Fireheart | Raven Reyes [O.H.]

5 | not a hero

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chapter five!
NOT A HERO
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ARES SPENDS THE night thinking about his mother.

Jasper's frequent, drawn-out cries of pain chase any thought of slumber from his mind. It's the second day of enduring his anguished groans that cut through the serenity of the forest any time there's any bit of silence. He's come to cherish the few moments of quiet he manages to get throughout the day.

He doesn't know why he thinks of her. Maybe it's because he'd been staring at the ceiling of his tent for so long that he doesn't know what to do anymore, and his mind had eventually drifted to Elena Ortega's face. Or, at least, what he can remember of it. He has vague outlines— they share a similar facial structure and high cheekbones. Her shoulder-length dark hair was always braided back, and it somehow smelled like apples even though they couldn't afford many showers.

Ares mostly hears her voice. She'd liked to call him her "conejito," or little bunny, because of how restless he was as a child. He remembers how it would change tone when she'd teach him Spanish— like speaking it was the same as returning to an old home. She loved using it and tried to teach him as much as she could, incorporating the language into everything they did together.

"And when you have a niño of your own," she'd said, bopping him on the nose with the pad of her index finger, "you can teach them the language, too."

The last time he'd seen her, he'd been eight years old. He still remembers the day as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. A kid in his class had gotten sick, so the other children were dismissed to keep the infection from spreading. He'd walked the entire length of the Ark alone since his father wasn't there to pick him up yet.

It comes in flashes now. His key card swiping through the slot. The buzz of the door opening. Ares walking in, his eyes automatically drawn to something his eight-year-old eyes couldn't comprehend: there was his mother, tangled with a man who most certainly was not Castor Ortega. He couldn't do anything except cry in that moment. There was nothing else he could do— he may not have fully understood what was going on, but he was aware of the overpowering sense of wrongness that accompanied their actions. And his mother had scrambled over to him, running her hands over his cheeks soothingly and explaining things he couldn't comprehend.

A few hours later, she was gone, and it was almost as if she'd never existed.

Ares had been dimly aware of the fact that there had been a fight between his parents. He'd been sent on an unnecessary errand all the way on the other side of the Ark, and when he'd returned, his father was downing a bottle of liquor like it was the last bottle of water in a desert. And then the bottles never left.