Lucky and the Killer ✔

Goodbye, Lucky

It happened the way water filled jugs. It came to life the way smoke billowed up into trees. It sank into place like a busted ship. Creston's power flew into King the way the ocean drowned the earth beneath it: fast and unyielding.

"How does it feel, son?" Creston asked with a bit of a smile still playing on his face in the black air.

"Don't talk to me," King said. He shut his eyes so that he couldn't even see their figures. What was once mostly dark turned a total dark. He could feel the wind hitting his skin. He could feel the fire on the back of his neck.

"King...," Helix whispered.

"I'm going to end you all."

"Good," Creston smiled. "Come at me. New horses have to be tamed, after all."

King flew towards them. He hurtled a punch to Creston's shoulder with an almost lightning-sort of magic behind it. The demigod flew backwards and into a nearby building. Glass shattered into his skin, but it wouldn't make him bleed. Creston stood, wiping his jaw, and grinning from ear-to-ear.

"You've taken it from her alright," he said.

"You made me kill my own mother," King cried. "I swear to God that I'm going to kill you, Creston!"

"Why do you call me that?" Creston said as he landed in a hit of his own on King. The air around them vibrated inside the vacuum of power their very bodies created. "Call me dad."

"Never."

"You might as well," Creston said with another hit. "I'm the only one you've got left."

"Go to hell," King spat. Another pop of energy came from his fist and sent Creston flying. They split into the air like birds—each falling down the street from the hit of another.

"Calm down, King."

"You got what you wanted," King snarled. "Now, here it is. Deal with it!"

"Fine," Creston said. He threw his hand, palm down, in front of him, and the air froze. The crickets didn't cry. The wind didn't howl. All that remained was thunder, and it was a thunder he created. "Now that I have you, stay down and obey."

Bolts of lightning rained down from the sky. They pushed King to the asphalt and knocked him unconscious in an instant. Raw power was easy for Creston to control, because there was no finesse or precision involved—something of which he'd long-since mastered. King was too rash, and so was she. He stared down at King and Lucky as they lay, sleeping side-by-side, in the rain. Creston snapped his fingers. Milo came.

"Yes?" Milo asked.

"Subdue them," Creston said. "We're all going home, and this time, my son is coming with me."

"No!" Lucky screamed. "King, don't go."

Milo held her arms behind her back as she watched King from the other side of the grated wall. The ice was everywhere. It dripped over everything like hardened foil. It wasn't Earth. It wasn't her home, that was obvious. It wasn't anything she knew and neither was King. They'd woken up, and he'd woken up...different. He'd woken up sooner, and Lucky found herself bound and begging for King to snap out of things.

"I told you to stay away from me, Lucky," King said with a clenched jaw. Shadows pooled into the hollows of his cheeks. Slivers of ice pierced the air they tried to breathe, and it burned like cauterized mint. He watched her: shaking in Milo's arms as black eyeliner dripped down over her pale, shivering face. Lucky: lucky to live, lucky to be alive, lucky to be some sort of mortal. She wasn't much different than Anna, and Anna was in the ground. In the ground—like Gray. Rotten like his mother and Liz would be. "You can't take me lightly this time. You can't just scream at me and expect me not to kill you. I will, so stay away. When my father comes to you, give him your power. Don't fight against him on it. Please, for me—as the last favor I'll ever ask of you."

Lucky sucked in a breath and elbowed Milo in the side. He weighed her down, and she couldn't get up. How was it that she ended up being the one fighting? How was it that she ended up trying when King already gave up? Frost followed his footsteps as he descended down the hall in front of them—every step, a step further away from her—down into the icy black, down into an abyss she couldn't reach.

"King!" Lucky cried. "Stop."

King stopped. He stared down at the water beneath his feet. It lay, constantly anxious, under a solid, perfect sheet of ice. That old ice was so fake. He knew better than to think things could be the way they once were. Evil was something that'd always been a part of him. He couldn't change that no matter who it was for. It brewed under his skin like the water beneath his feet and no amount of ice was going to cover it up forever. For so long, he'd been able to go through life without getting close to anyone. He knew the day he first kissed her that he was going to ruin her life.

"You're hopeless," King said. "You're so needy...to be with someone like me. Do you like it? That's it. You must like it. You like getting hurt. You like being around someone stronger than you, so you don't have to be strong yourself. That's what's right, isn't it? Helpless. Out of your hands. You're not responsible for it. There was nothing you could do, right? Of couse not."

"King," Lucky bit her lip. "Don't walk away. I don't care what you say, but don't. Don't go. If you go, I'll lose you. I'll lose you all over again, and I don't want that to happen. I don't want to. Please, King. Stay."

"Goodbye, Lucky," King sighed. His feet hesitated just once before his shoes took to clacking against that rocky ice. He could feel it inside: his father's curse. What he couldn't bring himself to feel...were his mother's tears.

"You're just going to leave me here?" she shouted, now some distance away. "And, I am not needy, you asshole!"

He closed his eyes and walked. It wasn't supposed to be that way. He wasn't supposed to kill innocent people. He wasn't supposed to ever hurt her. He wasn't supposed to be just like his father, but he was, and everyone he knew would drown in the waves he made—especially Lucky. Her voice drowned out in the distance: her screams, her shrieks and cries. It wasn't worth living like that. He opened his eyes and walked towards his father.

"What are your thoughts?" Creston mused as he fell into stride beside his son. He raked his hand through his hair and stared up at the glowing moons in the Deraindian sky.

"I just...," King groaned, "need to reset. Reset it all. Reset you. Reset Me. Reset life."

"Would it matter if you did?" Creston smiled. "Life has a way of screwing you over in a multitude of ways. It'd just be something else."

"No, I could fix things," King groaned.

"Could you?" Creston smirked.

King looked at his father's outstretched hand. He could feel the energy in the air buzzing around like drunken bees in winter. He could feel it inside his very veins, and somewhere deep inside, he could feel himself begging not to move. The dying human in his eyes kept seeing Lucky in Milo's arms, and though it was wrong, he stepped after Creston anyway.