Flames And Blades

Chapter Thirty-Three: Breakeven

"Charlotte, Charlotte, wake up. Please?" Olivers ever so quiet voice whispers as he nudges me. At some point in the middle of the drive, I must have curled up in the center of the car and cocooned myself away from everyone else. I open my eyes, immediately squinting at how bright the sun is. The smell of coffee changes my eyes from forced shut to looking everywhere for its source.

The source of it turns out to be my dad just outside the horribly parked car, where he's holding a back and looking to me as if holding an experiment. My appearance or not, I wanted coffee, and food, so I hop out of the car and walk at a relatively fast pace to get some of both.

By the time I take it over to him, he's laughing ever so slightly and Oliver is too, for what reason I don't know, and the sound of it annoys my ears so I hide by walking over to a corner on the street, and accidentally run into my mom. By the looks of it, doing the exact same thing I had planned on doing.

She was just standing there, back against the red and crumbling brick wall, staring at the abandoned buildings surrounding her. We were in a town I never knew existed but knew that this would have been the mid-city of it, from the crossing lights and little shops tied so close together by a wide strip of crossing roads. She was studying the area with such force that he was completely unaware of me, when a tear rolled down her cheek, her face showing no forms of acknowledgment to it. Her empty hand came to her face and wiped the tear away without a second thought and afterwards her eye caught mine.

"Fell for the coffee trick, too?" Her laugh hides the sniffle she had unsuccessfully, but her smile seems genuine and far off into a time I obviously wasn't around to have known.

"Yeah, it seems to be becoming closer than my blood to me, now." I laugh awkwardly where when she does, it comes out as she had actually thought me, her daughter sly joke, was funny. The realization came to me that I had no idea how to act around any of these three people I was with, and if I was with my brother, I wouldn't know what to do around him, either. Suddenly, I just wanted to know about him. "What's he like, does he look like me? My brother, I mean." Her smile looks saddened again like I had hurt her without even realizing what words had done so to her. She nods and takes a deep breath, appearing to look over the happenstance we were in, as of late.

"Well, he', he's like your father. So much like your father, and has the sly bits of your brother that had always bested me when he was little. He's crazy smart and knows how to get everything he wants. When he wants. He knows how to survive and knows how to do it well. He-" She gets cut off by yelling around the corner.

"Honey, child. Where are you? We should get going before we're late." The two of us just stand there, drinking coffee and waiting for them to come to us. A sarcastic staring contest starts, and I realize that I do look a lot like her, only those eyes. They're almost like her permanent mood ring, changing from blood red and slow flames dancing between them, to dancing velvet at a moment like we were in right now. "We have food! You gotta come to us to get it, though.". At that the decision is made, we were crying uncle only to get the food part of it. The walk takes all of twenty seconds and both Oliver and my father are laughing the same way they were when I got the coffee, by the way, Oliver was hunched over, they had probably never stopped.

"You're lucky your pretty, Warwar, 'cause I don't come to just any guy if they give me food." My mom says, snatching the bag and splitting its warm contents with me.

"Oh, right, they have to have coffee, too." He rolls his eyes with a look that screams 'oh how could I have ever forgotten' and puts his arm around her shoulder.

"And a good book." She laughs and leans into him, munching on her french fries.

"Would you two just get a room before we have to witness another 'lost scene' from Grey's Anatomy, my god." A cracky voice comes from an abandoned door.