Apocalypse, Steve Harrington

Chapter Sixty-Two. Wiseman

SIXTY-TWO
— wiseman

SHE'S HOLDING A COCA-COLA CAN to the growing bruise on her cheekbone . . . she still can't believe a grown man punched her.

Lucy's sitting criss-cross in a plastic chair outside of Nathaniel's Hotdogs. Her eyes are glued to her sneakers— there's a drop of crimson-red blood on them, not that it was noticeable, because the sneakers themselves are red. She only noticed because she's been psychoanalyzing them for fifteen-minutes . . . and she's only been psychoanalyzing her high-tops because she's afraid that if she looks up, she'll cry. Steve is sitting about two-yards away from her, give or take, and his face is blown-up like a balloon. She can't look at him like that— it's a guaranteed sob-fest.

Right now, she feels small. Physically, she's exhausted. She's weak, and she's starting to get sad, and, wow, she has one hell of a migraine. Her thoughts start to wander, now, and she thinks back to the Russian base, and she realizes about how absolutely, disgustingly lucky she is to be sitting here right now. Three hours earlier, she had been drugged against her will. Beat. Tortured. Her body could have been cold, limp, and lifeless, curled on the tile-floor of a foreign bunker. Her eyes open, staring aimlessly at the fluorescent-lights that hung from the ceiling. Pupils small, unfocused, lips parted, and jaw agape. Fists unclenched. Muscles loosened— she could have been dead. It's the first time she realized how slim the odds of life are.

The weight on her chest comes out in an audible grunt/sigh. She moves the Coca-Cola can from her face, and places two clammy-fingertips on the wound. It's hot, and it basically has a pulse, and the lightest touch is enough to send an aching shock down her neck and body. Lucy blows a puff of air from between her cracked-lips, and watches when her bangs flutter upwards in response— the way she's forcing her eyes up is making her migraine a lot worse than it has to be.

She only realizes she's been alone this entire time when someone's squeaking footsteps break her trance.

Lucy sees her brother reach out to her— he's seconds away from dropping the possibly the most painful slap across the side of her head, but he stops himself, and it's almost shocking. Daniel slumps down into the white, plastic chair across from her, and relaxes his body with a heavy exhale. There's a hole in his jeans, by the knee, and a drop of blood on his white tee-shirt. He's disheveled, she's noticed— but, then again, when is he not?

"I thought you were gonna slap me across the side of my head," she says, squinting.

His nose twitches, "yeah, I was gonna," Danny blinks. "Then, I remembered you get headaches when you're all . . . stressed-out, and stuff."

Her brows narrow into a V-shape, and she almost scoffs in her brother's face, "stressed-out?" Lucy's tone has a pitch at the end. "What makes you think I'm stressed-out?"

Daniel's face drops, and it's clear he's unamused. With his pointer-finger, and without moving his whole hand, he gestures to her, "you've been picking at your fingernails since I first saw you," he says. "You're literally bleeding, Luce."

She doesn't say anything, but instead, places the Coca-Cola can back on her cheekbone. Lucy sniffles stubbornly, and lifts her shoulders with a shrug, as if to dismiss her twin brother's observation. He chuckles dryly, and shuffles to sit criss-cross, like a mirror image of the girl in-front him.