Trust From Within - Book 3 Daughter of a Monster Series

Bonus Chapter- Long Forgotten Grief/Give Up

Brine's PoV

Nothing but darkness. It's all I can see. It consumes me, everything dark, except for my hearing. I can hear everyone and everything. It's so cold here. But there is something that gives me warmth, something that gives me hope, sparks my magic and I to keep trying to wake up. I know I'm in a coma, I know I'm not conscious, and not just because everyone is saying it.

I'm not stupid, and neither is my magic.

"Brine, you always said you would wait for the day I would have to get you out of bed, you were always first up. Well, that time is now, and here I am, trying to get you out of bed, so please, help me out here," Steve says gently, his voice sounding so far away, yet so close at the same time. "Jade needs you here, Brine. You can't be her father if you're with Sana, and I know you want her back, you have ever since she passed, even with Jade here I see that sadness lingering behind all your layers, but you can't leave your daughter here. She needs her father, she has no one else."

I've been trying to find my bonds, to Karn, Jade, and even the weird, faint feeling one that connects me to Steve, even the broken ones to Sana and Notch, but I can't reach them, I can't feel them. It scares the hell out of me.

My magic curls around me, trying to comfort me, and I hug it back, as we only have each other in this void like place. "Y-you can't leave, n-not-t yet-t," he says, his voice starting to crack and break up. Shit, now I've made him cry. Well done, Brine.

I hear the door open, someone stepping into the room. They obviously hug him by the sounds of it, which puts me at ease knowing someone is with him. "Nathan, you can come in boy," Steve croaks out. Nathan is here, and thank goodness he's alive because I would not be able to handle it knowing Jade would be going through what I've had to go through. But, if he's here, that must mean...

"Do we have a clue on when he might wake up?" I hear her familiar voice ask, my magic perking up at the sound of our daughter. If only I could just sit up and give her a hug right now. Fucking explosion, ruining everything.

"No, Karn says he's in a coma, we just need to wait it out and hope he heals," Steve replies.

He goes on to tell the two of them about my energetic younger self pulling them out of bed each morning. Lazy asses.

"Just before he... got shot, he could easily best both Notch and I with all his little tricks and techniques. He was fast, so damn fast, would have us disarmed before we knew what was happening. Dad taught him a lot of the things he knows." I... never thought I'd hear him say that. Never in my life would I think he would tell someone about us like this, about when we were so close.

"What happened to them?" Nathan asks gently.

My mind flashes me back to that night, the last night I was nine years old. When we were sitting in that safe room and Notch and Steve were promising that Mum and Dad were alright, that they were just helping clean up the village.

And I believed them.

And how I woke up on my tenth birthday to find my parents dead, I was the first to find Mum.

It broke me. I know it did, I'm not ignorant of the fact, but I also understand there is no possible way I can fix that.

It's why I was so upset when the other two left me in that mine, it's why I've always been afraid of small, dark, underground spaces. Because it all reminds me of that night.

It's also why I hate my birthday.

Steve continues to tell them about that night and that morning, stirring something up in me, some sort of relief that he's telling them, and I can hear that it's all just pouring out, whatever filter was there is now gone.