Beautiful Wilting Flowers

'I love-..y...'

Vek POV:

I rip up pieces of my shirt in a panicked agony, and stuff them between the gashing and gaping wounds.

"Dad, an ambulance is coming, you're going to be okay." I tell my father as his eyelids flutter for what I assume is going to be the last few seconds of his life. But I'm pleading to the universe that he'll make it out of this alive.

"No.... no, Vek... you can't save me from this. Don't fight it, bud, I'm okay. I do wish you weren't here to see me like this though." He attempts a smile as he continues to bleed from his chest.

"No, dad, I can't... you can't leave me, you're all I have left, please!" I whimper, trying to contain myself, but honestly looking past how stupid I must look right now. "You're all I have left,... you promised mom you would be with me!" I cry, desperate to keep him here.

My father is all I have left. I have no mother, no siblings, no best friend,... all I have keeping me here is the thought of my father being here with me. It's all I have left. He's all I have left. Even if I'm immortal, that won't stop my soul from dying with him.

"Someone!" I scream in Japanese. "Get help! Please!" I look back down at my dad, who is paling and starting to fade away by the minute.

"Vek, the ambulance is coming." Greigh's kind hand rests on my shoulder. "But I do suggest... making sure you don't have any regrets, just in case, if you get what I'm saying."

"Yeah." I nod, dread seeping through my veins.

"I'll give the two of you a moment." Greigh pats my shoulder, and walks away to see if the ambulance has appeared yet.

I look down at my dad's bleeding body, and let a tear dribble out of my eye. Here, on the lawn in front of the haunted mansion, my dad's bloody body remains.

"Dad, we don't have much time left... I've accepted it. But um... so that I don't have any regrets... thank you. You always took care of me, even after Mara, even after mom. You were my rock. I couldn't have asked for a better dad." I know that's all I need to say.

"Vek... cheesy as it is, I do have a dying wish." My father struggles.

"What?" I ask. "What is it?"

"Take... take care of.."

"Who? There's no one left." I laugh, unamused.

"Yes, there is... take care of yourself, Vekner. You're the most.. most important person in my... my life, short as it has been." He rasps. "I l-love...y.."

And I watch his soul fades away as the darkness ensues, as he takes his last breath, my beloved father. The dark blue of his eyes cloud over, and I gently help him along, closing his eyelids where he can't do so himself, letting my tears flow down my face. I take his hand, and kiss his knuckles as my goodbye.

"I love you too, dad." 

And the only light in my life has flickered away, leaving me with the sound of the screeching sirens that have come too late. 

🖤🖤🖤

"Drink it all." A warm paper cup of coffee slides into my hands, extra dark and extra sugar, just how I like it.

"Thank you, Dean." I accept his peace offering with gratitude, but the coffee still doesn't lift the heavy darkness that has been placed into my life. "I can't believe how fast it all happened."

"I know." He rubs my back, trying to be there for me like an older brother that I never had as I hunch over with my hand rubbing my face, trying to wipe away my fatigue. "Can I do anything to help?"

"No." I reply. "I can't shut this darkness out like I did with my mother, or a friend's death. I need to learn to deal with the fact that stuff like this happens. But it's my fault." I don't even try to keep the tears at bay.

"It's not your fault, Vek. Listen, it isn't our faults that we got stuck with these inhuman abilities. And we can change that; were not kids anymore. We can find the serums, lock them away, and... if you wanted Vek, you don't have to live with immortality. You don't have to reinject yourself. You have a choice now." Dean says seriously. "We are actually free right now. We weren't before, but if you think about the better half of the whole situation, you have a choice not to live with this curse anymore. You don't have to be hunted down for being alive, Vek." He tells me, and gets up to leave me to think, and give me the space I will gratefully need.

So I sit in the hospital waiting room, knowing that this darkness will eat my insides until I'm hollow. 

The doctors are 'trying', but I know they're just keeping him in that room until it's safe to say it's been long enough that they can say he's dead. As if they're running tests, or trying to revive him. Spoiler alert! He wasn't breathing, and the killer stabbed a knife into his chest. Do you think he's alive?

I sigh, my tiredness leaking from my aura across every inch of me. I let this happen again. For the third time. The good news is, there's no one left for my 'gifts' to hurt, besides my gift bearing friends themselves.

A soft voice speaks as a figure sits down next to me.

"Hey Vek." Heyden says regretfully of how things played out today. "I'm sorry your personal life is involved in this. It never should have ended this way."

"Damn right it shouldn't have." I laugh without actual happiness to fuel it. "It should've been me. Or anyone else. Not him. My dad was all I had left. Now I have to wait here for an hour for the news that my dad is dead. I know, doc. I was the one stuffing his gaping wounds with my shirt." 

"So, Vek... there's something I need to tell you... and I don't expect you not to be mad." Heyden fidgets with the hem of his shirt.

"What is it." I say, less of a question, more of a get it over with. I don't need any more bad news.

"It's about your mom."

"Yeah? Dr. Evelynn Black?" I sigh at the name of my beloved mother.

"So... when you found her internally bleeding... uh- I actually have a third ability I didn't tell any of you about." Heyden fiddles.

"Huh?"

"I can make anyone's heart explode... when I'm mad enough..." He looks up to face me, fire in his eyes.

"Heyden?" I ask, terrified, not of him, but of the answer. "You didn't...?"

"I'm sorry Heyden, I really am," Heyden cries. "I killed your mother four years ago."