"Absurd. Just absurd." Joshua was staring at me like I had sprouted three heads. Even though only tiny shafts of moonlight shown through the deserted barn, I could tell he was gaping at me.
Obviously, as I didn't have his support, I looked to Aaron for his. "I'm sorry, Reneger. It won't work. We have to come up with something different." He wasn't visible in the darkness but knowing him, he was smiling almost sheepishly and sympathetically at me.
The three of us lapsed into silence once more. Aaron sounded as though he was shifting uncomfortably on the hay, which, to his credit, did poke into our ragged clothing quite effectively. Joshua remained perfectly still, hidden between the shafts of light; directly in the shadows.
"Hey, it isn't your worst idea." Joshua cut in, evidently trying to cheer me up from my brief stupor.
I felt myself desperately groping for another idea. Another solution. Something to get us out of here. We had to get out of here. Or at least I did.
"Maybe we could stay and see how things will play out." Aaron blurted out suddenly, his voice quiet and perhaps a bit ashamed. He knew as well as Joshua and I that this was the possibility all of us didn't want to find the result to. What I didn't want to hear. It brought back memories, which were just as blurry, hazed, and feverish as I was that night. What happened exactly, I'll never know. All I know is they died.
My mouth was dry. I couldn't respond. "No. You know why that won't work." Joshua responded for me, a glimmer of defiance in his eyes. I wanted to laugh. He looked like the Merry Men when they were determined to make a comeback. Outlaw. Handsome. Rugged. Maybe not handsome.
Aaron shifted some more, the hay crunching under his weight. "Then what do we do?" His voice was filled with weariness, dread, and utter hopelessness.
"We just leave." The words rolled easily off my tongue as if I had been holding the words back for a long time.
The two stared at me for a moment. The Joshua blinked and dipped his head. "Yes."
He lowered his head, eyes glittering in shame. His voice was nearly a whisper. "I think that's the only way."
Aaron was more hesitant. His eyes sparked with worry. Finally, he nodded.
"Fine."
"Great. Let's go." I stood up and walked to the rotting, collapsing entrance to the barn. I looked back, waiting for them.
Joshua got to his feet, groaning melodramatically while Aaron rolled his eyes. He swept past me into the chilly night. Aaron paused for a moment, then heaved himself up. As he passed me, he stopped for a moment.
"Forget about them." He looked me straight in the eye, the normally warm almond-brown dead-serious, his voice equally so.
"Who?"
"Don't fool around. You know perfectly well who I mean. They're the past."
"No, they aren't." I was hopelessly clinging onto my parents now. Our parents. There was no point to it, and we both knew it. Why I still thought anything was a mystery. Live and forget. It was the only way.
His eyes softened to pity, the rest of his face followed. "I think they expected to die. Your name, after all, means --"
"Don't. Even." The thought of being abandoned pounded in my mind. Aaron shrugged then walked past me.
All of them. Slaughtered for conquest and land. And... vengeance. It made my gut churn. I watched ... something. My fever-racked body falling out of bed onto the hard spruce floor, recollecting myself to watch the intruders in black sweep past me through the window. A scream. Mother running to my room, screaming my name. Only to be trapped. A flash of metal sinking into flesh. A cry of agony from her as she crumpled onto the ground, her eyes wrought with sheer terror.
