Onyx: Heathens & Heroes

Chapter Fourteen: Reminiscing the Past

I decided to switch it up this week: I'm uploading a day early! I'm going to the zoo tomorrow and I won't be home until later so I figured to get it done now. I just finished this story (literally 20 minutes ago) so I'm super pumped for the last few chapters. There's only two remaining chapters and the epilogue to post--then I'm going to begin the second book in the Onyx series: Beyond Redemption (title may change). The last few chapters are going to wrap a few details up and bring in more hints to upcoming books in this series. Thank you guys!

Isn't it so ironic that this city focuses more on burying a man who killed various others and hurt a lot more than honoring the ones who tried to help? They're celebrating the life of a murderer who did nothing but bad things in the months leading up to his oh-so-unfortunate demise. I find it terribly irritating that when I was rotting in a cell, they were out holding vigils for the man who was killed 'too soon'. Which just made me want to kill him all over again.

    No second thoughts.

    I stood behind a tree, leaning against it with my hands in my back pockets while I watched the funeral pan out. Multiples of people were crying as they lowered the casket into the ground, including my witch of a step-mother and her damned daughter. Of course, they were both sobbing, but I didn't feel bad. In fact, I couldn't feel a damn thing. My head, after my talk with Merlyn, had been all kinds of screwed up: I wasn't crying, I wasn't sad, but I wasn't happy either. My head was foggy, like I was drunk in the worst kind of way.

    Right now, I think I preferred being drunk over being alive.

    A hand rested on my shoulder and I turned my head slowly to see Oliver's solemn face, then Barry's. I didn't speak but just continued to stare at my step mother as she spoke about my father—all good things, which just made me want to kill her twice over.

    Few other faces came forward: Felicity, Diggle, Cisco, and Caitlyn, but no Snart and no Mick.

    Both women stepped forward to give me an awkward hug with sad faces, one of which I didn't return. I wasn't in the mood for hugs and I certainly wasn't in the mood for talking, especially to people that weren't Snart. However, Barry pulled my rigid body into a bone crushing hug, trying to prove to me that he wasn't going to let go of me, which I was okay with for the most part after realizing that I wasn't going to get out of it.

    He held me tightly as I returned it, digging my fingers into his red hoodie, finding salvation in the colorful hoodie of The Flash. "Where's Snart?"

    "Asleep," Cisco chimed with a small smile as he rested a hand on my lower back in a small gesture of calmness, "Caitlyn slipped him some painkillers so that he would go to sleep, after multiple times of refusing medication. He hasn't been able to relax since you got put in jail, we figured that he needed the rest for the time being, so he's passed out at the apartment. As for Mick, well, he got too drunk and now he's sleeping off that hangover." For once in three long days, I managed a small and tight twitch of my lips, then wrapping an arm around his neck, pulling him towards Barry and me.

    He laughed quietly as he pulled everyone into a small group hug, including Oliver who seemed less than pleased about the situation. As everyone giggled, even the Green Arrow began to chuckle as Cisco ruffled my hair, we stood in an awkward embrace—so awkward that even Diggle was laughing.

    It continued for a minute until we broke apart and I ended up wrapping my arms around Cisco's waist while his arms circled my neck in a very close hug that I definitely needed from all of my friends, yet sort of didn't want. One by one, they all received a hug from me. The last to get one was Oliver.

    He rested his head on mine as his hands rubbed my back while all of us stood and listened to the funeral of my father—the man I killed willingly to save one of the only people I cared about. I didn't really cry, however, I just stood there hugging Oliver and I didn't have a single regret in my body for killing my father—the only one that I remotely had was not killing him with my bare hands.