The Protectors Trilogy: Book Three

By Arial Alexis

“You want to talk about not knowing yourself? Try to blame it on shape shifting? Are we really the first freaking teenagers to feel that way? Do you think that being a Protector makes you weak to admit it? Why? Why is it so bad to admit it? You are fighting for who you are, but if you buy into the lie that you’re fighting alone then – then you’re the one hurting yourself!” The silence was as quick as her anger. She had raised her face, holding it tightly shut against any expression until the end, when whatever control over the rise of her voice had shattered. She looked scared. Not of me, but of what she’d said. She stared at me, nearly panting, waiting to see what I would do, if I’d fall into the bed she’d pushed me back against, or if I’d fight back. But it wouldn’t be her I’d be fighting. I could shift out. I could disappear. That would have been easiest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684705696

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ALEXIS

Copyright © 2019 Arial Alexis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0570-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0569-6 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 06/07/2019

To Rob. If I could only shown you one thing, it would be yourself in my eyes. I love you, you crazy, punny kid.

[INTRO]

T he craziest thing is, and I say that knowing exactly how crazy it would have to be to out-crazy the fact a bunch of teenagers were/still are superheroes, is that we managed to get back to normal in less than a day from the WTH that had summed up the last few months. Well, our version of it anyway.

I know, if you’ve read the other books, (which you really need to do) it is impossible. So is being able to turn into anyone you want or jump around the planet despite the fact it flies through space as fast as you can jump from point a to point b. But hey, they don’t call me Shift because I drive a manual.

We had found out how it started, details you are better off not knowing, except what the last books said: He is the living product of a private organization with its hands in everything from international politics to organized crime, to experimental genetic science with heads from every government, task force, and industry at its disposal. We had shut them down, proving you can’t have your Killer Cake and eat it too, or rather make a superhuman and it expect to control it. BD had taken a lot of pleasure in proving that one. Their bases laid in ruins. Shadow had fried every single electronic device they had data stored on by tracking the electronic energy signature down to the last thumb drive and external, off location server. And I had taken care of the personnel, in my own, ‘wake up on the wrong side of the padded room’ sort of way.

Oh, and Stargazer had brought Black Dagger back from the dead.

Can’t forget that part.

[HELLO SATURDAY!]

"M ary! She rolled over and threw a poorly aimed punch in my direction. Get up!" She blindly grabbed two pillows and buried her face. I pulled the blanket, dragging her to the edge. She attempted to shove me off and we kind of pushed each other around a few times until she called for a time out.

Hello Saturday? He asked expectantly. It was an inside joke, one of about a thousand we had already forgotten. We once gotten up on a Saturday, thinking it was a Friday and stood at the bus stop for an hour. Some stranger walked by us, loudly shouting ‘hello Saturday!’ in an amused, laughing tone. We’d raced home and slept until noon, making up for the six thirty alarm.

Hello Saturday. I agreed in defeat. I stood little chance in getting him. He let my arm go, his eyes flicking above him to look at the door. Shadow entered and sat at the corner of the bed, smiling and just a tad pink. We wake you up? I asked. She nodded and hid a yawn behind her hand. You have our parents’ sympathy.

She forced a smile before she nervously glanced over at Jonny.

The flash back to elementary school antics had been a coping strategy, one that didn’t work longer than a couple minutes. He wasn’t smiling – and her expression, however dollish, was weighted.

You know about…about Stargazer? He asked solemnly, after their silent conversation.

I talked to them last night, or earlier this morning…but she gets better quick. I would give it a day tops until she is walking around and a week before you are all back on the grind. The Protectors don’t do days off from what I’ve seen.

If I could see anything that proves that, I’d feel better. Shadow admitted, looking between us and then through the door, like she was hoping to see them both standing there.

I wish I believed me too. Stargazer and I’d talked a lot the night she and Black Dagger had got engaged and one thing she mentioned was the more strength she gave to someone, the longer it took her to recover, because she built on what she had already. From what I saw the night before, she had no strength. At all.

Well, I’m starved. My brother cut the silence.

Is that your way of asking to be fed?

He sulked. She broke not a second into it.

Fine… Come on… Sisters know other stuff too, like when their brothers are showing off their girlfriend. In his case he’d figured out how to get her to cook for him. To him that made her the perfect woman.

I unwillingly dragged myself out of bed and into a shower, staying long enough to wake me up. I pulled on a light sweater. When your brother is human ‘human transporter’ you learn to dress in layers, should Canada or the Caribbean come up on the same day.

The main part of the apartment was empty. I caught myself pushing back the old sense of dread. They’d been gone for so long even an empty couch seemed like a bad omen.

I peeked around into the kitchen. Shadow was being messed with by Jonathan, mid flipping a pancake. She said something back in a low tone that made him pretend to be offended. She laughed. He pulled at her hair, trying to see how long it was straight. He got a spatula aimed to the face when he tried again, which he blocked. She countered by threatening him with a fork.

I remembered all this because in that moment they were a couple messing with each other, like puppies play fighting. There wasn’t any real danger, or anger, or even annoyance. And above all they weren’t Shadow and Shift. It was nice to see.

That smells good. I piped in. The apartment had filled with the smell of toasted butter.

He shifted next to me. I’d expected as much and had put my hand out, knocking him over to the polished floor. It would have knocked me over had he been able to get his balance first.

He gasped.

"I’m predictable?!" He frantically begged. I leaned over him.

Only to psychics and sisters, I assured him. He grunted, hurling himself to his feet before he shifted behind Shads. He snatched up a pancake before she could stop him and shoved all of it into his mouth. The betrayed look on her little pink face was priceless. His expression was covered in a stuffed smirk.

So immature.

And proud of it! He almost said. It came out more as ‘anthd prouth oth whith’. Following the pancake, his pretense was lowered. I’m a full out super-powered kid from now on, so you two can get over it and join the party.

Killer cake isn’t a party favorite. From the sound of her tone, and how heavy the pancake she was flipping seemed to have gotten, I almost preferred to not know.

He tapped her on her shoulder. She looked at him the instant he leaned down to kiss her.

I had an immediate gag reflex.

The pancake burned in protest to their PDA.

And you said we had scarred you for life.

She looked behind me like a deer in headlights. I turned around, less caught and more stunned at how stealthy he could be when he wanted to. Brad was leaning up against the entryway, his body taking up the entire space.

I feel sorry for you, Shads.

She went profoundly pink.

I don’t really. She said quietly.

He laughed once and stood up. I blinked a few times, taking in all that can only be called him. His very presence was by default, intimidating. In the bright light I saw he looked paler, more weathered. He noticed me watching him and had stared back, neither of us able to hide anything in that second. My awareness of the change, for the second time, and his awareness of what it signified, were both exposed. The sheen of sunlight highlighting the seemingly carefree morning couldn’t hide the truth in its glare.

Uh…where’s SG? Jonny asked him, worried.

Behind me.

I looked around him. She was standing there in perfect stillness, the kind that you see only when something is balancing on an edge just before it falls.

Hello everyone. She said lightly. She started to collapse. He quickly steadied her, their movements too small for anyone but me to notice from where I stood. It’s good to see you, Mary.

You too…

I saw that Shads had gone back to trying to salvage breakfast, looking for something to do. Eight hours before they had been at the hands of their biggest threats. Now they were hovering around a kitchen that was much too quiet and an audience that hadn’t caught onto their game of dream house improv.

Might as well rip off the Band-Aid.

So…did you kill the company? I asked. In hindsight ‘kill’ shouldn’t have been used. ‘Beat the crap out of them’ would have been a lot better.

Shadow froze. Jonny uneasily judged Brad’s reaction. He leaned back into the cabinets in half a move to retreat, but his hand slid closer to Shadow.

No. We didn’t. I didn’t. He said as soon as I had finished talking. I kept my eyes anywhere but his. He was being exceedingly guarded over what he said, and how he said it, which was scarier than if he had yelled.

The Certified Idiots of America has their hands full then? I asked to say something. I knew this had been way above the FBI. The Neurotic Spy Administration, (aka National Security Agency) was more likely to be tracking them down, by whatever faint electric trail that might remain, but we hadn’t fully decided on a suitable name for them at that point, so CIA took the fault.

I looked up at him and he smiled faintly, not holding it against me. I felt better and Jonny laughed again, a real one.

You bet cha’ they do – if they weren’t in on it. I have half of them stashed in some-

Shift. He said sternly.

What?

We will take care of the rest tonight. Details are liabilities.

"I wasn’t going to freaking tell her. He rolled his eyes and looked at me in that silent sibling speak that says dad is overreacting again. I was saying that we’ve got a lot of intel tied up in the personnel but that we destroyed the actual stuff. And don’t harp on me BD. Finally getting to do something was fun and you know it… besides I liked it." He looked at Brad with a contented smirk and his eyebrow up in anticipation.

When I glanced to her, Shadow was staring at a pancake too intently.

I do admit it, but I don’t take any comfort because it ended. It isn’t over yet, and it cost us too much.

Perfect weapon gets a conscience and suddenly there’s no fun anymore. Jonny muttered.

Brad broke out the widest, brightest, and weirdest smile he had ever worn, stranger than the one to Shadow the day after his and Stargazer’s sudden engagement. And that is saying something. Stargazer looked up at him, her face lifted from the haze of exhaustion in interest, even confusion. Then she too smiled and her eyes glowed bright gold.

The perfect protector. He merrily corrected.

Yes, I said merrily.

My brother and Shadow are my witnesses.

What? Shadow and Jonny said at the same time. She stopped mid pancake pour. All of us wore with blank expressions of cluelessness.

What do you mean?

The one who took Shift, I met him when we were looking to destroy their research. He answered the questions we were too shocked to ask. No, he isn’t the bad guy. Not like I thought. What he intended was something different than what they tried to create it into. I don’t know how it morphed into the mindlessness they wanted out of it, how he let them. If he stuck around to try to control it after it was obtained or – I’m hoping to find the research in what we salvaged. Shift, the reason you weren’t on their radar initially is because they didn’t have anything to do with you. He was smirking at our reactions, Stargazer was watching with soft gold eyes, and the rest of us had been recalling to breathe. Shadow in particular.

So, I’m not a mad genius’s science experiment…I liked that part. He actually looked bummed out.

No you are, but I’m not the perfect weapon, not entirely. SG hugged him, or him her. You could tell because there was still air in his lungs and eyes in his sockets. I looked away, feeling the quiet intensity between them.

There goes the bad guy created war machine cliché. Jonny laughed. It was comic relief, underscore on the relief.

That’s the only thing he told you?

No.

Apparently I don’t get the hear the rest of it…

Why was he still there then? He could have reached out to us or gotten away from them before, couldn’t he? I didn’t see any of this! If he was able to make Shift in secret and hide you then what was he doing there still? How did he even manage Shift if he was under watch? If he wasn’t then he could have gotten away. Shadow didn’t doubt what Brad said, all of us felt the relief – but I agreed with her. If he was smart enough to create a superhuman and a shapeshifter, why the heck had he gotten caught up with them in the first place?

You can try to see it. I don’t know – he wasn’t lying.

Cryptic. Jonny huffed. Our normal veers into stereotypes but I’m at least an original.

I will have to go through what we confiscated to understand it better… I think he was there to keep them from succeeding in recreating what they were able to do with me.

They were still trying to?

Yes.

That why… Her emerald eyes widened. She held the spatula too tightly. Jonny glanced between them again, for some reason rubbing his forearm.

Why – what?

Oh sure ignore me.

She handed Jonny the controls, almost flinging herself towards them. She threw her arms around BD as far as they could reach. He hugged her back, and I saw Jonny wearing an expression of reality-be-damned, determined hope that made me remember how he’d looked when we’d found a kitten in a storm drain after a tropical storm. Stargazer hadn’t said anything, like it took all she had just to stand there, but her hand rose to rest on Shads’ head.

BD I’m so-

Don’t try to see what they did, Shads.

It wasn’t an order, but she nodded hurriedly and let him go. He didn’t lean down to get closer to her, but his voice was softer. That part of it is truly over. You can help me look for answers, when you’re ready. We stopped them, that is what matters. And we survived it.

And we have pancakes. No killer cake.

Yeah. He smiled, black eyes brushing to her flushed face, mine, and then Jonny’s.

We watched with passive interest to the conversation. I was too weak to look into their thoughts, to know why Shadow’s words were guarded, why Shift cast anxious looks-to-seek-reassurance from her and from us after every spoken word. I did not need to look, I knew, for it was only our presence, each of us together, that would bring healing.

I felt my fragile support give way. Dagger caught me and cradled me near him, supporting the weight of a body that seemed oddly disjointed from the haze of my thoughts.

He softly kissed my cheek, being maddeningly cautious.

Easy. He quietly advised and walked to the long-sitting-chair, putting me on his lap. The power he emitted washed around me in subdued shades, like a pool protected from waves. I leaned against him, treasuring the heart pound-beat that resonated. Their voices and the faint, seeking-to-assure laughter of Mary and the hesitant peace seeking brush of Shadow’s power to mine were as the notes of a song his life set, its tune one that brought such stillness I too succumbed.

Stay with me. He whispered, his breath sprawling over me. I closed my eyes, listening to the midnight-panther-purr of his voice.

My protector. I replied even softer.

I felt some of his thoughts, the surging crashing of their forces not without form. There was no sense of wandering, he knew what it was he pondered, and at each rise of a consideration needing to be met with an answer, another took its place. It was not without hesitancy – the pathways that had been reborn, or perhaps, uncovered, were still new in their existence. He was himself, his mind and his spirit returned to him as he had been, but he was also more.

The revelation of his origins, ones I longed to have been able to speak to the one who had given me my protector, caused disturbance only in that he struggled to apply the new vision of himself to thoughts, and actions. It was a welcome change, but a change nonetheless, one that did not have the power to free him from his assumed responsibility in all that had happened. But I could always tell him who and what he was if he asked. Mine.

Shadow watched me, apprehensive. I opened my eyes and mind, knowing she would only find peace in seeing the state of my being for herself. The faded sunset tinge of her powers softened, the lilac of her resting nature returning at the lacquered-unbroken weavings of my being. I will be stronger soon. Do not fret for me, dear one. My love for him may have saved him, but my love for you all held me here.

We love you too.

I was forced to sever the connection. It took less energy than speaking, but it still took energy.

Something had played in the background, neither of us watching it. I thought it to have been the news-events of the last days, but their words were played too softly to hear more than the tone. They were worried, not marked with yellow-red-fear, but their discussion was over what was to come. I made no motion to offer answers, or seek my own. Theirs were worries I would have the might-strength-of-will-and-body to face in another time, in a place other than his arms.

I felt him, them, all of it…and my own energy, the slight it was, interacted differently, reaching with caution and curiosity like a fledging leaving a nest. I wondered at the reason, though the will to find it had dissipated in the fog of my consciousness.

SHELL SHOCK

T he heat of the sun on my face brought me out of sleep with the gentle slowness of a flipped car, after a burnout while going just under two-hundred miles per hour. I could almost feel the rough scrape of the pavement. I jolted upright, throwing my hand up in some halfhearted attempted to ward off the light and whatever or whoever had dared to defy the laws of nature and open the multiple layers of blackout curtains in my room.

Except I wasn’t in my room.

I raised my hands to my eyes to rub them into seeing straight, stopping at the first feel of the sand they were covered in.

Oh. Right.

I didn’t remember shifting there.

I wasn’t shocked that I had.

I squinted, looking out into the water’s familiar color of pale green going off into a dark sapphire, then up to the cumulous cloud littered sky, trying to gauge how high the sun was.

It was pretty high.

I fell back, sighing and throwing my arm over my eyes. I could feel the sunburn, the sand, and if my mouth hadn’t felt like I’d won a cotton candy eating competition, I would’ve been able to taste the salt in the air. But they didn’t feel real. I wasn’t dreaming. But to be there, laid out on beach like any of the book reading, snowbird tourists this time of early spring, or dog walking locals, wasn’t real.

I could still see the maze of white walls and hear the buzz of constant electrical monitoring and the shrieks of gun fire. It was the sound of the waves and the pressure of the sand on my back that were the distant memories, one’s I wasn’t sure I could get back.

This isn’t helping.

I shifted to the icy cold cypress spring a few hours’ normal travel time from the beach. They’d built a dock recently, but the chill still in the air kept most of the people from flocking for sixty-eight-degree pools, leaving it deserted. I stepped off the platform in the middle of the gem colored lake, the frigid water taking the breath out of me the second I hit it. Floating is a little more difficult in fresh water, but I managed. I didn’t expect a mindless escape to the beach or an ice bath, for all intents and purposes, to clear my head. But they helped.

It’s almost noon.

I knew I shouldn’t have left, and with Stargazer being as she was, I didn’t plan on being MIA for long. I shifted to the shoreline, peeling my shirt off and wringing it out the best I could, before letting the picture of my room fill my head until I was thrown back there.

I spun around at the slight noise. Shadow’s wide eyes and instinctual step back killed my instant rush of fight or get the hell out of there reflex.

Sorry– We said at the same time. She sighed, shaking her head at her attempt to smile.

No, I should-I knocked and you didn’t answer so I was going to look for you…Don’t do that again, okay?

What?

Run off like that without telling me.

I frowned. Out of everyone who knew what I was, and I’ll admit the list was on the light end, she had never criticized my running, except when it was BD that had an issue with it. Hell, she’d told me more than once she wished I was the psychic and she was the one who could go and be anything.

I wrung the wet rope of the shirt between my fingers – not as a distraction, but to feel the straining of the fabric and the force driving the water out of it instead of the pressure of the demand that I do something, other than what I wanted to do most. Whatever kind of expression I had, I didn’t know what made it to the base first, offense, guilt, or the bare violence of frustration that I was being forced to defend something I hadn’t even done intentionally, she interceded. She stepped forward, tearing the dripping t-shirt from my hands and throwing it into open doorway of the bathroom in a violent jerk of her arm that hinted I wasn’t the only one held taut enough to snap. The cold water still dripped from my hair down my chest and spine, but it phased me less than having her standing that close.

She didn’t notice it. Or, I thought she didn’t. The way she titled her head back to look straight at me, the nine-inch difference in our height reduced to what felt like the thickness and with all the protection of a piece of paper, said something else.

I’m not – That’s not what I meant… After tying up all those…ends…yesterday I was just checking on you. You don’t have to ask my permission. I’m not trying to cage you. I just can’t see as clearly as I need to. And if something happened… I know you’re hurting, and why. You’re trying to get Alex out of your head-

Don’t, Shads.

She could have head-butted me in the chest and it wouldn’t have felt any different.

No, I’m going there. She bristled. What I had said as a plead she must had heard as an order. "Super powered kid or not, I can’t let you just put up this act for Mary, pillow fighting like you’re four and joking with everyone else so you can buy into your own bull that you’re not still trying to cope. No one buys it! And the most dangerous thing we can do is what we did before – just go along and keep pushing like with the feds. This isn’t three days made better with a freaking party – this was months. Months of you trying to balance everything, months of me being so scared and they could have – No we don’t get to just blow it all over this time! I could do it before but not now. You look like you haven’t slept since the first night and you jump at everything and I can’t keep coming in here and seeing you scared-"

When have you ever been in here? I dodged my own admission in favor of figuring out hers. As far as I knew, she’d never entered my room.

She stopped, backing down. Not physically, except that her green, platter sized eyes broke from mine for an instant and told me this was a retreat and I had the upper hand again.

That’s not the point.

"What is then? What are you hoping to get out of this intervention? Superhero therapy? Memoirs of an assassin? What? Tell me! Because I’d really like to (freaking) know what to do right now! When we should have won – when we should be happy! And all I can do is feel like I’m waiting for the bomb to drop on our heads! I haven’t lied – I never said I was okay and I never told BD or SG or you or my sister or anyone else that I wasn’t still dealing with this."

The sense of confrontation hadn’t left. I’d like to blame it on the adrenaline rush anyone’s unexpected presence that morning would have caused, but I can’t. It was her presence. Not her in that it was her fault. But I’d be a lot smarter than I am if I had been able to admit that then.

You haven’t admitted you’re struggling either.

"Who isn’t? I’m not asking for sympathy. Or help. Why do we have to make a deal of it? We’re here – we made it and we are safe, like he said, so let’s just be good and forget it all. And if something happens or doesn’t then – then we’ll get through that too."

This isn’t about how tough you are. She hadn’t stepped closer. But it felt like she had. Her hands were held at an angle at her side, like she was fighting to maintain control. I hadn’t realized until then that I was leaning away from her, braced for a fight that wasn’t coming. I know what you did for us – for them – for me. You struggled to not kill everyone they ordered a hit on and made it look like they’d moved or made them disappear before you could hit them fatally, but you still had to pull the trigger.

I forced the air out of my lungs, my jaw locked to keep from pointlessly arguing that her seeing what I’d done – what I had to do – didn’t mean she understood it, and even if she did, it didn’t mean I was anytime on this side of the decade ready to talk about it.

"Why can’t you just admit it? Why do you have to run and be alone to hide when I’m trying – they’re trying – to help you? BD said we all needed to talk after yesterday and you bailed-"

I shifted into Alex. Her stunned silence was expected. The anvils roped around each of my joints weren’t.

"You said that Cynthia and Shadow were different, Shads. That who you were when you came here, you feel like you’re different now. You’re who you are meant to be. Your name – your eyes – even your hair you constantly complain about is all tied to this and you’ve taken it on like you were made for it. You throw out your abilities and talk about them like they were always something you expected to find, and everything before was just a waiting game. You like it, like it is some kind of blessing to have this stronger side of you to lean against.

Alex is stronger, but this isn’t a blessing. You’ve seen what he did – what I did. But you have no idea what it is like to live in someone else’s skin and see eyes that aren’t yours and hear a voice in your head you don’t recognize for so long that who you are begins to feel like the imposter and the fake feels real. You don’t get it!"

That’s crap! She finally snapped, her hands flying between us and shoving me back into the bed, and it was my turn to be stunned. "If you want to feel alone in this that’s on you – but don’t tell me I don’t understand. I’ve seen more lives and more suffering than I ever wanted to even know existed and it took me to places darker than I ever want to see again. You were there. You took me to freaking Disney World and Christmas villages. You filled my room with plastic balls and shifted in a thousand blankets and turned the gym into a fort – I knew what you were doing, just as you did, and I let you. I played like it irritated the hell out me but I needed it and you knew it. And I knew you needed it. I didn’t name it then – I’m naming it now.

I had to make myself remember who I was, what my own emotions were, and I did it – despite having to dive back into everyone else’s desires and face everyone else’s demons second hand every single day. I didn’t pretend I wasn’t hurting. I know I can be crazy. I did it with her help, with your help. She had to make me look at myself beyond any misconception or excuse I could make every single day to know what it was I was protecting and know I had to always get back to that, no matter what I saw.

You want to talk about not knowing yourself? Try to blame it on shape shifting? Are we really the first freaking teenagers to feel that way? Do you think that being a Protector makes you weak to admit it? Why? Why is it so bad to admit it? You are fighting for who you are, but if you buy into the lie that you’re fighting alone then – then you’re the one hurting yourself!"

The silence was as quick as her anger was. She had raised her face, holding it tightly shut against any expression until the end, when whatever control over the rise of her voice had shattered. She looked scared. Not of me, but of what she’d said. She stared at me, nearly panting, waiting to see what I would do, if I’d fall into the bed she’d pushed me back against, or if I’d fight back. But it wouldn’t be her I’d be fighting.

The slowly widening space between us was made of electrically charged sandpaper.

I could shift out.

I could disappear.

That would have been easiest.

…I didn’t want you to see it. My voice betrayed me.

Her hands fell to her sides.

That doesn’t matter now.

Yes it does– I shifted back to being me, the memory of Alex clinging to every cell that had been told to look like him. "Damn it, Shadow. I didn’t want – I didn’t want you there! I didn’t want you anywhere near it. I knew I couldn’t force you and they wouldn’t but I didn’t want you to know. Why is that so hard to understand? I shouldn’t have come back and forth, I was stupid and I hate that you were always trying to read me and I hate it now even more that that you can see it. Why can’t you let me deal with this, why does it have to be talked about? It happened, I did what I did, even if no one died I had to hurt people to keep…to keep by him. I was there one of the times he ki– I didn’t stop him. I couldn’t have stopped him. If I did then the whole thing would have imploded. I had to…to see that. To let him. Even then I still screwed up! He did what he did, because I was stupid. Is that what you want to hear? Fine. I admit it. I screwed up and let the freaking Romeo and Juliet have their way and it nearly cost us all everything. I didn’t take her out when I should have and I didn’t get him out before the only way he thought he could save us was to give up."

Shift… That wasn’t the answer she had expected, or the one I had wanted to give.

I nearly lost them and if I… If hadn’t of been for him, I would have lost you. I had sat down, the weight of the anvils was only at my head, pulling it down into my open palms. The shadow was cast from her body standing in front of me.

The warmness of her hand against my shoulder lifted at the sound of the door opening. I thought she left.

Don’t be an idiot.

I looked up, startled. He shut the door behind him, looking first to Shadow and then to me with a glance that was calculating how close we were to yelling at each other and sympathy and understanding that it had come to that. The latter won, and I knew I wasn’t the only one tied to a weight.

The strange thing was, it wasn’t looking at him that made me remember, and I think he got that. He sighed before he spoke again, his voice less harsh than before.

You did more than what anyone could have asked you to do, Shift. You… It wasn’t the pause that caught our attention, but the fact that he hadn’t done it on purpose. Shadow’s hand rested against me again, the other twitched at her side, the only giveaway of her trying to get a reading on us. You did more than I should have asked for, more than we deserved. I didn’t want you there, but I knew when I said it that you’d find a way in, even if only to observe. I never thought you’d force yourself so deep. We both put you through hell. One that wasn’t yours to suffer. I thought it was your fight.

It was.

No, you weren’t ever a part of their scope-

I’m a Protector, that’s what you told me. That if I chose this I had to live with all that came with it. Including going after the head of the thing that would have come after us.

He smiled, almost. Shadow’s hand went still.

"Then you know that none of that was on you. Not what you witnessed. Not what I did. Those are my crosses. I knew exactly what I was choosing in trying to take away their power over you all, over me, even if I didn’t know what it would cost, same as Star knew it. That choice was ours. You couldn’t have seen it, Shadow, and you couldn’t have changed it, Shift. I am the one who put us in their crosshairs, not you.

You kept them together when I wasn’t there, you kept her balanced by being with me, at the price of your own temporary sanity, just like Shadow is trying to do for you now. Turning on each other is the worst decision you could make, even for a moment. We learned better long before, just as you two will. Shadow wanted to be there. She had a right to be, she chose this too… You want to hate yourself for letting her be in danger, I can’t blame you, I hate myself more, but it wasn’t your choice.

It wasn’t yours to bear the guilt of my actions. I could say that every life I took saved hundreds more, either by the hands that wouldn’t pull the trigger or write the order, or in the service those deaths served in getting me deeper so that when the time would have come, I was a pawn they thought they controlled and we could have rooted out what we needed. We could have disabled them, piece by piece, so nothing got overlooked. Even with what we were forced to do, to blow it all to hell and hope the ashes are thick enough to suffocate whatever is born out of it, was enough to save thousands. But I won’t say that, because those lives are ones I took. Consciously, even if who I was then was not of the mind I am now, that is on me, because I let myself become that. Who that man was knew then what it meant, in taking lives, and in taking mine. And when it came down to it, my promise to you Shadow, the first day you came here, your life over mine, was held up. That’s what it means to be who we are. We aren’t strong because we can take the beatings. We’re strong because we can help each other heal from them."

Even though his arms were crossed, his chin lowered in a makeshift wall between him and Shift and I, I knew this was more exposed than he had ever allowed himself to be with anyone other than Stargazer. The rotating colors of the room looked like the thunderstorms over the farms lining the roads of my earliest childhood memories and were just as terrifyingly powerful and beautiful then as they’d been behind the windows of that tiny house.

I looked at Shift. He had dropped his hands, lifting his head in a deliberate show of strength to watch BD with slightly narrowed eyes, but he hadn’t responded.

BD nodded, the silence somehow telling him more than it told me. Then I was the one he was watching.

You can’t hold each other on pedestals, or in a glass case. One tumbles and the other shatters, but the end is the same. This isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last time one of us gets hurt, and as long as you choose to continue in this, it will get worse before it gets better. What you’re able to see, or what you’re able to do, Shift, doesn’t matter right now. All that we can do is mend – If anything happens, we aren’t without contingency plans. If it comes down to running, we will, at first. But not yet, and never from each other.

He took a step towards the door, turning back halfway. His arms dropped, his head lowered only enough so he could look down at both of us. The black eyes that had once made me shiver with their reflection in a rearview mirror made me feel the weight of space now.

If she were able, she would tell you the same things, better than I can, but I need you both to know how grateful I am that it is you two who stand with us.

Oh. I eloquently stated. He smiled in apology and in understanding.

The door shut.

He’s right. I ventured, sitting next to him.

Yeah.

You know… you know I’m here. Whenever you want to talk about it.

His laugh was more like an exhale of relief.

It may be a while.

I’ll be here then too.

[THE TALK] (AND MY DEATH)

"M om, you here?" The living room was empty. Shift was behind me. He was only supposed to bring me home. She’d called, saying she had missed me, that almost a week was too long to go without seeing me. I hadn’t doubted any of that until then.

Have you ever walked in somewhere and you know something is up and you’re likely about to get into some serious trouble? Well that happened.

The fact I was psychic made it serious.

She was sitting at the small kitchen table, in her perfect practiced ‘mom look’.

Uh…Shift, you might want to go.

No, you stay too. Don’t even think about shifting out. She warned, and he believed her. I tried to see something and got a big fat slap in the face of nothing. That had been happening a lot recently.

Hi Ms. Noel.

He had no clue what was going on either.

She watched us sit down and I saw her mentally calculating the distance between us. Okay… I tried to do the mental tap thing again and failed. I was going to tell him to make a run for it.

I want to talk to both of you. She said without any type of hint.

"About?"

She didn’t blink. She didn’t take a breath, or shift in her seat, or fidget her hands. She’d practiced it, she’d planned it, and the words that she was about to say were the product of what had to have been hours of her life I hated myself for not having seen coming. My entire existence had led to them, actually.

Your sexual relationship.

I died.

I dropped dead and my ghost is writing this for you.

No?

Okay I didn’t die, per say, but I wanted to.

Shift went completely blank. I went bright pink, fading into a bluish white when my diaphragm stopped moving.

"Mom!" I shrieked.

Cynthia, she said calmly, I have every right to discuss this with you both, and I want to make sure you aren’t doing somethings you shouldn’t. Or that you’re being responsible. I think they will back me up.

By they she meant Black Dagger (who she knew was back) and Stargazer (who hid being weak to avoid my mom’s paranoia.) She had come over on the fourth day, after we had gotten things somewhat settled, staying long enough to convince herself everything was okay, make three different meals for them to eat off of the next week, and to insure that I was home safe and sound.

I hadn’t told her about the run in with the sarin gas, not then. I definitely hadn’t told anyone about what I’d done. I hadn’t told her much at all, even what happened with BD and SG. I hadn’t processed it all, and throwing it on her before I knew what to say seemed cruel, even if 20/20 hindsight says I was avoiding her to avoid it all together. I realized sending her home and not making a point to call her or go back in the next seventy-two hours had been a mistake.

She had sensed I was hiding something.

She was just completely off in what it was.

I considered crawling under the table.

She couldn’t pull me out if I got a good enough grip on one of the legs. I could hide there for a while, until I figured out how to go back in time. It wasn’t as if we’d ever done anything. You of all people know that we were completely PG rated. But I still wanted to die, or take up the move out of the country and learn to speak Portuguese thing.

My only hope was to try to derail the conversation before it got worse. I didn’t dare to glance at Shift. I wasn’t sure how he would take this interrogation. The last hadn’t gone well. Even if the eight days of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus blared through the massive speakers of our training gym, while he pretended to see if he could work up to holding a human cross on the still rings and a human flag on a bar for ten minutes each, while I pretended to want to break five miles in ten, which we both then pretended to be excited about having managed to do, paired with Netflix, takeout, and laying low in the apartment had helped, it wasn’t a cure.

Mom…you’re getting ahead of yourself.

She didn’t say anything. She just watched us for what I still believe had been a sizable section of forever. Her ‘mom’ look was perfect. Her arms were crossed over her chest, showing us that she meant business.

…Ms. Noel? He asked, hesitantly. She’s telling the truth. Shift sounded like BD. Okay. I lied. I wanted him to sound like Black Dagger so I would calm down. He actually sounded shocked and even a little amused, which didn’t have the same effect, at all. But he didn’t feel cornered, so it could have been worse. Not entirely sure how, though.

"I believe you. I just want to know if you two plan on anything."

I died all over again.

She started to say something.

Noooo – Moooommmmm! I threw my head on the table and put my hands to my ears. I was every color of pink ever invented and known to mankind and womankind and Stargazer – That gives you a good enough idea.

I also re-died at his answer.

After I marry her. He said effortlessly.

I looked up in shock. He was smiling a little bit, staring eye to eye with her, and my mom was the vacant one. I don’t think, no I know, she had not expected that answer from him anymore than I had. I don’t know what I expected.

Silence mostly.

I hadn’t thought of the answer I’d immediately come up with and sure as hell wasn’t going to say it. Saying things like ‘eventually’ to your mom when she asked that in front of the very guy that is in question, was beyond my capacity to process and something I never had really put a second thought to before in the cyclone that had been our life. And I would ultimately be dealing with my other mom over it too, the mind reader one.

"After you marry her?" She asked, in disbelief. I would have been offended, except it had nothing to do with me. She knew what I thought about the whole enterprise. She and my dad were the cause of it, with good reason.

He laughed, of all things, and I assumed had nodded. The colors in the room were sent through a blender of shock, humor, and fear until I wasn’t sure what, if any of them, were ones I felt.

Cynthia?

I hid my head in my arms. She wanted to hear my side of the (before that time) nonexistent story.

What? I said loudly, pretending to not understand.

She huffed, irritated.

I’m not the one that decided to go coming of age teen romance right after the sci-fi thriller/suspense of our lives just ended. Timing. Is it so hard to ask for? Just a warning that I can see about my own life for once.

Ms. Noel, BD and Stargazer waited, so as far as when we are with them, you can trust them, and us. If not, then I guess you’ll figure out a way to shift proof your house if it is me you don’t believe. I’ll stay out if you want, or swear to not be irresponsible, I guess, but it’s really not what you think. I love Shads, and that’s it. The whole concerned tiger mom vibe works though.

I died yet again. I think I am also part cat, not just alien, because I used quite a few lives that day, or week.

I came back to partial life when my mom laughed. He’d done it again. I used to hate how he could cuddle up to her with nothing but a smile, but I was thankful because it meant she’d let up on the two of us, or at least him and in extension me.

"I think that will be unnecessary." She said as if she’d still been thinking over it. It being us. "I don’t trust either of you. I know what I got into – you have the same hormones I had, but I think that if they trust you both enough, if Stargazer keeps an eye on you, then I can manage. Oh, and about the marriage Shift, she has to be at least twenty-three." She added as a side note.

"She is right here." I was technically dead but I could fuss at her in my afterlife.

Cynthia? (She wanted to know if he’d been serious… The crazy thing is the Big Shot had been serious!) I looked up. She was staring at me, trying to not smile at my pathetic little fit.

Yeah. I could feel my lungs closing. My heart was in my head, pounding way too loud to not end in fainting. Please stop talking…Please…?

Was that so hard, drama queen?

I didn’t look up.