KOLE
I never thought I'd see him again and yet here he is right in front of me.
I didn't think he'd wake up before we got back to Earth and yet, again, he's right in front of me.
What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to act? All I can do is stare at him as he stares at me with judgmental hazel eyes as he hangs onto Mars. I dropped my Twizzlers, trying to get away from him.
"Hi." He said, his voice sounding so real and firm and... disappointed.
It was that same feeling when you've done something and your parents are neither mad nor upset just... disappointed. It's an unnerving feeling of failure and confusion all rolled into one. You don't know if you should be begging them to say something or leave it alone; a nagging feeling of incompletion.
"Hi..." I eventually eeked out.
"If you're going to sleep in there then I would change the sheets. "Whatever Max was kept in smells like the inside of a constipated colon as well as his own BO. So..." he said, starting to take Max most likely to the showers.
If he was having such a hard time walking then maybe Max wanted the bed back? I mean, I didn't really want to piss him off. I'm not even sure if what happened to me was something the aliens did in my head or changed themselves to do to me, but there's a possibility that they may have tapped into Max's mind or something... I just got back to semi-normal... I didn't want to have to go through anything else.
"N-no... I'm good. Um... he can sleep in it if he wants..."
"You never change." Dawaen said with a roll of his eyes as he spun back around, putting his back to us.
Max asked a question but I was starting to feel sick and left to go to go to the room and try to calm down. I went into the room and then put my back against the door, breathing heavy and trying to gain composure. I thought for sure that Max would stay asleep at least a couple more days before I would have to see or talk to him. This was a disaster! I couldn't avoid him forever!
I started hyperventilating and I walked towards the small table in the middle of the room and leaned on it, trying to catch my breath. I gripped the sides and just stared at the table top, my eyes seeming to stay perpetually wide in shock? I guess? I'm not sure...
The door opened but I ignored it.
"You can't avoid him, Kole."
It was Mars, of course. I swallowed hard and stood up straight, turning to him. He watched me with an almost disgusted look and I really couldn't blame him. I know what I am, what I've always been. I've always been a coward and a weakling. My biggest strength was somehow befriending the strong ones but in that, I became lesser than myself. I was a lacky, a weasel, a bitch, a patsy, whatever you want to call me. I would do anything -anything- to keep from getting hurt. I would grovel and betray and do all the dirty little things people were too chicken to do if it would gain me immunity. Mars knew it as soon as I tried being friends with him after I saw him beat the hell out of these guys one time. I knew that I had to be on his good side and I thought that I could charm my way to doing that, but Marsden Holt was a completely different type of person. He could smell me a mile away, like I had rolled in shit and tried to say it was dirt, and so, I went after the next best thing: Max.
Max was lonely, introverted, and kept to himself but Mars was his best friend. I had watched them, trying to figure out what it was that made Mars want to be his friend, why Max Taylor was granted the immunity and protection that I so desperately desired... I had to be Max's friend in order to be Mars' friend... and Mars knew it. He knew that my friendship started shallow with Max and that's how it ended with Max. He was getting off on my pain like the fucking sadist he was.
"You're enjoying every little bit of my struggle, aren't you?"
"You barely saw each other, what is there to enjoy? I'm just saying that we are on a tiny shuttle out in space so there is no way you're going to be able to avoid him. You're going to have to talk to him."
"I can figure out a way to avoid him."
"Now you're just being unrealistic. Kole, why don't you man up for once in your miserable little life and confront him about what happened? If nothing else, just say you're sorry."
"I highly doubt that apologizing will justify what I did."
"This little adventure didn't even justify what you did. The least you can do is give the guy a sincere apology about fucking up his life even more than it already was... and is again. He's been stuck on that ship for almost two years and one of the last things he remembers is seeing you, his supposed 'friend', watch his bully beat the hell out of him and not even lift a finger. The last thing he remembers is you betraying him. So why not try to level the playing field?"
"I think the playing field has been leveled out enough. I'm pregnant with alien babies and so is Dawaen. Now we can both endure the same ridicule that Max went through."
"Getting pregnant against your own will isn't the same and you know it. I'm going to go try to see if I can help Dawaen find that section about Max in those documents..."
"You seem real chummy with him now all of a sudden."
Mars looked over his shoulder at me and I stepped back a little. God, he was the most menacingly innocent looking guy I've ever met in my life...
"Unlike you, Dawaen's lesson was learned through the pregnancies. You, on the other hand, can't be changed or even properly forgiven because all of it stems from you inability to think about other people. You're a selfish little bitch and you never try to grow from that... That's one of the reasons I never liked you... besides me knowing you were only Max's friend to be mine. I only let you be with us because Max thought he had finally made his own friend and I didn't have the heart to tell him you were nothing but a ruse."
He left the room and I clenched my fists. All my life, I have done the same thing to survive this world and I have always made myself feel better by justifying that it was a defense mechanism. I never considered anyone else's feelings... and now look at me. I'm pregnant with alien progeny, fucked up even more in the head due to all the mental torture they did to me, and stuck on a small ship with the very person that got me into all of this mess. I put my hands over my face and tried not to break down and cry.
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Mars was right, I should have changed the sheets on the bed. I woke up, my face in the pillow and it smelled like butthole. I sat up quickly, coughing and then I coughed so hard I gagged and then I threw up. I sighed, sliding down the side of the bed and onto the floor next to my vomit. I don't remember falling asleep and I don't remember even getting to the bed... I made a face at the vomit and went to the panel on the wall.
"Computer, how can I clean up this vomit?" I asked.
~Vomit is cleaned up easier by putting a drying agent on it such as clay, sand, or powder. Would you like to use one of these?~
"Yeah, the most effective one."
A few second later, a tub of cat little came showed up in the wall and I picked it up, opening it and pouring it all over where I threw up. The door opened and Dawaen walked in.
"What are you doing?"
"I got sick off of the smell on the bed. I fell asleep and forgot to change the sheets."
"Oh, okay. So are you rested up now?"
"I guess so; why?"
"Because I want to take a nap too. My eyes are tired from looking through all that documentation and such."
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Not yet but I think we're getting close. They're starting to mention experiments done on Max and such so..."
"Ah... um... Well..."
"You don't want to be alone with Max do you?"
"Where's Mars?"
"He fell asleep at the console. He'll be sore as hell, but Max is wide awake."
"The last thing I want to do is be with Max."
Dawaen didn't say anything and then he crossed his arms, seeming unsure.
"So... I apologized to Max. He was pretty chill with it. I told him what Zylith did to me and all the stuff that happened. I told him that going through what I did, I understood him now and I regret doing what I did. He didn't seem fazed at all."
"You were drunk when that happened... you weren't exactly yourself."
"We both know I was more myself than I ever was." He looked at me for a moment. "You have to talk to him."
"No, I don't."
I started to leave but he grabbed me by the arm and spun me around to him.
"Do you think this is some sort of joke, Kole?! Take a look around and then take a look at yourself! We just escaped an alien ship full of shapeshifting blob people and went through months of mental and physical torture that included being impregnated! How can you stand there and believe that you have nothing to be sorry for?! Even I apologized for the stupid shit I did that got me here! I know what I did and hate that I did it, and I hate that what I did made what happen to me happen, but I fucking owned up to it."
I wrenched my arm away from his hand. "Why is it necessary for me to apologize for you to have closure? Shouldn't that be my decision?"
"Because I honestly don't know why you helped me. It's been wracking my brain ever since the incident. I honestly can't figure out what the hell would make you turn on your friend and then just sit there and watch me beat on him-" Dawaen's eyes suddenly got wide and he pointed at me. "You were jealous."
"Jealous? Of what?"
"Maybe jealous isn't the word... I think envious is a better term. You were so mad that someone like Max had a friend like Mars and he didn't even have to grovel or do anything degrading to do it. You mentioned it the first time we got back from being experimented on. You said that you wanted to help me, but you couldn't... something about wanting to save me. Mars is a complex guy (so I've come to realize) and even though he looks like he's nothing on the outside, on the inside he is raging almost all the time. You said you've seen it before and he almost did it to me. He's a weird dude, that's for sure... and then there was Max. Max wasn't anything special or amazing, more like an emo kid than anything, and you couldn't fathom why in the world someone like Mars would have someone like Max as his best friend."
"You sure you haven't been drinking again? I think you're making shit up."
"Am I though?" I just stared at him as he crossed his arms again. "Kole, even you can't answer the question that's been on everyone's mind about that night. The most simple question: why? Why did you lure Max to me with some bullshit story about Mars? Why did you betray your friend? Why did you just stand there and let me beat and batter him and not even try to do anything about it until the last possible moment? Why, Kole?"
"I don't have time for this." I growled. "You can change the sheets yourself."
I left the room and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Dawaen doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Jealous of Max? Envious of Max? I got over the fact that Max and Mars were friends after a while. I wish I knew why I did what I did, but it wasn't because of that. What do I have to be jealous of of Max Taylor?
******************
I brushed my teeth and then gargled some water. I spit it out and stood back up and yelled, finding Max standing behind me. I turned as he looked at me for a moment and then at my stomach.
"Dawaen said you guys got impregnated on the ship."
"Y-yeah..."
He didn't say anything else for a minute and I started to fidget. This was the worst!
"Kole." I looked back at his face and he was staring back, no expression. "We need to talk."
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A/N: uh oh! the dreaded four letter sentence! (°ロ°) ! what will this consist of huh? and finally, we get a better explanation (somewhat) of maybe why kole did what he did. it's not necessarily as superficial as that but it's part of it anyway. and yes, it's pretty sad that even kole knows he's a bitch. again though, it's not as superficial as it sounds. but everybody gotta face their demons and for kole its... right now. (oT-T)尸
so i decided to a semi-multiple POV that's similar to what i've been doing so far but a little more organized. it'll be mostly in max's pov but since there are four people in this return, we will visit them a little more than usual when they get back to earth. so... yeah... sorry if it gets hectic. i will try to keep it as tame as i can. ヽ( ￣д￣)ノ