I sat in my car as I waited for Christine. Scrolling through my phone as music played in the background. The sad song filling my ears through my earbuds.
The rain adding an air of sadness around the car that was almost suffocating. It's hard to escape your thoughts when you're feeding into the emotions that the painful memories thrive off of.
The rain being swiped to the side rudely by the windshield wipers. Through the curtain of rain I could see Christine coming out the school. I honk my car horn catching her attention.
Before she could fully step out of the rain, I pull out of the parking space and move my car up to the steps. She carefully skips her way down the marble steps and rushes into the car.
"Thank you!" She says as she shakes off some of the rain that collected on her hair and jacket. I hum back as a response and moving my way around the other cars in the parking lot, I pull out onto the street and begin driving.
"So what are we doing?" I ask.
"Give me your phone and I'll put in the address." She says and I do exactly that.
She speaks as she types in the address, the clicking noise coming up behind her voice.
"Was your day at least the slightest bit easier since this morning?"
I sigh.
"It was bearable. I never had to threaten so many people in one day before though."
"I find that hard to believe." Christine laughs. She places my phone on the magnet phone holder on the dashboard. Following along that thick blue line on the screen as Christine begins asking questions.
"What's your favorite color?"
"Anything that isn't too bright." I answer honestly. "I'm assuming your favorite color is green."
"How'd you know?" She says giving me a megawatt smile.
"The Mother Nature costume you wore when I went to the masquerade. People tend to wear the color like or what they look best in during those types of things."
"Well technically it's a green gold but no one's gotten that close before." She says leaning back in her seat. I couldn't help but notice the smile that was plastered on her face.
"Can I ask you something else?"
"Sure." I shrug my shoulders, turning onto another street as the navigator directed me.
"Do you really hate the lycans or are you just like that with everyone?"
"No, but you guys have a lot of things that I'm jealous of. Most people have a lot of things I'm jealous of."
"What do you mean?" She says turning her body to me a slight bit.
"Most people have a group of friends they can confide in, or a lover they can talk to. Most people have people they can call family." I try to maintain the sadness in my voice, refusing to let any emotion show.
"And you don't feel like you have those things?" Resting her hand on her chin as her eyes graze my face.
"I think I'm just floating through other people's lives. Like a side character. I'm not really that important to anyone. You see me and then you don't. It is what it is." I shrug my shoulders.
"I can see why people may think you're a little mean with that kind of mentality." She says.
"Oh I know I'm mean. I'm an asshole and I know I'm an asshole. I can be the rudest, meanest, most horrible person you've ever met. But do you know why?"
"No." Christine shakes her head.
"Because I don't lie. Or I try my damn best not to. No one likes an aggressive person that can tell you the truth without flinching. People don't like hearing the truth, and it's not hard to guess why. When you have someone pointing out your own faults and insecurities it only shows how blind you are to yourself." I give a sarcastic snort.
"And what about you? Are you blind to yourself?"
"I try my best not to be. I know my faults, I know what I'm insecure about. I know me better than anyone else will and that fact will never change. But people would rather lie to make things easier."
"I think people lie because they're afraid. And I think they tell the truth for that same reason." Christine sits up. "Think you push everyone away, or try your hardest to because you don't feel like you deserve any love or attention from anyone that might want to give it."
"I think you try your hardest to push yourself into my life because you think you can change me." I retort.
"I'm not trying to." She shakes her head. "I want to show you that not all relationships are bad. That having a friend can be good and that you don't have to be alone."
"So you're trying to save me then?" I laugh. "Alright, you think there's a chance for me? You think I can be saved?"
"You're not a damsel Sol. You don't need saving. But I know that there is more love in you then you care to admit. Amber didn't take it all."
"Amber killed me." I snap. The rage inside me coming to a simmer. But I take a calming breath, continuing to speak. "Do you know what happens to a young wolf when they've been turned away by their pack, their family; and their mate? Their wolves become twisted. Mentally and physically to a degree. Grits is a coping mechanism for me because if I don't do it, then I'm harming innocent people on the street. My mind and my connection to my wolf is so warped I need to take extra precautions on certain things."
"Like what? How do you mean?" She sits up intrigued.
"Like when the full moon comes. I need to lock myself in a room I'm renting from the landlord in the second sub basement of my building. I become so violent and unhinged, it makes grits look like a daycare. It's hours and hours of unbridled physical and mental pain, it's the closest to hell I'll ever get to."
"Isn't there anything else you can do?"
"I've already tried everything. Sedation, drugs, chaining myself with silver, you can ask Seffy about that one. Even hypnotherapy by a witch when I was eighteen. Everything you could think of, I've done it."
"I've never heard of this. I've been alive for five hundred and twenty years, I've never heard of anyone ever going through things like this." Her voice sounding small.
"Because you're a Lycan. You just hang around with other lycans. You're chances of ever hearing about this are slim because most people die during these things or they just straight up kill themselves. Deadman tell no tales, right?" I say. "And no one even cares what happens to wolves like me anyways."
Carefully driving down the highway as the rain beats against the car. Christine is silent for a moment, like she was contemplating what I said.
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault. None of it had anything to do with you anyways so how could it be your fault. There's nothing you need to be sorry for, Christine." My tone even and my anger subsiding.
I was so tried of being angry. But it was all I knew how to be. Angry at the world for things that the world could never understand. I hated being this way, but how could I be anything else?
"My next question might sound a bit rude. But why haven't you killed yourself if you were in so much pain?"
"I don't know." I shake my head.
"There has to be a reason."
"I don't know." I repeat. "I don't know what in me has kept me alive. Maybe I'm in love with my own pain; or maybe I'm a lot more afraid of letting go of life than I'd care to admit. Maybe somewhere in my pathetic masochistic soul I have hope for something better."
"That could be it couldn't it. Having hope?" Christine lays a hand on my arm. My knee jerk reaction was to shake her off, but I let it be. It was an honest touch. Not a punch to the face, or an upper cut to the jaw, or a lead pipe to the back of the knee. All things I've had happen to me before.
But this was a gentle touch from a gentle person who I think was trying to be my friend in this moment.
So let her be a friend.
"Maybe, I don't know. It would be pretty pathetic wouldn't it. To still want better when I've been dealt the worst of the worst. God," I scoff. "That's pathetic."
"It's not." Christine gives a squeeze to my forearm. "It just means there's a chance for you."
I say nothing more and dislodge my arm from her grasp as I turn the wheel into the parking lot of a gun store.
"What are we doing here?" I ask.
Christine turns to me, her lycan eyes shining with glee as she smiles. "It's something fun."
"How vague."
After parking we rush inside, much of the rain catching into our hair as we are met with the ice cold air of the gun shop. Christine heading to the front of the store. I follow close behind as she bounces up tot he clerk behind the glass counter top that displayed many hand held weapons.
I approached eyeing on weapon. A long shining machete that layer across the shelf. I mean if I could have anything to fight off zombies with, I'd definitely choose a machete.
"Solus, Theo here is one of Victor's men. You probably don't remember him but he's the one that transported you back to the palace. Along with three others."
Looking to him, I pause. She's right, I barely remembered that night with how much happened but I do remember breaking his nose. He was tall, as a Lycan would be, competed copper colored hair, lean but toned build. He looked like the friendly kind.
"My bad, dude. I was pretty out of it." I say.
"Don't worry about it. I'm actually quite impressed." He replies with nod of his head.
"Well take a couple rounds in the back." Christine gives a beaming smile as she takes my arm and drags me behind the counter.
Pulling me into the back room I'm met with an indoor shooting range. The dull grey concrete room and fluorescent lighting accompanied by a biting chill.
"Not ominous at all." I mutter. We approach a long table of hand guns and paper targets.
"Okay? What's this for?"
Christine hurriedly takes off her jacket and throws it on a few chairs behind us. Rushing back over she picks up a paper target and I freeze at what's scribbled on it.
AMBER.
Her name scribbled in red in all caps. Plasters over the top of the target. Her smile never fading as she hooks up the target to a set of clips. The target moving all the way to the back of the room.
"We have an hour in here to ourselves. Let's make this as fun as it can be, yeah?"
Thirty minutes later we were both firing off at targets. Theo has joined us at the sound of the noise and was laugh as we each grabbed a new target, wrote a name, hung it up, and fired away.
I had written Ambers name over ten times, repeatedly shooting the target until only scraps of the papers remained.
"Oh I remember him!" Christine growled. Hunched over the table as she furiously scribbled another name onto a target.
"Who we talking about?" I ask as I take a sip from the flask I had hiding in my coat.
"Percy!" She growled. "This old enemy of Holland and me. It was a hundred years ago! He was trying to get me to sleep with him and tried challenging Holland for me! He of course lost, but he was the epitome of swine. God I hated him."
"I remember that one. A hot head and a cad." Theo hummed as he drank his own drink.
"And he was trying to fight Holland for you?" I laugh. Mostly because Holland when he's not smiling looks massively intimidating, I don't imagine anyone wanting to mess with him.
"Men typically handled most of the conflict. Why is that funny?" Christine sounds offended.
"Because, four hundred years mated and someone tries to tears that up? That's suicide. I wonder what made him try that shit."
"His ego." Theo answers. "Lycan men admittedly have very large egos but not from the women, it's from each other. If you can beat another Lycan it's an ego boost. Times twenty."
"And this Percy thought he could beat the crowned Lycan beta?" I scoff. Dumbest shit I ever heard. But then again, I challenged the former Lycan King and Queen. But shit that was out of annoyance and anger, not ego.
"Some men forget to used their heads." Theo shrugs.
"Or they just use the wrong ones." I say as I fire at the target. That made Christine giggle as she hung up her target. It swings all the way to the back and she grabs her gun firing off.
"I wonder what you felt when that happened." I say as I reload the pistol.
"What do you mean?" Christine asks.
"I am not the type of person to just sit back and let anyone treat me like a second class citizen or a trophy to be won or lost. Maybe you thought differently, and it was a different world you were living in back then. But I can't even fathom that for myself."
"It was a different world." Theo speaks up almost like he's talking about a lost memory.
"It just was really different back then. Males did most of the talking, and the bartering, and the owning, etc. Females just existed. But now it's better. But some people can't really get out of that mindset just yet."
"That's ridiculous." I say flatly.
"How so?"
"That everything was separated and done by gender. Especially since gender is a human construct and shouldn't be the defining characteristic to what a person is capable of. I can understand there being a spectrum of the masculine and feminine, but no one should be so concerned about what's hanging in between a persons legs. Unless of course it's fun time and we're bringing special toys." I say and look back up to Christine who's sun kissed skin has a blush. "I'm kidding. Kinda."
Theo laughs as I smirk. Handing the gun to Christine she takes it not saying anything.
"There is no shame in taking pride in being a woman or a man. But there are people who don't identify as either, or feel as if they're more than that. I can't imagine the type of hell they were living in back then."
"But you identify as a woman right?"
"Not really." I say as I take another sip from my flask.
"Man?"
I shake my head.
"What are your pronouns then?" Theo asks.
"Which ever. I don't really care."
"But that's so confusing!" Christine says. "How are we supposed to know what your comfortable be called?"
"You ask." I say plainly. "I don't mind being referred to as a man, woman, or even a damn steamboat, cuz at the end of the day, I know who I am as a person. I'm comfortable with whatever pronouns people call me. Just don't get rude with it because I can and will send someone back to Jesus." I shrug and lean against the long table.
"Wow." Theo says. "That evens the playing field by a lot then, doesn't it?"
"What do you mean?" Christine asks.
"Think about it, if you didn't have these gender conforming roles back then, do you think Percy would have still fought Holland or you?"
"I don't know." Christine answers after a beat. "I didn't really think about that before. But I'm happy being a woman, or feminine."
"As you should." I say. "Women are a powerful force, they are what gives life and preserves it, they shouldn't be pushed to the side to make way for the men. Everything between the two should be even. And then there's people like me, than kind of just dance everywhere and have a party." I say smiling.
"Why?"
"Because fuck conformity."