were strategically placed, to be easily hidden under her clothes. She also had bruises covering her stomach and ribs from a fairly recent encounter. Also..." the doctor sighed, looking at us with a broken expression. "We also found tearing and bruising from what looks like a very violent sexual assault. With all of this evidence, we had to contact the authorities. I'm sure they will want to talk to you boys, along with her father once we can reach him."

"I'm sorry, I know this is a lot of information to take in. We also had to inform psych, since this was a suicide attempt, her second one at that, we need to monitor her mental state when she wakes. I'll have a nurse show you to her room when it's ready." He turns to leave, leaving us alone, trying to process the bombshell he just dropped on us.

"God. She was this bad?" Logan asks, mostly to himself, his face riddled with guilt.

"We added to the pain she was already going through." Jayden said, pacing the room.

"We didn't know. How could we?" I said, trying to make them feel less at fault. I wasn't feeling any better myself, she had trusted me all those years ago, and I just turned my back on her, leaving her behind.

"What the hell was that Ash? Calling her your girlfriend!" Logan said turning to face him.

Asher looked over at him his usual coldness. "The paramedic already assumed I was, and he wouldn't have gotten any updates on her if I hadn't. None of you stepped up." I could tell what the doctor had told us was affecting him, he looked angry at the fact someone could hurt her so bad.

"Yeah, but if Ariel finds out what you said, she'll come after Sawyer worse than before." Logan said anger coating his words.

Asher rolled his eyes at Logan's concern. Taking a deep breath he walked towards the nurse, waiting to take him back to see Sawyer.

Present Day;
"What do we do now?" Jay asks, concern lacing his voice.

"I'm not sure. All I know is I'm not letting her go back with her father. He has to be the one that's been hurting her. I mean I remember her saying that he was strict, he wouldn't let her be around anyone he didn't know. She told me she wanted to keep our friendship a secret from her father, because he wouldn't like it." I said as I recall the memory.

"How well did you know her? You never really told us." Logan asked, looking over at me.

"We were friends the whole last year of middle school, and the summer leading into freshman year. She would sneak out so we could hangout, but during the last month and a half of summer, she started to act weird. She wasn't able to hangout as much, only taking on the phone. I didn't make a huge deal about it, because I was going through my own shit, and I just met you guys. Then after that first day of school, we never spoke again..." I said lowering my head in shame.

"We drove her away..." Jay added.

I shook my head. "It was my own fault. I was too embarrassed to stick up for her, I was barely holding myself together. But, she had no one else and I left her."

All the boys have been racked with guilt and concern over everything we did to her. We fully believed what she did was because of us, but once the doctor told us about the scars and bruises, we know we just had to protect her. Whatever it takes.