Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains

Chapter twenty

The sigh this time was more drawn out and tired than the last one. "You got to start letting people take care of you," the other teen insisted. "We're allowed to worry about you, you know."

A coldness swept over my body as my mind went blank at the words. "Worry about me?"

Growing up, the only person to worry about me was my mother, but her worry has always been suffocating, a heavy thing that I had to live with as my dreams died beneath its weight. I know that she meant the best, that people like me weren't meant to have as big of dreams as I was trying to, that my dreams could get me killed. Worry has never been a weight of someone else's that I wanted to bear, but Hito made it sound like it was the only natural emotion that another human could have when faced with something like this.

"Yes, Izu, worry."

I could almost imagine the look on the other boy's face as he spoke. It was one that I was familiar with, a look that seemed to wonder what had happened that I could understand simple things like this, but then the other's face would relax as he seemed to remember that he wasn't so pieced together either. As he seemed to remember that neither of us were truly used to having someone else care for them.

"How about we go running tonight?" I suggested, already hearing the defiance that I was sure was about to come from the other side of the phone.

"You just said that you were sick for a week," the other boy protested.

"Yeah," I agreed, knowing that that was the story that I had used. "I won't be as fast, but I've been cooped up all week, I need to see something other than the same four walls."

The other teen sounded tired when he finally answered, more tired than his usual amount that he allows himself. "We'll go slower than normal," the boy agreed at last, "but if you pass out, I'm not dragging you home." It was a lie, something that we both knew it to be but neither of us commented on, choosing to let it rest there.

We talked for a little while longer, neither of us able to sleep despite almost everyone else in the city seeming to already be fast asleep. We talked until the sounds of rattling cages finally quieted in my mind.

—-

When Mom came home a few hours later, she had a warm smile on her face, one much too kind for me to be able to copy even before the week from hell that I'd just left.

Not that she expected me to.

Ever since she found out the things that I hid from her growing up, our relationship has been different from the endless lies that it used to be built upon. She never expected me to fake a smile for her, or to try and present myself in a way that wasn't true. I was quiet and my voice much more monotone than I knew she would have wanted it to be, my skin still crawled at people's touch more times than not, but she would rather see my problems and try to help with them than have me hide them as I had before.

That was one of the reasons that I couldn't be mad at her for the way that she acted as I grew up, the way she cried and apologized, that she was the first to see my dream as something unreachable. I could forgive that because I knew that she cared.

I knew that she would still care even if she knew that poison that I was made from.

I helped her bring her luggage in, me grabbing one bag and her the other as she told me some of the things that she saw in the states. It would have been a much more pleasant scene if it wasn't for the way that every step burned like the tearing of flesh, but I was well versed in the art of pretending so I didn't give away that anything was wrong.