The Rebel (#Wattys2016)

42. Damage Control

Dedicated to Aprilflower14 and SincerelyEmilie for voting and commenting! You girls are awesome and thanks for that! Hope you enjoy!

The girl lied on her hospital bed. A transparent plastic tube connected her to a plastic bag full of clear liquid that was being pumped into her veins, calming her pain, numbing her down. Electric cables glued to her chest connected her to a monitor to her right, its steady beep beep loud in the otherwise quiet room. Her eyes flew behind her eyelids. Her left hand clutched the blankets, her knuckles white, while her right hand lied limp on her chest. The girl kicked. She kicked the blankets with such force it appeared like she was trying to expel the pain out of her body, as if she could somehow take the agony out of her heart, down her legs and out the fingers of her feet.

The girl failed and the pain remained in her chest.

The boy lied on his bed. He was still as he lied on his back, his chest was the only thing that moved. His black hair was messy, and his eyes held the remnants of the tears he'd shed earlier. The tears multiplied everything in his empty room, and as he stared at his white lamp, it turned into five different lights, shining bright in the dark room, like stars. Ever since he'd begun training to be King, the boy had learned about entire civilizations that looked up to the stars and asked them questions, their eyes hopeful as they waited for the stars to answer back. He'd always considered them foolish, naive. The stars were objects, how could they help humans? And even if they did speak, why would beings as ancient as them bother with fickle humans? Now his lips moved with silent words.

The boy waited for someone to answer.

Miles away the girl mumbled feverish words in her sleep. The Commander to her left didn't bother trying to make out what she was saying. He simply sat on his metal chair, leaned back and with his feet on the girl's bed, striking his beard as he examined her. His eyes roamed the girl's entire body, and if the girl had been awake, she would have hid from his scrutinizing stare, but not after scowling at him. He arranged and rearranged the girl's claim and the doctors' words in his mind, trying to figure out what exactly had happened. The girl whimpered in her feverish sleep, and she clutched the blankets harder.

Miles away to the South the boy shook his head. A few tears escaped his eyes, and he squished them shut. His right hand reached to his left cheek, where a bruise was forming. He briefly remembered that was the cheek the girl had kissed the night he was tortured. He shook his head once again and opened his bright blue eyes. The stars on his ceiling stared at him, reminding him of what he'd asked them earlier, and of his failure. He turned to his side, for a second expecting something —someone- to be there. But when empty blankets met him, something inside his chest cracked for the hundredth time in the same day and the wind was knocked out of him. He was alone.

The girl's lips tingled with unspoken words.

The boy's hands tensed with undone actions.

The girl groaned in agony.

The boy sobbed.

The girl opened her eyes.

The boy closed his.

~

"We did not find them." Were Golmes' first words to Adeen once she woke up.

Adeen squinted against the blinding white lights and groaned in pain. Her shoulder was on fire, and a headache had begun to set in, but she was alive. No, not alive. She felt numb, empty. She was somewhere between dead and alive, hanging to life with her fingertips now that her only thread was gone. Adeen sighed.