Bend and Break(poly)(bxb)

L's Break

"I fucked up." It's weird hearing his deep voice say it. It's weird for him to admit his wrongs. He hasn't done that since he was like thirteen.

"I fucked up, horribly." Damian sighs, hits his head against the wall so that his messed over curls fall over his forehead.

Mia's dainty hands were pulling on them. His mouth on her thighs as he licked her clean. I found them like this in the middle of the kitchen. When he first told me he was going to stay away from her, I was smart enough not to believe it. Mia is irresistible. As much as I'd like for the two hotheads to keep their distance, they can't.

"I realized if I lose her... like I lost Rosemary, it would kill me." Damian says. Repeats.

"Okay." I'm already over this conversation. They're safe. Stupid but safe. The two of them, Romero, we're all safe. Seven isn't.

"Yet, I couldn't control myself. She thought I was drunk. Like there was no way I could be that stupid on my own." He's softly tapping his head against the wall like that'll knock some sense into him.

My eyes skim over a few titles on my bookshelf.

"L help me!"

"Sorry," I whisper. He looks wrecked. The time he was a kid and fell off of his handmade sled and into a tree. Only missing the snotty bloody nose. "I don't know what's wrong with you. I don't have time to give you a psych consult either."

No, it's the height too. He wasn't taller than me back then. He was small with stored up potential energy. He was a victim with concealed retaliation.

"How do you control yourself around her?" He asks lowly, like he didn't hear what I said, like he's been out of it since before we even began.

"I have a couple of morals left. Just think about how she's feeling after all you put her through." I release a self-calming sigh. "You punched through a wall right next to her head last time. This time you were licking your own cum out of her."

"She said she loves me." Damian interrupts. "In that voice that just makes you want to keep going forever. She said she loves me."

The first love everyone experiences is love at first sight. Violent and bloody. Loss and birth. A mother when she first sees her child. It's unconditional. Von never experienced this love. He doesn't know what love is.

"Mia is eighteen-years-old," I remind him. She was pure and inexperienced when we first met her, still sharp tongued but not sinful. Now she's spark and seduction. Now she's going to be death of us if we let her. "If you want to abandon her, the sooner you do it the better. Otherwise stop playing with her. There's only so much she can take."

Damian listens to what I say with an expression that melds thoughtfulness with apathy. He was more impressionable when he was younger. That's when it started. I caught him fighting a kid over a bag of pretzels, scolded him for cutting out a girl's braid, yelled at him for shooting a frog through the eye with a BB gun.

He spiraled downwards with me by his side, with my guidance and my advice. So maybe it's my fault.

My daughter isn't scared of monsters being under her bed. She doesn't wake me up to tell me to make it go away, to let her sleep between me and her mother tonight.

I don't hear of abysmal darkness under her bed frame. A cold hand ready to grab whatever dangling limb she has to offer. I don't hear her scattering to the bathroom to outrun ghosts, to make it there before her nightmares do.

I don't hear it because I'm not there.

But I was there with Damian, and I let the monster take him.

It seeped into him slowly. Changed his fighting to shooting and his bullying to killing.

He was always cold and unloving. I can't change the way he was born. But I could've changed the way he was raised. I was right beside him.

"Let's go save this fucking kid," I tell him.

•••

Romero already knew there was a spy on our side, but there's no way he figured it out on his own. So now I just need to know why Seven never told me.

My guess is that Seven is the spy. It's not a secret he lets every bullet we send off with him die. Even the smaller missions, a contract to kill five men. Seven will be the only one who returns.

And he's easily swayed. Easy to please just to earn praise. A slut for any form of attention.

So it'll be hard. Even if we're able to get Seven back, I fear he'll be so much worse than he was. Weeks off of his meds and weeks without anything familiar to him. Weeks without feeling loved and weeks without freedom.

Seven is different because he was broken when I met him. He didn't get worse like Damian or slightly worse like Mia. It was my job to make him better. Trauma induced bipolar disorder can go away. I can make it go away. But not if I'm not with him.

Rosemary leads us past metal storage sheds with raggedy rusted doors. Our desperate footsteps are the only sounds. There are only ten of us in this first wave, I'm not with any of the other gang members. My wave is just supposed to scope the area out anyway. To clear whatever we can and locate Seven for extraction.

After our fourth time opening one of the sheds only to not find him, we appear in front of another one. It looks just like half of the storages here but Rosemary is sure. She purses her lips and nods at it. I press my ear against the cold metal door.

Nothing.

"Seven?" I call.

Nothing.

I call again and this time I hear the eerie sound of chains rattling. Rosemary perks up, reaches for the bolt cutters. I help her take the lock off quickly but my fingers stutter when I go to raise the door.

There are three potential scenarios. He will be okay. He'll smile at me with moonlight in his eyes and arms around my neck. Or he'll be fragile, easily triggered. One misstep and we could break him. Or he'll be gone.

And maybe Seven isn't the spy. Actually how could I ever think it was him in the first place. I raise the door and it feels heavier than the last ones, it rattles the slightest bit more.

It's dark in here. The only contrast is his long white shirt. Crumbled and curled into a ball like him.

The chains shake against each other as he pulls himself up onto his small hands. He's shaking. Seven looks up at me with raw fear in his eyes. A squint. A sparkle. And a strained smile.

"Target spotted," I speak slowly into the walkie talkie.