ELBINA 3

Chapter 26

"Lucas." I don't answer him, stepping closer with my arms crossed. His eyes widened and watched my every move.
My feet stopped just off the edge of the bed, at first I just looked at him. The more I look, the more I can see the slight cuts on his face, the bruise forming under the eye from a punch thrown. It was probably from the apartment building, only bringing my head straight back into the chaos of that stairwell.
I'd thought my heart might stop from the sheer adrenaline coursing through my veins, beating so fast so no pace of my breathing was ever going to be fast enough to keep track. I can't even remember what I was doing throughout that entire ordeal, what my legs were doing or who I fought to make it out of there. It all comes back to me in a blur, nothing made sense until we'd hit the open air outside.
"You got away?" He says, staring back at me. The blinds for the window are drawn, the daylight gone from outside and hiding the panicked city that surrounded us. The light was replaced instead by the LED light above us, a bright white illumination that only amplified any bruises that had begun to form on his skin. And then probably made mine more obvious too, but I couldn't see that of course.
I shake my head, looking down at my feet and trying to not see the look on her face as she held the gun to my temple. The cold metal had been abrasive against my scalp, her hand shook so it etched further along my head and dug into my skin till it hurt. I keep trying to forget that she actually pulled the trigger on me, and I keep trying to forget the look on her face when she did. The whole thing was messed up and I don't honestly know how we managed to survive that.
I have to remind myself though, even if we'd been through hell and back today... it's still not over yet.
"No." His eyes match mine, the machine beside him silent but I can see the ECG keeping track of his heartbeat which is quickening the more the tension rises in the room between us. He's not sure what to think of me, what I'll do to him now that I have him alone in a room. For all he knows, I could be here to finish the job that those soldiers started in the street. Here to make sure that he died like he was supposed to.
But I wouldn't do that, even if Arden would. 
"She nearly killed us, tried to blow us up in some building." In the corner of my eye I can see red blood stains on my sleeve, mixed in with both mine and hers. It's mostly hers though, from carrying her to the hospital as her blood trickled out of her wound. "We got out... barely, but we got out."
"Where's Elbina?" He jumps in.
Immediately the thought of him worrying about her makes my blood boil, so a hiss leaves my lips in response to him. "She's being looked after, she lost a lot of blood."
"But she's okay?" I can't help the curl of my lip, looking back at him in distaste.
"Don't act like you give a shit about her!" How dare he? After what he'd done.
How dare he.
"You've got it all wrong. I care about her, Lucas." My stomach churns, anger bubbling up in my chest till I want to scream at him. It made me sick, hearing him say he cared for her. If that was caring for her, sending her to slaughter and breaking every ounce of trust that she'd put into him then he had something fundamentally wrong with him.
I don't shout at him though in response, instead I snort to myself. Shaking my head and shuffling on my feet under me.
"You know what, I'm actually glad you're not dead." Catching his eye, I feel a snarl form on my face in hopes he realises how much I hate him right now. How much I hated him since the minute I saw that video and when I realised what type of a sick bastard that made him. "Because now you're going to suffer the consequences, and I'm going to enjoy every bit of that."
He's quiet, shuffling up a little on the bed till he starts groaning to himself from the pain. His arm gripping over his abdomen once he's settled himself in an upright sitting position. I watch him take a couple of breaths through it and I can't help the small smile that forms having seen it.
But then, after a few tense moments of silence between us, he looks up. A worried expression is screwed up onto his face, his eyes flick to the door behind me unable to keep eye contact with me. He gulps, it's faint and barely there like he didn't want me to see. I did though, and it's more obvious that he's uncomfortable when he lowers his voice and he grumbles out the lodge in his throat before speaking. "She's going to be okay?"
I gulped too, thinking of her pale face when I left her. I knew I had to be here, with Nero. It was where I needed to be, even if it's not remotely where I wanted to be.
I nod, convincing myself more than anything that that was true. Trying to self-soothe to make me stay in this room and do something to stop anything getting any worse. "She should be. I hope so."
I wanted to believe it, and have no doubts in my mind that it would be true. That the pale face I'd left her with would be bright and full of life once I returned, and that she would be fine. I also didn't want to play with fate because just saying someone was going to be fine never worked in my favour, so I'd rather just stay quiet. Just because you don't see something coming, or you want to believe everything is going to be fine, doesn't mean nothing will happen. The worst imaginable things, things that you don't even want to think about, they always end up coming around...I know that now.
I just wasn't ready, and I'm still not ready to deal with it.
I can't think about that right now anyway. I didn't have time, I had other things to worry about.
Chewing my lip, deep in thought I don't say anything more until Nero speaks up, a matter of fact tone as he avoids my gaze. It makes me jump because I'd almost forgotten he was even still in the room, it'd been so quiet and I'd been so stuck in my thoughts that I'd almost completely drifted out of the room.
"Arden's coming for me. She's going to find me."
I don't say anything and so I just nod in agreement.
"I can't imagine I have long till she does, it won't have taken her much to realise I didn't die on that street like I was supposed to." Then we look at eachother, his fingers fumbling over the catheter on the back of his hand. Running his index finger over the top of it absentmindedly until he suddenly shakes his head.
"You shouldn't be anywhere near me right now. If she finds out you survived then you're done for too and so is Elbina."
I shrug looking back at him, "She'll find out eventually, if not today, maybe tomorrow or maybe even a couple of months from now. It doesn't matter really when, only that we'll never be safe with her out there. We only have one chance of getting her any time soon and that's today. When she's tying up loose ends... that's when we can get her."
"You're underestimating her again." He says, but I shake my head.
"She's only human."
He lets out a snort of humour, even though the words are anything but funny. "And that's where you're wrong."
"Then what do you think I should do?" My voice risen in frustration.
"Leave." A sigh falls from my own lips, shaking my head. His voice increases trying to get me to listen to him, I don't think he realises I've already made up my mind. I was done living under protection any longer and getting Arden is the only way out of it. "Call Gerald and tell him I'm here but leave. Take Elbina and get out before she finds you too."
"I can't move her, she can barely walk. She needs to be in hospital right now." I point out.
"You either move her or she dies. She has more of a chance out of this hospital than she does in it."
"She's safer here, they won't find her." I had to believe that, I didn't want to take her or myself outside if I didn't know exactly where Arden was. I knew she'd come for Nero and if I know where she's going to be then I can keep Ella out of the way. It would be too big of a risk to take her outside now, we may very well end up walking straight into her.
"Is her name in the system?"
My head shakes on instinct, "They don't know her name, so no."
"Are you sure?" My teeth grind at his questions, like he cared. I shouldn't have to answer any of them, if I wasn't thinking I could get Arden, I'd leave him to her. She could do what she wanted with him, it's not like he didn't deserve it.
Then you start making excuses, and then you're already a murderer whether you like it or not.
I gulp, remembering her words that rang through my head from today, even if it felt like days ago that it happened.
Instead I nod my head, "Definitely."
He looks at me long and hard, until he sighs "You're not going to follow my advice, are you?"
"You're catching on." He lets his own humourless smile form too, matching mine.
There isn't anything more to say to each other, he knows where I stand and I have my own mission now. To protect myself and Ella, and maybe even Nero.
But then, if I didn't manage to save him... That wouldn't be the worst thing.
"Keep yourselves hidden, get out of here and call Gerald somehow." I narrow my eyes at him, stepping closer to the door.
"But what about you? I don't want you running off anywhere." He looks down at himself, a roll of his eyes as he shuffled under the covers.
"I'm not running anywhere fast, Lucas."
"You better not." My finger prodding out into the open towards him in a form of a threat that I hope he feels. "Or else I send you straight to Arden so she can finish the job."
"I'm facing the consequences, Lucas. That's what you want from me, and that's what I'm doing." He tries to reason with me but I hiss back at him in anger.
"What I wanted was someone who would have Ella's back when I wasn't able to!"
He drops his head away from me, I hope he realises his mistake. I hope he hates himself for all eternity, he should feel ashamed and he should be punished for what he's done.
I try to remind myself that the things I've done, that they don't make me a bad person either. Does that make me a hypocrite?
Probably.
I'm done talking to him, turning and heading for the door but just as I'm pulling it open Nero pauses me in my movement, calling out to me with sincerity.
"I do care for her, despite what you think."
My head shakes on instant, my knuckles whitening on the door handle as I grip onto it harder till I pinch the skin in my own palm.
"You said that before. But you had a choice Nero, you just chose yourself over her.... and now you're going to pay for that. From where I see it, you don't care what happens to her in the slightest. Otherwise you wouldn't have set her up for Arden."
"You've got it wrong, yes ... when my life was at stake, I chose myself but I also chose for Elbina. If I took her to Arden today, she would have died but she would have also died quickly. I didn't want what happened to her before to happen again. No one should go through that."
My gut sinks, forcing a falter in my breathing.
I didn't want to know.
But fuck, I really did for some reason.
"What happened?"
"You must have seen the scars on her, Lucas. Do you need to know much more than that?"
Why does my face feel numb?
It's panic, thinking of all the possibilities and all the things that could have happened to her that day. My brain automatically launches into multiple different scenarios, like vivid memories panned out in front of my eyes as each scar is formed. The story behind each individual one acted out in the most horrific of ways.
My chest tightens, imagining how Ella must have felt. How I feel thinking of her going through that much and coming out the other end with the reminder of it too. I know more than most that the aftermath is the worst, in the moment you can rationalise it. You can tell yourself that it will come to an end at some point, but the aftermath?
Not knowing when you'll go a day without thinking of it, not knowing when you'll get a full night's sleep again. That's worse because it feels never ending, a long tortuous journey with no end in sight.
And that's hard to cope with.
"What about Fallen?" I did want to know this, it's a detail I never quite got from anybody. Maybe it's the case that most people just didn't know?
"He bled out, and she couldn't stop it. We were in a stalemate, Fallen could see it... He stabbed himself in the neck so Elbina could get out." He shakes his head, pressing down further on his stomach over the blanket. "There was no way he was going to survive that, even if we did have people close by to help." This time, I inadvertently caught his gaze. "She blames herself for it]."
"She does?"
"He died in her arms, Lucas. Even if there wasn't anything she could have done to save him, and he died so she could live. She still thought she could have done something so it would have all ended differently." I understood that, it's something I had thought of countless times before too with the people that died in front of me. Could I have done something more, acted differently or said something which might have ultimately led to them surviving?
The problem with that thought, is that I never get an answer. I'll never know what might have worked better, only that what I did or didn't do led to their deaths.
"I know you're mad at her, for cutting you out of her life for those few months. But I saw what she was like Lucas. You didn't want any part of who she was, you wouldn't have helped each other. She did the right thing."
I can't say anything to that, I hated him butting into my relationship with Ella. It wasn't his place to tell me how I should feel about anything to do with her. Maybe I'm more annoyed not because he's getting involved, more that he's spouting out truths that I didn't really want to hear.
Either way, I give him one last look before I swing open the door the entire way and slip out into the hallway, searching once again for a way to contact Gerald.
This time though, he better not try waiting because we certainly didn't have the time to do that.