Luminescence

Twenty-four.

"I don't care, Hudson," I say to him honestly, my gaze meeting his soft, green eyes. "This is something  I want to do."

He finally relaxed, letting me do as I please as I turned him around to inspect the injuries on his back. And seeing what was there, my stomach struggled to hold back my dinner from earlier.

His back was covered in angry, violent whip lashes that were a deep red, now turning purple as they looked extremely painful. His head hung low in shame, as if this was the last thing he wanted me to see.

Taking deep breaths, I begin to summon the power I had found within me the other night. Healing was more of a willpower than anything. The familiar golden wisps suddenly start to appear from my fingertips, as they reached out like little branches to each one of the whiplashes on his back.

Slowly yet surely, the marks on his back began to close up. The bruises on his chest must have been healing too, because his shoulders visibly relaxed as a soft sigh came from his lungs.. The job was hardly even halfway done when a wave of fatigue suddenly washed over me. But I had to do this. I had to stay strong for him. At least two minutes passed, and my mind was ready to give out on me.

As the process finally came to an end, I didn't notice the tear that fell from my eye until it landed atop my kneecap. As my smaller body sat behind his larger, now fully healed body, I rested my head softly on his defined, muscular back as if he were a pillow. The fatigue of the healing process was proving to be way too much.

He begins to turn around in his position, but I stop him by placing a hand on his back.

"Why can't I turn?" He whispers to me, his voice now sounding much better than before.

I wipe another tear with the sleeve of my eye as guilt consumes me. "Because I don't want you to see me crying again," I whisper.

That sentence only made him turn more forcefully than before, not letting my hand stop him this time. I sit there like a helpless puppy next to a human. He slowly takes both of my hands and pulls me into his chest, making butterflies erupt in my stomach.

Hudson wipes a tear from my eye as he looks upon my smaller figure. We were so close, so damn close that I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.

"Why are you crying?" He asks softly, beginning to play with the loose strands of my hair. It wasn't fair that he was so naturally good at everything — especially when it came to winning my heart.

I look anywhere but his face, too overcome with guilt. "Hudson, this is all my fault. You wouldn't be in such a poor state if it weren't for me. Each day that I'm still breathing is just another day of trouble for you, and I'm sick of it all. Sometimes I wished that I was still working in that darn scrapyard, away from all of the commotion and away from—"

"Do you even hear yourself speaking right now? This isn't the Mara I know," he interrupts with a hint of panic in his voice. "Did the Rebels do something to you? Did you get a concussion from the battle?" He questions like an overprotective mother, inspecting my face.

Despite the guilt in my chest, a weak laugh escaped my lips. "No, Hudson. I'm perfectly fine."

He sighs. "Fate does things for a reason, Mara. Just like how we met. Who knew that I'd be sitting here with a beautiful girl I found from a junkyard?" He questions to himself but didn't seem to notice his slip-up. "It was my wrong-doing by joining the Plague. After what happened at the Rebel base—the murder attempt on me," he clarifies. "I was angry at everyone, and vowed to never let anyone close to my heart ever again. I thought joining forces with the Plague would help me become more powerful and stronger, so I could defend myself against future attacks like those. For seven years I fought alongside with the Plague, searching the continent for mutants all for the damn throne. Looking back now, I regret it every day. I could never kill mutants myself, though. They would be tortured in a cell for days by guards until they were too weak to survive."