The Dark Archer

Chapter 27

Kylie POV

"Mommy? Mommy what's wrong?" I asked my mother, who looked incredibly pale as she froze mid phone conversation.

The phone dropped from her hand and seemed to take forever to fall to the floor, though not nearly as long as it took for my mother herself to collapse. I could hear a concerned voice speaking through the phone, but I paid no attention as I fell to my mother's side. She had fainted, her eyes closed, but that wasn't the main thing that concerned me. In a daze, I spun around in our new apartment and picked up the discarded phone.

"Help! You've gotta help my mommy's hurt!" I yelled into the phone.

"Kylie? It's okay it's Auntie Nat, everything will be okay. I want you to hang tight honey, I've got someone calling 911 for you. Keep talking to me. Is she breathing? What happened?" My aunt's voice rang through the speakers. I took in a deep breath as I turned back to my mother, seeing that she was also breathing.

"She's still breathing Auntie Nat. She fainted—I think— after you told her something. What do I do, Nat, I'm scared," I whimpered.

"Listen to my voice, sweetheart. Your mommy will be okay. I need you to be brave for me and stay calm until the ambulances get there," Auntie Nat soothed.

"But she fell on it, Natty, she fell on it!" I sobbed.

"She fell on what, Kylie?"

I gasped awake, sitting straight up in Peter's bed as I fought to calm my racing heart. My forehead was covered in a cold sweat that I wiped off on my sleeve. Peter stirred and grumbled, woken up by my thrashing, no doubt. He turned and looked at me worriedly when he noticed my appearance. He sat up and opened his arms, which I gladly dove into. Peter began to slowly rub my back to calm me down from reliving the scarring memory.

"Which one was it, Kylie?" Was all he asked, accustomed by now to the nightmares, though this was the first time I'd been with him after having one.

"When my mother fell," I whimpered softly into his chest.

"Shh, shh," he soothed me gently. "You haven't had that one in years, Lee. What brought it on?"

"I don't know anymore, Pete. At first they were about Gwen, but these past couple nights I've been getting flashbacks, sometimes good, sometimes bad. I think maybe the loss of Gwen is triggering suppressed memories and emotions," I reasoned.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Aside from the ones about you and Gwen, I've been having ones about my parents and Uncle Ben," Peter sympathized.

"What do I do to stop them?" I asked quietly.

"I think the only way we can make it stop is to come to terms with them, make peace with them. You have to stop blaming yourself," he whispered.

"Well what about you?" I wondered, sitting back. "If you don't stop blaming yourself for all of this, you will never get past it and move on."

"Kylie—" Peter protested.

"No, Peter, you listen to me. You are a good, wonderful person and what you do gives people hope. Hope that things can be better, and hope that the sun will shine through the clouds and chase away the darkness looming over them. You were doing something with your life, and it was amazing. And you can still be amazing. Sure, you're human—we both are, but you can't be brought down and stay there. Heroes get back up, Peter, and that's what you are—a hero. And heroes don't let grief keep them down—they have to make their own hope and then spread it to the people," I motivated passionately. "They probably need you right now. C'mon."