Short Stories and Oneshots

Borrowed Time

"What are you thinking?"

Cosmi wouldn't look at me, keeping her dark eyes trained on the falling rain outside. I'd never seen her this still, nor this quiet.

"Would you believe me if I said I didn't know?" she asked softly.

I paused. "I guess so. I get lost in my own head a lot too, so...yeah, I think I understand."

She shook her head absently, the rainbow colours of her hair shifting and mixing like a kaleidoscope. To what she was disagreeing with, I didn't know, and I somehow felt like it would be wrong to ask.

We were all hurting. I knew that. I hadn't seen Liam in days, and according to Jango, Wren had completely stopped talking. Meanwhile, Bay had been alternating between screaming through their sobs, crying silently, and staring numbly into space. We were all dealing with it differently.

But Cosmi's pain seemed different. It was like she'd been holding something in, and it took the death of Colt to bring it to the surface. I already knew she'd been through a lot, so it was too hard to guess what might have been holding her down right then.

"You know you can talk to me, right?" I asked. The words felt flat as they left my lips.

She still didn't look at me. "It's not about whether I can talk to you. It's about whether or not I can even talk." she snapped.

I let the quiet stretch between us, broken only by the insistent tapping of the rain against the window.

Cosmi let out a loud sigh, turning away from the glass to finally face me. Her dark eyes were misty, devoid of the mirth they usually held. "Do you ever just try so damn hard to forget or ignore something, and it just keeps coming back up to hit you in the face?!"

I raised an eyebrow, watching as she lowered her head so I couldn't see her eyes again. "This is no longer the end of the world. It's something else. It's after the worst, and things still hurt. It's not fair. It's not fair. I keep thinking that nothing else can happen to us, to me, and then it DOES."

She shifted her position on the window seat, tucking one leg up to her chest. "We are all living on borrowed time, Annikai."

Goosebumps rippled up my arms. Annikai. She never called me by my real name.

None of them did. It was always Kai, or Nik on occasion. Colt had called me Anna sometimes. Bay would refer to me as Ick if they felt like being a pill. The last person to call me 'Annikai' was Simon, and he'd disappeared months and months ago.

"What are you saying?" I asked quietly.

"I'm saying we should all be dead."

Her voice was very, very heavy. The words hung in the air for a few moments, before she breathlessly continued. "You, me, all the others. Everyone left alive that's not a godforsaken monster. We shouldn't be. I'm tired of being alive, and I'm angry that I'm tired of it, and so we're getting nowhere. The world is over, and yet we're still hanging around because we don't know what to do and we're too stubborn to admit it and give up."

Cosmi let out a shaky breath, then reached up to press the heels of her hands against her eyes. "What's going to happen to us when you die? When Liam dies? Jesus, when Wren dies? This group is so fragile. Everybody left is so fragile. I keep trying to pretend this all isn't real, just so I can keep on not-dying for another couple days. We're all...we're just..."

The words finally faded off into hard, angry sobs. I hesitated, not sure what to do. Cosmi was known to be averse to being touched for any reason, and there wasn't much to say to comfort her. My mind had gone through similar loops before, trying to plan strategies for when, inevitably, one of us was no longer around.

I slowly got up, moving towards her. She didn't move, not until as I sat beside her and cautiously set my arm around her shaking shoulders. Her body stiffened, but she quickly leaned into me, accepting my awkward side-hug.

"I'm not...going to pretend like I can say anything to that. I'm not gonna tell you you're right, or you're wrong, or...anything." I said quietly. Cosmi sat up straighter, giving me a melancholy look.

"Good." she muttered.

I scooted closer, pulling her into a real hug. To my surprise, she let it happen, tucking her face into my shoulder. She usually refused any sort of physical contact, and I took this to mean she really was hurting deep.

I heard her stifling a few more quiet sobs, and I gently said, "We can be okay, Cos."

Another few moments of silence passed, and then she muttered, in true stubborn Cosmi fashion, "Borrowed time, Kai."

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Context?

I'm currently working on a story (probably called Unknowable Skies) about a bunch of kids trying to survive after the apocalypse. You probably figured this out, but this bit takes place shortly after one of the main characters dies, it's all very angsty.

The whole thing is written in script form, and I wanted to step out of that for a lil bit. Plus, we don't get to see a lot of Cosmi's deep emotions (that aren't anger), so I wanted to try writing something about her just...dealing with shit.

P.s. Annikai is soft babey pls love

p.p.s. why is Kai's reaction to Colt's death so less much extreme than any of the others?? hmmm...