Reminiscence {Book Two of the Vengeance Trilogy}

Chapter Twenty Two: Stay Forever With Me

"Danny! Danny, c'mon wake up!" a voice called out. My eyes slowly began to pry open. Peter was on top of me, panic spread across his face. I could feel the dried venom crusting around my mouth, but all of my bones had snapped back into their places and I could move again. Still, I didn't want to.

"Peter, what the hell are you doing here? I was looking for you, how did you find me?" I asked, but Peter ignored my question and reached behind to grab a bottle of water and a rag. He carefully poured a bit of water onto the rag and reached for my face. I winced away from him, causing him to pause. At first he was shocked, but that quickly melted away into sadness.

"I heard everything. About how you are..." there was a long silence between Peter's words before he corrected himself, "were, in Elliot's pack."

"Look, Peter—" I began to say, trying to quickly come up with an excuse, but Peter stopped me before I could continue.

"No, you don't have to say anything. Actually, you probably shouldn't, since it looks like that twat did a number on your face." Peter once again reached for my face, but I flinched away just as I had before. Normally, this was the part where the person taking care of me got frustrated and either yell at me for not letting them help or give up entirely. Still, when I pulled away once again, Peter backed his hand away, not saying a word. I stared at him, unsure of what to say. The right thing to do was apologize. To tell him that I was sorry for lying to him. That I never meant to betray his trust. Some things never change though and after all of these years, I still struggled with apologies.

"So, how bad is the damage? Be honest, I don't need anything sugar coated here," I sighed. Peter let out a small chuckle and that alone was enough to make me crack a smile.

"Well, everything seems to be in place, but you still need to be cleaned up. Does anything hurt?" he asked.

"Nah, the pain is long gone."

"That's good, but that still isn't going to clean all of that off of your face," he said, making small circles with the rag in his hands. He wore a sympathetic smile on his face, which caused me to smile a bit too. Once again, Peter started to move the dampened rag towards my face. Every instinct in me was urging me to move away. Almost like there was a voice in my head telling me, you don't need his help, but I fought it and instead continued to look into his hazel eyes. The coolness of the rag making contact with my skin was normally enough to make me cower back, but all I could focus on was Peter and his eyes that were glowing with different shades of blue and green.

He wasn't looking at me anymore, instead focusing on cleaning up my ugly mug. Not once did I take my eyes off of him though. He was so gentle and careful, as if he were afraid to hurt me. As if he could hurt me. I wondered why. Why wasn't he yelling at me? Why wasn't he angry? I had used him and lied to him. How was he still able to show me so much kindness? I was expecting him to be filled with rage, but instead, he was caring for me.

"Tom's going to be looking for you," I muttered

"No, he won't." Peter didn't stop cleaning as he spoke. I cautiously took a hold of his wrist and he slowly stopped. "Even if he does try to find me, I don't want to be found."

"I don't want to be the reason you're not happy Peter."

"You're not."

"I feel like I destroyed your fairy tale."

"It wasn't a fairy tale. It was a nightmare I tried to dress up to look like a fairy tale so I could make sense of all of this." Peter still wouldn't look me in the eyes. As he continued to clean me up, he softly moved the rag over the corner of my mouth. "There, I think I got all of it."