On My Own

When Are You Going To Learn?

None of them started talking, and I was ready to start smacking some sense into them, but Victor spoke up. His voice was collected and calm, a soothing river that washed over all of the others. The effect took a couple of seconds but then they sat back down in silence. I was the last to sit.

"Ten months ago we began to be targeted. At first we weren't sure, it was a series of cruel pranks and guarded notes. But then it got worse. After a few weeks the guy began to get personal. He would put letters on our table in public places without us or anyone else seeing him. He snuck into our cars and put discs in the CD player, turning the volume all the way up, so that when we turned on the cars it would blare.. but it wasn't music. It would be our conversations, us trying to figure out who he was... it would be us talking privately, us doing.. private things.

Victor cleared his throat and continued, "That wasn't the worst of it though. He started escalating, making threats. And then one night, about seven months ago, he made his move. He kidnapped her, he kidnapped Sang and told us we had to kill each other, and when one was left standing she would be released." Victor's voice cut off here and Nathan's picked up, some how knowing Victor couldn't go on.

"It was like some sick twisted fucker got a hold of the Saw movies and decided they could do it better, they could put us through more hell. The whole thing had been targeted at us up until this point. Sang had only been a piece to help hurt us. The guy was trying to break us apart as a group, and he used Sang to help achieve this.. we never thought.. anyways. We had asked one of the other teams to help us out, and when they noticed we were gone they put everything into finding us.

"By the time they got to us it was too late, the time was up, and we watched as a projector flicked to life, and the guy- too fucking scared to show his face, took a baseball bat and crushed Sang's head-" Nathan was crying now.

I didn't realize I was crying until this point. Everything I'd thought she'd done to these guys, every word I'd come up with to diginify how they'd all been so broken- it all paled in comparison to this story.

Nathan couldn't talk anymore, and all of the others were crying, reliving the pain. Mr. Blackbourne finished the story, I had a feeling it was something that they hadn't done since that day. They'd been holding this traumatic experience inside for so long, and I'd been blind to it.

"She looked to be dead. The individual who had hit her with the bat voiced that our time was up, and if we wouldn't kill ourselves, he'd kill any chance of happiness for us. Sang had been fully aware the entire time, her mouth was gagged, but even in her final seconds before she blacked out from blood loss, she was trying to tell us who the kidnapper was.

"It was around this time that we locked in on the location that Sang was being held captive at. Not very far away, three blocks at most. But still, the individual had her connected to a heart monitor, and the machine had pronounced her dead by the time we arrived.

"The person who had done all of this was gunned down, or at least we thought so. As soon as we saw the body hit the ground we focused on Sang. The ambulance showed up seconds later and Dr. Green rode out with her. They she died six times in that ambulance, and another two in the hospital. By the time she was gone and the rest of us could pull ourselves together enough to go deal with the kidnapper, our tormenter, there was no body. No blood, not even a hair for evidence. He'd vanished.

"But Sang could tell us who the person was, she'd seen them, right?" I'd never heard Mr. Blackbourne sound so... empty, "No.. when she woke up we found that her head trauma was worse than predicted. She didn't remember any of us.. she didn't remember her name. She didn't remember anything."

There was silence, it stretched on so long that I wasn't sure anyone was going to say anything else, but then Doctor Green wiped his eyes and blew his nose before continuing on, finishing up the story that had slowly but surely begun to rip out my heart.

"We had thought the individual was after us, against us. We thought that if we let her go she would never be put in that sort of position because of us, because of our affiliation with the Academy again. At first we thought we could support her from afar, but the truth of the matter came too quickly for any of us. We had to erase her, we had to forget, or at least try to. She was better off without us, safer, healthier.. and now she didn't have the stains of her past on her mind. She was totally free, and none of us were willing to be so selfish as to pull her back into our lives."

I settled my elbows on the table and used my sleeves to wipe my eyes, "but that's changed now, hasn't it? You guys had it wrong, because if he's after her, you were never the target. She was, and always has been."

Several of them looked angry, but none of them disagreed with me. They'd let her go for her own safety, and in turn had put her in the heat of the danger.

"And you never found the guy?"

Gabriel, my sweet sweet Gabriel, turned to look at me this time, "Clementine, we did. His fucking ashes are scattered in the ocean.."

"Obviously not," I stated, "So if that's the case then you all need to figure out how to tell that poor girl the truth," I was starting to get mad at them. I understood, of course I did, who couldn't? But they'd pushed her away, they'd been her only family, the only people who had loved her, and they'd shoved her out of their lives without even giving her chance to speak for herself.

"No," Kota said, "we can't. She's safer not knowing.."

"Are you kidding me Dakota? When are you going to learn you can't just decide her life for her?"

He lifted dark eyes to mine and locked his jaw, "We're not telling her, understood?"

I breathed heavily, but as I looked over his shoulder I saw the vent. Two shocked, tear filled,  angry, devastated and lost green eyes stared back at me through the slots in the vent.

"I am not willing," I said, taking a page out of North's book, "but I will obey."

These boys were about to get taught a lesson, whether or not they left me on the street for teaching them it or not. 

I looked away from Sang, knowing she'd seen me catch sight of her. I could only hope she and I would be on the same page.