His Sour Lemon #2.1

Part 33: Creed Headquarters

CHAPTER 33: Creed Headquarters

June, 2033.
Outskirts of New York City, America.
Fitzgerald Institute for Troubled Youth.

Loyalty can keep someone alive longer than any weapon. Trained shield in a storm. That's what Sampson showed me. If I fall too far behind, that loyalty slips and a whip comes crashing down while they stay out of the line of fire. Talon was the only one not as corrupt as the others. The only one who didn't show loyalty, but friendship. Friendship is what I needed more when that whip came down or when the fight wasn't long enough to entertain. Because entertaining gives us gifts. Not taking a hit gives us a hit of our own later. And losing...meant punishment for failure.

I no longer want to understand the meaning of punishment, but the meaning of friendship, which has its own league of loyalty all on its own. And it's stronger than loyalty made through fear.

*******

August 4th, 2042.
London, United Kingdom.
London Airports.

The dead could have walked through the car a hundred times over before the silence in the room became any more dark and dreary. I had one hand on the wheel and the other as close to her as possible, without looking like a creep wanting to hold his girlfriend's hand. It was on the console between us and the ride ahead was for the airport. I cut the silence, having enough of it.

Sighing, "You know that I never meant to hurt you, lemon." I confess.

She stares out the window on her side when I glance over to her, "You were protecting them." She mutters. I glance over and she meets my eyes with pursed lips, betrayal sunken in them and I sternly slide my eyes back to the road ahead. Rain shatters into a thousand droplets on the windshield, turning the wipers on. The electrify the air.

Screw that. Lemon did by just breathing.

"I lied too, perhaps I had seen it as protecting you, perhaps it wasn't, but you knew about most of what was happening to me. That's what hurts the most." She tells me. My fingers whiten on the wheel of this damning car, the air now suffocating...should've kept my mouth shut.

"Are you talking about the fact you went to New York just to learn more about my past? You helped the others escape at the cost of learning everything I'd ever been through and you still ripped my heart out when you got back home." I increase speed, not dangerous enough to cause her to feel it, but enough so that I could.

She closes her eyes next to me, "Yes, I did. I bloody well knew you'd never tell me anything."

I can't help but scoff.

"You really think in the time we've known each other that I'd want to confess everything of my miserable childhood, compared to yours. Don't think I don't know the kind of life you've had, Melanie. Loving parents, siblings-strength that I couldn't experience the same way." I spit, that bitterness was there, rifling through my skeletons like a fucking reminder, she had what I wanted.

But now, I want something more.

The ability to create my own.

She huffs...probably shouldn't ask to start creating now then, "Why are you comparing our lives, our past experiences? You told me that I'd look at you differently if I knew about your past, I didn't. I only...changed when I found out your team had a hand in Johnson's ploy to make me his next victim." Not all of us, baby. Not all of us.

I look over to her, "I thought that if you knew about my life, you wouldn't want me in yours anymore, I didn't think neither you nor your family would want someone like me dating you." She could deny it, make me feel better...there was no way to deny the truth in this regard.