I wake up, not realizing I had fallen asleep. I'm warm, like I'm lying on something soft. I rub my face, feeling the dry tears that left marks all over my face.
My eyes are puffy, my sinuses are stuffed and I think about what happened yesterday. I think about Nick.
I have to try hard not to cry, but my thoughts quickly change subjects when I realize what I'm laying on.
Colton is asleep, his arms spread wide, a blanket over the two of us.
My head is resting on his chest, we're lying under a tree. I don't remember any of this happening, I don't remember falling asleep. The last event I recall is collapsing onto the ground crying.
I can't imagine what Colton thinks of me now, he probably thinks I'm some emotional freak. I can't stand the thought of me crying in front of him.
I sit up, the sun warming up my skin. It has to be late in the day, because we got back to the middle world very late at night.
I'm still surprised at how quickly it took us to find Nick, I expected it to take a few hours. It also didn't take me long to lose him. Colton said that we might've had to spend a day there, which is unimaginable.
I stare at the grass, not sure what to do with myself. I basically killed my brother. I wish I could hug him just one more time.
Colton moves slightly, and sits up next to me rubbing his eyes. I'm too ashamed to say anything to him and too confused to ask him what happened last night. All I know is that his chest is extremely comfortable because I slept really well last night.
"Are you ready to get going?" Colton inquires in a raspy voice. He moves his backpack in between his legs and begins packing things inside.
"Sure." I reply and push myself to my feet. "Where do we go to get back to the Afterworld?"
"We have to walk about two hours east to another museum. There's another gate similar to Pluto's gate." He answers, placing the straps to his backpack around his shoulders.
"How many gates are there? Are they just scattered all around the world?" I ask in a dull voice as we begin our journey back. I have to walk fairly slowly and I limp as I do so, but the pain is getting better.
"There's twelve to the Underworld and seven to the Afterworld. We got lucky this time because Pluto's gate and Sukko's gate are really close to each other. If we appeared in Israel or Argentina or something, this would be a different story and we probably would've had to walk for days to get back." He explains.
I nod in acknowledgement, I don't feel like saying anything in response. I'm too scared that I was going to say something and my voice would crack and I would start crying again.
I have to save it for when I get back to my room by myself.
Oh no.
I can't imagine what it's going to be like telling Brooke what happened. She has been so confident that we'd save him.
I was so focused on the journey itself to ever wonder if we'd actually be unable to save him or find him. I thought it was a possibility but never imagined the consequences.
I don't want to speak to anyone for weeks, I just want to be by myself until I am ready to talk to people.
She's going to be devastated. I feel like I let her down. I know I did, she is expecting me to come back with my brother but I'm only coming back with a huge injury and the same sarcastic voyager I left with.
Nick looked different, he looked sad. He must've been depressed spending all of that time in the Underworld, I wonder how Daisy was so cheery when she saw me since she had been there for years.
"Colton?" I ask after a few minutes of silence.
"Yes?"
"How are there that many angels down in the Underworld?"
He looks at me, then shifts his glance away from me. "That's the one question I cannot answer, blondie."
I tilt my head in interest. "Why?"
"Because I don't know. One in every billion people die and go to the wrong place. It's extremely rare. Something's wrong." He replies and my stomach ties in a knot.
"How else would they get down there? Maybe it's more common than you think." I suggest but he doesn't seem too keen on the idea.
"Maybe. There's a lot of things you don't know, Juliet, as a stage two. It's hard to explain." He says, then checks the compass that sits in his hand.
"Explain them to me, I want to know." I insist but he shakes his head.
"It's better that you don't know."
The next few hours of walking consisted of pure silence, I think we were both extremely upset about what happened to Nick. We also didn't really have anything to talk about, I expected our journey back to the Afterworld was going to be full of laughter and catching up with my little brother.
I can hardly walk now and it's starting to get dark outside. Walking with a hurt leg is impossible, we move at a very slow pace.
At first my limp was faint, it didn't hurt too bad, but walking on it for almost two hours made it hurt so much worse.
I chuckle uncomfortably at the pain, trying not to let it show through on my face.
"Alright we're stopping." Colton retorts, tossing his backpack onto the ground.
"No, I'm fine. I can walk." I insist. I don't want to stop, I want to finish strong. I don't want to stay on earth another night, I want to be alone for once.
"No you can't, Juliet. It's okay if you can't walk. We can rest for a bit." He assures me, already sitting down.
I groan. "Colton, I just want to get back to the Afterworld. I just want to be able to lay in bed. I don't want to be down here anymore."
He sighs. "If you keep walking, you will hurt your leg to the point where you physically cannot walk. And it doesn't just completely go away in the Afterworld. Is that what you want? Do you want to stay here for a few hours and rest or do you want to be forced to stay here another day?"
I inhale sharply. "I guess not." I sit down. "What are we going to do here while we rest, just sit here in silence?"
"Well," he begins, rummaging through his bag, "we can eat this old bread if you're hungry."
I take a piece of the bread, which is really hard and not very appetizing. "This looks like the food they gave me when I was kidnapped."
He narrows his eyebrows in concern. "What did they even do to you in there?"
I shiver thinking about it even though I wasn't in there for long. "They were about to transport me to a new location to be sold. These wounds are from a whip because I..." my voice fades away thinking about the piece of clay impaled in that man's stomach.
"You what?"
"I broke the clay bowl they gave me and I." I sigh. "I stabbed one of their workers with it to try and escape and this was my punishment." I point to my leg.
"Wow." He rubs the back of his neck with his hand. "I'm glad I found you when I did. I wish I saw those men before they took you so that we could've entered the Underworld earlier. I've heard that those who lurk in the Underworld can hear when somebody approaches the gate, which explains why they were ready for us to come."
"Do you think that would've changed whether we saved Nick or not? What is the Underworld usually like?"
Colton pulls a blanket out over his legs. "It's like the Afterworld, there's different types of people. Where we appeared was where the most demons lurk because it's the main entrance. They search all day for souls like ours. Usually, most of them are found much deeper into the Underworld, we're lucky Nick was found within the first few minutes of being there."
"Oh god," I shudder, "I don't even want to think about what goes on down there."
"The problem is that the people you saw in that jail cell are probably one percent of all of the angels that are actually down there. I don't think you understand how huge this is." His face is serious.
"But there's nothing we can do, though. They're stuck. Right?"
"Yes they're stuck, most likely." He sighs, rubbing his face. Talking about this clearly makes him stressed, so I stop asking about it.
I don't speak for a moment, watching how sad his face looks. "Thank you for taking me, Colton. Even though you had to."
His lips curve into a smile. "It's my job I guess. Although out of all of my voyages, this one has been the most interesting."
I raise my eyebrows. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
He ponders over the question for a moment. "Depends. I've never had someone be kidnapped while I was here and I've certainly never been knocked out by a demon." Colton points to his black eye and we both laugh softly.
"Still, even if we didn't get Nick, I appreciate you doing everything you could to save him. If you didn't agree to go with me, I don't know what I would've done with myself." I think about how Stacy said that I wouldn't be given permission to go and how Carter said that Colton is the only one who could've taken me.
"Look, as someone who comes here all the time, I had never been so invested in somebody's story. It's always going on mission trips, or going to fix something in the middle world or even visit the Underworld to save somebody. This scenario however, has me interested."
"Oh," I reply, "well I'm glad you feel that way I guess."
"You in particular are interesting." He begins going through his backpack. "Out of all my time spent in the Afterworld, you are the second person I have seen without the sparkle in your eyes."
"Really?" I'm shocked actually, I didn't think it was that rare.
"Yeah, but it fades away quickly. You'll get it within a month I'm assuming. You seem to be handling your fears pretty well." He smirks.
"Well thank you. If mine are supposed to go away quickly, then why don't you have it yet?" I inquire. "You're still not healed from your death, are you?"
He adjusts his seating position, but doesn't seem bothered by the question. "Depends on what you consider healed. I've moved on alright, but nothing will ever let me forget what happened."
I look into his eyes, see the sorrow seeping from his body. "It is pretty horrible. But you'll heal eventually, I'm sure of it."
"Thanks for the optimism, but I've tried everything. Making friends, partying every night to forget, but nothing works. I'll always remember how I killed everyone I knew."
I look away. "You didn't kill them, you did what you had to do." I turn back to him. "We've both lost people we love."
There is a silence after I say that and a very noticeable tension between the two of us emerges as we look at each other. I want to break the silence, I want to say something so that I wouldn't feel so captivated by his stare.
"Right." He says quietly. "Is your leg feeling better?"
I nod. "How much further until we get to the gate?"
"Approximately thirty minutes, maybe more if you need to take another break. We're going to get back to the Afterworld very late." He replies, then lies down on his back.
"Great. That's going to be a long train ride." I sigh
"Yep. Have fun with that." He retorts, resting the back of his head on his hands, and his elbows sticking out.
"What do you usually do after a voyage? Prepare for the next one? How often do you go?" I question.
"Usually everything goes back to normal. I would do what a normal stage three does. I go on a voyage about every other month. I hardly go on big ones like this." He answers.
"Usually?" I repeat, "is this time different?"
Colton looks at me, then looks back at the sky. It is starting to get a bit chilly now that the sky is painted a beautiful orange color and the sun is sinking towards the horizon. "No, this time is just like every other journey. I'm just saying that sometimes it's different."
I can't tell if there's something off about him or he is just tired. He could lie better than anyone I knew, and what he said is genuinely believable. It's not important anyway, I just don't understand why he would even lie about that.
"Ready to go?" He asks.
I lie down on my back like he is. "Just a few more minutes. I need to mentally prepare myself to go back."
What could Colton be hiding?