Electric

chapter twenty-five

My eyes wonder around the inside of the tank aimlessly. Parker is on his radio, talking to Ryder about something I care nothing about. My heart speeds up when he glances at me and smiles briefly. It's a smile of reassurance meant to comfort me. There's a thin line of sweat lining his forehead and I study him. Why do I feel like I'm not the one who needs reassurance?

    Before he had me load up into the tank, I did, in fact, go back to the asylum. The orange girl was nowhere to be seen and I didn't even try really looking for her. I had an epiphany in the padded room when I saw it again for the last time. I realized that she was still in one of those things, still trapped like I was.

I wondered what the point of me showing my success was. Why would I find her and show off my pretty uniform when she was just going to go get tortured like I used to right after I saw her? It would be horrible and belittling, and the fact that I even wanted to do such a thing makes me sick.

What type of person have I become?

    So I sat in the middle of that padded cell with Parker watching me silently from the door, and I looked at the white walls around me. Those walls had held so many of my secrets, so much of my misery. I guess I wanted to see if they would recognize the person I am now. Would the walls notice the way there's a bounce in my step? Would they be proud of the way Parker lights up my face with a bright smile? And then I remind myself that they're walls. They wouldn't be able to tell me apart for a dog.

    "What are you thinking about?" Parker asks me softly now. I blink back to reality and offer him a smile.

    "Walls."

    "Shall I ask why or just leave you to think about them?" He questions with amusement lacing his voice. I never fail to amuse him, do I? I slide on the metal bench of the tank so that I'm closer to him. His small smile turns into a grin and my hip presses to his. I marvel at his muscles as he reaches his arm back and rests it behind my shoulders.

    "Well I was just thinking about how they've seen so much of me and yet they don't even know who I am." I explain and he raises a curious eyebrow.

    "They're inanimate objects, love." He says tenderly like I'm crazy yet he loves me anyway. I laugh and he exhales at the sound. I've come to realize that he has an extreme fondness for my laughter.

    "I know that, Parker." I roll my eyes and he spontaneously presses a kiss to my temple. "I'm just thinking about how sad it is that we become so familiar with things that don't even have the heart to reciprocate the feeling. We can go through our wholes lives loving a blanket or a stuffed animal or even a piece of clothing, yet that thing will never love us back. Maybe it's not sad. Maybe it's just ironic." He looks at me for a second as if he has to process my words and then he shakes his head at me.

    "You are astonishing – Did you know that – absolutely astonishing." He muses, I look up at him.

I feel like a big, mushy pile of emotions at this point.

    "And you're insane," I smile, leaning into him with my head on his chest, "absolutely insane." He reaches down and interlocks our fingers, causing my eyes to look at our conjoined hands.

We fit perfectly. On the outside, we may seem completely different. I mean, he's the general of Division 64, a general of the Prominence. And then there's me, a Prominence outcast, a freak meant not to live outside of a government asylum. Anyone with a brain would think we'd be sworn enemies, yet here we are holding hands and heading off to a battle against the Flesh Feeders.

"If anything happens out there today, Parker-"

"We are going to acquire a house on the beach." He interrupts and I blink. Um...what? "I figure that since we are evidently going to live together after this battle, we should live by an area that you have an apparent fondness of."