Lost in Technicolor

Tied Together

It was about midnight and most everyone was asleep on the train, but Damien and Dane were still awake, casually playing a game of cards. Neither one needed to talk and neither had for the past few hours. It wasn't because they were angry with the other, but rather because they were too tired to talk and far too tired to sleep. Damien sighed and glanced out the window at the dark moving sea. It didn't seem odd that somehow the train tracks had been built to run over the sea because the technology in End World never ceased to amaze.

Just then there was a rattling as the door to their booth opened up and Jade, who seemed to be sleep walking, but was actually waking up from her drug induced sleep, stumbled in. Her eyes looked glazed. She was crying. That was, tears were running down her face but she wasn't making a sound or an expression.

Damien pursed his lips, but didn't look away from her this time. "It hurts doesn't it," he almost whispered to her maliciously.

She nodded, but she must have been too drowsy to feel the full affect of the pain or too out of it to respond properly. Dane held open his arms for her and she climbed onto the bench with him and curled up under his arm. He bit his lip hard, feeling deep sympathy for her. She was barely fifteen.

"Here," Damien slid a cloth package across the table to Dane. "This should make her sleep."

"Isn't there another way?" Dane asked. "She's clearly in great pain."

"I know," Damien looked out the window again, clearly vexed by the situation. "Jade," he spoke to her, but his words didn't seem to reach her, "Jade look at me," he commanded her. At first it seemed that even that wouldn't work, but slowly, very slowly her eyes moved onto him. He frowned, "You're right, Dane I don't think we should give her any more of those drugs."

"But we can't just let her suffer!" Dane protested, but Damien held up a hand to silence him, slender, delicate fingers extended upwards and gently curved backwards.

"I don't know what else to do Dane," he muttered with a genuine frown as his hand retreated.

Jade sat up more, color beginning to fill her eyes again, more tears running down her face. She opened her mouth as if she were about to scream, but didn't. She was too weak to scream and so she just held her mouth open for a moment almost like she were yawning before closing it and whispering, "Please, make it stop."

"Damien," Dane growled angrily, "I don't care how you feel about her, you need to help her now."

"I don't," he replied through thin lips his eyebrows pressed closely to one another.

Jade leaned over as if she were about to vomit and then laid her head on the table, covering it with her arms, digging her nails deep into the paint of the old table.

"Damien," Dane was almost pleading with him, "I can't bear to see her in this much pain!"

Damien looked up at him as if he were confused, scraping his teeth back and forth across his lower lip, "I can't think of anything that will help except for the drugs. I just don't-"

Then the door slid open and Drake spoke before looking on the situation before him, "Damien, I went to check on Jade and she . . . oh."

Damien stopped fidgeting and smiled at Drake as if he were a million dollars, leaning forwards on the table. "Drake," he even went so far as to grin, "sit down there beside Jade would you."

Drake sat down without another choice. Why was Damien commanding him? He glanced at Jade. She looked terrible, white as a ghost and trembling all over.

"What did you do to her?" He asked with a small laugh as his leg touched hers unconsciously.

Damien's smile widened, "Don't move a muscle."