A Reborn: Apocalypse fanfiction

29. Not Worth It At All

Kevin ran through the night. Hours after the sunset, Kevin heard voices calling out, literally whisper yelling "Who's There?" to the dark. Kevin was not all that surprised he found another group of people, but he didn't stop or even slow down. They didn't see him, as best as he could tell, and in only a few moments he would be far enough away that it wouldn't matter if they did. He pulled out his Kite shield and put it on his back just to be sure though.

Several hours after that, as he had done before, he stopped a few hours before the sun came up. He cleared the ship he was on and took a nap. He was almost definitely going to make it to the ship that day. He took a low-tier healing pill and a low-tier recovery pill opting to save his last recovery potion for tomorrow so he could really push it. He was going to have to have a healer check out his liver when all of this was said and done. In just low-tier healing pills, he'd probably consumed thousands of points worth since he got on the bridge.

Despite how tired he was, he just wanted to get there, he needed at least some rest. He was worried about the state of his sister's cluster. To say nothing of how worried he was about her. Kevin was worried about what might happen to a pretty young girl in a world where people saw each other as enemies as much as they saw the monsters as enemies. People could be vile enough when there was the full weight of the legal system sat as a deterrent. They were even worse when the only repercussions were those of family feuding. Kevin really didn't want to think about how bad things could get when you didn't even have strong emotional connections with anyone sufficient to warrant reciprocity.

Kevin counted his heartbeats, he slowed his breathing and listened as his heart slowed too. If he couldn't sleep, he'd cultivate and meditate and maybe that would help. He would, with any luck at all, see his sister today. He couldn't wait to see the look on her face. He couldn't wait to hug her. She'd probably pretend to be a little annoyed about it, but he doubted she would want to let go.

Kevin was six when Katie was born. In the stories, the older brothers are either immediately ready to be super-bro or try to kill their new sibling within minutes of bringing it home. Kevin was ... well somewhere in the middle. He was nervous about hurting her so he didn't want to hold her, but if she was crying he wasn't overly concerned about what she was crying about.

That changed when Delilah was born when Kevin was 9. It was like a light had flipped in his brain and he suddenly realized that these two girls were kind of his responsibility. He didn't really like all the girly stuff they wanted to do, but if he was at home with them and didn't have much else going on, he would play with them. They wanted to play this or that, but really at the end of the day, HE was the toy they were playing with; making him set up board games, or play House with him, or build forts. They didn't care about what they were doing, they just wanted to spend time with Kevin.

Once Katie started going to school, Kevin spent more time with her even if it was only bus rides or walking to school, so when she had her first boyfriend in all of first grade, Kevin decided he needed to set the record straight and told the boy to "Be nice to my sister or I will make you eat mud." He should have picked on elementary school kids, but the little brat had it coming. He kissed another girl right in front of Katie no less, and she still wouldn't even let Kevin throw a snowball at him.

The family got really close when their dad died. He had never really been around much, his parents had been divorced but then child support went away and Kevin felt the strain. He graduated a year later and decided to join the military. Katie had cursed him out for leaving them. Kevin still regretted it.

He did everything he could to get stationed near them. He selected Logistics as his job because the recruiter said "They need logistics everywhere son." And it worked. Kevin was less than an hour away, he saw his mom and Katie and Delilah all the time. Kevin would have been deployed, if he hadn't been snatched up in the first wave a few weeks before the leave date. So, blessing and curse. From Katie's perspective, he had only been gone for a bit more than two months, not the year or longer the deployment likely would have been. From Kevin's perspective, he had to do the whole year and more. He couldn't wait to see his sister. He hoped Delilah was safe at a friends house or maybe with one of the grandmas. At least she wasn't here.