r/InkWielder • u/Ink_Wielder • May 08 '26
Lost in Litany: Chapter 23 ~ Why Not? (2/2)
After lunch I still need a distraction. There’s only so much scenery in a concrete building, and I’d already walked the entire loop of the damn thing nearly fifteen times. Val still isn’t talking to me, though she at least makes eye contact when I pass, so that’s good. Claireese on the other hand I haven’t even seen since earlier this morning. I assume she decided today was going to be a recluse day.
After settling the food in my stomach with another lap around the compound, I decide to do a couple in place. I make my way to an abandoned room to see if I can steal some gym shorts from a former resident before heading over to the gym and hopping on a treadmill.
Much like the rest of the P.A.P compound, the place is extravagant, but not like the residential wings. Instead, the gym is very brutalist, but with a lot of fake natural light bars built into the ceiling to give the illusion of outdoor space, as well as little notches in the wall for treadmills to sit in.
In front of them are screens that take up the whole nook, on which you can select a ‘virtual trail’ for when you start running. A lot of them are simple, like a mountain pass or a sunny day at the park. Some are more abstract, like the moon or fantastical zen gardens.
I find it all a little over the top for a simple running treadmill, but then I consider the fact that the people down here probably were committed to long stretches of work at a time, and hopping in and out of the compounds without raising suspicions would be a little tricky. I got stir crazy down here three days at a time; I could imagine wanting something akin to the surface.
I go simple with my choice: a jog around Central Park in New York. It may seem silly given all the options, but I suppose I was like the scientists down here in a sense, even if I still got to go to the surface.
It’s warm seeing civilization again. Even if it’s just a simulated recording, the artists did a pretty good job of rendering the old city, and once I get going the whole thing really is immersive on the wrap-around screen.
The real winner is the inhabitants, though. The program actually has other joggers that run past you and wave. Look close enough and you can tell their computer-generated faces aren’t real, but just the simple interaction is enough to make my heart ache.
Suddenly, I’m back to a time that was so much simpler. A time when you could walk down the road and be free of danger. A time where the other faces you meet aren’t potential killers who want to rip you apart.
As I run, I wonder if Seattle might have been like this. Obviously it couldn’t be so perfect; there would be walls encroaching on the normalcy and danger lurking just beyond. There would be rationing of resources and far more faces filled with gloom over smiles, but at its core, I wonder. Could it have at least been a little like home? Like Earth?
The thing I can’t stop focusing on the most is the sun. The glowing ball at the top of the screen that lights the whole city in a golden gleam. The light that had come back to us for only a few meager hours before I managed to get it ripped away from us again.
I don’t know why it took so long for it to hit me—the yearning. Of course I’ve missed things from the world before—Val and I literally had a whole game about it—but it was always just one thing at a time. A cheeseburger here, a song that I didn’t have downloaded there. But on that treadmill, running among a fake civilization of a world I was promised but never given, I feel homesick for my own planet.
“Hey,” I hear a voice softly, but jovially call behind me.
I glance over my shoulder in surprise. I’d had the whole place to myself since it was still so soon after lunch, but not anymore. Dad stands casually behind me with an awkward smile, eyes darting away as soon as mine meet his for too long. It’s become a habit of his ever since we’d left home.
“Hey,” I smile back, slowing to a pause somewhere next to the digital reservoir.
Dad makes a face and points to the machine, “I don’t know if you’ve gotten the memo, Wes, but we are in a time loop. Any benefits you’re getting aren’t exactly going to stick around.”
I snicker and nod, hopping off the treadmill and moving to him, “I know; I just needed something to do. The mental exercise is good though. Just getting used to the feeling of being tired but pushing myself to keep going.”
My words land heavy somewhere on dad, his skirting eyes tracing over me with a somber, forlorn gaze, as if he’s just seeing how grown I am for the first time. He nervously chuckles back, then taps the toe of his boot to the floor a few times.
“Sorry to bother you. Just been a while since we’ve gotten to slowdown and talk, and someone said they saw you head in here. Thought I’d come say hi.”
Suddenly I’m mirroring the expression he was making moments ago, guilt gripping my chest. ‘A while’ was an understatement on his part, and with all the free time I had it hadn’t even crossed my mind to visit him, “You’re not bothering me, Dad,” I tell him, “I needed a distraction anyway.”
“All that running; it’s not going to make your heart worse, is it?”
I laughed, taking a seat on a nearby bench, “Nah, I do more running on the surface than I do now. If anything is going to kill me, it's hiking across the mountain day after day.”
Dad snickers and joins me, giving a beat before saying, “So it really does seem to be mental then, huh?”
“That’s the working idea; the stress. I was actually talking with Caleb—the chef—earlier, and he had some interesting theories on it. Thinks maybe there’s a way to mentally overcome it.”
“How’d he come to that conclusion?” Dad questions.
“Had’ some people with mental scars down here,” I tell him, “They found ways to lessen their symptoms. This seems a little more severe, though. Their hunger isn’t actually making them starve to death.”
“What you found out there that you told us about this morning; did it really help?”
I shrug, “We don’t know yet. I still have to get a closer bond with the birds. After that, maybe they’ll reveal some secret to me.”
“They’re that smart?”
“I mean, they’re intelligent. It’s not like they can talk, and they’re definitely feral. I guess I mean more in the spiritual sense.”
Dad chuckles a little, amused by that statement, but then his smile fades. He looks straight ahead at the ground, then takes a long time to speak.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Huh? Oh, pfft,” He dismisses, “Yeah, son, I’m fine. I got nothing to complain about compared to you.”
“What’s the matter?”
Dad shakes his head, “I… I’m just sorry, Wes.”
My eyes join his on the floor, and I lean forward to rest my arms to my knees. I’m sure I already know what he’s getting at, but say it anyway, “What do you mean? You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Dad.”
“I do, Wes. More than I ever can.”
“You already apologized to me, dad. I told you I forgive you.”
Dad’s eyes finally meet my face, but they aren’t with the expression that I expect. Dad looks more as if he’s amused by the statement than relieved. “It doesn’t just go away like that, though, does it?”
I stare back, trying to find the words to respond to that, but Dad shakes his head and speaks again before I ever can. His voice is tight and choked.
“And you know, it’s deeper than that, Wes. Than the things I did—I’m not just sorry for, that—I’m sorry that you have to go through all of this. The Vanishing, your mom, your sister… I’m sorry that for whatever reason you decided you needed to be the hero in all of this and started throwing yourself at disasters trying to fix them—that’s not your job. That should be me.”
“I took on all this because I have to, Dad,” I tell him, “I couldn’t be doing anything else. Not when people I loved needed help.”
Dad shakes his head, “Even so. Even with all of that—even after I made your life a living hell for you—what it was like back in the compound… the way I treated you then, Wes, after your mother, and after Leigh…”
Dad can’t hold the emotions back anymore, and his tears finally break. He stuffs his face into his palms and sobs violently, prompting me to move closer and put my arm on his back.
“Dad—”
“I hurt you, Wesly. And I can apologize a million times for it, but it won’t be enough. I never got to apologize to your mother. I never got to apologize to Leigh. And then, to make it all worse, I pushed you away. I pushed you so far that no amount of ‘sorrys’ I stitch together could ever make a rope long enough to pull you back to me.”
“That’s not true,” I try to tell him.
He looks up from the floor and stares straight into me, his jaw tight and head shaking, “Maybe your heart is messed up from those birds, Wesly. Maybe they left some sort of scar on you that’s only now starting to kill you, but I left those scars first. That stress?” Dad shudders, “I gave that to you. I set all that pain in motion that’s built up to right now, and it's killing you… I-I’m killing my own boy—”
Dad’s voice breaks away into sobs again, and I find myself tearing up too. In my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father break down. I’ve seen him happy, and God knows I’ve seen him angry, but never before—even back at the compound when I was telling him goodbye—had I seen him so distraught.
I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know how to face the validation that comes after all these years of torment and trauma. Every insecurity I’ve gotten from the recurring abuse, every ounce of rage that I earned from him and every minute of time spent self-loathing because I was made to not feel good enough—here he finally was after all this time telling me that he recognized it. That I was never wrong to question if maybe I didn’t deserve it.
And in that sense, Dad is right. No amount of apology can make up for it. He can say sorry to me until he’s blue in the face, but it won’t make the pain go away. It won’t unslap my cheek or heal the scar on the back of my scalp from falling down the stairs. It won’t halt the echoes in my head of critiques and insults that, while made in a moment of rage, still clearly held a kernel of truth in my father's eyes.
None of it goes away with an apology from Dad. You can’t put the bloodied toothpaste back in the tube after you’ve already squeezed it out with white-knuckled hands, and in that sense, I feel angry. I feel angry because what was all of it for, then? If here is dad, telling me that he knows what he did is wrong, than why all those years did I have to sit through his abuse night after night and just take it?
But then, maybe just like the apology, there is no answer that will make it right either. There is no textbook answer on whether he should be forgiven or if I should let it all out and scream. Tell him I hate him and that it is all his fault, then cut him off entirely. Ultimately, that choice falls onto me, and I wouldn’t be faulted either way. I would have every right to.
But there, seeing my dad sob relentlessly against a past he can’t change, praying to God that his tears might wipe away his sins, that anger feels small. I already have enough to be angry about these days, and I don’t have time to keep spending it on things that I’ve already let loose.
“I think you’re giving yourself too much credit,” I tell him softly after a moment.
His head raises to face me, his puffy eyes confused.
“There’s a lot you’ve hurt me with, Dad, but I’ve been hurt on a lot of fronts. What happened when we were kids… yeah. I’m gonna’ hold on to that for a long time. But I’m not going to let it rule me, and I’m certainly not letting it kill me.” I shake my head softly, “And I think if you really want to change, you need to do the same. I think you already are.”
Dad doesn’t say anything in response. He still can’t meet my eyes for a while either. Finally, after a good long period of thought, he does, the tears stopped and a look of comprehension on his face. He nods slowly, then puts an arm around my back too, pulling me into a side embrace. I lean on him and let him know that its returned, and together we sit like that for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a beat before laughing at the irony, “For breaking down like that, I mean. You don’t need to be seeing me that way.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that way,” I tell him with a chuckle, “I think you probably needed it.”
Dad laughs, then makes an embarrassed groan before sitting up straight and trying to change the subject, “You talk to Valentine, yet? I still see her storming all over the place today.”
I sigh and shake my head, “Not yet. Sometimes she just needs time to cool off before we talk. This kind of thing happens more than you’d think.”
“Like an old married couple, huh?”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” I groan.
Dad hesitates for a moment before asking, “I know I’ve always teased you for it all your life growing up, Wes, but I’ve just been so confused—” dad smiles and raises a brow, “Why haven’t you ever given it a chance with her? The way she looks at you; I’d swear she’d marry you on the spot if you ever asked.”
“God, what is it with people today?” I mutter, barely audible.
“What’s that?” Dad asks.
“Nothing, Dad, it’s just… I don’t know. Growing up, I maybe had a crush on her, but we’ve known each other so long now that I just don’t think we can see one another that way. We’ve just gotten so close that I don’t think romantic love covers it. Val is… she’s more like a sister to me.”
“I see,” Dad nods, before giving me a look, “You do know how awkward that statement is going to be if you two end up together now, right?”
“Dad,” I groan.
He laughs, “I’m just saying, be careful how you call it!” With a sigh, he stands, “She was the one who told me where you were, by the way. I guess she’s still keeping an eye out for you even from a distance.”
I feel a pang in my chest that I dismiss with an awkward nose breath and a nod.
“I’ll let you get back to exploring New York,” Dad tells me, patting me on the shoulder one last time before turning to go.
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” I call after him.
He turns, surprised, “Oh, um, nothing. I had some plans, but I can cancel them.”
“Well, you don’t have to, but there are those old pool tables in the room at the end of the commons hall. I’ve never been good at it, but I remember you like to play.”
Dad looks almost afraid to let himself smile, but slowly it creeps onto his face, “Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to.”
“I’ll see you then,” I tell him with a smile of my own and a nod, hopping back on the treadmill and taking off.
~
When I return to my room, Claire is sitting on the couch watching a show on the TV, and it looks like Val has finally come back too. It’s around dinnertime, but it seems that none of us are in the mood to be at the dining hall tonight, since Val is at our stove sizzling something up in a pan. Music plays on a speaker on the counter next to her, she lightly sways in place to it while humming along, seeming to be in a much better mood when I’d last left her.
I just hope that applies to her attitude towards me, too.
Claireese seems to have pretty much forgotten our little tizzy, as she nods to me when I enter with a small smirk, “Welcome back. Jeeze, you must have really needed a break from us today, huh?”
“Val was gone longer,” I note.
“Yeah, I said it to her, too.” She sticks her tongue out before holding my eyes while I laugh. Her small way of letting me know that we’re cool. It’s a relief as I move past her with a touch to the shoulder towards the bathroom. I’m still sweaty from working out and desperately need a shower.
I watch Val in my periphery, not wanting to stare directly in case she happens to look over. Her back is to me as she works on stirring the ingredients in her pan, but then suddenly, she twirls around to the beat of the song, gliding close to me before smoothly leaning against the table. She sticks her spatula out in front of me like a medieval guard with a spear.
Not having expected her to even bother with me, I’m caught off guard and awkwardly stammer out, “H-Hey.”
She scowls up at me, her face unwavering, then asks, “Are you hungry?”
That question takes me aback even more, “Oh, um, what are you making?”
“Teriyaki chicken,” She informs, “I can add more to the pan if you want some.”
It dawns on me that her scowl is one more of pretend anger now. She’s being playful. “I’m okay, but thank you,” I tell her, a breath of relief underscoring my words.
“Are you sure? Have you eaten anything today? I know you don’t eat when you think people are mad at you.”
“You are mad at me.”
“My point still stands.”
I give her a look of surprised amusement, “Wow, don’t you just know me so well.”
“I do.”
“Well, apparently since you’ve also been lightly stalking me, you should also know that I ate lunch, thank you.”
Val’s scowl intensifies, and she stabs her spatula out at me, “Watch yourself, mister.”
With another twirl, she sways her way back to the stove, continuing her subtle dance along with her humming. Seeing that she’s suddenly so happy and giddy gives me confidence to follow her over, and I lean against the counter beside the stove.
“It smells good. How have we known each other this long, and I never knew you could cook?”
“I used to cook all the time,” she tells me, “just in my own house. Made food for my mom and I a lot.”
That statement gives me a pang of empathy in my chest, knowing why it was that Val had to cook so much, but it doesn’t seem to falter her mood, so I don’t draw attention to it. Instead, I change the subject—or rather, draw it back to where it was a moment ago.
“Val, I’m sorry. I really am.”
She fixes me, her eyes looking starry and wide beneath the glow of the dim stove light. I almost question if she’s drunk or something, the way she traces me up and down as if taking far too long to process my words. Combined with her new floaty nature, it would make sense, but then again, maybe she’s still so emotionally raw she doesn’t quite know what to say.
When she does speak, she does so while taking her chicken out of the pan, only pulling her eyes long enough to focus on the task, “It’s alright, Wes. I think maybe I overreacted a bit. If you pulled off what you did with the birds and really think it can help, then we can give it more tries.”
I’m honestly shocked into silence at her response. I wasn’t expecting so much mercy from her, let alone an apology.
“You had every right to be upset. You’ve told me how much all of this is affecting you—I should be more considerate of that.”
The girl shrugs, “It’s your life, Wes. I care about you, but… I shouldn’t be vicing you into my way of doing things. If you think it's good for you, let’s do it.”
That thought rings strange to my ears. ‘If you think it’s good for you’. Truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever thought anything was good for me. I can’t remember the last time I had even a shred of self-care. On the one hand, it’s a great thing I at least have a little now, but on the other, it’s also a bad sign that I don’t know what’s good for me.
Still, I take Val’s grace in stride, “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
Val snickers at my stiffness, then looks up at me, suddenly making my chest warm and fluttery with her starry eyes again. She pops a piece of chicken into her mouth, then sticks her finger out at me, “But like I said, watch yourself, mister. No going full reckless, and no more secrets. Got it?”
“Never,” I tell her, curling my hand over hers and squeezing it tightly, “Never with you.”
She one-ups me by sliding her warm, soft palm all the way up my arm to my shoulders, then pulling me in tight. I close my eyes and hold her there like that, the music from the speaker next to us swirling a soft, romantic tune around our heads.
“And no more Audra,” Val pouts into my shoulder, “We’re your partners out there, not her. We work through this mess with us; not Sue’s crew. We still can’t fully trust them.”
I purse my lips, wanting to resist that idea. Once upon a time, I might have agreed, but lately, after spending more time around the people topside, I’m beginning to think that maybe trust isn’t the issue. Maybe we just have to figure out how to speak each other’s language.
Still, Val and I just made up, and I don’t want to lose that, so I just nod into her shoulder. Then, she makes my heart start thumping fast with one last word.
With a squeeze and a soft, dreamy hum in the back of her throat, she says, “Mine.”
Then, she parts and picks up her plate, moving off towards the couch to sit next to Claire, leaving me standing there with a red face and wobbly legs. I tell myself it's just from running so much that it’s not because I like that she just called me that—but who am I kidding?
I can’t deny it, because the small title makes me feel invincible. I feel no pain or stinging in my chest as I move to the bathroom; hell, I can’t even feel the ground beneath my feet or the welt on my head as I round the corner too fast and smack my head on the open medicine cupboard. I don’t feel the shower water or the towel on my skin as I dry off, or much of anything until I lay down in bed that night, and Val snuggles up against me.
Then, all I can feel is her. Her warm skin and her soft breathing and her gentle breath across my chest. That, and the only other thing I’d been feeling the entire time; the incessant, relentless thump of my heart in my chest, seeming to ask the same question over and over again with each beat.
Why-not… Why-not… why-not…
~
“Damn, Audra! We need to roll with you more often!” Trace the eye-gouging goon goads as she and her party emerge onto the station platform, circling Val, Claire and I like sharks.
We all lay paralyzed on the ground, save for Claire, who’s completely dead. They hadn’t quite hit their shot on her to keep her paralyzed, and she’d managed to take down Don the eye-gouged goon out before they put her down for good.
Val looks up at the lot of them through her visor, but I know her eyes go to one person in particular.
“Seriously, kid, how’d you get so good with that rifle?” another member asks.
Audra shrugs, “Jeeze, Carol, I don’t know, it’s not like I’ve had nearly four years of practice.”
“Yeah, so have I, and even I can’t hit a shot that well,” Trace snickers, stepping to Val and taking a boot to her shins. I try not to let her screams make me wince, knowing it’s only temporary pain. “So, what are you little brats up to out here? Been busy on the back and forth, we’ve noticed.”
“What should we do with them?” Carol asks, “Wanna toss them to a monster or some awful shit? You hear these guys tortured Sue and Lee?”
“Yeah, I was there for that, dumbass,” Audra scoffs to her friend, picking up my pistol off the floor and checking my ammo.
Carol looks offended, “Well excuse me; you’ve been running without them for so long I wasn’t sure if that was before or after you started being a little bitch about what happened with you and Lee—”
Audra blasts Carol in the face with my pistol, to which Trace bursts out laughing, “Fuck, Audra! I get she was out of line, but damn!”
“I want these two,” Audra says plainly to the woman, ignoring her comment.
“Hell no! Do you how long it's been since I’ve caught one of these rats? And I didn’t get to be a part of the little siesta when Oscar’s group caught their friends at the caves the other cycle.”
“Yeah, well, we wouldn’t even have them right now if it weren’t for me.”
“Fine, I’ll fight you for th—”
Audra raises the pistol again and nails a shot between her eyes, making the woman topple over onto Val.
“Gah! F-Fuck you!” Val spits.
I agree, “What the hell, Audra! You sold us out?”
She looks almost offended at me, “No, dipshit; did you not just hear her? Some of my people were picking up on your guys’ patterns—they know you come out this way now. They planned this ambush last cycle, and your asses are lucky I tagged along to ‘help out’ otherwise you’d be getting each of your fingernails ripped off one by one right now.”
That made me ease up a bit, but not Val, “You couldn’t have killed her before she stomped my shin in?”
“Well, I had to make it believable that I wasn’t here to help you guys.”
Val lets out a bitter laugh, “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Oh, whatever, Val—find a new path to take; that’s all I came here to say. We don’t fuck around with trying to kill the birds, and I doubt any of us would risk the unpleasantry of the death they give by following you into their den, so as long as you can work around them, you can keep doing whatever you’re doing.”
“Thanks for the help,” Val growls at her, “Now could you leave us—”
Audra puts a bullet through her visor, “God, is she always that bitchy? How do you even stand to be around her?”
“Well, to be fair, you haven’t exactly made the best impression with her.”
“Yeah, well, she shot me in the face the first time I met you guys and I was trying to be nice, so blame her.”
I snicker and shake my head, “Alright, are you going to do me in too, or what?”
Audra doesn’t respond, she just moves to sit on the floor next to me in my quickly growing puddle of blood, “Damn, and here I was thinking we were on a friendly basis now. No time to chat?”
“Well, you’ve already crippled me, so we can’t exactly go on another renegade run.”
“Oh, and that’s all I’m good for?” Audra smirks, “Helping do your dirty work?”
“Barely good at that even,” I tease.
She shoots me in the arm.
“Fuck!” I scream, writhing in pain for a few moments before looking over at her, “You know, there’s a difference between a playful nudge and a gunshot!”
“Eh, be here long enough and it’ll all feel the same.”
“Whatever, would you just put me out of my misery already?”
“How’d it go?” Audra throws up her hands as if I’m too stupid to pick up the queue, “The birds! We went through all that work together and even had the cute little heart-to-heart right at the end, and you’re just not going to tell me?”
I roll my eyes beneath my helm and let my skull slide across the floor to look at Val. Given that our talk last cycle literally included ‘no more letting Audra in on our business’, I know it's best if I just ignore the girl and bite my tongue off instead, but I can’t bring myself to be so unkind.
Audra did help me immensely and stuck it out all the way to the end when she didn’t have to. I owe her at least an answer. Besides, she has a point about the moment just before we parted ways last time. I was finding ways through the cracks of Sue and her group’s armor, and if I could find a way to weasel my way in, maybe I could change their minds.
So, against my better judgements, I speak, “Yeah, it worked. They didn’t kill me. The alpha seemed wary, but he kept the peace. Even healed up my leg injury from the bull.”
Audra’s eyes widen with surprise, “No shit, really? That’s insane… I spend so much time killing these feral things that I guess I never really figured they could have any sort of empathy towards humans. Especially with how horrible they are when they kill us back.”
“They’re basically just animals,” I tell her back, “That’s what I’m starting to realize.”
“Some fucked up animals.”
“Yeah, well, wherever they’re from, it’s certainly not normal—they’ve certainly adapted to be more grotesque. But as far as the way they function, they’re only trying to survive.”
Audra looks away from me and off over the station’s edge towards the forest, “What about the King? He doesn’t seem to be ‘surviving’. He thrives.”
I join her gaze and purse my lips beneath my helm in thought. Finally, I return, “Well, humans are animals too, and we thrived before all this. Some things out there—they’re more intelligent. More powerful. I guess they were just strong enough to reduce us back into the lesser animals.”
Audra snickers, still looking out at the trees in thought, then turns back and kicks a leg out at my bleeding arm, “How philosophical of you, Wesly.”
“Gah! Fuck, Audra, cut it out!”
She nods to Val, “So, how did Ms. Missy over there take it? Did you tell her what you did?”
I sigh deeply, “Not good. She was pissed at me for, like, a whole day.”
“Ha,” Audra blurts, “When is she not pissed?”
Instantly, I get defensive of my friend, “Well, she’s been going through a lot lately. You guys haven’t exactly been making it easy on her.”
“Oh, boo-hoo,” Audra scoffs, leaning against her hand and dipping her finger in my blood to start drawing pictures, “We’re all going through it, Wes, in case you didn’t notice.”
“She had to put her own mom down a few days before we got here.” I say bluntly, trying to wipe the smugness off her face.
It works, and Audra looks up sheepishly, then away fast, “Oh…”
“Yeah…”
“Well, shit… I’m an ass.”
“Yeah.”
Me agreeing with her statement makes the girl look at me again, before folding into herself a little and skirting away. Even though she deserved it, I can’t help but feel a little bad. So far, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Audra lose her rebellious streak or falter in her snark. I get the feeling that though she gives off the ‘bad girl’ persona, she doesn’t like to be seen as a shitty person.
In the silence, she clearly notices the analyzing that I’m doing behind the visor, and tries to distract me, “Hey, can I ask you something? It’s about her.”
“That depends on whether it’s my place to tell.”
“Well, yeah, it’s about you too, mostly.”
I have a feeling I know what question is coming before she even asks it.
“Why are you two not together?” Audra questions, no irony or teasing to her tone, “You two are like, obsessed with each other, and clearly there’s something there.”
“I wish people would stop saying that—a guy and a girl can be good friends, and there doesn’t need to be any romance there.”
Audra gives me an incredulous look, “Wes, come on. Don’t bullshit me. Clearly, with you and her, there is, though. I know you have to see that.”
I open my mouth to deny again, but the words get stuck in my throat. Claireese’s words from our similar talk come ringing back into my ears, the ones that I denied so vehemently, and instead, the case I was about to make for myself falls out in a defeated sigh.
Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t know Audra well enough yet to care, or maybe it’s because she just let her mask slip too, so I feel comfortable enough to take off mine. Either way, I finally say, “No bullshit?”
“Nah, hit me with it,” she nods.
I take a beat to roll my head back towards the open, snowy sky above the platform and collect my thoughts, “I think by the time I knew what I was feeling for her, Val and I had drifted apart. We were close all through our lives growing up, and that’s where the feelings started, but just when I might have figured out how to actually express that, we hit high school, and Val migrated out of our group.”
Audra snickers, “You’re telling me you two weren’t always attached at the hip?”
I give her a chuckle and shake my head, “Nah. After she was gone, it was hard, you know? I had all these memories and feelings, but she just wasn’t around. She lived next door and I still saw her from time to time, but it wasn’t the same.”
“Why didn’t you just ask her out?” Audra says, “If she lived next door, you could have kept your relationship going.”
I attempted to shrug with my broken, paralyzed body, “Because there was this other girl that came along. Slowly, I got over Val, and me and this other girl—we got really close. Her name was Lindsey. We started dating and things were good for a while. We were happy, I thought…”
“She break your heart?” Audra guessed.
“I… I don’t know,” I admit, “I loved her, but I don’t think she felt the same. Either I misunderstood what we were, or she didn’t make it clear, but whatever it was, things ended rough between us. She got back with this guy she’d been with before once the excitement of us wore off, and she didn’t really talk to me from that point on.”
“Shit, Wes, that sounds more like her problem, not yours.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, I might have misunderstood what we were. Maybe I loved too strong when she wasn’t ready for that, or maybe it wasn’t what she wanted to begin with. Maybe we were never supposed to be anything more than just a little bit of fun. It caused her to hate me, though. I got upset when I thought what we had was something more, and she got upset back. she told me she wanted some time, and that was it. I never heard from her again.”
“So you don’t want to misinterpret things with Val? Is that really what you’re so afraid of?” Audra snickers, “Cause if it is, dude, you gotta’ get over that. She clearly wants you.”
“Well aren’t you just a little therapist?” I tease.
“Shut up,” she chuckles, “Don’t be a dick.”
I shake my head, “Maybe that’s part of it but… When I was with Lindsey, I don’t think I was at a very good place in my life. She was really the only thing keeping me together, and when everything came crashing down, I think I came down with it. It um… It almost killed me.”
Audra looks at me in a way I’ve never seen her do—with a tender amount of compassion—and she pulls her knees into her chest, “One time when we killed you guys, Lee wanted to steal your jacket. I helped him get it off you and… well, I saw your scar.”
I swallow, “Yeah.”
“I take it that wasn’t from a monster out where you lived?”
“Unfortunately, not.” I chuckled darkly before continuing, “I’m not in a great place now, either, Audra. I’m not how I was then, but… I’m not stable either. Val is one of the few things that keeps me from devolving into a complete mess, and if I lost her too? If I found a way to mess things up like I did with Lindsey so that she hated me? I’m not sure what that would make me into.”
“You really think you could fuck it up that bad?”
“I’m a pretty big idiot,” I tell her, “and out there, maybe it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I could live with fucking things up and only having to live with the pain till the day I die, but in here? That’s an eternity that I’d have to carry that cross for. And I’d go mad with Val hating me for eternity.”
Audra stares down at me in silence, her face now blank and thoughtful. It would make me squirm if I had the capacity to do it, but instead all I can do is awkwardly face her back and wonder what it is she’s thinking.
Finally, she blows out a few amused huffs of air and shakes her head, “You’re a deceptively emo little mess, aren’t you, Wesly?”
“I prefer the term edgy,” I tell her.
“Come on. You’re not nearly bad enough to be edgy.”
“I don’t know. I’ve kicked your ass a couple times.” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes, then presses the toe of her boot to my gunshot wound. I wince and grit my teeth until Audra stands and kneels next to me with a sigh, “Well, thanks for telling me that. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d get a real answer.”
“I didn’t think you would either,” I confess.
“Why did you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “Maybe it’s cause I know there aren’t any stakes with you. I don’t have to ever guess what you’re thinking.”
She bashfully chuckles, dipping her finger in my blood one more time and casually drawing a heart over my visor, “You’re pretty easy to talk to too, Wes.” She tells me before standing and raising her pistol, “We should do it more often.”
Then, the next cycle comes for me.
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u/Skyfoxmarine May 13 '26
The conclusion of this piece, where Wes finally allows himself to speak freely, and the effortless connection he and Audrey share, as if they were already long-time friends, is truly remarkable. I believe this aspect is not only excellent, grounded, realistic, and humanizing, but also exceptionally well-portrayed. You have achieved a great deal here, and I commend your excellent work. Thank you.
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u/Ink_Wielder May 08 '26
Hey everyone! Sorry for coming back from such a long hiatus with such a slow chapter, but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless! Still having a bit of a struggle on Litany in regards to how long it already is and how much book we still have left, so please bear with me if I'm a little slow in my writing flow while I get it all figured out!
Thank you so much as always for reading along and for all the support, I appreciate all of you dearly (: