Regretful Love

Chapter Eight

                  

Morning came, finally. Kell watched as the dark blue sky became lighter and the grey dawn light started spreading over the riverbank. Still he waited, though. Didn't want another medication screw-up. He waited until the girl woke, yawning and stretching, saying nothing. He liked her silence. There weren't many who were comfortable with not speaking. We have an understanding by now, he thought, and she took herself off to the river, where he could hear her splashing around and washing up.

When she was gone, he got his box. The pain had been so constant through the night that he was almost used to it, almost couldn't remember what it was like not to have it, not to carry it around. It was tough to sit upright, what with his chest hurting as it did, so he settled for propping himself up on his pack as he opened the box.

It was fast this time, his hands sure and steady as though they knew that that was the only way to get him feeling better, get him up on his feet. For a few more minutes, he drowsed off till the girl came back, dripping water on his face whilst looking down to see if he was all right.

"Not dead yet," he said, opening one eye.

She nodded. "I can see that."

It took a while to pack things away, and the girl kicked dirt over the fire as she'd seen him do before. And then they were on their way again, back to the road, back to the walking.

Though the morning had seemed cloudy, it was an illusion, just the heat of the day saving itself up to burn the blue into the sky. They walked well into the morning before either said anything more. Kell was still shaky, his knees still bothering him. He didn't want to talk about what he'd told her unless she brought it up first.

"Why?" she asked out of nowhere, her voice seeming strange in the buzzing-insect hum of lunchtime.

"Why what?" he asked. There were a lot of whys in the world, after all, though he was pretty sure which why it was she was asking.

"Why all this? Why do it? Why the drugs and ... why all of it?"

It wasn't like these were questions he hadn't asked himself, and he wasn't sure that he had answers to them, if he was honest.

"I could tell you a lot of things," he said a while later. "Growing up in the orphanage was tough, but it wasn't that hard. No one beat me—well, no more than the beating a kid normally gets from the older guys at school. I wasn't hungry. I had a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, and meals on the table. Could have been a lot worse. 'Course, could have been better, too. I don't remember my parents, though, so it's not like I had much to compare with, if you know what I mean. And I had Angelius: my rock, my love."

"It was a difficult start to life, I suppose," she empathized, but she sounded doubtful.

"No tougher than others have had, and better than many," said Kell.

His stomach was grumbling a little, and he wished that he'd eaten more of the stew the night before. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He ignored it.

"I liked being liked, I suppose," he said. "Liked being a part of something, and that made it easier for other people to persuade me to do things that probably I shouldn't have done. So there was that."

"And?" She wasn't buying that.

"And, I don't know. I guess some people just have that natural tendency to get addicted. I think about that. Think about what would have happened if I'd just said 'no' that first time. If I hadn't let Mike talk me into taking that coke. Maybe things would've turned out different. But there's not much point going over it again and again, I suppose."