Rise and Fall [[BEING MOVED TO ANOTHER ACCOUNT]]

Chapter Two

Two

                    Grant sets his mug back on the table, and leans back in his chair. "Good coffee," he comments. I'm not in the mood.

                    "Why are you here?" My voice is rough with disuse. It startles me. It's been so long since I've heard it do anything but scream.

                    "I don't know." He rubs the whiskers at his jaw. "Felt like a change of scenery, I guess." I don't buy it.

                    "Why."

                    He sighs. "I'm supposed to be taking care of you. Your parents-" I silence him with a look. He changes his approach. "Well I'm not doing a very good job." His words lie lopsided on the floor, and he shifts in his chair. Uncomfortable facing the boy whose life has ruined his own. Even though I know that that is who I am, I'm still more comfortable than he is.

                    The awkwardness hangs on him like a shroud. It's too afraid to approach me. I know what I'm doing. For once, I'm sure of myself. Sure enough to speak again.

                    "You and I both know that its best I stay here. Alone." My voice cracks, and I clench my jaw.

                    Grant's eyes soften as he mistakes the crack for fear. "I can stay with you, Alek. You know that."

                    "No. I don't need any more reminders. I can take care of myself." But it's more than that. Why wait until now to seek me out, and offer the help he had intended to give? I stare him down. I don't want him here. I want him to know that.

                    "Okay." He absently strokes the handle of the mug with his thumb, and I lean back in my chair. This battle -if you can even call it that- has been both won and lost. I'm staying.

                    "You know they're dead."

                    With those four words, I shatter. Hot anger wells up from the cracks in my being, and I leap at Grant from across the table. My hands wrap around his neck as I hear my mug shatter, and I throttle him, screaming.

                    "Shut up! They're not! Don't say that!" My voice cracks again, and I'm sobbing.

                    "Don't say it," I beg. "Just don't." My hands have slipped from his neck, and I have slipped from him. I sit trembling on the floor. Rocking slowly back and forth. Lucky for me, Grant isn't fazed. His hand comes down and flattens my hair as I try to regain some small part of myself. Finally, I look up.

                    "Why are you doing this to me?"

                    His face mirrors the agony in my heart. "We need to remember if we're ever to forget."

                    "I don't want to forget."

                    "And it's killing you." He takes my arm lightly, and raises it. The jagged scars that trace across my wrist break the horizon of skin. Red mountains. A pale sky.

                    I pull my arm away.

                    "What if I don't care?" I have his full attention. "I just don't think it's worth it." I lower my eyes, and stare at my hands. Not able to see his as he slaps me. Hard. He slaps me, then grabs me by my shoulders. Yanking me up to face him. He shakes me.

                    "Don't you ever talk like that." His words sting my reddened cheek. "It's worth it. Because we're alive. Your family -our family- died so that you and I could live. Don't ever say that again. It was worth their lives." He slaps me again for good measure, and sends me stumbling back through the house. He's here to stay. I can feel it. As the kitchen door disappears from view, I imagine Grant getting comfortable in my chair. Sipping my coffee. Living my life. Because he will be, soon enough. And it will be hell.

~*~

                    I stand under the hot water that cascades from the shower head, wondering what I'm doing. Grant is here. Now. And I'm hiding in the bathroom. He's the only person left that I can trust, and I don't trust him.

                    The steam is suffocating me. Like smoke. Smoke, and fire. My breath comes in short gasps as the water awakens memories, and faces flicker through the flames I have conjured in my mind that combat the careful defenses I've put up. They're burning now. Just like the faces into my retinas. Into my mind.

                    Maria. David. Keyne. Aleksandar.

                    Mother, father, brother, me.

                    Two dead, one missing, one barely holding on.

                    The warmth of the water awakens other things as well: The cruel eyes of the Summer Superiors and their followers, and the jets of flame that jumped from their torches to our houses, setting the world ablaze. The world of the ones who can do nothing to stop them. The powerful against the powerless, and now, the living against the dead.

                    And the hidden, I remind myself. The forgotten. The broken. Those like Grant.

                    Those like me.

                    But that was Summer. Fire is forgotten in the crisp chill of Fall. The ones who use it must settle for the element that comes with the sun-browned leaves that litter the ground, and the bite of the wind that blew them there. And after that, what accompanies the freezing cold, and the intricate designs of the snowflakes. And after that still, what goes hand in hand with the clear skies, green grass, and the colors. Always the colors. Until Summer comes again. The season of death. The one that burns, and kills, and eliminates the weaknesses in the Superiors' purely elemental society.

                    Or so they think.

                    Because I'm still here.

                    And so is Grant.