Teen Idols And Happy Meals

Spice And Sacrifices

Jacen’s POV

Looking at Eleanor, face down in the snow, lifeless body as still as the ice that landed on it, I couldn’t help but think that she and I weren’t so different. I didn’t want to think it, but like I said, I couldn’t help it. We’d both had shit childhoods, suffered abuse at the hands of an older brother, been abandoned and discarded and passed around like trash.

We’d both been sick with our own self-hatred at one time or another. We’d both wished for death at one time or another. Her wish had already come true that night and it seemed mine was the next to be granted. Even if I didn’t wish for it anymore.

I choked a little, coughing into my sleeve. There was no blood, but there was plenty elsewhere. I ignored it, ignored the way it poured from my chest and stained my borrowed shirt. I ignored the way the agony split my body like a spearhead. Pretending the pain belonged to somebody else, I got up.

It was a slow process. Gripping the tree I’d been braced against, I pulled myself to my feet. One of my wrists had been broken in the motorcycle accident, the other mangled by my attempts to escape my restraints in the cabin. Neither was in proper working order, but none of me was at that point. Every inch of my body had been beaten to the breaking point. Where there weren’t bruises, there were lacerations, and were there weren’t lacerations there were contusions and sprained muscles and broken bones.

I was consistently surprised that I was even still alive. I’d survived a high speed crash, a swim in arctic waters, two weeks locked up with a psycho, reckless medicating, a fight with a lumberjack sized rapist, and even a gunshot wound. Though, based on the blood dripping down to my jeans, that last one wasn’t going to be so easy to bounce back from.

But I had gotten to my feet, and that was something. Blinking against the rush of darkness and dots that had flooded my vision in response to the change in altitude, I steadied myself against the tree, forcing myself to focus.

There was Nikki, kneeling in the snow, sobbing over Eleanor’s body. Eleanor the psycho. Eleanor the monster. Eleanor, the same Eleanor who had abducted us, bruised us, made us bleed. The Eleanor who had shot me. The Eleanor who had allowed our friends – Sylvia, Monica – to be tortured and raped.

And Nikki still cried over her. Because that was the kind of person Nikki was. Nikki was a savior, one of those people that believes that everyone can be saved. But even she had had to accept that there was no saving Eleanor from herself. Nikki forgave everyone, but I knew she’d never forgive herself for what she’d done. 

I stumbled forward and on another day, I might have found my complete lack of coordination amusing. Finally, I made it to Nikki, crashing to my knees before her and immediately pulling her sobbing form in my arms.

She buried her face in my shoulder, and I ignored the shooting pain it sent down my arm. The bullet was lodged somewhere in the upper left side of my chest, just beneath my shoulder muscles, and I could feel her salty tears mixing with the blood.

“I never wanted to kill anybody,” she sobbed. I’d never seen her cry like this and it was ripping me apart inside; worse than any broken bone or gunshot wound. “But-but I couldn’t let her hurt you again.”

“I know baby,” I tried to comfort her, but the words were strained. My throat still felt tight from where Victor had tried to strangle me. I wondered if there would be bruises on my neck in the shape of his fingers. It didn’t really matter – I probably wouldn’t live long enough to find out. “I know you didn’t mean for any of this. But you did the right thing.”

“The-the right thing?” she asked in short, breathy little gasps. I could practically hear the hypothermia in her voice. She would freeze to death if she stayed out here any longer. Maybe I wasn’t making it out of these woods alive, but Nikki still had a chance. “Jacen I killed somebody.”