Pacifier

💔Benji🍀

My eyes stung, the whiskey i drank warm and smooth down my throat, my cigarette smoldered, burning out without me noticing because I was watching the hospital entrance for any signs of life.

The night watch was uneventful, people came in, but not many people tended to leave at 4 o'clock in the morning. That made sense I supposed.

Still I knew that Camille wouldn't do this the expected way.

She'd always been one of the smartest people I knew, and of all the family she was the one I'd trust to make no mistakes.

I'd always put my faith in Van and I trusted Bondy, Bob and Larry with my life, but Camille, my little sister. She was something else entirely.

I knew that if her and Bonds were still alive in there, she'd make sure they got out.

I just needed to be here to see her when they made it. I couldn't leave until I knew they'd gotten out.

Watching the hospital from the window of Elena's flat, i didn't feel so helpless. Like at least from up here in the high-rise across the road I could keep an eye on them both. I couldn't see them but I felt at least as though I was watching over them. At least like I was doing something.

I was letting Bob take the day shifts because I knew he scared the kids less. Elena's two little girls were sweet but I struggled to be around them because of that.

Because they were so innocent, so happy and curious all the time. They wanted to stand look out with us and they didn't understand what they were looking for, didn't really understand who we were and I was struggling not to feel guilty for having invaded the sanctuary of their little home.

Because we weren't the kinds of men who should be raising your children. We were the kinds of men with shadows behind their eyes which had seen death, which had been death.

When I saw those little girls I thought only of Nakita, the life I'd secretly always wanted to give her, though I'd known I never could.

I'd wanted her to give it all up, to be mine and mine alone, and I'd wanted us to settle down one day, get married, have a family, all those things my fathers generation had been able to do before theyd started their futile fucking war, died and left the no man's land to us.

My father and his friends had lived so recklessly they'd left no safety haven for us, left us with nothing but to be foot soldiers doomed, and now I felt it.

I'd had hope for a little while with Van at the head of the family, I'd had hope that things would change, that things would get safer and though they did for a little time in hindsight that time had been fleeting. Ephemeral.

Now I felt doomed as I should have done my whole life.

And perhaps I couldn't blame the family, couldn't blame our fathers for the things which had come to pass.
They'd left us long before Kita had been ripped from me.
That was on me and me alone.

Tonight just like every other night it was her that i lingered on. All the things I should have done.

I shouldn't have let her go to work, I should have stopped her. Should have tried so much harder for her when she was alive.

If I'd given her more, if I'd put up a fight, she might not have been working that night, might not have been taken and murdered and left lying in the rain outside the balcony for us to find.

It hurt, hurt like nothing I'd ever felt before. To know id loved someone so much and not done enough to save her.

Not done enough to keep her alive.