Anything For Rachel

Chapter Forty.

The ringing in my ears. The smoke in the room. The blood. Something isn't right.

I rolled off of my back and felt the sticky blood on the ground around me. This didn't make any sense. I'd seen the grenade. I'd known the only way to save Rose and everyone else would be for me to take the blow of the grenade myself. I ran for it, as fast as I could. I was going to lay on top of it, take death in exchange for everyone else to live.

Everything around me seemed to be slow motion, the ear killing ringing in my ears making it hard to concentrate on anything as I tried to push up from the floor onto my hands and knees but my head was feeling loopy. All the mirrors around me were shattered, some of the small wooden panels behind them blown out too.

My head hurt as I whipped it to the right to look where the toy was and I sighed when I saw that the wooden panel there was still intact, just smeared in blood.

Blood.

I couldn't make sense of anything. I should be dead right now. It should be my blood smeared all over the room, but it isn't. I brought a hand up to my face just to be sure that I was in fact intact and not just a ghost seeing the aftermath of my sacrifice. It was there, and so was the rest of me.

If I'm still here, then who isn't?

I pushed up, standing slowly and I strained my eyes to see, the lights in the room all blown out. I could see Cromley, and Pedro. They were both on the ground, probably struggling to gain control back on their senses like me. Renard was standing up in the distance, training his eyes in my direction and he seemed to sigh in relief when he saw me standing there.

I looked to the other side and I could see Octavia by the door, sitting up on her hands and knees, her body shaking like she was either breathing heavily from shock or crying...possibly both.

Oh, god.

I couldn't find Calvin.

I turned around, my mind fixing to explode when I was smacked hard by something, taking me back down to the ground. "Rachel, you are insane!" He yelled at me as he hugged me on the ground. "I thought I'd lost you."

"Calvin." I sighed his name and he buried his head in my hair that had been knocked down from the hair tie.

"Oh, baby." He cried into me. "I thought you were gone." He said again. "I-I-I don't know what I could have done without you."

It made sense now.

The only other person I couldn't find, and the only other person out of us that could have beaten me to that grenade.

Lexton had done it. Lexton sacrificed herself to save my daughter.

I wished so much that she could know how thankful I was. The girl that everyone distrusted. The girl who only ever just tried to live. The girl who was only guilty of falling in love with a man who couldn't love her back. She'd given everything up to save him that heartache and to fix the wrongs she thought she was the cause of. Lexton was never a bad person. Her circumstances, much like mine had forced her to do things she might not have any other time. As much as people praise me for having a big heart, I think it was always Lexton whose heart was the biggest, and it was hers that was hurt the most.

I cried into Calvin's chest too, but for so many more reasons.

"Lexton." I whimpered.

Calvin nodded. "She did it." He muttered. "She pushed you out of the way, and she took the blow. She saved all of us."

"Not just us, Calvin." I told him, pushing him back so that I could get up and I dragged him by the hand over to the corner of the room, opening the panel.