Genesis

Right and Wrong

     Blaine crossed his arms as he saw me approach.

     "Quinn, you know I can't let you in here without Lucius' say-so," he said. I continued walking, unfazed, as I gave my reply.

     "I know," I stated, "He said I could talk to him."

     As I came close to the tent's entrance, Blaine stepped in front of me.

     "I need to hear it from Lucius," he stated coldly. In that moment, his motives became infinitely clear to me, and any love I'd ever had for him disappeared. In its place, there grew an icy hatred and a will of pin-point precision. I was going to get into that tent, and Blaine Giovani was not going to stand in my way, even if he was Kraig's twin brother.

     "Really?" I asked, "So, I suppose I should go tell him that you're the guy who refused his order. I might even tell him that you want him to hold my hand and walk me inside. Or, just maybe, you'd rather tell him yourself that you've abandoned your post to waste his time."

     I held Blaine's distant stare for a few moments before he stepped aside without a word. I glanced at Emerson, who looked at me nervously as I pushed aside the flaps of plastic at the back entrance of the meat-prepping tent, stepping inside and walking up to the guy whose pair of icy eyes were locked on mine.

     "What are you doing here?" he asked me.

     I looked at him, puzzled.

    "What is it that you think I'm doing here?" I said, sitting down in front of him, "I'm trying to help you."

     "Why?" he asked me, his serious expression unrelenting. I took a moment to observe him. He was sitting down, his knees up in front of him and his ankles tied tightly together. His arms rested on his knees, his wrists tied too. The way he sat looked almost casual. Blood trailed down from his lip which was pulled tightly, in accordance with the rest of his facial expression. His eyebrows were furrowed and his eyes looked sternly at me, waiting for my reply.

     "What do you mean, why?" I asked him.

     He sighed impatiently, "Why go to all this effort? You don't owe me anything. Plus, I thought you hated me."

     I looked at him in disbelief. Did his mind really work that way?

     "First of all," I began to clarify, "I don't hate you. And second, why would it matter if I did? I can't let you die for a crime you didn't commit. You're innocent."

     "And how do you know that?" he asked me.

     "This morning," I explained, "You were looking for your blade. You don't seem the type to lose something so easily, so someone probably stole it and used it to--... to frame you."

     "How do you know I didn't set all this up? Maybe I wanted you to find me this morning, and I pretended to have lost my knife."

     "I know you didn't do it," I replied harshly, forcing the words out through my clenched teeth and pulling my hand to tug on the twine wrapped around his wrists, "These constraints are too tight."

     He pulled his hands away from my grasp, "The constraints are just fine. I'm fine."

     I shot him a look, "Really, Colt? You're tied up here, on the floor of the butchering tent, accused of murder and set to die tomorrow, but you're fine? Do you really expect me to believe such bullshit?!"

     "Look, Quinn, I don't expect you to understand, but I've made peace with it."

     "Made peace?" I looked at him incredulously, standing up abruptly and pacing about, "How can you make peace with that?! It's not right!"

     "WHO CARES ABOUT RIGHT AND WRONG?!" he yelled at me. I suppose he noticed my shocked expression because he took a moment to gather himself, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes before he next spoke.

     "Quinn," he began to explain, "It's not about what's right or what's wrong. It's about the facts. Fact; Lucius thinks I did it. Also fact; he's in charge. So, whether I like it or not, I'm going to die tomorrow, and I made peace with that a long time before today."

     I couldn't believe what I was hearing from him.

     "Quinn, listen to me when I tell you that investigating this will only make your life worse. This day has been coming to me for six years. Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long. What I'm saying is, you can't stop it, and trying to will only make you feel like you're to blame. But you're not. So, please, just sto--."

     SLAP!

     I felt a wave of fiery anger taking me over, spreading from the pin-pricky feeling on the palm of my hand to my arm as I grabbed a shirt-full of him and pulled him towards me.

     "Now it's your turn to listen to me," I growled, noticing his cheek beginning to turn scarlet, "You said I wouldn't understand. You're wrong. I do understand."

     I jerked him towards me when he tried to pull away, "I understand that you don't think you deserve to be saved because of whatever you did that got you into juvie six years ago. I also don't care. As far as I'm concerned, this damned apocalypse, if it was ever good for anything, gave us a chance to be absolved of our sins. Fresh. Fucking. Slate. So, I don't want to hear any more of this bullshit from you. Even you have said that I have a fucking excellent intuition, and that's how I know that you're a good person who doesn't deserve to die. I also know, in the exact same way, that you didn't kill Dorian."

     I let go of his shirt and pushed him away, pulling myself to stand up straight again. I stared hard at him, deciding that I had nothing left to say before I turned around and stormed out of the tent.