Fateful Hindrance

13. Only Fools Fall In Love...And I Guess That's What We Both Are

I was beyond furious now.  My hand balled up into a fist and pounded down on his chest hard.  “Don’t you dare even tell me that I should choose him over you, to be happy with him and not you.  You’re not going anywhere, John.  I’m with them to help protect you.  You’re not going to die.”

John didn’t say a word then.  He was only gazing up at me, a slight smile on his lips.  But as I looked at those lips, a drop of red dripped from the corner and streaked down the side of his face into his hair. 

“I told you, Emmy love,” he rasped out.  “I told you I was next.”

“What are you…?”

My eyes went from the streak of blood coming from his mouth up to his eyes.  He was looking at me, but then his eyes dropped down to my fist still on his chest. 

Something wasn’t right.  My hand was clasped around something smooth and cool and metal…and when I lifted it up, the knife pulled from John’s chest with a sickening sound.

My hand opened and the knife dropped to the crisp, white bedding, staining it red…

John’s blood.

From the knife that I stabbed through his chest.

That chest where a giant hole was, blood pouring out of him.

My hands were shaking as I lifted them in front of me, both covered in crimson, before my eyes looked past them and at John, who was lying there, his eyes open and unseeing. 

 ...

My scream could have woken up the entire house, the entire street, the entire town of Pallandino.

I shot up from my bed, sweat drenching my skin and hair, body shaking violently, and heart racing in my chest.  A sob bubbled up in my throat, accompanying the tears that welled up in my eyes, eyes that couldn’t stop seeing the image of John lying there dead...

And because of me. 

Pulling my knees to my chest, I gasped before my sob finally came out, broken and miserable. 

Because I soon realized, it wasn’t just a dream. 

Almost all of my worries and fears were rolled up into it, seeming so short and yet the clock glowed four in the morning.

The first was that John would find someone else in the time that we were apart.  Yes, it selfish of me, but I still didn’t think that I would be able to take it if it were really true.  Had he found someone else in the time since my ‘death,’ even if it had only been a few short weeks?  And if he did…how was I going to take seeing him with her whenever I did get to see him again?

There was also the whole thing with the Order going after the Brotherhood’s founding families.  Sure, I knew the Knights were protecting them as best they could, but something could always go wrong.  And the dream John being so accepting of that fate…I could never imagine him doing that, giving up so easily.  He would fight for his family, for the Brotherhood, and for himself. 

And the dream John wanting me to be with Ryan if something did happen to him…never going to happen.

But what shook me up the most would probably any other person.  The image of John and the hole in his chest…then the knife in my hand, which was covered in his blood…I shivered just from picturing it again.

They said that dreams were your subconscious thoughts, your fears and anxieties that lay deeper than what you believed.  Maybe I was trying to tell myself something?