Inked Creations

CHAPTER NINE (PART 2)

As I gaze into Agmos' piercing white eyes, I see years of guilt and torment burning through. So many emotions he buried down, hiding them beneath a no fucks given attitude. I feel a lot of my anger towards him trickling away. Not all of it, but a good chunk. Mainly, I no longer feel a burning desire to introduce my fist to his face.

I break eye contact first. I push my chair back, and stand. Grabbing my vape off the counter again, I start pacing across the room, puffing hard. My mind is flooded with questions, but there's only one that stands out above the rest.

"Agmos," I say, coming to a standstill in the middle of the loft. "You said Fuze's human identity is Charlie....but that's impossible..." I turn to face Agmos, only to find him walking towards me. Ink stands from the table and sits herself on the couch, only a few feet from where I stand.

"Is it really so impossible, Hawthorn?" His voice is soft and comforting. "Just think about it. Think of all the signs he gave yah. Did you ever see him out in sunlight without sunglasses, or was he obsessive about having them? "

"I don't know why that would mean anything, but yeah, he had this crazy intense obsession with super dark sunglasses. He would literally not be able to go outside during the day without them. All he would say was that he'd hurt his eyes as a kid, and couldn't handle the sun without them."

Agmos nods. "Our eyes can't handle the intensity of the sun's bright light. Have yah not noticed that we've only gone out at night together?"

I pause for a moment. I honestly hadn't noticed that. The one time we met during the day....he had already been inside Alpha Ink, so I didn't notice any shades. Nor did I notice that he put them on before even opening the door to leave the shop.

I swallow hard. There's one memory I suppressed many years ago. I have always assumed it was simply a trick of the light. I was drunk out of my mind....I was seeing things...

"There....there was one moment...." My voice is choked, yet I force the words out. "It was the night he put me in the hospital. It was in the middle of a party. Charlie had gone off alone, and I went to look for him when I realized his absence. I uhhhh....I found him alone in one of the upstairs rooms of the house we were in. He was..." My voice breaks, and I hesitate.

Agmos steps forward and opens his arms to me, giving me all the power to initiate contact. Before I can stop myself, I close the distance into his arms. My racing heart slows as his warmth envelopes around me. I'm safe. It's just a memory.

I pull back, taking a deep breath, and let the words continue to flow.

"Charlie was acting crazy, clawing at his head. He kept hunching over, and standing back up. Repeating over and over the ink was wrong. The ink was wrong."

I shift my gaze over to Ink, sitting on the couch cross legged, and shake my head. Everything is suddenly becoming clear.

"Only now, I think he wasn't saying the ink.... I think he was just saying Ink. I think he was referring to you.... and when I asked him if he was okay, he growled at me like some feral animal or something. He screamed at me to get out, and when he looked at me....all these years I just thought it was a trick of light on top of me being plastered out of my gourde."

"Hawthorn?" Ink asks.

"Charlie's eyes were glowing red. He launched himself at me...and then I woke up in the hospital." There it is. The one thing I never told anyone, not even Kaylee. After all these years, I finally understand what happened that night. Why Charlie's abuse was so abnormal sometimes. Why he was so unjustifiably paranoid about me betraying and abandoning him.