Eyes of Time - 9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9:

Chapter 9, Witness to my demise

“So, what do you have to say for yourself?” James voice is cold, merciless, obviously tired of waiting.

“Why must you always make it sound like everything is my fault?” I sigh, and am slightly aware that I might sound just a little bit whinny.

“What?” I struck him speechless it seems. His posture changes dramatically, very defensive, like a little kid that has the sinking suspicion someone is about to steal his candy bar.

“I know I haven’t been the easiest person to handle, and that I have been pushing your buttons and all that. But have you tried and think why that is? Put yourself in my position. Of course I’m going to be defensive, and fighting everybody around me. Isn’t that what you would do?” I’m scared, I almost let slip.

“And all this trouble, I didn’t ask for it. Last night, I didn’t plan on it, or was even able to stop it. It just happened. Stop pointing me the finger. If I’m so much trouble why the Hell did you even bothered with bringing me all the way here?

Not to mention all the answers I have been promised but nobody seems too keen on providing, and that includes you. So leave your high horse for a moment and be a decent human being and treat me as an equal, not a bothersome piece of mud on your shoe.”

Ok, so maybe I said just a little bit more than I intended to. I look down, half in shame, half not wanting to witness the outburst that is sure to follow.

But it doesn’t. James shuffles around a little, perhaps looking for words on the walls around us. He finally sighs and ends up sitting on the bed, where I had ended up sitting myself. And here we are, two awkward adults, sitting side by side in a bed, looking for a way to actually communicate with each other, trying to resist the urge to hide behind shouts and sarcasm for once.

His hand meets my shoulder, a reassuring warm weight. “You’re right, I’m sorry. You just take me out of my reason. Ever since we started trying to protect you it has all been hitting too close to home. I have been dumping my frustrations on your shoulders, and that isn’t right. I’m sorry.” And he means it, his voice contrite and ashamed. I look disbelievingly at him, trying to see what he’s playing at, but his profile shows nothing but honesty, and pain. He is looking blankly at the wall, gazing beyond it, looking back to some hidden and terrible memory.

“Tell me.” I whisper, so low I’m afraid he won’t hear me, but I would hate to disrupt his thoughts. The real James is finally here, opening itself for me to witness, and I want to share his pain, make it mine and smother it into nothingness, so he won’t have that look on him ever again.

He swallows and looks down, avoiding my face. My hand rest on his knee as welcoming encouragement. A promise of support.

“It was some years ago. Around the time I joined the Community. This place was shining gold to me back then. An answer in the middle of all the chaos. Someone close to me had the gift. Just like you he was able to witness things nobody else was able to believe. The doctors were giving all sorts of awful diagnostics. I couldn’t believe it was actually happening to my…” He coughs and tries again, going in other direction.

“And it didn’t make any sense, you know? He, this person was ok the rest of the time, and this episodes, it wasn’t anything significant, life changing. He mostly talked about people he would see. A mother and daughter mostly, on their road trips, even though of the girl he couldn’t tell much. He called her a void of laughter. He couldn’t really see her, just how everybody else fitted around her, and then only occasionally.” I try to still my hand imperceptibly, trying not to tell him how that sounded so wrong in my hears, even though I had no idea why.

“Other times it would be this older, quiet boy. Something awful had happened to him, to his family, and he had seen it. Both of them did. Those times would disturb him the most, for days on end, make him have nightmares.

“He used to say this boy had the eyes of the rainbow, at least before.” He chuckles a sad little sound and I again resist the impulse to crush his knee with my hands, to keep them steady enough so they won’t shake either.

“Mic… He was amazing in here. Never before a student had had so much potential, at least that’s what they used to tell me. Patting me on the back, as if it was something wonderful. And I would believe it was too, because that meant he wasn’t sick after all. I vowed to protect him and this place with my own life. But I failed.” His voice has drowned to simple air leaving his lips in a shaky breath, broken on the last sentence, a plea to prove him wrong. A slow, single tear shines down the face of this man I have come to think of as an unshakeable wall of strength.

I’m following its course down his face when the sentence pops into my mind. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut, but I was never the kind of girl that played safe, and it was out before I could stop it anyway.

“His name was Micah.” It is a statement, I have no doubt of this, because somehow I just know. My voice wavers slightly as I draw my next breath.

“And he was witnessing me and Leo growing up.” I feel ashamed, knowing somehow I am responsible for James’s pain. For Micah’s fate, whatever it had been. Two times guilty for Robin’s despair this afternoon, not only for bringing it up but for causing it in the first place.

I don’t even stop to think it might sound presumptuous of me, because in some part of my brain some puzzle piece just clicked together in place. And now I can see wider, in bigger directions. It is my fault.

“I’m sorry.” It came out almost a broken whimper, it would have if it had had any pitch other than a shaken gust of air parting my mouth.

He looks at me then. “Don’t!” His voice is strong as steel again. “It isn’t your fault and me thinking it is isn’t what has been upsetting me.” He turns so that he can face me, his hand lifting my chin so he can stare into his eyes.

“I have just been afraid of failing yet again. You keep surprising us at every turn, being quicker than I can keep up with. I won’t let go of you. They will not take you away. I promise.” His words might be proven wrong in the future, but right now I have no doubt we’ll do it, just like he’s saying. I nod.

“What happened? With Micah?”

“I’m assuming this is what upset Robin earlier? He told you his name?”

I nod, but shake my head afterwards. “I heard some girls talking about me in the bathroom, Mi.. his name just came up. I thought Robin would be able to tell me what it all had to do with me. I didn’t mean to upset him.”

“I understand. I should have realised people would talk. I was hoping they had forgotten it, that they wouldn’t bring it up.” He gets up and starts pacing in front of me. I feel bereft without his arms as support.

“He.. got taken away, by the other side. The same people that were chasing you. At some point we thought he was dead. Robin, (a deep strained breath almost cuts his sentence) the poor kid once witnessed a torture session during one of his outside training classes. They were friends, Micah and him, they had a special bond. Both so gifted and so close in age.” James shudders, keeps silent.

“That is why you’re so protective of him.” Again I don’t need to ask. In less than a fifteen minutes span I find myself able to unravel the mystery that is James. His actions, his attitude, his hidden, cold rage. His protectiveness when he lets his guard down for scant seconds. This confession sheds light into who he truly is. And I ache for him, with him. Ache for not seeing earlier the pain that he was holding so close to an heart he so clearly has, but you have to look just so to actually see it.

I get up and without thinking walk to him, I hug him. No words are said during hours, minutes, the moments that pass us by. No words are needed, just the comfort such a simple gesture can bring. It works both ways, because his solidness helps me regain my bearings too.

I am finally making peace with this man that isn’t mean and arrogant after all. Just a hurt warrior, left bereft by his own inability to conquer fate and battle his own inner demons.

“I won’t let them take me.” I vow after a long stretch of basking in his warmth, because somehow that is all I can think of saying to make it better. I can’t save Micah, but I can try and spare James of yet another perceived failing in his eyes.

He parts after a little, obviously lost after having put his armour down. Shuffles in place and finally heads for the door.

“Are we good?” I ask before he can leave the room.

He looks at me sideways and gifts me a little smile, and I am reminded again why I likened him to an angel before.

“Yeah, we are. Thanks for listening.”

“Thanks for telling me.” It’s my turn to smile. He’s almost leaving when I blurt “You still didn’t tell me who he was to you.” I leave Micah’s name unsaid, there’s no need to say it out loud. I don’t know why I asked it though, why I had to know, maybe it was some sort of self-punishment, who knows?

James hesitates by the door, his back to me. “He was my little brother.” And he leaves. The enormity of his statement crushing me as the door closes behind him.

I know just how he feels. It’s what I felt when I realised Adam was in part unknown, not answering my calls. That feeling times the infinite, plus the knowledge you failed to protect him as you promised him you would. That is exactly how James feels, not knowing if his little baby brother is even still alive.

*

After all the heart breaking revelations the night had brought me I tried to get ready for sleep, for its comforting numbness. I couldn’t sleep though. A whirlwind of more questions left unasked, swirling behind my closed eyelids, denying my subconscious the opportunity to take charge.

I eventually got up and started tiding up the room. I had left clothes scattered all over the place last night. My backpack was still near the wall. I invented things to do in order to take my thoughts away from recent conversations.

I even closed the door so there wouldn’t be a chance of someone else bothering me tonight. And that was how I came to be sitting on my bed, the same spot I had been sitting while James had been spilling his heart aches to me, staring at the floor, eyes directed towards the foot of the desk, where an apparently harmless cell phone lays.

It’s the cell phone James had given me just before the car had exploded in our faces. The same where I saved the number of the police station. The one I had called on a phone booth and talked with a Detective Haley, reporting my family and boss missing status. I’m pretty sure that if James hadn’t showed up and told me what he did I wouldn’t have hesitated to call again, ask about my family, if he had any leads. I would have been quick to talk about this place maybe, saying people that had disappeared all over the place were here, kids mostly. They might even trace the phone call all the way here. If it had any signal at all, me being underground and all.

But James had been honest, he gave me some answers, finally. He had cried and calling now felt like too much of a betrayal. But an awful thought crosses my mind just the same. If James hadn’t been able to protect his own brother what guarantees do I have that he will be able to protect mine? I imagine Adam being gone, his beautiful baby face, impish smile staring all over it, missing. My heart crumples at the thought and I grab the cell phone from the floor in two strides. I just have to do something.

I’m on my knees, with the cell phone in my hand before I can understand what is happening. All that is grounding me is the heavy weight in my hand. An anchor that has me doubled over as everything blurs around me. It clearly is an episode, another one, but the only other time it happened like this, this nauseous and heavy, it was before the accident, the day I met Leo.

A lot of blurred images run fast forward in front of my eyes. Figures I can barely distinguish as such, blurring in places that dissolve and melt into each other before me.

And then, all of sudden, after an unbearable, undistinguishable amount of dizziness and ache, there he is. Stiff, cold, beautiful.

This experience is something completely new for it is almost an out of body experience. I can see myself, with my own eyes. Me and him, in a unknown location.

He told me last night that I should run, and I obviously tried, but he’s stronger, faster, I’m trapped. My hair flying about all over the place, the hint of fear written in the tenseness of my body muscles, ready to bolt.

It feels just like before, the familiar nausea and wrongness. Of knees crushing the floor with the weight of disrupting the time continuum (or that is how it feels, as if the Gods themselves were punishing me for my gift, doing so by pressing the strong pull of gravity and balance on my human shoulders.)

The way it feels as I watch tells me it must be something that is going to happen. The sound is blurred and dragged. Like it’s barely there, distorted as if under water, very far away. The images are clear only when I’m not looking. Diffuse if I stare but sharp to the corner of my peripheral vision. Only the human shapes are somewhat clear and once again my eyes are drawn to him.

This is an alien feeling that is starting to become all too familiar. This pull, this unspoken fascination with this man that I barely know, but that mesmerizes me just the same. It’s almost like my instincts are telling me to look, and to look well, to not let go.

I don’t understand. I mean, I can recognize beauty just like everybody else. I have in the past. Just recently with James, attractive if pig-headed sometimes. With Dylan too. But this is different. Even the few times I tried for a more colourful friendship in the past, it wasn’t like this raw, sharp thing. The attraction had always been rational before. A certain something about someone that I admired or coveted. But this man, I know nothing of, what can possibly be daring me to leap?

What is causing such irrational behaviour on my part? Both me and my future self it seems. Future Rhina too is drawn, I can see it in the strangeness of an expression I almost don’t recognize as mine. All of me focused on him. His coldness. His sadness? Above all a void in him that was pulling me in, begging me to fill it with… something.

I’m so focused on him that even at a distance every pore on his skin becomes familiar. There is warmness and something else thrumming in my veins as I watch him, ever more deeply. My pulse starts at an exhilarating pace. A joyous fest of adrenaline and serotonin pump through my whole body. I’m strong, aware, light. It’s an electric bolt of.. energy. A twinkling, overwhelming awareness that grows with my assessment of him. An atunement of vibes and feelings that allow me to share his plight.

Everything around me slows down, time almost stops, like if this thrumming inside me is freezing the scene outside to match my own inner tempo. A weird balance that I am sure will break any moment now, as soon as I blink and lose sight of him for even the slightest frame of time.

He’s so still now, so sharp, and I’m so light and drawn to him that I can’t do anything but move to where he is, finally able to stand and nausea free. His eyes are focused ahead, behind me, on future Rhina. His limbs barely move in the stillness of the moment. His expression is stoic and empty. But not his eyes (and what a clichéd little girl I’m becoming with all this eye gazing, but it’s true). Even though I would have called them cold before, now I can see they are anything but. They’re troubled, all of him is. A maelstrom that causes the minute worrying of his forehead, the imperceptible flinching around his eye muscles, the tensing and clenching of his strong jaw.

I am grateful for this opportunity to study him. Someone or something has made him a dangerous and cold killing machine, but I can still see, in the minute details of the slow motion that there is something salvageable, something left of his soul that is rebelling against all of this.

My hand rises without my consent. It’s now in front of his face, and even though I can’t touch him I’m sure some of his warmth seeps into my fingers, his energy, him.

This is what is different, the way this feels, that he feels; and I know the moment I let go of him this prophetic vision will proceed as it was meant to. The moment this energy stops flowing between us, connecting us. I can’t phantom why it’s happening, nor what is the key to it but I know it is this kinship, this alien fascination that holds me in its thrall that is somehow causing it.

Leo shivers at my touch, even though I can’t feel his skin. It is enough to startle me, and that is the trigger. My focus is broken and now the pull and ache and dizziness are back. I step aside, my weight dragging me down. Someone turned on the extra gravity switch again. The air around me shudders and everything starts happening too fast for me to catch, my lungs struggling to breathe.

She must have tried to bolt yet again because my future self is a bit to the side now, still trapped by Leo though. He had warned me what would happen, he’s even holding in his hand the means for my future demise and he doesn’t seem thrilled about it.

I have to make an effort to focus on the shapes and sounds, discern what is happening. I can’t miss anything, I need to know what is going on, and how to stop it when it comes to it.

Future Rhina is being held at gun point. He scares her, me. But she too is overwhelmed by the contradictory emotions he harbours inside her. She too knows that as much as she craves it, allowing for even the barest touch of his skin will be deadly to her. (And how weird is it to think about yourself as someone else?)

The metal gun shines in the light, a deadly glint prophetic of pains to come. He did promise to kill me. She tries to dodge, eyes desperately seeking a way out, his arm and gun following her every glance. Rigid, deadly, precise.

“… should have prepared yourself Rhina, should have known it was a trap.” His words are blurred and shapeless to my ears but some meaning starts to come through. His timbre an anchor for my focus. I try harder to listen in.

“If you hadn’t called the detective he might even still be alive.” My future self looks towards the corner of the big spacious room, where now I can distinguish a lump of cloth on the floor, a pool of sticky red liquid surrounding it.

“We’re tracking you since after our little car accident. The coincidence still baffles me, me being the driver and all, not knowing while it was happening that I would be the one sent to kill you.

“Such a loss, you might even be the first kill I will truly regret Rhina. You should have known better.” He sounds regretful, mad at me for coming here, for letting myself get caught.

“I know what you told me that night in your bedroom, ok? I remember your words, but I also remember what you looked like. You don’t want to do it, I know that much.” My voice is foreign to my ears. Is that how I sound to other people? My future self is obviously scared, but I’m not just grasping at straws. I can see she too was able to witness there was something salvageable in him, worth fighting for. If only he will let us. I wonder if she saw what I’m seeing and that she already knew this was going to happen.

“Night? We haven’t met by night time. not yet at least.” The last part is accompanied by a smirk, holding promises of sensuality if only my fate were another. I’m not indifferent to him and he knows it. He’s flirting with me.

“Huh, yeah. The night I visited you in your room but didn’t actually made use of the door? This was not even two days ago.”

“You believe this.” It isn’t a question. He’s obviously intrigued, trying to read through my plot. There’s none. My future self is obviously puzzled, why can’t he remember?

“It never happened though. I am very flattered however, to be a star in your nightly ‘escapades’. ” The tone is teasing and so very lewd I’m almost sure I’ll blush (not certain which version of me though.)

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not the one going ‘round the bend. You’re obviously getting too old to keep your memories straight.”

He’s closer, too close. His hand digging on future Rhina’s shoulder, his teeth grinding together right on my face. I must have pissed him off.

“I don’t know what you’re up to but it isn’t funny and it won’t stop me from doing my job.” This is his scary side and I almost whimper. I’m sure future Rhina did, or tried to swallow it down.

He drags me to my knees, towering over me, her, pointing the gun to my forehead, her forehead. It’s hard to be objective and not shake in fear for what I’m witnessing, my own dead so close, at the hands of the only man that I actually ever desired.

“Don’t do it, please?” She whispers, on the floor, looking up, desperately trying to find inside his soul some of the laughter he had that night in his bedroom, some of the warmth that had me so aware.

“I have to. You are nothing, you’re no different. I will hold no regrets.” He’s convincing himself. I just know this is foreign to him. He has had no remorse, nor hesitation ever before I’m sure. Whoever made him like this made sure of it.

He drops to his knees as well, eyes gazing mine, hers. The gun lowers to my stomach. Forehead touching mine, my tears almost caressing his cheek.

“Why?” She asks in a shaking whisper, and I crave to know as well. What forces made him like this, fighting his own self for the ability to be empty again, remorseless, fearless, cold as steel, heartless as the void inside.

“Because there is nothing left to wish for but the sweet end.” I look puzzled at him, and the look remains, only added by the tremors and whimpers of pain as the ripping sound of thunder leaves the gun to cut through my skin at burning speed. He shot me I realise, the echos still lingering in the empty air of the big, bare room.

A sob, so soft it breaks my heart. It isn’t from future Rhina. It’s Leo. He cradles her to the floor and looks into her eyes and begs forgiveness, even though he makes nothing to stop the flow of blood on her side. Caresses her cheek, my face, and real, heartfelt tears run down his face. Murmurs of ‘I’m so sorry’ over and over again caress the air in an almost undecipherable whisper.

She gazes at him for hours on end, grabbing his arms as an anchor, a port. My last words ‘I forgive you’ stolen by his wet, bumbling kiss and then all becomes still, empty. I just died in front of myself in the arms and at the hands of a man I cannot hate. And he looks so lost, gazing into nothingness, lifting the gun to his own temple..

I’m so shaken by what I saw that it takes me some time to understand my surroundings again. I’m back in my room, but the nausea hasn’t left me. It’s just a different kind of ache, a sadness so great it cuts through my chest. I just died, and he died too. And it was all just so sad I feel like crawling and crumple on the floor, turn myself into a human ball and whimper until the sun shines on my face again, forcing myself to forget everything. It doesn’t come though.

I loose count to the hours I cry, embracing myself on the floor, a blanket covering me that I must have pulled from the bed beside me. The cold doesn’t leave for hours on end, even though I’m sure the room temperature is just fine and warm. I go to and out of sleep several times. The ache always there, always cutting, the shivers never leaving. I don’t think, I just feel and ride the wave, blanking my head into nothingness, even though the images play over and over again in my head.