Strive // Kai Parker

<18>

Kai

Conflicted, responsible, desperate. 

Those were a few words that summed up how i felt right now. I was losing it. Spiralling back into the man i had left in the prison world. Desperate to grasp any semblance of reality and hope as i stood in the centre of the creaking Magnolia compound. I looked around at the bland wall's, the paintings falling from the cracked plaster. 

The blood had flowed like water as my coven crashed through. I took in these details breathing heavily. They were dead but here there bodies remained, lifeless eyes gazing at me with accusations and hate. But she wasn't here anymore.

My Azalea, i had promised to keep her safe, to be the one she could rely on and need. Ever since the prison world, all that time ago and i had lied. It was truthful in the moment, a promise made by a man who didn't value the importance of his word. She didn't want it, didn't want to rely on anyone but herself, then through my manipulations, through my constant appearance in her times of need she had succumbed to it.

To needing me. 

I bathed in it. The love she gave, the importance she made me feel. She was mine as i was hers. We were unstoppable. 

Then i let her be taken from me, stolen. I was responsible for letting her get hurt like this, for letting the Magnolia walk over us. I had to take care of Azzy, i had to. I had to. I had to. I couldn't let her slip away from me because i had failed, she would leave me and i would be alone again, she would be better withou-

I wouldn't let it happen.

I couldn't lose her love, the only person who came above everything. She was everything i wanted and admired. She knew what she wanted, fought like the wall's were closing in around her. Today she had been what i first found her as.

Closed off, determined to survive instead of live. I was conflicted, i liked the way people feared her, the way her commands rolled off her tongue without emotion or hesitation. However i loved the way she was before Kalani had ruined her, happy and tranquil, clever and thoughtful for me.

The Azalea i had met had intrigued me, a puzzle i wished to complete and then shatter. Though, the Azalea that had bloomed before me had stolen my heart, the puzzle had connected and i couldn't bring myself to destroy it. So i preserved it in a way.

Kept her close.

Then she was pregnant. I remember the emotions that flickered through me, the same ones that had hit me when she told me she loved me. I needed that, call it greed, call it being selfish but i wanted it.

Our own little family, another little angel to love me the way Azzy did. Another one to protect and preserve in our own little bubble. Until someone else came in with the intent to kill and shattered it. Stole what was never ours. 

My fists clenched as i stared hatefully towards the dead bodies around me, the wall's cracked and crunched, caving in due to my erratic magic.

I didn't want it, the emotions that whirled around with the motivation to break me. They were determined and spiteful, passing through my mind like a tornado. It was getting harder to breath as pure panic struck me. I couldn't decipher if i was mentally suffocating or physically, until my breaths began to leave me in erratic waves and the air thinned.

Sorrow, loss, need, hate, want, love, agony, anger.

All my thoughts jumped at the opportunity to surface. Whether it was the fight to cry or the push for murder. They mixed in ways they never should have, i tried- I tried so hard to control them. 

Azalea wasn't here, where was she? What would i do now? The Magnolia were gone and Kalani had evaded us all- I couldn't get back my child, i didn't have a child- There was no replacements, no recovery.

The dust escaping the cracking walls did nothing to help my aching lungs, or the battle i was facing inside my broken mind. Still i stood with shaky breaths, unclenching my tight fists, then with one swift movement. 

It all came undone.

I pushed it all out guided by the wave of one agonising scream. The sound was shrill and strangled and i felt as though i was collapsing into the darkness, the void that i had been pulled out of long before. 

My eyes closed with the effort to keep it all out, the yell of despair ever lasting as i felt the crunch of debris underneath my knee's. I had fallen. Literally and theoretically. I only opened my eyes when the bright light burst through my eyelids.

And how fitting was it that the room was on fire? 

Drained and hurt, i stood from my place, lowering the hand that had caused the chaos. I contemplated my options for a brief moment. To stay in the burning building and let the scorching flames lick at my skin until they cleared away my mistakes and with them, me. Fire cleansed all didn't it? 

But like all those years in my imprisonment, i refused to resign myself to death. No matter how appealing it looked. My drive for revenge had placed Azalea in the chaos. To make good on my promise i would get her out of it. 

That thought repeated in my mind as i walked from the fire, all the way until i stood adjacent from the splintering building. The sight could only be explained as catastrophic and apocalyptic. It was a mercy to the bodies that laid within, a burial of some sort as i waved my hand making the entire structure cave in, leaving it a flaming pit in the ground

"To hell and back in one day." I scoffed finally sucking in the breath i needed. I stood over the wreckage, a grin of hate and triumph flickering over the roaring fire before i turned away ready to find my own saviour.

"Does that make me the devil? Huh."