SHADES of GREEN ↬ m. wheeler

XXIV. SOLACE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
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❝SOLACE❞

　
　

"WHAT THE HELL happened to you?" Sarah cried, rushing at her daughter.

　Jade turned her head and held out a hand, as if to say stop. Of course, that would never have worked on Sarah. Jade had known it would be a bad idea to come out of her room, though if she had locked herself inside, the same result would have come.

　This turned out to be the only unfortunate thing about Christmas Break. Sarah was also granted time off from work, and that meant Jade could not avoid her for long. Winter light set the kitchen aglow, and it all looked so terribly normal, Jade could hardly grasp how deeply she had changed the night before.

　It was the oddest thing, to have the world open up to you and spill all its secrets, and then to be thrown back into what had once been comfort and familiarity. But when your eyes are opened, the alleviation once carried by the portions of the world you'd touched crumbles. You begin to acknowledge all of the dirty little creatures lurking in the shadows, beyond the mundane eye. You realize that you never were and never will be completely safe.

　"What happened to you?" Sarah repeated, in a more demanding tone than the last. She took Jade's face in her hand; while her movements were tight and worried, her fingers were gentle. "Did you get in a fight? Baby, who did this to you? Did you hit them back?"

　It was lucky Jade had showered and changed before exiting her room. She'd been much too exhausted to clean herself when she'd gotten home the previous night. Sneaking in had been just as stressful as fighting the Wurqa and the demodogs; Sarah would have raised Hell if she had caught Jade in her previous state, covered in blood and ichor, clothes tattered and dusted with gravel.

　Beneath the fresh sweater, Jade's left arm throbbed, where the Demogorgon had sent her crashing to the ground and her arm had been sliced by the rocks. Her stomach ached every time she drew in a breath. She thought she might possibly have a concussion, though she had slept the moment she'd touched her bed and she was able to wake. The least of the pain was in her wrists, where Esme had dug them into the ground; they felt as though the bones might be fractured. The worst of the pain resided in Jade's heart.

　And so she couldn't help it. The concern in her mother's eyes was a live and intense thing. The care and the love. Jade hadn't realized just how painful the whole night had been, more mentally than physically, and when Sarah forced Jade to meet her eyes, Jade burst into tears.

　Sarah's eyes softened, and she smoothly pulled Jade into her arms. Jade clung tight to her, let the tears pour, and savored the short moments that her mother held her in silence, save for small uplifting whispers.

　How stupid she felt. Jade had spent the night incinerating monstrous creatures without so much as a bat of the eye. She'd thrown herself off of a cliff, had plunged down to darkness, right into a terrifying Shadow Monster, and had felt her entire body go up in flames. She'd done all of this with a bravery she'd never imagined she could bear. And here she was, crying like a child in her mother's arms.

　Her sorrow was deeper than the failure of keeping Steve alive. Deeper than killing the girl who had, at the very last moment, become something of a friend. Deeper than seeing her grandmother leave for the second time. And it was deeper than pouring her heart and soul into protecting those she loved, and then losing Mike to the first—or only—girl he'd ever loved.