Fallen (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 51 - Healing

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I was ready to head outside an hour before I was supposed to meet him. I did not get much sleep anyway. It was hard to go to sleep and to stay asleep. There were constant nightmares, some I couldn't remember and some I barely did.

I always woke up with my magic flaring causing damage to whatever room I had fallen asleep in. The flaring was constant, even when I wasn't asleep. It wasn't normal, I knew that. My father's magic didn't do that, no one else's did. He constantly had to help me get it under control with spells. It seemed to become worse whenever we were drawing close to approaching another clan.

I should have been used to the nightmares, but it didn't quite seem natural, even though it was something I encountered so often.

There was noise coming from the kitchen, showing that my father was up too. That, to me, was usual. He usually woke up a few hours after I did. I wondered if he knew I was considering heading out. He always insisted on knowing where I was going.

I had not yet decided whether to go out and meet the guy I had met at the bar the previous night. I didn't quite trust him, but he was right. I was curious about who he was. Something about him seemed so familiar...

It was frustrating.

Frustrating because my body didn't seem to agree with my suspicion and distrust of him. When he walked up to me in that bar, it already felt different than it had with the others. I felt at ease with him there. Maybe it was just the vibe he gave off.

I doubted that though. Something about him just told me I had known him before, but I couldn't remember. I hated that. I knew it was my fault I couldn't remember things. My father had told me I asked him to make me forget everything painful from the past.

It made me wonder what kind of pain the guy was connected to; how much of the constant aching in my chest was connected to him.

Sometimes I asked my father if he would give me my memory back, but he always said it wasn't a good idea. Said the memories my mind had created to fill in the gaps would clash with the others; I would just end up confused and in more pain at the horrors of the past.

I wondered if what I chose to forget was worse than the flashes of recent events I remembered. Maybe it was because messing with my memory had consequences, but I couldn't remember things for every long. I still felt them, though.

"Ashen, want to leave earlier?"

I turned from the balcony doors I had been staring out of when my father walked into my room.

Although it had been months since I first woke up to him explaining what happened and what we were going to do, he still seemed unfamiliar to me.

We didn't do much together apart from visiting the clans. We would return to the ground after striking fear into clans enough for them to basically bow to him and then not really address each other until the next time we moved to another clan, or until he needed to calm my magic.

"Why?" I asked.

"Seems like we should. I don't like this city."

"I do."

It was quiet. The people there didn't fear me like everyone in every clan we went to did. At first, people had not but as we visited more, they began recognising us when we arrived. Kids would start crying, adults would cower and hide.

Of course, their reactions made sense.

On the ground, there was a chance no one knew who I was. No one in that city had except the bartender who clearly feared me as well, and Kendrick.