Our Soul Divided

01| It's Too Much

Stetson

I watch as Dorian's body is drubbed and thrown to the ground like garbage as I hold a thrashing Athena in my arms.

The sadness, the grief, the anger: it all begins to bleed into my veins as I realize that we've been standing here too long. Athena's body goes limp and it feels as though she stops breathing when Dorian slumps.

Now is my chance. I lift her into a cradle position and run as fast as I can with the extra weight. I know I have an ATV about 100 meters away, but it feels like it's a world away as I struggle to hold her dead weight.

She's mumbling and whispering and I can't understand the words so I try to soothe her through my own pain, "It's okay, Athena. It's gonna be okay, you're out. You're free." I find myself focusing on the positive.

We reach the ATV and I try to sit her up on it and she slouches. "Please, Athena. We have to get out now or they're going to catch us too. "Here." I wedge myself behind her and cage her between my arms as I crank the ATV and speed off in the direction of safety.

I keep looking behind me to make sure that we aren't being followed. After we are a few miles away, I start to relax a bit and slow the vehicle a bit. Athena is still slumped in my arms, almost as if she's sleeping, but I know she isn't.

I don't know what she is feeling, but I know it's pain like she'd never felt, or maybe she's still in shock. I only hope that's the case, because when it passes, the pain will be too much for the escape.

I keep watching as world around me begins to change. Crumbling buildings, some perpetually smoke from the smoldering embers. The ground is all mud and blasted asphalt parts. Rodents and small animals scurry in every direction away from their mission to find food as they hear the ATV rumbling toward them.

Ten years ago, this was a city. People lived, loved, and worked here. The Elites have destroyed it all and branded us all as Havenots. If you don't have millions, or at least business worth that, or some sort of skill that they find valuable, you have nothing. Everything is in ruins.

I snap to attention as I see our tiny garage in the distance. It used to be a mechanics shop, but the old guy who owned it was paranoid and built an underground bunker at the back of his shop. To anyone else, this building looks like the rest of the fubble surrounding it. To me, to us: it's home.

As I near it, the door rolls open and I slow as I pull the ATV into the garage and down the makeshift ramp near the back. The door is closed behind us and I roll to a stop and switch off the engine.

I am immediately bombarded by Rain. Her rainbow-colored dreads tied on top of her head branch out in every direction. The piece of fabric tied around one of her narrow shoulders is riddled with rips and tears and barely covers the small plate that she's built from scrap metal. Her black jeans are also worn and dirty and her arms are covered with tiny tattoos of random things. Her heavy combat boots clomp toward me.

"You're back... where's Dorian?"

I hang my head and shake it gently. A small gasp comes from Rain. "Come on, let's get her taken care of," she immediately recovers. She helps me pull a still-limp Athena from the ATV and each of us takes one of her arms over our shoulders to carry her to what I call my room.

The underground bunker has several 'rooms' made of concrete, but this is really the only one small enough to call a personal space. The doorway is covered with an old muddy piece of cloth that barely covers from top to bottom. With the tattering, there really isn't any privacy.

I've pushed an old pillow-top mattress into the corner where I sleep and a table made of an old tire and a piece of splintered wood sits right next to it.

We ease her onto the bed and look at each other with worry in our eyes. Athena curled into a fetal position and stared at the concrete wall. She didn't make a sound.

"She's pretty, for what it's worth," Rain commented looking at Athena softly. I give her a look of warning and she raises both hands in surrender. "When was the last time she ate?" Rain asks.

"Fuck, I don't know. Dorian would have known all of that," I say sadly.

"Cover her up and come with me," she replies.

Rain walks from the room, and I ease myself into a sitting position on the edge of the mattress. I slowly reach for Athena and gently brush her hair from her face. She flinches but otherwise doesn't protest. "It's gonna be okay. I'm sorry, Athena," I whisper.

"Go away." Her first words spoken since I got her back cut like a knife.

"Okay," I murmur. I rise to my feet, throw an old blanket over her, and shuffle toward the doorway. I turn to take one last look at her thin stature curled up and staring into space. I shake my head and leave the room.

I find Rain in our makeshift kitchen, trying to open a can with a knife. "What's up?" I ask nonchalantly.

She doesn't look at me, she keeps struggling with the can. "Are you okay?" she asks. A pink lock escapes the tree on top of her head and falls forward.

"No," I answer plainly and sigh.

"Stetson, she's gonna be okay..." she trails off.

"I hope you're right, but Dorian..."

She turns to look at me and drops the knife on the counter with a clatter. I flinch at the sound. "What happened?"

I feel the burn in my stomach and nausea begins to roil so I shake my head again. "He's gone," was all I could manage.

She dives for me and wraps herself around my waist. I raised my arms quickly as she dove for me and now I let them gently drop around her shoulders. "I'm sorry," I whisper through tears.

"He was our friend," she cries into my chest. "Your friend."

"I know..." I rub small circles into her back and though I feel like I am going to fall apart, I feel a little better comforting someone else.

"She's ruined, they scrambled her brain–" my voice cracks into a sob. Rain's grip loosens on me and as if she was holding me up I sink to my knees and my whole body shudders with the cry that has been begging to consume me.

"She's not..." Rain sinks next to me and wraps her arms around my shoulders again. "They wouldn't, they need her," she reminds me.

I shudder again, "She told me to go away. It's like... it's like she doesn't even know me." Rain fiddles with the longer locks on top of my head.

"She'll come back to you, Stetson. It's going to take time..." I can't help it. I break into full-blown blubbering. I've been holding it in for too long.

She's here, she's safe, and that's all that matters. I tell myself over and over. But Dorian. It's going to devastate her. It's devastating me. I don't know what he had her reliving, but if I know Dorian, and I had to guess... No, he wouldn't erase me. He was my friend. My best friend while she was gone, and now he's gone too.

My ribs wrack with harder sobs. "He's gone," I cry into Rain's shoulder. She pets my head and continues whispering to me something that I am too far gone to hear.

She has to remember, she has to come back. I can't do this without both of them. Please, gods, bring her back to me. Bring him back. It's too much.