A/N Y'all asked for it. :) Haven't edited yet, since some people were so anxious ;)
Still.. love you all. Just save me a drink or two.
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He was there again when I opened my eyes. This time I knew it wasn’t him and was able to shake the image. It was Dr. Kaplan. He was checking my blood pressure again.
It didn’t really matter. I could feel it now. I could feel the slow decline of my heartbeat.
I watched him through a muddy veil. I could spot the moment that his concern turned to urgent worry.
His eyes met mine and I managed the smallest of smirks, glad my nightmare was coming to an end.
He hurried out of my room. I could hear his voice raising down the hallway, but I couldn’t focus on it. It was too close. The end.
I saw him hurry into the room again before my sight blurred out with black dots.
“Goodbye.” I whispered out to my absent love.
“Don’t you dare. “ I heard a deep voice say faintly.
But I was already gone.
___
I felt like time was moving backwards. My body was responding to whatever the doctor had apparently given me. I slowly began to feel life again. My fingers and my toes began to uncurl, my insides relaxed, and the constant stinging itch beneath my skin began to subside.
The first thing I did was pray for it to return.
The more I hurt, the closer I was to death and I wanted it more than anything. I craved it and I wanted it to find me even more than I wanted Mitch to. I’d been so close and yet they’d pulled me away again. They were continuing their torture.
I'm weak. I always have been. I've never claimed to be anything but.
I just wanted all of the hurt and pain and suffering to disappear. I wanted every hardship, every weird, unnatural occurrence and every tear and every single heartache to end.
I needed an end.
I, of course, was denied my peace and had I the strength to scream, to thrash about, throw a tantrum and damn them all to hell I would have. As it were, I could barely keep my eyes open.
As a consolation, I mentally gave them the finger and cursed them with every possible horrible, angry word I could think of as I rested, slowly gaining strength at a snail's pace.
There were new doctors that came in every now and again to check on me. I didn't like them at all. They were old and coarse looking, not at all as inviting as Dr. Kaplan.
These new doctors only took notes, checked the machines, poked and prodded me with their needles and their tiny flashlights and then they left without a single word.
I hoped he'd come back.
I needed something familiar, something at least pleasant to look at if nothing else.
Thankfully, it wasn't too long before I was joined by none other than the man I'd been hoping to see.
"I thought you'd abandoned me." I whispered out, unaware that I was even thinking out loud.
He smiled a bit. "You can't get rid of me that easily."
It reminded me of something Mitch would have said.
Mitch.
I forced myself not to think of him. The more I thought about him, the more it hurt. So I didn't.
"Tell me about yourself" I asked, my voice still not strong enough to be more than a quiet whisper.
He looked mildly surprised as I made my request. I don't know why I asked, but I did. I was curious.
He chuckled a bit. "I take that as a sign that you're feeling better. What do you want to know?" He looked at me with a hint of amusement as he wrote something onto a notepad I couldn't see.
"Everything. Your name? Where you're from? Why you're here?"
He hesitated for a moment, but eventually he started talking… not instructing me or questioning me, but just talking as he began to check my vitals and unhook me from some of the various machines, tubes and lines.
Avriel, he told me, was his name, but everyone called him Avi. It actually made me smile, as much as I could anyway. Avi. Such a strange name. I liked it.
He told me that he was from California, that he’d wanted to grow up to be a musician, but his parents and everyone else said he was gifted. They told him that his intellect shouldn’t be used for something as trivial as music. So they had naturally enrolled him in the best schools, pushed him into the field of science and he’d hated every second of it.
He was only 24 years old and had 3 different Master’s Degrees.
Gifted.
Well, I guess so. Reminded me of someone else I knew.
But no, I couldn't think about him.
“If you hate it, why are you still here doing this?” I managed to croak out awkwardly. My throat was still raw.
He looked at me and I swear I saw nothing but pure sadness, a darkness behind his eyes that I'd never seen in anyone else before.
“My sister. When I found out she was sick I swore I’d find a cure. No child should have to live their life like she did, always sick and in pain, in and out of hospitals, undergoing treatment after treatment.”
He looked away from me, remembering. I couldn’t take my eyes away from him. I felt closer to him in his sorrow. At least it was something we shared. I didn’t want to think about the irony, of what Mitch had gone through before he’d met me.
“I dedicated every spare second to research, to experimenting. That’s how they found me. AdAstra. They told my parents they could help Esther. They said they had a cure for her cancer. We, of course, didn’t believe them, but Esther didn’t have more than a couple of months left in her. We had nothing to lose.”
He busied himself with drawing more of my blood, avoiding my gaze. He seemed to have trouble looking at my face, but my eyes were all over his. I remembered the girl in the photo he’d shown me on the day he’d began my torture. She had the same eyes.
“Your friend has something inside of him that makes him incredible."
My friend.
I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of those words. Mitch was so much more than that.
My friend. My lover. He was all I'd ever known and all I ever wanted to. My love, my heart, my entirety.
"He saved a life. I just need to know how. I want to know how to help people, children like Esther. I want to save people’s mother’s and fathers... grandparents, sisters & brothers … sons and daughters. I’ve lived this life, lived in my own cage and I want it to mean something. X23-“
I flinched, grunting my hatred at the label.
He stopped and chewed on his lip. “Mitch” It was forced, almost as if he was choking on the simple word.
That name. Hearing it brought back that horrible ache in my heart that I kept trying to forget.
"He saved a little girl and who knows how many others. That means something. His life has MEANT something. He lived in a cage, but it was for a reason. I don’t want to hurt him, I swear to you. I didn’t want to hurt you, I never wanted to, but-”
“-so why did you?”
“Because. Their methods may be slightly medieval, but their intentions are the same. It’s all for the greater good. I would have never actually let the virus kill you."
“The ends don’t justify the means.”
His hand sat gently on my arm and his eyes finally met mine. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Once you’re in over your head, there’s no turning back.”
There was more than sorrow there, reflected in the expressive eyes of my captor. There was fear. He was trapped just like I was and there was nothing either of us could do but ride it out.
We were nothing more than puppets in someone’s warped stage show. The world is a cruel place. I know that all too well.
I opened my mouth to speak again, suddenly feeling a very Mitch-like urge to comfort him, but he quickly changed the subject by asking me how I was feeling.
Just like that the stone-like expression returned to his face, and he became the doctor again. I felt sick to my stomach as I realized the reach of this company or whatever the hell they were.
“Are you-“ He started but then - chaos.
.
We both turned our eyes to the door as we heard dozens of footfalls echoing through the hallway. I heard a voice through a speaker at Avi’s hip.
I couldn’t make out what they were saying as Avi had moved away to look out into the hallway, but I clearly heard the words X23, cornered, communications and something about Avalon.
I swear I stopped breathing.
Mitch.
They had him. It was all over.
It was completely my fault. If he hadn’t been coming for me this never would have happened.
If he was trapped, then all hope was really and truly lost. I watched it die in the other man’s eyes as he turned back to look at me. His mouth turned downwards as he slowly approached me again.
“I’m sorry, Scott.” I could tell he genuinely meant it.
My hand found his and I squeezed it for strength.
My enemy.
Ironic how things turn out in drastic situations.
“They have him? He’s here?”
He shook his head. “He thinks they’re keeping you somewhere else. He cut their power and communications, but they’re sending practically every resource to contain him. There’s no way he’ll make it out.”
“Will you promise me something? Will you tell him that I’m sorry and I love him?”
The real Avi was showing, I could see the guilt and regret. He nodded. “I promise.”
“So I guess they won’t need me anymore. Think they’ll finally kill me?
He stared into my face. “I don’t…I don’t think so. I mean...”
“Don’t lie to me, Avi. I know this is it.”
He chewed on his lip, probably wondering if he should say what he wanted to.
“I think they may use you to make sure he cooperates.”
My insides turned to stone. I’d been through so much already, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be used that way, not knowingly. They’d done it before, but it had only been words. I couldn’t be put in front of him, I couldn’t be used against him. I wouldn’t. I’d go through hell again just to never let that happen.
“Please kill me. I’m begging you. You can’t let them do that.”
“Scott, I-”
“Avi! Please.”
“I can’t, Scott. I can’t.”
I sat up, but that had been a mistake. The room began to spin and I teetered. Avi’s hands pushed me back against my bed.
“You’re weak, Scott. You need to rest.”
Weak. Always.
I hadn’t had anything solid to eat in weeks so, yes, I probably should rest, but not then. This was not the time.
I just looked at him, trying to figure out what I could do to prevent this from happening. I could see the internal struggle going on in his brain. I don’t know what he was debating, but I assume he wasn’t supposed to do what he did next.
“Here, this will make you feel better.” He had shuffled with some things on a table and then injected me with something else. It didn’t even phase me. I’d been stuck so many times in the past few weeks I’d never be bothered by needles again.
At least he was right. Immediately I felt a surge of warmth through my veins and finally I began to feel as if I were truly alive again.
“It’s his blood, undiluted. You'll be better in no time, probably healthier than you were before." He whispered it as if someone else was listening in.
His blood.
Mitch was all over me, coursing through my veins, alleviating the ache, the pain, the heaviness. My comfort.
“Scott ” Avi's voice shook slightly with an emotion I still cannot pinpoint. I assume it was anxiety.
“Yeah?”
He looked at me, wanting to say something important, I could tell, but I never got to hear it.
The lights went out, all power gone.
I could see nothing, not even the back up emergency lights came on.
“Scott?” I heard Avi’s voice, laced with the fear he was trying to disguise, and then his hand was on mine again.
We stayed quiet for what seemed at least an hour. I closed my eyes to shield them from the endless darkness.
.
“Don’t make a sound.” A voice whispered in my ear, throwing me out of the silence. I recognized it immediately, throwing my eyes open in an attempt to see him.
I almost laughed with the weight of my relief, but I remained frozen, Avi’s hand still gently keeping contact with mine.
My relief was short lived as I heard the cocking of a gun.
I strained my eyes to see where it was coming from, who possessed it, where it was pointed .. but they refused to adjust and fear gripped my heart in an iron fist as I held my breath.
The fireworks were about to start.
“Please.”
It was so soft, scared and yet unwavering. It wasn’t Mitch, it was Avi.
That meant Mitch...
I couldn’t even imagine Mitch holding a gun let alone pointing it at someone.
Until I saw it.
My eyes adjusted and I could make out the faint outline of Mitch's extended arm, hand seeming to meld with the object he held inches from the doctor’s forehead.
I was momentarily paralyzed as my eyes dilated and I could finally make out the scene before me.
I wondered how it could have come to this. I remember thinking that there had to be another way
You wouldn’t think that you would have time to think of anything except staying alive, but it felt like time stood still. I tried to come up with something to say, to do. I searched for a resolution but none came to mind and my eyes moved to the face I’d been longing to see for far too long.
I stared, trying to make out the features of his face, but my entire body tensed as all I could see was white-hot anger. He looked as if he’d like nothing more than to rip the man in front of him into small pieces with his bare hands.
Even I feared him.
Avi’s hand held mine, and I swear I could feel his heart beating almost out of control as he tightened his grip.
“Trust me, this is me being kind.” The words came from my love’s mouth, almost spat out at the face of his enemy.
I fought for my own words, to find a voice. I tried to come up with a plan, to think of any motion to stop him.
I needed something to save the only thing that had kept me alive and sane in that miserable place. I needed to tell him.
“don’t.”
It was a gravelly whisper and I know he heard me, but he didn’t acknowledge me.
Avi’s eyes met mine in a fleeting moment of acceptance and apology.
Even now if I close my eyes I can see that face as clearly as I did that night and it still tears through me.
I expected Mitch to let him go.
I expected blood and yet I thought the three of us would walk out of there alive.
I expected a gun blast.
What I didn’t expect was the tiny sound that made his body crumple to the floor, the hand on mine sliding out of my grasp. Even the sound he made as he fell was louder than the object that had snuffed him out.
I sat up again, transfixed on the thing that used to be a living, breathing human being.
That body used to be a doctor, a big brother, a dreamer.
I felt conflicting emotions as Mitch flung himself at me, wrapping my frail body tightly in his arms. I could still feel him trembling as he held me against him. He was whispering things, kissing me, but I couldn’t seem to hear him. My ears were filled with high pitched buzz.
I lost track of what he was doing as I stared at the lifeless, now almost shapeless form on the floor. Somehow I was detached from everything and before I knew it the form was getting smaller as Mitch lifted my now significantly lighter body and hurriedly navigated through the dark.
It took us quite a bit to maneuver through what was a bit of a labyrinth, but Mitch seemed to know it well. Too many times we were forced to hide and wait as more and more men rushed by to aid in what was, apparently, a well thought out diversion.
I remember us running, I remember gun shots...
I remember pain, and the sound of Mitch shouting.
Then my familiar friend, darkness.