Hidden and Silent (SpyxFamily)

Ch. 15: Part Five

"Oh, #%&^!" Damian swore under his breath, whipping his head behind him where the heart-stopping sound of an adult's feet sped up down another corridor.

Anya hardly noticed. She was motionless. Stunned breathless in the wake of Damian's words and uncomprehending of the tremble in her chin and shivery ache in her chest. She couldn't take her eyes of him, slightly agape, unable to pull herself together. But it didn't matter.

Damian was up in an instant, not even looking at her, and Anya was pulled to her feet through no action of her own. Damian raced in the opposite direction from the incoming faculty member.

"This way!" He hissed urgently and dragged her around a corner.

Very few times had Anya ran unimpeded down a hall with no one in sight, no one to lessen the sound of the pounding of her heart, or distract her from the adrenaline setting her nerves ablaze, sizzling like bacon in a pan. Damian's rant still fresh in her mind, her stunned thoughts clung to the present feeling of air rushing past her ears and his hand firmly gripping her's. They went as quietly as they could, though their steps still echoed like little scuffs bouncing on the walls.

Not her fault.

Unbidden, Anya gasped a shaky sob as if it had been abruptly and forcefully squeezed out of her chest.

Damian snapped worried glances at her as he slowed and peeked cautiously around the next corner. "Wh-what is it now?!" He whispered anxiously before continuing, but his nervous attention for the teacher nearing the end of the hall they had just left, had him pulling her along again.

She belonged here.

Damian kept shooting glances back her way, confused and panicked at her continued tears. Had what he said upset her?! Why?! Why did everything he do make her cry?!

As they turned down yet another hall, Damian searched for the supply closet he knew was here somewhere. He found it and was pleased to find it unlocked. He swung it open and he and Anya sat on the floor.

"U-umm, Forger?" Damian whispered uneasily into the dark.

She knew. They had to be quiet and she couldn't stop crying. She stifled it as best she could, but it just wasn't working.

Not her fault.

The words were pain. They were hope and grief and relief and something beautiful, but searing hot. She was afraid to touch it, and it filled her with a want so strongly, it ached.

It was so different from what Demetrius had told her. He believed everything he had been taught by the lab growing up, but thought they should get to live how they wanted, anyway.

And Damian. . .

Damian had outright said Kai was wrong. With no hesitation. With little insight to what the director had said or what was expected of an esper or why. He so easily claimed them invalid and Anya had never heard anything so exquisite in her life. So beautiful it made her sob, almost unbelievable that it could exist. That it might exist.

But still.

He was and outsider. What could he know?

And yet. It was everything she wanted.

"Then let it fall." He had said. As if no consequence was worth the bad things that could happen. He had been so insistent on it. So sure.

He had challenged her father's word so completely and utterly and she had to wonder if he could be right.

Anya inhaled unsteadily. Deeply. She fought the way her chest seemed to break into a million pieces, the wet sobs that crawled up her throat, and exhaled, hiccupping instead of expelling another sob.

She couldn't see her hands in her lap, though she stared at the inky blackness of where they should be.

She felt Damian looking in her direction. Or trying to. It was hard to see her. And he wanted so much to ask what was wrong. To try and assuage her fears and anxieties like he had tried so many times already.

But before he could, angry footsteps sounded in the hall and they both stiffened.

The teacher didn't speak. She elected to let the sharp clack of her heels on the hardwoods floors scare the students she was trying to catch instead. To let the harsh sound and fear of getting caught because they did something bad, ride apprehensive nerves up their shoulders.

Through the door, they her heard her getting closer, and closer. Click, clack, click, clack. Each footfall resounding ripples of audible vibrations into the air.

Damian was closer to the door and sat as near as he dare, listening intently.

Closer, and closer.

Damian didn't want to get a tonitrus bolt. He couldn't. If Henderson learned they didn't go straight to the nurse's office, surely they would get one.

Closer, and closer.

The steps felt unbearably loud as they approached nearer and nearer, and sweat glazed the back of Anya's neck.

Closer, and closer. Until she was right outside the door and walked past with a displeased sigh. And left. She must have stepped out of her classroom at the noise she heard, but she couldn't leave her students unattended for long.

Damian and Anya released the breath they'd been holding, and Anya shuddered, instantly feeling the urge to cry again as if it had been put on hold like a telephone call and was suddenly back, ready to continue as it had been.

She took another deep breath, willing herself to keep together, willing her thoughts to stop thinking of the things she couldn't bear to think about if it couldn't be true. She wanted it to be. But she was scared and hesitant. She didn't know how to let go of what she had to grab something new. Like a monkey, swinging from one vine to the next, releasing one to grasp another.

"What do I do?" A strained whispered escaped her lips from where she'd buried her face in her knees.

Damian was quiet. In the darkness of the supply closet, she could believe she was the only one here as she waited for him to say something. To think something. And the moment was drawn out too long and sucked dry of any of the comfort that Anya had felt earlier.

"You could stop running away." He whispered back not unkindly.