Assassination

Chapter 12

Cyrus Anders

Cyrus laid down in bed with a dramatic sigh. He hated days when new recruits came in just as much as he hated the days when new recruits were getting trained. Even though he didn’t have to deal with actually training them himself anymore, he still found the whole process so annoying.

“¿De verdad?” Vara asked him with a laugh on her tongue.

“¿No estás exhausto?” He asked.

“Yo soy. ¡Pero no soy dramático!” Vara threw a pillow over from her bed at him.

He scoffed at her remark. He wasn’t dramatic. At least, he wasn’t being dramatic right then. He threw the pillow back at her and watched her gasp in surprise that he had reciprocated her action.

She grabbed the fluffed object and, despite the ache in his bones, he did the same with his own pillow. The fight quickly escalated from throwing their pillows at each other to wrestling until they eventually became too tired, and both of them collapsed onto each of their own respective beds.

She moved slowly to her side to ask, “¿Empatar?” He just nodded, not even having the energy to respond back.

He put his pillow back onto his bed and laid his head on it, slowly falling asleep.

♚♕♚

“Hola. ¿Qué tal?” He opened his eyes and saw that he was sitting at his childhood dining room table.

He looked up to see who had spoken to him. He recognized the voice but still felt like it was foreign to his closer memories. He saw Katherine standing in front of him with a smile on her face. Oh, he guessed that she did know Spanish after all. That was good, he thought, yeah. That was good.

“No dormir en la mesa.” She said, and he instinctively sat up straighter and taller.

“Yo no era dormir.” He said with a look of fake innocence on his face.

She rolled her eyes at his obvious lie but didn’t mention if she found it to be stupid. He felt nervous, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why it was that he felt that way. So he simply waited to see what she was doing.

She walked into the conjoined kitchen, leaving him alone in the room. He looked around to see what it looked like. He wasn’t sure why. He had been there a million times before. He had the room memorized practically as well as he knew the back of his very own hand. Still, some things were different.

The pictures held different faces, well, not exactly. He could tell it was still his family, but they looked older. He guessed that made sense. He hadn’t seen them in so long. Of course, they had naturally aged over time. He thought of himself as silly to find the changes to be odd at all.

Holiday was taller, and her face had slimmed out quite a bit. She stood with more confidence and smiled with more meaning. He wondered how school was going, if she was still in school.

Birdy was still almost just as short as she had been when he left. He laughed, knowing that she would most likely be angry about that. He noticed she kept her hair in a ponytail in most of the pictures. She should still be in school. Maybe the hairstyle was trending among her classmates.

James was just the same as always. Wearing the same clothes and smiling the same smile. He held his hand over his chest in most pictures, and his hair had begun to gray, though. He smiled, but he knew his father wasn’t supposed to be there. Why was his father there?

Monica, his mother, seemed to start favoring slightly shorter skirts. She had always liked floor-length when he was younger, but now they fall around mid-calf. He would ask later if it made it easier to walk.