Teen Idols And Happy Meals

Strawberries And Blood

Nikki’s POV

“Never,” the word tasted like blood and stale tears on my tongue. The searing, agonizing truth of those five letters was almost suffocating; it stuck to my lungs like glue, clogged my airways. My body had been polluted with panic, my head sick with desperate determination. It was almost hard to breathe in the wake of the love I felt for this dying man.

It didn’t matter how close the wound was to his heart, or how much blood he had lost. I would never give up on Jacen. As long as he was breathing, as long as I was breathing, I would fight.

I allowed myself one last look into his eyes – those unnaturally blue eyes that inspired belief in a higher power because God, how could anything be so blue? – and then I was running.  I choked back the bitter salt of tears and took off across the hills.

Adrenaline spiked in my veins like a toxic element, propelling me forward like a woman possessed. I certainly felt like there was a demon inside me, clawing at my brain and screaming in my ear, its putrid words running together in a nearly unintelligible stream.

Run. Jacen. Blood. God there was so much blood wasn’t there? Jacen. Jacen. Jacen. Jacen needs you. This is all your fault you know? He took a bullet for you and now he’s dying. Dying. Dying. Dying by the second. Blood, God there was so much blood. Damn it run, you have to run faster than that. Runrunrunrun.

The night was silent around me, but the words were deafening. They made me want to scream, rip out my eardrums – if such a thing was even possible. My own psyche was tormenting me, allowing the truth to tear me apart from the inside.

It was the sort of thing you couldn’t outrun, but I ran anyway. I wasn’t just fighting the truth, I was fighting time, fighting death, fighting fate. Jacen had always said that he and I were fate. And that was pretty and all, but fate could go fuck itself. I was taking destiny into my own hands.  

I would choke the life out of destiny until it gave me the outcome I wanted.

The snow was up to my calves and the branches were slicing the bare skin of my arms, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about frostbite or blood or destiny. All I cared about was Jacen. He had taken a bullet for me, now it was time for me to be the hero.

My lungs burned and my veins sung with adrenaline but I kept running. My legs, my body, my soul – they all ached. I could feel bruises taking shape under my skin, courtesy of Eleanor’s attacks. Thinking of Eleanor only made me angrier though – because I hated her, because I had killed her, because she was dead and that still wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t sure which, but thinking of Eleanor made me run faster regardless.

Rage vibrated through my nerves, swam in my head. The forest around me seemed indistinct and unimportant. My mind was somewhere else – my mind was with Jacen. I wanted so desperately to be with him – to hold him and soothe him and tell him everything was okay. But I couldn’t – because if I had stayed he would have died, and then nothing would ever be okay.

So I ran; I ran to make everything okay, I ran to save Jacen, and I ran to save myself. It would be naïve to say that I couldn’t live without Jacen. I very well could have. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to live in a world without Jacen’s kisses, or his laughter, or his beautiful eyes – because a world where Jacen didn’t love me seemed hopelessly incomplete.

So I ran; I ran to make sure that world never existed.

A steady flow of memories had invaded my mind, and I let it, because it drowned out the screaming demons. The memories, it seemed, proved a much more useful prod anyway. I thought of Jacen, and shower sex, and how we used to fight until we went hoarse – and it made me run despite the way my feet slipped out from under me. I thought of the playhouse, and the tree, and the pond and all the other spots that his presence had made magical – and it made me run despite the way my skin bled.