Beautiful Wilting Flowers

Luckier

Dean POV:

Liana slaps an article dating back ten years ago on the wooden coffee table with much flourish, making me cough with all of the dust it kicked up, and sighs with her natural pure flair.

"This is so boring." She pouts. "We haven't found anything." A grumble escapes her lips, and I roll my eyes.

"Why we couldn't have gone looking for suspicious buildings?" I groan at our stack of read articles that have given us literally no information whatsoever. We've literally sat here in the public library for over an hour now, and our brains are mush from all of the nonsense we've been reading. Not to mention our butts are mush too, from these uncomfortable chairs. Seriously, they managed to make a couch uncomfortable. That's a new low.

"None of this is productive." Liana nods. "Maybe Black wrote an autobiography or something? Or a book on lab research?"

I sigh with my own original Dean flair.

"It's worth a shot." 

We make our way over to the biography section.

"One day, I'm going to write my own biography!" I puff out my chest with pride. "It'll be called 'The paranoid donkey whispering immortal with really great hair'." I nod in affirmation to myself.

Liana giggles. "I would never come near a book with that title."

"Why not? It's very accurate." I argue. "Yours would be -"

"Okay, that's enough from you." She shoves me lightly, laughing. "No one would want to read my biography; my childhood was depressing and my teenage life isn't much different."

"That bad?" I wince. "I'm sure there were a few happy times."

"Oh, don't worry, there were. Greigh was the reason for most of them." She smiles fondly of her protective brother. "Greigh was the best thing in my childhood, but my parents are a whole other story."

"Talk to me." I nod, pushing her on as I take one side of the biography aisle and she takes the other.

"Well, for starters, my mum is thirty six." She laughs. "She never meant to be having kids. And my dad is forty, and didn't see the big deal, so they got divorced when Greigh and I were six. Three years later, they got back together, resolving all of their hate towards each other, and turned it around towards us."

I don't say anything as I riffle through the books, and Liana continues.

"Any remaining effort my mother had towards us faded. Our father never liked us in the first place, so nothing changed with him. Eventually, they came to the mutual decision that we would be 'better off' with another family. They didn't want weird children with abnormal abilities. So before they could send us away to someplace, Greigh and I ran away together." She laughs at the memory, making my heart flutter a bit. "It was the best time of my life. We were together, and it didn't matter that we weren't sure where to go or didn't have money. We were living our childhood dreams of running away from the hatred at home and living the adventure of a lifetime. A nice elderly woman let us stay in her home for a while, but eventually we knew we couldn't stay there forever. So Greigh erased her memories of us, and we left some flowers we picked in a vase on the doorstep."

I push some books out of the way to see her face. She isn't frowning, but she isn't smiling either.

Looking up, she smiles.

"What's your sob story?" She grins, eager to get the attention off of herself. "Did you have any siblings?"

"Yeah," I nod. "I have an older sister, Gemma, and a younger sister, Vivian. Gemma is twenty one, and Vivian is eighteen. I'm pretty close with them since were close in age, and my parents are both alive. I'm pretty lucky."

"Tell me more about your family." I can hear the smile in Liana's voice as she sifts through the books, and I continue as I follow suit.

"Gemma and I have always been pretty rock solid, mostly because she tolerates my ego. Vivian has an ego just like mine, and we were always fighting over the spotlight in our household. But when I moved out of the house with Ina- which yes, my family totally thought I would end up settling down with her, which I didn't- Vivian and I became a lot closer with the distance." I smile. Vivian always comes to me when there's trouble, and Gemma saves me from my troubles. When Gemma has trouble? Vivian and I gang up to save her. Were a tight knit trio. I'll never want anything more than what I have.

"What about your parents?" Liana asks.

"My mom and dad..." I fail to answer for once in my life as I shuffle through the books. 

"You okay?" Liana asks, pausing in the search.

"U-um." I feel the lump in my throat grow, and I know I won't get any words out without tearing up.

Liana comes around the corner of the bookshelf aisle, and sees my motionless freezing. She walks over cautiously, and puts a hand on my shoulder.

"What's wrong?" She says, voice sweet and careful not to overstep.

"Uh," I tilt my head up to try and send the tears welling back where they came from, but it doesn't really work, so I give up and tilt my head back to normal. "It's- my dad. He's sick, and... my mom's been caring for him, but they brought him back from the hospital last month because there's nothing more the doctors can do to help him."

As soon as they came, I force the tears away, and look down at Liana to see an empathetic face. She doesn't say anything, but her sympathy just makes me want to tear up again.

"I'm sorry, Dean. I know it never helps when people say they are, but I'm still sorry." She adds, "And I don't really know what it's like to have parents, but I know I'm missing out on something if this is the person you became."

How is Liana always this... pure?

"You are an angel." I laugh softly.

She smiles with a sad look on her face, and hugs me with all of her tiny strength.

"You're luckier than most, to have parents." She says, muffled in the hug.

"Luckier." I echo.

Why doesn't it feel that way?