MARKED

03

"You should sleep."

Aaron's voice softly cut through the darkness of the store. The sun had gone down a long time ago, leaving us in nothing but silver lighting. I could see the moon from where I sat. It was full and beautiful yet ominous at the same time. To me, the moon did not hold the same oblivion as the stars surrounding it. It did not twinkle in delightful ignorance. It shone but it was aware.

At his request, I stayed quiet.

"Please. Get rest."

Quiet.

A sigh. "Fine."

It had been hours of not speaking. I had no idea how long it's actually been. Or what time it was. I had a watch but the battery died a long time ago. It felt like a little past midnight, however. My eyelids were heavy and my butt hurt from sitting down for so long but I hadn't moved. And to Aaron, not one word was muttered. I had no desire to engage with him. And judging by the cold shoulder he had given me, I could tell he was in the same boat.

I could hear the stranger's breathing behind me. It was rugged and I could tell his lungs were struggling to gasp at the air, but as the hours passed by it became more steady. I checked his pulse from time to time, to see if he was in fact alive or at least on his way to being more alive than he was now. And each time I checked, the pulse quickened. I knew Aaron felt triumph over this and I let him have it. Saving a life was not on my list of To Do's. Who am I to judge if it was on his?

"I'll try to catch some sleep. If there is anything, wake me up." And with that, he rested his back on the wall beside me, closing his eyes. I looked over at my brother as he settled in to get some rest and I felt a slight pang of guilt for yelling at him earlier.

Just because our world is in shambles does not mean your humanity has to be, too.

If surviving meant I lost my sense of humanity to him, then I'll let him think what he wants. We've been able to come so far, surviving the destruction that caught us all by surprise. And it was because I made sure we lived until the next day. I stopped trusting people. I killed to live. I ran from my Normal in order to go on. My hardness is the reason why. If I gave into feeling like he so often did, then we were as good as dead. I did not believe we came all this way to just die. That's why I fight so hard. That's why I fight.

Behind me there was some movement and I turned around to see the stranger waking up and my heart stopped. His eyes opened and blinked a few times before he looked around to take in what was around him. His eyes landed on me and they widened. He tried to move away but he winced as he did so, and lied back down, eyes shut tight in pain. When he opened them again, he saw Aaron's sleeping form and his hands began fidgeting, looking around for something to protect himself with. His pocket knife. But it was in Aaron's pocket.

"Wh-where.. Who are..," his words stuttered. His voice was hoarse. He had blue eyes. They were disturbingly bright in the darkness of the room. At first I had nothing to say. Much like him, my tongue was twisted. I was not expecting him to live, for me to speak to him. I wanted to leave. I wanted to take our things and leave. But, given our circumstances, I knew that was not the right thing to do.

I cleared my throat. "You were unconscious and bleeding." I looked to his side, to motion to where the wound was. His hand went and slowly reached up to touch what Aaron cleaned and bandaged. He took his hand away to see if there was blood, and he was surprised to see there was none. He looked at Aaron again, and then at me. And then at the things surrounding us, the shelves and the packs and the weapons. It was as if he was trying to understand why a couple of random strangers decided to save him.

"Y-you helped me," he said in a questionable voice. He stared at me in confusion. "Why?"

I shrugged. I did not want to explain that I wanted to leave him for dead. And that it was Aaron who wanted to help. I did not want to go into detail over our argument. I did not want to tell him that I felt safer leaving him behind to die. So instead I averted the question. "You should rest. You've been out for a long time." How did this man survive?