When the Clouds Fell

Chapter 6: In Which Noah Comes Home

Noah had not set foot in his own house for almost a year. It had not changed much since then. The walls still pressed down on him, laying a weight he could not hope to carry upon his shoulders. It nuzzled close to him, welcoming him back after months of separation. The corridor squeezed around him, made narrower by the spurts of darkness radiating from his arms.

He walked down the front hall, his mind wandering to all the memories that had happened in it. The happier times, when the world had only extended as far as his parents' car would take them. The times when he, En, and Derek would lick raw cake batter beneath the table. The times, a little later, when Marie and Hayden would also join them, and they would run through the long grass outback together, hiding from each other behind stalks as tall as them.

All that joy. All those giggles and tears that had been destroyed. By him.

A shuffle and a flash of white skirted into the dim corridor. Noah reached down to stroke Buttercup's sleek fur, much to her pleasure.

"Hey, how're you doing, kitty?" He weaved his fingers through her thick coat. "I don't think white suits you." As he petted Buttercup, blackness spread into her fur, leeching onto every fiber like oil in an ocean. The cat purred contentedly, rubbing her head against his leg.

Noah smiled to himself in the dark, an uncomfortable tingle bouncing in his chest. He could not quite identify what it was, but he knew he did not like it much. It did not sit well with what ran through his blood and cycled through his body. The two just would not agree.

He continued his journey deeper into the house, making a point to step around all the metal trinkets littered everywhere. They had not been there before. Noah toed a small and shiny car, watching it roll soundlessly down the hardwood.

He came to a stop before the smudgy basement door. The marks were visible under a yellow glow cast by the lights in the atrium. Something tugged at Noah from behind the door; something that belonged to him, something he missed, and something that he really, really wanted back. His fingers hovered over the golden knob, twitching ever closer with each breath.

"Step away from the door," the voice made him flinch, a cool, commanding tone that turned his blood to ice. She had the same fire in her eyes, the same angry tilt to her eyebrows, and the same firmly set lips.

"Vienna." Noah breathed his sister's name in a gasp. He took a step away from her, then another and another. Until he reached the atrium and had his back pressed to the thin screen that barred the way outside. A draft of hot night air wrapped itself around him, stifling him.

En's short hair danced a furious wave around her neck, following the movement of the little metal objects she suspended in the air. "What are you doing here, Noah?" she growled, anger pinching her acne-scarred face.

He gulped, words trying to make their way to his throat but falling back down halfway. She was right. He had no right to stand in this house again after all that he had done to them. But, instead, a shaky smile turned his mouth up. "You can't do anything with those, En."

The ornaments, as if insulted by his words, wavered in the air, liquefying and merging into one solid mass. A dangerously sharp and pointed mass, suspended just over his jugular vein.

"Oh." Noah coughed at his own stupidity. How could he have forgotten? "Hello, Derek."

His brother did not even deem in necessary to look at him, standing in the shade of the left stairwell, hand fisted. Derek's lanky figure distorted in and out of focus. The pit of Noah's stomach burned with an angry sensation. It pleased the thing in his blood and, for just a second, the shadows around them jittered. A spell of thick tension fell over the siblings, sucking the summer night air of its warmth.