Teenage Wasteland

C h a p t e r T h r e e

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Nelson awoke to the distinct chill that came from sleeping in the camp's windowless and doorless rooms. The nursing office, she recalled through the thick sludge of hallucinations and brief periods of lucidity from the day before.

Or was it's actually two days prior? How long had she been asleep?

Unconscious. She reminded herself, since she hadn't exactly drifted off to 'sleep' under the comfort of warm blankets and of her own free will.

No, she'd knocked out kicking and screaming at the two boys who'd desperately fought to save her from herself.

It was then that Nell decidedly cut off her overactive mind and scolded herself for going off on a tangent mere seconds after waking up. Her head wasn't even clear from the fog of unconsciousness and she was already pushing it to decipher the last overwhelming episode of the unbelievable story she knew to be her life.

Focus. Observe. Assess. She ordered her mind as she steered her reenergized powers of observation towards scoping out her surroundings.

Since she had yet to open her eyes, which were still heavily lidded by her recent state of slumber, she pushed her other senses to confirm her surroundings. However, before she could fully engage herself in this basic survival task she'd engrained into her instincts since the fallout, she was gently approached by the soft woodsy scent and even exhales of a very dear, and very much sleeping boy.

The boy who had saved her life, once again.

She knew his scent like she knew the light of day. It was the fresh overlay of rain and wood entwined with a unique and impeccable essence that she had self-titled 'Remi' after her failure to pin a better name or origin unto it.

Her thoughts and senses continually betrayed her previous commands as they instead focused on inspecting the dear friend before her and reveling in the safety and comfort of his presence.

His large and slightly calloused hands currently enveloped her smaller ones with warmth and loyalty, she noted. She also realized right then that he had stayed at her bedside, and knowing him, had intended to stay until she had awoken.

She opened her eyes then, smiling as her vision focused in on the boy's sleeping visage. In sleep, Remi resembled the best friend she had grown so fond of over the few years of her new life. She didn't get to see that part of him very much anymore, with all the workload that came upon them as leaders of what was quickly becoming Earth's greatest chance of salvation: Phoenix Corp.

So she had learned to enjoy these rare moments when he was once more the sweet boy that she had started this new, scary life with. She wouldn't have continued without him, both in respects to her recently major successes as a leader and to her life.

She ran her fingers though his unkempt, chestnut-colored hair, and he sighed appreciatively as the chocolate embers she knew to be his eyes fluttered opened.

"Hey." He greeted simply with his thick morning voice, roughened from disuse during his slumber. She smiled radiantly in response and pulled him into a mighty hug.

"Mm, hi." She cooed in simple addition to her nonverbal response, and proceeded to melt in the bliss of their embrace.

However, though she thoroughly enjoyed the implication that she was still alive and sitting there with the dearest person in the world to her, she found that instead of quelling her nerves, this only heightened them.

She became increasingly aware of this as an incessant desperation came over her, demanding more of him out of nowhere, so she held him tighter within her arms to satisfy her unprecedented needs.