Bound By Blood

Chapter 6: A Terrible, Reckless Decision

“Another day,” I respond to her softly, seeing that some of Rosa’s tension increases for a second before she manages to get it under control. “Please, Rose, just leave it for another day. It’s another issue for another day. Please just leave it there.” I can see the tears I’m trying to push back and can see them in my friend’s eyes as if even though she can’t see what’s inside my head she knows something’s wrong. And like the temptation of Pandora’s box, she wanted to keep it buried for as long as she could in the hope that if she didn’t vocalise it then it wouldn’t be true. It couldn’t be true because it wasn’t found. So she could cling to that fragile hope for as long as possible. Something that when I see Hunter’s, Ash’s, and Leila’s eyes I can tell all four of them are doing.

Because even if I haven’t said what happened in that half-remembered dream at least three of the four had been around the last time I’d had it. Sorry, the last time I had the dream and Rosa and Ash managed to get it out of me before Hunter also found out. Meaning we all knew. We all knew what might be happening and soon if the timeframe we'd guessed was accurate. Meaning that out of the four of them three had been there and I know Ash and Leila have no secrets from one another. Not since they’d come to the end of the trials that the others had set for them. Not after the torture, Amber had put the two through aiming to tear them apart but that had backfired. And in the worst way possible since all that had done was make the two more sure about how they felt for one another, forever securing what Bound them as one. Leaving no room for anyone else.

She could see everything in his head that took people like me years to understand. Hunter managed it through persistently meeting aloofness and hostility with warmth and compassion until Ash let him in. Selene was willing to see the good in Ash, even if he couldn’t see it in himself. Leila could see any and every memory he ever had, including the ones from the last time we played before Leila was even brought into it. Like the one where he and I shared the vision of what was supposed to be our deaths.

But I refuse to dwell on that since I wouldn’t want to tip the balance of calm instilled in those of us who are still left but not as we once were. No longer were we the invincible, hopeful and naive people we once were. Now we were broken, scarred and still reeling from suffering so much death, so much loss that we were almost done. A few breaks away from shattering irrevocably. From breaking so much, so deep that we’d end up being no use to anyone else. Because that’s what this game has done. It’s taken so much from us that all we have left is ourselves. Ourselves and each other. The last parts we have left of who we used to be before all this came into our lives.

“Please,” I tried again to see if I could figure out what to say. To make it right without divulging the one secret that the four may be mentally dancing around. One that may not even happen since the future isn’t set in stone. A reassuring fact that I cling to even now as if it’s the last piece of hope left in the world. “Please Rose, leave it for another day. Don’t dig that skeleton out of the closet, leave it there and maybe it….” Maybe it won’t have to come out. That’s what I was thinking but not saying. Just as they all were. “Please don’t go there. Not here and not now. We need to move past that and try to live as normal a life as we can.”

“You mean until we can’t.” Rosa’s tone is haunted and flat but I can read the emotions in her eyes as clearly as if she’d spoken them aloud. Fear. Torment. Paranoia. All common emotions that I’ve sadly seen too much of. “I know what you mean Eri, even if I don’t want to say it.” Her shoulders shake and I can tell she’s trying to hold back her sobs but it’s difficult since she seems to be so emotional that it was difficult to hear her talking until she got it under control. “I’ll try to keep away from that by remembering that the future isn’t set in stone.”

“Something we’d all do well to remember Rose.” Ash’s tone is as haunted as hers but I can see the tangible regret in his eyes. Like a physical presence in the room that would appear to the stranger in the room like a deer trapped in headlights. Or a butterfly trapped in a glass case. Something that looks stunned and out of its depth almost as much as he must be feeling with the whole pregnancy idea and Leila being his everything after he lost so much so long ago. “We can all be worried about the future as much as we want but without the confirmation, it would be a waste of time and it could make us waste our life and not make the most of the time we have left. However long it is.” He sounds bitter then but I know it’s for the choices he made that he thinks he should take back. That he wishes he could take back.

Something Leia seems to see. She sighs and turns her head enough that it rests on his shoulder and his arms go around her more securely than before, her hands threading through his where they rested on her stomach. “Don’t think like that beloved.” Leila’s eyes find him and I can tell she’s trying to silently convince him of something that we can’t hear but she’s sure he won’t accept. “Don’t think like that because to change the past….”

“....Would be to change ourselves.” Ash finishes the quote with a heavy silence at the back of his tone. “I know what you mean beloved but what other choice do we have? Do we just try to live a normal life with the threat hanging over our heads or do we figure out how to stop it? Do we try to ignore it or do we fix it?” He sounds so anguished I wish I could offer the solution he wants but I won’t lie. It’s not in my nature and I won’t do it to him.

I can’t do it. Not when all of them have lost so much. It wouldn’t be fair, but Ash’s questions remain valid and urgent. Taking up space in the room that was before occupied with happiness, laughter and joy. Darkening the room so it becomes that much harder to ignore the words I’d spoken but didn’t know the full implication of. I hated knowing that I’d been the cause of the tone change in the room but I refused to let Laurel, Amber and the others change who I was when I’d already lost so much. Just as the others have. Leaving me with no other option than to tell the truth, even when it cuts deep.

“Ash,” I try to appeal to my friend whose golden eyes look so tortured I wish I could take back what I’d said. Just to make that expression disappear not only from his eyes but also from Leila’s, Rosa’s and Hunter’s where the implications of what I’d said had just started to sink in. Looking around the room I can see other people with the same expression. All the families who had sought solace and shelter here since they supposedly couldn’t shake the feeling they were linked into all of this, that their children were. “Ash don’t think like that, Leila’s right. The future isn’t written yet. It could change.”

“And the vision we all know about?” His tone is as haunted as his expression and I know he is meaning the one we lost the tail end of about a year ago. But not before we all memorised it. And knowing what it meant. “What do we do about that, Eri? Do we ignore it and hope it isn’t true? Is that fair?” He tries to appeal to me with his eyes but I can tell he’s just looking for an excuse. An excuse to keep living in the land of denial so he can convince himself that it’s not right. That it can’t be. Just like when Rosa refused to vocalise her questions before, founding on the naive belief that if it isn’t vocalised then it can’t be true. It can't be real. “What do we do about it?”

“Maybe nothing,” I responded softly, seeing how he gave me a strange look as if I’d lost my mind. I sigh. “Maybe we do nothing for now and see if the future gets any clearer. It isn’t set in stone and isn’t written yet but it constantly changes. I know that because I keep an eye on it every time it changes, even slightly, and that can help in deciding preemptive moves.”

“Is there nothing we can do?” Leila asks from where she hadn’t moved from Ash’s arms the whole time we’d been having this conversation. Grounding his anger when I could feel it beginning to spiral out of control, and him keeping her together when the pregnancy caused the power inside her to act up. “How can you be sure that there’s nothing you can do? Nothing we all can do?”

Rosa looks over then, sitting in a similar position in Hunter’s arms as Leila was in Ash’s. “There is something we can do, I proposed it before but you all shut me down.” She rolls her eyes and I see her spear me with an especially dark look that I hope is prompted by the sudden instability of the power inside her rather than an actual hatred. I frown back and she rolls her eyes. “I gave up the idea of killing Ebony and Azrael and you shut me down so I’m officially clean out of good ideas.”

“Because that one was so helpful,” Ash mumbles, forgetting she can hear him until she hisses and he looks up with a semi-resigned expression. “Look Rosalie, I know you think you’ve offered up the solution but have you thought through how this would work?” He looks at her with a confused expression but she just shrugs and looks away, suddenly bored with the whole idea. Something that has Ash groan and mumble something unintelligible about pregnancy too low for even me to hear but that has me laughing all the same. “Not funny Eri, I know she means well but has she thought through how it would work? The story we’d have to come up with? The people we’d be risking involving?” He fixes me with a fierce golden gaze that shows me then just how much he had been tempted by Rosa’s idea. How invested he was, like Leila, to keep his unborn daughter safe. No matter the cost. “How would it even work?”

I shrug, “Don’t ask me. I didn’t think she was being serious.” I hear Rosa’s scathing remark on the other side of the room but don’t take it to heart, knowing that she probably won’t mean it when she snaps out of whatever dark hole her brain had dug at this present moment. “I know what she’s saying is logical and if I could come up with a safe way to do it then would but it’s not that simple Ash. You and I both know that given how old your mother and Azrael are. And how much power it would take to do it. I’m not even sure if someone could do it since most of the witches seeking solace here are either pregnant like me, Rosa, the Lilias’ and several others or so busy helping those of us who are that they would be unable to do both.”

“Or they lack training,” Hunter says from across the room where my eyes are drawn to my other friend who’s watching his brother with an inscrutable expression. “Think about it, those of us who have the power to do it are either massively untrained or lacking the abilities to do it safely and without repercussions. It’s just not possible.” No matter how much I wish it was. His mental voice sounds angry and I can see a trace of the same emotion in the backs of his eyes, tempered by a fine shading of moonstone blue that vanishes seconds later with the anger. Though the colour and intensity of the shine suggest that, like the other three, the power was leaving him properly. Though if a trace of it remained later on in the process I don’t know since I can’t see that far.

“So do we just give up?” I hear Leila ask when my eyes return to her and Ash, seeing that Hunter was attempting to converse with a suddenly sullen Rosa. a bad sign given that out of the four of them her and Leila’s power shares were the most volatile. Even given Ash’s temper which had before been the trigger, he seemed to be more in control than his partner. “Do we just give up and let them win or do we find another way to get rid of the two currently stuck staked, desiccating, and rotting down in the basement levels?” Her tone is mildly angry but I can tell she’s gotten her temper under control.

“No matter what way you try to rationalize it Rosalie it’s still a terrible, reckless decision that could end up getting all of us killed. Or worse,” Ash replies, the possible veracity of his words sticking with all of us and shutting us all up remarkably quickly. “Think about that when planning your next stupidly suicidal endeavor. Is it worth risking your life for? Is it worth dying for if there may be another way?”