Are We Human?

Chapter 16

My home was back but our hearts weren't. Phil told me all about the terrors of his new training program that night and I held him as we cried. He showed me the purple blotches and forming scars that marked his once clear pale skin and I washed away the bad memories attached to them with salty tears and trembling kisses. 

I could hear him crying at night sometimes, his screams suffocated by the midnight dark of the sky and the silence that wrapped us tightly in a frozenly rigid blanket. It physically pained me when the ear splitting shrieks of his dreadful night terrors cut through the air or when he flailed his limbs in defense against the empty spaces around us. I wanted to tell his brain to shut up, to stop the memories in their tracks before they made their marks on his innocent psyche. 

I wanted to help him as much as I possibly could, but with my limited resources and supplies, the best I could do for him was hold him as he fought against nothing and wipe his tears away with only my filthy thumbs when they began to leak from his eyes. 

Of course, this only happened at night. When the sun was still up and brightly lit, his heart turned cold and he became the stone warrior that the government made him to be. He spoke with little to no emotion, no expression, no life. He gave me nothing, so I gave him my all. 

One night, we decided to watch the sun sink below the horizon together for a lack of anything better to do. I had to do a bit of begging just to get him to sit down beside me on my wooden bench so we could talk, but when he finally did he slipped his hand into mine and threaded our fingers together, just like we used to do before this mess. He hadn't even attempted to be this romantic with me since he returned, so it was fair to say that I was more than a little bit surprised, but let him do it nonetheless. I even risked dropping my head onto his shoulder, him still being the perfect height for the action. I immediately thought it was a mistake when he released my hand, but breathed a sigh of relief when he looped his arms around my waist and drew me in closer. 

His cheek rested on the top of my head as we sat there, but he eventually broke the silence in a choked up voice. "What the hell are we going to do now, Dan?" 

He didn't need to elaborate. I knew we'd only last a little while longer living like this; with no resources and demons running rampant in our heads. The clothes on our backs were barely getting us through the night anymore. The food that scarcely found its way to us never got us through the day without our stomachs protesting against the starvation with pain. It was only a matter of time before one of them killed us.

Mind spinning and gears turning, a terrifying thought popped into my head. I tried hard to cut it at its roots, but it spread like butter through my brain until I couldn't think of anything better. I shuddered and closed my eyes, feeling myself beginning to spin out of control.

I wrapped my arms around Phil in an attempt to keep me grounded, but my mind barely settled. I knew it was all we could do, but I didn't know if I wanted to admit it.

"Phil," I began, throat closing up and tongue scratchy, but I pressed through it. "I think I know what we need to do," We made eye contact then, and I shook my head as tears pooled in my eyes. "But I don't think you're going to like it."

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A/N

That's the end! Sorry it had to end like this, but there will be a sequel, just probably not for a while. Sorry to the literal one person reading this.