Haven's Army

Chapter 9

I sat down next to Katie. Andrew had fallen asleep minutes before, curled up with his head in her lap like a child. She was still running her fingers gently through his soft brown curls and looking down at him, both pity and love showing expressly in her clear blue eyes.

"Hi," I said simply, softly. When she only responded with a faint smile, I continued. "How is Andrew doing?"

She shrugged. "He's getting better." Then she sighed. "I can't imagine how he feels. I've never had someone that was that close to me before. I mean there was always..." She trailed off.

"Mae?" I prompted quietly.

She nodded. "But it's not as if we were extremely close or anything." We sat in silence for a long moment as she thought. "It's so hard to see him like this. It's hard to lose him."

I didn't know how to respond. I tried to imagine if Nathan got distant, but he already was enough that I couldn't see it getting much worse.

As if on cue, Nathan sat on the deck next to me.

"How was it?" I asked, almost afraid for an answer but thankful for an excuse to stop talking to the oddly depressed Katie.

"I got in a fight with Dennis again," he said. Just before I could sigh, he interjected. "He was being an a-...a jerk. He was trying to get us to turn back and regroup, maybe get a following."

I thought for a moment. "He might have a point."

"But," he said, "how would we get a following, exactly? Obviously, those people are holding back from revolt for a reason."

I nodded. "True."

"Besides, we've made it this far without help."

"Barely," Katie said, a grim reminder of the two most recent deaths in our group that sent a sharp ache to my heart immediately. Could we really make it all the way on our own? Our past missions had all been failures. How could we win?

Nathan put an arm around my waist and pulled me closer. I laid my head on his shoulder and he kissed me on the head. I felt a sort of warmth spread through me, much different than the shocks of emotion I usually experienced.

For a few minutes, I allowed my mind to go elsewhere. I thought not of war and death but of peace and victory, and my life after. All that mattered was the rocking of the ship, the spray of ocean, the hum of chatter, and the warmth of Nathan, my whole being relaxed into his and his into mine.

But then it ended. He turned and brushed his lips on my temple, whispering a simple "Love you," that sent a shiver down my spine, and left.

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

The light was waning, leaving stripes of pink and blue in the sky, before the next meeting was out. Everyone had left the deck and I offered first shift along with a few others. When the meeting got out, Hazel and Rachel were the first out, looking tired, then Dennis, who looked stressed and sleep-deprived. Next was Nathan, who mostly looked annoyed, as he often did. Naomi shut the door behind them, looking exhausted. Nathan spotted me and made his way over.

"We're going ahead with it," Nathan said. "At least if we die we'll be martyrs." He must have seen the expression on my face because he looked like he regretted what he said.

"Hey," he said softly, taking my chin in a hand. "Hey, look, it'll be alright, okay? We'll find some way out of this."

But I knew he was unsure. And suddenly I was afraid. Afraid of what might happen. People were dying. I could be next. Or worse, Nathan would go and leave me alone, an empty shell like Andrew or Lloyd.