Chapter 16.

A party raged in the Rogue territory. Children, teenagers and adults all jumped up and down to the heavy thudding of music. Confetti colored the streets and its people, alcohol flowed through bodies. Peace was made against haters, lovers became closer. The earth shook with their heavy waves of marching and stomping. A girl with green hair bellowed from the top of a building, sending the party into a deeper frenzy. A boy with dreads let loose with a bottle of champagne, covering the jumping colors around him.

A girl with golden eyes watched from her mansion.

A boy staggered through the party. It was the first time he had ever drank. The first time he hadn't felt nervous in a large group of people. The first time a hole had been torn through his chest. His black hair was matted, tears mixing with sweat. He gulped down the alcohol and spat it out, he took another swing of the bottle and forced it down. It made him feel good. It filled the hole.

He picked up another bottle and pushed out of the mob. He stumbled and fell to his knees, scraping them against the tarmac. He wobbled onto his feet, picking up the bottle. The world swayed in front of him, undulating under every step. He marched on, the party fading into the background. He floated through the streets, a ghost with its green eye stark in the pale white lighting.

The empty streets echoed with every step, his boots knocking against the pavement. Women with children veered away from him, people lounging in windowsills gave him wary looks.

He floated through the barren hallways of the hospital. He floated up stairs and past tired nurses and doctors. Floated past groaning Rogues with missing legs and arms. He arrived at a door, two girls stood with rifles in their arms, tightly pressed against their chests.

**

"Hera told me to come here," I said. Speaking was harder, like the words were trying to come out in the wrong order. Standing straight was harder too, the world had this weird thing going on when it kept moving every so often.

One of the girls eyed the bottle in my hand.

"She told me to bring this here," I muttered. "She couldn't get any doctor around so…yeah. He's gonna go into shock if he doesn't get any alcohol in his system."

"I'm not sure-"

"You want to bother Hera at this time?" I snapped. "Or are you going to disobey her and tell her that you let him die because you weren't following orders?"

They both looked at each other, uneasiness in their faces. They were younger than me, older than Runt. Where was Runt, anyways? I hadn't seen her since the massacre. She was as hard to find as me when she wanted to be, guess she was learning things. Was that a good thing? I don't know. Don't care right now.

I lifted the bottle to my lips, the bitter froth running down my throat. It was terrible. Tasted as bad as skin farms smelt. But it made me whole. It made me feel better. Happy, that's what it made me, happy.

They moved aside and let me in, the sliding door hissing shut behind me. The bastard was awake, stroking a photo of Mum. He looked at me, his green eyes glowing in the dark.

"The hell do you want?" he rumbled.

I staggered towards the bed, clutching the bottle.

He barked out a laugh. "Look at you, a drunk. What, you brought that for me? Want to share a drink with your old man?"

I smashed the bottle over his head. The green glass thudding against his skull. I hit him again and again, until the bottle finally shattered. Glass exploded, he roared and gripped my arms. I pulled away and jabbed the jagged end of the bottle into his face. Over his right eye. The eye he took from me.

"You like how that feels?" I yelled, pushing the bottle deeper into his face. His thick hands wrapped around my throat, a vice shutting off my wind pipe. I twisted the bottle, the ends grinding through flesh. He squeezed tighter, no air was getting to me anymore. I was losing my grip on the bottle.

A body slammed into me, tearing the hands away from my throat. My head smacked against the wall, heavily tattooed arms forcing me against it. I tried to gulp down air, it felt like I was breathing through a straw. A straw that had been stepped on and cut up.

White lights snapped on, my eyes stinging in the sudden blinding light. The hospital bed was red, the floor was red. My hands were red. The thing in the bed was writhing against his restraints, clutching at his right eye.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Draco yelled.

"Something that was meant to be done," I barked. I tried to push him off me, but he was bigger than me. I was trying to push a house.

"You little shit," the thing barked. "You're just like me. Angry. Useless. That's what you are. A mistake."

"Screw you, you old bastard," I roared.

"I shouldn't have bought your whore of a mother," he chuckled, pain arcing through his body, making him slam a fist into the railing.

I kicked Draco in the gut. He staggered back and I lunged towards the bed. Another body slammed into me, throwing me onto the cold floor. My lower jaw smacked into my upper jaw, making my head ring. Green hair fell around me as Saia pressed a knee into my back.

"Dan, get a hold of yourself," she hissed.

"Get off of me," I growled.

"You're acting like a freakin' idiot, man," Draco wheezed. "Look at yourself."

I looked down at the white floor, the thing's blood had covered me. The floor was turning red, two colors fighting for supremacy in the hospital room.

The thing chuckled. "I would have never said it myself, but you are mine. You were born with green eyes, you're a Fallow. That blue eye of yours is a reminder that you'll always be a burden to your mother," he shouted. "Maybe if she had both eyes she would have seen the bullet better."

I switched on the Unit. I knew the angle I had to be at to push Saia off. A few shimmies and I sprung up, sending her across the room. I switched it off and pelted towards the bed. I grabbed the vase of flowers at the window and brought it down on him. The hard ceramic exploded and mixed with the blood, shards dug into his raised forearm. I brought it down again, the pot cracking completely and covering the bed. I slammed a fist into his face, over and over until my metal arm's silver was a deep crimson. He was laughing through the crashing punches, barking out slurs and insults.

I punched him for Mum. I punched him for myself. I punched him for all the lives he took in the massacre. I punched him until my fist was raw and our blood mixed, two parts of the same creature. The same last name, the same stupid green eyes, the same sickening rage for each other. A creature that battled against itself until nothing was left apart from hate.

His head exploded in a loud bang.

My fist stopped shy from where it should have been. The top half of his head was gone, exposing the rest of his barren skull. His right eye dead and staring, his lips still twisted into a smile.

My face was covered in skull fragments and blood.

I looked at the door, Kira stood in tis frame. Pistol smoking, her black-golden eye sharp.

I fell off of the bed. I stared at it. A smile still on his face. Still smiling. Just like the day he blinded me. He had won. Even now, after that, he had won.

"What…what the fuck did you do?" I raged.

"Get a hold of yourself," she snapped, helping a wincing Saia onto her feet. "Hera's orders. Not my decision."

I slammed a fist into the floor, my eyes stinging and my heart fighting against my chest. I gripped my t-shirt, it felt like my chest was being ripped apart. Like shards of the bottle were ripping into it. The creature had torn itself apart, leaving nothing but bitter hate.

Draco staggered towards me, he bent down to help me up. I pushed him away.

"You don't get it!" I screamed.

"Get what? What, Dan?" Kira shouted. "You hate him, and now he's not here. So you don't have to. Now get your ass up and let's go."

"Fuck all of you," I shouted, I was breathing heavy. Still breathing through a crushed straw. "He won. He killed my mum, he blinded me, beat me until I couldn't even walk. He killed hundreds of people. And then he dies with a smile on his face? And I'm supposed to just go handy fucking dandy like nothing happened?"

"Dan-"

"No. Save it, Kira. He didn't even remember me. All. These. Years," I gasped, running a hand through my hair, glass and blood fell away from it. "And he doesn't even remember me. You know how much he was in my head? All those nights I wanted to give up looking for her and he popped into my head, he was the reason I kept looking for her. I was going to prove him wrong. I was going to prove that I'm better than him in every way."

The three of them stared down at me, lips in thin lines. Brows furrowed. I probably looked pathetic, sitting in a pool of blood. Dripping of the smell of alcohol. Just like that thing.

"But here I am. Exactly like him. I smell like him, and I have this…this thing," I cried out, pointing at my green eye. "And he died knowing that. He died knowing that I was the same as him."

Silence blanketed us, my gasping cutting through the air. Blood tapped against the floor, the distant sound of sirens echoing through the city.

"He won. I'm exactly like him. Drunk and lonely. Nothing but a burden," I whispered.

She handed Saia to Draco, nodding at the both of them. Saia and Draco shook their heads at me, both of them staggering out of the room.

I sat up against the wall, forearms on knees. No reason to live. No reason to keep going. Mum is dead, the thing in the bed won years ago. He won the day he shot himself and I got sent to prison, where this damn Unit was put into me. She must have been so scared, no one around to help her, to one around she could hold onto.

Kira stood at the door, clothes till pristine, the pure smell of roses rolling off of her. Battling against the smell of alcohol and blood.

"So you're just going to have a pity party?" she muttered.

I didn't respond.

"Dan, come on-"

"It's not like you wanted me around in the first place," I snapped. "So don't serve me your self-serving crap, Kira."

"One truth and one lie. Right now," she said.

"Is that some sort of joke?" I growled.

"Do I joke?" she said. "I changed my mind about you or you never really wanted to find your Mum. You just liked the idea of finding her more because staying in one place for too long made the memories catch up to you."

I glared at her.

"Or should I say that you wanted a reason to not be around people because you were afraid they'd hate you the same way your dad did?" she continued. "Or maybe in reality you hate people because you feel like you have to prove something to them to be accepted. For example. almost dying trying to save Mei, even though you barely knew her."

"You don't know anything about me."

"Wonder where I've heard that before," she muttered. "But I do. Because you're so easy to read. I can tell you want to leave, every morning when I wake up I check the camera in the sitting room to see if you're still there or not."

"Cut the crap," I muttered. "You keep me around because of the bounty on me."

She shrugged. "At first, yeah I did. I played a long with your happy go lucky vibe. But without you…then the silence would be as loud as it used to be. And you know how I would deal with that silence?"

"I don't care."

"Killing people. More and more hits. Guns fill the silence, but after it goes off there's just more silence. So…I started to care about you. Didn't want you to leave because of the silence," she mumbled. "I stopped taking as many hits as I used to because I guess I'd look forward to listening to you talk about whatever you and Tick have been through."

"Fuck you," I spat.

"Excuse me?"

"Let me put this to you properly. You're afraid of being alone, and so you keep me around. You give zero fucks about…about that," I jerked a hand at the bed, "or any other problem I have. You didn't even care about me finding my Mum, did you? But you only want me around so you aren't alone? You're the shallowest person I've ever come across."

"Oh, right. The shallowest person you've ever come across," she guffawed. "And how many people are those, Dan? 'Cos I can bet my bank account that it was barely higher than two."

"And there she is ladies and gentlemen." I spread my arms. "Kira, the girl with all the friends in the world. Congratulations."

She rubbed her forearms. "I'm so sorry then. Is that what you want to hear? Because unlike you, I actually had a Dad who loved me. And you wanted to kill yours. I'd give anything to see them again-"

"You told me they threw you out. You told me they hated you."

"My Mum and Dad-"

"Your Mum and Dad kicked you to the curb. So tragic. Heartbreaking."

She cut me off. "That was a lie you giant jackass. My parents…," her voice caught, she bit her lip and continued, "They sold me. We were dead broke and that's all they could do. That's what I convinced myself, though. I was the one who came up with that idea. I did that without them knowing, and they got the money."

I didn't want to listen. My head was buzzing, mouth bitter and eyes hazed. She always picked the worst times to argue.

She stepped into the room, boots squelching in the blood. "And I looked for them, lo and behold they had died a year after I sold myself. So don't pretend like you're the only one who's looked for their parents."

My stomach twisted. I was disgusted. Everything in this city was just mistake after mistake. And now I was getting a pep talk from a bounty hunter trying to relate to me. It made my skin crawl. I would leave tonight, there's nothing here for me.

"So, what? You think we're the same? Is that it?" I spat.

"I'm saying that you need to accept what your Dad did."

I laughed a humorless laugh. "Yeah. I'll forgive him. He beat the crap out of me, he beat my Mum, and don't forget the cherry on the top – he killed hundreds of people. He definitely deserves forgiveness."

She crossed her arms. "Orders, Dan. Those were orders."

"So what?" I shouted. "We're just supposed to forgive people for doing terrible things if it only comes down to 'orders'?!"

She stood there, face blank, short hair stiff. She didn't have an answer for that because it was a question for her too. She was standing on a mountain of corpse's that separated her from everyone else. No wonder she hated the silence, she had done it to herself.

"Everyone in this city is a weed." I stood up, my head buzzing, stomach flipping. I staggered past her, she was staring at the bed, or she was staring at something further away. Somewhere you could never really see, somewhere where certain words hadn't been said by either of us.

The thin rope tying me to the dock had snapped, torn away by words that hung in the air.

"Fine. Don't come back," she whispered.

"I wasn't planning on it."

"Good," she choked.