"They really fucked you up," Aria whispered to Dead Houseplant Number Three.
Several hours after the others had left, Aria came to the realization that these people couldn't keep anything alive. That did not bode well for her.
Dead Houseplant Number One was down in the kitchen, sitting on the counter with brown, crispy leaves. She spotted Dead Houseplant Number Two when she was searching the bathroom for painkillers. It was rotted. The stem was mush and the leaves fat and yellow. She didn't find any medication in the end, but she did find a dead fly.
The third one was the worst of the lot. It looked like somebody scorched it with a flamethrower. The sad thing sat on a table amidst scattered papers and used bowls in what appeared to be an office. Aria's gaze flickered from the plant to the stack of files. After a moment's hesitance, she sat at the desk and flipped the nearest file open.
They looked like surveillance photos. Each photograph was taken from a distance. The constant in each one of them being a white, suit-clad man Aria used to see on the news, spewing angrily about people like her before things got bad.
Aria's father used to switch the channel if he showed up on the screen while she was around. That didn't stop her from retiring to her room and listening to what was being said under the covers on the screen of her phone. She didn't know why she did that when she knew his words would only make her stomach twist.
The thought of her father made her chest ache and she wondered where they buried him after everything that happened.
"So you're a snoop," a voice said from the doorway.
Aria looked up. "I didn't mean to. Your plant is very dead and I-"
Eli's braid had come loose, locks of brown hair that had been neatly plaited back before she left now fell around her face. She pushed back a piece that fell in front of her eyes and arched a brow. "You came in because the plant isn't alive enough."
"It's not alive at all. And that's not what I meant."
"I'd be more worried if you didn't snoop, I guess. You're staying with strangers." Eli didn't smile, but there was an amused air about her. "But you could always just make us answer your questions instead of snooping, little Siren."
Aria's cheeks burned as Eli took a step back to leave. "I would-"
"And reign in your curiosity. Those aren't for your eyes."
Aria, albeit unwillingly, slid the file away once the other was out of sight while her face continued to burn hot with embarrassment.
It was rude. She was being rude. These people were allowing her to stay with them for the unforeseeable future and she was sticking her nose where it didn't belong.
Klaus stuck his head in through the door. "I'm heading out. Need anything?"
"Where are you going?"
"Into the city."
"Can you drop me off somewhere? Just for a walk?"
"With that wound?"
"I'll sit down often."
Klaus pressed his lips together for a moment before he sighed. "You can borrow one of my jackets. It's chilly."
✘
Aria didn't ask Klaus what he needed from the city and he didn't ask her why she was so eager for a walk in a place teeming with people that loathed them.
The park he dropped her off left her with a couple of miles walk. Aria kept her hood up and her head down, putting one foot in front of the other. It wasn't too late into the afternoon - a large number of people were out and about. That made it easier to get around unseen if she minimized any limping, but it made her heart beat a little faster.
The gates to the cemetery were open wide. Fresh flowers adorned a couple of the graves, but the grass around the land was green everywhere. It hadn't become the mass-grave-rotting-land-pile-of-corpses sort of nightmare Aria had expected. She walked around, eyes searching for her family, only to find nothing. The only other Muslim cemetery was two cities over - if they weren't here, she didn't know where else they could be.
Aria didn't know how far home was from here, but she found herself heading there anyway. She thought about going home after escaping, the thought flitting across her mind every once in a while, but it seemed foolish. Home is where they dragged her away. Home is where the guns went off. Home is where they would be waiting to take her again. But now she knew they thought she was dead and she needed to know where her family was.
She was going home.
The sky was getting dark and the wind blew a little colder the closer Aria got. The further away she got from the city, the worse off things seemed.
The little suburban neighborhood where Aria used to reside looked like it was once quaint. The houses were all nearly identical, varying only in different shades of brown and whether they were one story tall or two. The lawns were made up of brown, dead grass that was overrun with weeds. Compared to the amount of people Aria had seen on the way over, the place seemed relatively empty. A few of the houses had their porch lights on, but not a soul wandered outside.
Aria's old house was worse off than the others - the subject of vandalism and neglect. Windows were shattered in and obscenities were spray-painted in faded colors around the outside. She came to a stop on the driveway, catching the sight of a girl sitting in front of the front door.
"You're kind of an idiot!" Eli called.
For the second time that day, Aria's cheeks burned. "I get the feeling you don't trust me very much."
She stood up, brushing off her jeans. "For good reason. Like I just said, you're an idiot."
Aria walked up, letting her hood drop once she was across the threshold. "How'd you get here before me?"
"I drove. Why would you come here? Even if the world thinks you're dead, it's not safe. What if someone was still keeping an eye on the place?"
"How'd you know I'd be here?"
"Figured it was the first thing you'd do once you found out you were dead. And reckless. So, go get your closure and then we leave, alright?"
Aria moved further into the house. It wasn't anything like she remembered. Every piece of furniture, every picture that once adorned the walls was gone. Curtains that would have been drawn as the day ended were missing. That was typical for a home where an Enhanced had been removed - they didn't just take the people, they took everything. There was little left to keep one company aside from the trash strewn about on the ground and the spray-paintings on the walls.
Aria paused in the hall that led to her room, staring at blood-spatter that marred the wall and stained the carpet. It was a lot of blood for a child. How could something so tiny have that much in them?
"Yours?" Eli asked.
"Kid brother's." Aria's voice was steady. "What do they do to the bodies?"
"Burn them."
In a voice a little tighter than she wished it to be, Aria whispered, "Indiscriminately?"
"Yeah."
No burials. No bodies. Any stupid, hopeful notion about her family resting peacefully crashed down upon her, making it a little harder to draw air as her heart knotted up.
"I read that you put up a fight."
Aria moved away from the blood and toward her room. "And a lot of good it did me."
Like every other room, the furniture was gone and the walls were bare. Stray pieces of tape were left where posters were once hung up. There were deep, bloodied scratches running horizontally across the wall nearest to the door.
Eli waited outside, watching her from the doorway. "I also read you never used your gifts on them."
Something searing churned inside the pit of Aria's stomach.
"I didn't."
"You could have killed them all if you did, you know."
Aria aligned her fingers with the marks on the wall, but pushed her hands back into the pockets of her jacket to hide their trembling. "Doesn't matter."
"I'm serious. There's a reason they wanted you so bad. Why they're so scared of Sirens. They cut out your tongues and experiment on you when you don't fall in line. They kill all of you because you can stop them. You can do what you want to them and they'll be powerless."
"You think I don't know this? You think I don't know I could easily have had them leave us alone if I could control it? They were afraid because I'm a monster. Of what I could do. I know that. You're not telling me anything I don't already know."
"So why," Eli said, resting her head against the doorframe, "did we find you as a fucking barista? Why are you making coffee for them when you could be stopping them?"
The rage in Aria's stomach burned like hellfire despite her having thought it fizzled out long ago. It threatened to spill out through every crevice, every pore, but all she could do was laugh. "You think I don't want to? You think I want them to be able to walk around when they've turned everyone I loved to dust?"
"Tell me what you want," Eli said.
"I want to burn them to the ground."
Eli smiled. "Alright. Then you and I will burn them to the ground."
A u t h o r 's N o t e
I'm working on new headers, I swear. I have no idea how the quality of these got past me.