Chapter 65: Lost costs don't break us even, not in this forgotten paradise.
Cheap provocations.
A bespeckled figure threatened, in not in his demeanor then his tone.
"Now tell me, who was the one that killed me?"
His hand loomed over the pot bubbling away. Unexpectedly intimidating. Much like a witch's cauldron. An evil thing brewing below.
It was almost torture.
"....A stupid ape." Leon answered, eyes going back and forth lazily.
A cat to a toy.
Bored, but focused enough. As if it were all passing play. All that will be his, will be his eventually.
"Nah uh uh." a single finger waves, tsking before continuing, " We're going to need to be more specific than that. Names aren't important out here but, details. You give me details and I'll..."
Mattie waved ominously, shaking the goods like one does catnip to a feline.
Pure drugs.
"5'10. Bigger guy with a stupid tattoo on the back of his neck. Latino probably. He dies eventually. They all do. After you. " Leon leans back. His aura oddly smug despite the blankness of his young troublesome face.
A test. A play of power and conviction.
"Not bad..." Mattie stirred in the strange substance.
Two spoonfuls of darkness. Bitter and almost black. It would burn so easily. Steam emancipated through the dimly lit space.
The sun hadn't come out in quite some time. Their power and lights were limited without that solar charge. Adding to the ominous atmosphere.
"Not bad at all, but you must know. I can't be satisfied with just that....and neither can you?" stir and boil, bubble and toil.
A crinkled package. A spark of interest.
It contrasts almost ironically from a boy, not really. One that shows no guilt over much, not even death.
Sparks of something that could almost be understood.
Steam. Silence. A dying rainfall and a temporary peace that could only run out. It was inevitable.
"...Dude...all this dramatics for some chocolate and Oreos?" June questioned, face turned with disbelief.
Inevitable.
"Tell me everything damn it. Details! Lead ups?! I need to prepare a contingency plan here so I don't snuff out?! What the hell June, you don't straight get murdered off the bat like I do!" Mattie screeched, throwing an empty hot chocolate pack at his own sister.
Sophie sipped her tea. She was supervising everything while looking like she very much did not want to be here.
That's just how people were, even the normal ones. You flipped on and off. You detach and can't go back.
Besides, her head hurt too much for this right now. It would be much more preferable to sleep, indefinitely. That's what weather like this was made for. No work to be done. Nothing really could be done, except for rest. The equivalent to a winter storm in this place, these flooding summer monsoons.
But there really was no time quite like the present, literally.
"You have two years, till you died." Sophie says over the rim of the mug.
There's a simplicity to her. Words short and easy. That's why there's a blunt drop in the air. In the pits of Mattie and June's still empty stomachs.
Something horribly uneasy.
Something that went....if Sophie says it, then it must be true?
One was a stranger. Young. Unassuming, in the least threatening looking way even. He swims in even Mattie's smallest clothes. A mere human speck in the space of the couch. Small and fragile in the way bird bones are. He comes like an ominous sign.
The call of a raven. A black cat crossing your path. Salt spilled and glass pieces sharp. But his words don't carry the weight it should.
Sophie's does.
"If all goes as it did, you will die in two years. I buried you, again and again. They dug you up and I dug them down. " she spoke.
Neither warm nor cold. No metaphors in sight.
Not everything feels like something.
Sometimes reality was the cruelest horror we could ever imagine. More likely, just don't want to.
Mattie poured the hot chocolate before it burned, a hint of it already in the air.
"Well damn."He licked his own finger like it was a wound, and not just simply a spare drip of chocolate and milk powder.
What blood would taste so sweet?
"I recall asking you not to traumatize them." Sophie blew, eyes dark in the way empty rooms feel.
Leon doesn't even respond. It was mocking as it was unambiguous, what sort of strange thoughts could be swirling in that little head of his. What ways he would lash and sate this thirst for life thrust on him.
One day, he was a pissed but fucked up lost child. The next, he was a very sick and done adult. Something he never should have lived long enough to become if this was all that was waiting for him.
Now?
Life never could stop being a sick plot twist. Seriously? Time travel and second chances? How unoriginal. More like a second hell.
At least there was chocolate.
"I'm not traumatized," Mattie answered for the boy getting put on the stand.
Not just with liquid chocolate bribes in hand. Though that is passed over to the devil hiding in a child's body. The 'elder' boy, stared back straight at his sister. His simplest action was defiant.
"I'm not traumatized. Or scarred off. I want to know. Hell, I need to know." Mattie says, giving more than he's got.
"That's only because it's not real enough for you yet. You're going to die, Matthew. That's inevitable. " Sophie gave the barest of scoffs, looking at him through the dying steam. Cooling.
June winced, the only one in the room. Feeling about as awkward as she looked.
"Everyone dies, yeah. But apparently, the point of you being here, the point of all of this-" Mattie gestured to their surroundings, "was to make it through longer. Better. I don't know, get the fuck off this place? Not be murdered in the same god awful way? How about I avoid THAT first. Then I can comfortably despair about mortality or some shit?!"
He says this with gritted teeth and a frustrated scratch to his slowly growing out hair. So much so his glasses wobbled, threatening to fall off the bridge of his nose. Comedic yet realistic.
Sophie sees them. In another time, another reality. They fall and crash with bent plastic and broken glass. Then there's no more.
No more Mattie. No more anything really.
"I don't want to be here." Leon interjected, uncaring.
He dunked his diabetic luxury in a cup and stole the attention with nothing but the thud of his feet propped up.
Rude.
But powerful. All eyes back on him again where it was quickly forgotten.
"No one 'wants' to be here. Not you. Not me. Definitely not that sniveling dry ass baby ponytails over there. " Leon points leisurely, if not accusingly.
Accusing Sophie of being a part of this hell he couldn't escape from.
But moping could only get one so far when you are all on your own.
"Your point?" Sophie countered knowingly. That brat wouldn't speak out for no reason. Most days, he wouldn't even bother.
Not unless he wants something.
But Leon merely smirked, or well as much as a kid could. With a lean and a toast of his hot chocolate, he passed the spotlight, drinking down the sugar sweet bribes. The only worthwhile substance on this blasted island.
"I want to know, Sophie. I want to know but I know I can't. You can't tell me everything yet, you probably never will. " Mattie said truthfully.
As if he saw how it could play out, without ever living through it. As if his mind played through the simulation of what could be. In all the best and worst ways.
Sophie was never going to tell them everything she knew. Not when she could hardly make sense of them herself. Not when her lips, her throat, had long scarred over. Burned and melded in a sense more than the physical.
No rewinding time was ever going to fix that.
"I'm grateful. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful you didn't just....abandon us. Any of us. You could have left June to this unknown. You could have left me behind, confused and in the dark. We could have been....I don't know, safe? But that wouldn't sit right with you for a reason, and I would have never settled for it. This unease. " Mattie confessed.
Maybe at the wrong place, wrong time. But whenever was it going to be just right?
"So if he..."Mattie pointed, "...if he can help fill in any of those gaps. Anything I or we can use... god damn it why don't we?"
Leon rolled his eyes but didn't make any more noise beyond the obnoxious slurping. Enjoying his hot chocolate. The only that could make it better if he wasn't like 12 and had a fuck load of good booze to go with it.
Sophie glares and no one but Mattia is brave enough, or frustrated enough, to speak up.
"Ok, I die. I apparently get sick a lot and then I die. Not of germs or 'you have died of dysentery' bullshit but a headshot blunt force. By an asshole. Over a girl? Great, thanks, I hate it. Now I need to know that, so I can avoid it. All other things like it. You don't just get by pretending it doesn't exist and will all go away on its own!? " he walks up to Sophie, spine straight.
As young as he'll ever be ever. Living, breathing, god damn alive.
"You can't fix or prevent anything if you don't look at the infected injury, not when it's right there. " Mattie lets out, seething.
It would be too soft to say he took her hand. More like grabbed it, by the wrist. Gentle enough not to startle or splash. But plain enough to reveal the underside of a scratched up wrist. A little pink, a little raw.
How funny, when did that get there? Could have sworn we scratched some floors and just that.
Sophie doesn't feel itchy. She doesn't need to scratch right now. Or scratch and scratch and scratch it all off.
What's all, what even is it?
Mattie blinked, and Sophie wakes. He looked disappointed, slapping at her wrist before getting back up.
"You're gonna need to take care of that. Salve. Or I don't know vaseline? God, when did you last clip your nails? You too, June. Damn, why does it feel like I'm the one stuck taking care of you all? You'd all be soon dead without me, I swear." the teenager complained.
But was he wrong?
Didn't it really go all to shit without him? Even more so?
It would have regardless but there's a difference between a bump and a god damn freefall. That's what happened. A slippery slope and off the edge. Mattie dies and hell goes speeding up in a crashing series of collisions that don't end.
They just rolled and rolled. Downed and drowned.
Mattie was right, usually was.
Wasn't that the whole point of being here again? Saving them. Making it better. Making it god damn out?
Sophie has already decided this on day one. With or without any supernatural shit. With or without any help. But she needed people. More specifically she needed people like Mattie.
No one else was going to replace that. No matter who she found.
"What is it you want to do?" Sophie asks.
Into the air. As if speaking to no one in particular, maybe to herself.
Mattie doesn't deflate, not quite yet. But it's hard speaking directly to Sophie sometimes, even before. It's hard navigating through the parts of her he doesn't know anymore.
"I dragged you all here. That much is undeniable. The only one saved is June. I've damned the rest of you. So? What do you want? I don't claim responsibility. I'm not. But I helped set you up here. So if there's something you want, and it's in my power to do so....I'll help out." Sophie leaned back.
She stated her stance, but what each person made of it was their own business.
"I don't-" Mattie began.
"What even is in your power?" a too young snarky voice spoke up.
That gets a curve of her lip to turn, smiling peacefully behind her tea. Wasn't this nice and cozy? This play that was as real as it could get?
"Who knows? I'm just as lost on this as you are. " she puts the mug down.
Holds up her wrist, her wounds. Pulls the sleeves up higher, the hem of her sweater, and the dry pale of her ankles.
Snake bites and scrapes, most hidden behind clean bandages. A limited supply, but why else bring them if not to use them when needed?
Why not use everyone?
"I don't know why the snake bites mutated like this. I don't even know why I'm here. " she taps the still tender shot on her. Makes a finger gun to the side of her head.
Tap tap. Bang.
"I don't know what happened. Can't really remember, not that it matters. One day, one long day in an even longer life...I woke up like this? So? What was I supposed to do? Cry? Leave? Forget it all and live back on the mainland, the real world, like nothing, had ever happened?" she questioned out loud,
A weak whimper sounded out. But from who?
"Like I fucking can? You can't either. Once you know the truth. This is real. Realer than any little school exam or new video game back 'there'. " Sophie smiled wryly, like telling a bad joke.
A very bad joke. That's what this all was in the first place.
'And you know it,' goes unspoken.
Dark eyes and paper smiles hiding sharp teeth. For a brief moment, a mere side glance, dark eyes meet another's. Of one predator to another.
It's Sophie that blinks first. Too old and tired for this, even more so than Leon.
After all, the boy took the easy way out. With a crashing media sensation and bang to his death, but he surely exited, stage left.
Then there was just her. Just Sophie and the stage that belonged to someone else.
Every roach and scavenger that made it off this island. Skyrocketing off the profit of pain and death on here. High on wealth and fame. Retelling, rewriting the events that took place.
History is always told by the winners.
And what hurts more than 'losing' is to live with the tide of lies. Taking root all around you. It was better when she was too insane to take in anything. Better when she didn't have to see, to know.
"Once you know the truth there's no turning back. It's too much. Like a weight, you're not ready to lift and carry. You could very easily injure yourself, more than just a pulled muscle or a broken bone. Past the point of no return. Then what use do I have of you?" Sophie stretched, showing off the white of bandages more familiar to her than this virgin skin.
Leon's eyes scanned the lowly lit cave.
One of them was tense, biting her lip in nerves, possibly fear. Waiting to take a breathe, waiting for this to be over. The other?
Hanging hands trembled, but his gaze remained stubborn. Resolute. Biding his time and ready to bite back with the right opening.
Good, they could work with this.
"So trust me a little, hmm? I'm sorry. The suspense must be killing you, along with all this waiting. Ask me straight and I'll try to be clear as possible. But trust me in what you can or can't handle. A thought, a few pictures, is one thing. You just haven't seen the reality yet." Sophie warned, her self control a strange maze of iron walls and scavenged prey.
The secret is not to fight it. The hunger, the urge. The secret was to always use it as fuel.
Gulp.
Someone swallowed audibly, dry on nothing.
"It's you that needs to trust us. Just a bit more. Tell us, I don't know, something, I don't what else we can do when we don't want to fuck up? It's not like we want to be useless and left in the dark. " a girl blurts out for the first time, teeth marks imprinted on her bottom lip.
That's the thing about the young. Impatient but to the point. The tension wasn't their thing, especially not June's.
"June's right Sophie. If you didn't tell me anything earlier, I'd be even more lost than I am now. Then I would be no help at all. Can't get used to muscle strain if you don't practice or ....I just want us to make it off. I want us all to make it off this shitty disaster, and to not suffer so much in the time between. Is that too much to ask?" Mattie bounced off June's point.
Good old Mattie. Sophie picked up her mug, sipping the contents slowly. She dragged and damned him on this hell island with her, and he still has such a good and noble attitude about it. How touching.
That's why he died.
The good always died too quickly. Too easy to trick and catch off guard.
She was going to have to do something about that. If not, then overcompensate with herself.
"Alright then....we can do that. Take it a step at a time for that rescue date. And Leon? Until you find what you want, mind sticking around and helping. " Sophie shrugged, looking over the young boy. As if she were merely asking a small favor or what he wanted for lunch, and not whatever this hell ride was.
The boy blinks twice, slurps the rest of the hot cocoa loudly, and doesn't respond.
"Right right, snacks and meals included. I don't know why the venom mutated. But this..."
Sophie gestures with a wide sweeping motion, from the couch he sat on to the random stocks of supplies. An empty cooler, a bit of set up here and there, even the dismantled vending machine slowly being raided of it's protein-filled contents.
"....this is part of my power. Doesn't come easy, and I'm far from figuring it all out, but I think it's a very handy thing. No?" she sounds like a not so subtle salesperson.
Like there was anything to sell. It would take a fool to turn away the chance to align with this kind of benefit. What even were the other options?
"Hmm." The only one who knew the future Sophie, her true nature, snorted. A sound that wasn't quite a response.
It gets Sophie to smile wider anyways.
"That settles it then. Mattie. June. I'm keeping him for now. " she casually declares, as if picking up a feral stray for a pet.
Someone glares at her darkly, as if he would throw a cup at her head if there wasn't still chocolate in it. Not a good idea anyway. Not when Sophie herself was the magical convenience store.
"Uh...I mean, I'm cool with it....I think?" June looked over warily. As if her sister really had taken in a rabid hissing raccoon, rather than a human.
"You died fat and shitting yourself," Leon responded to her.
How charming. These first words were going great.
Mattie grimaced, looking at his sister in more than mild disgust. Perhaps even worse than the one she gave him earlier.
"Whoopee." June sighed depressed.
"As you can see, Leon can help me out where my memory isn't as clear. Another perspective is better than one for planning. But he's rather useless as he is right now. Right? One of our first priorities is health. Mattie and June, focus on strengthening yourself as well as cleaning and organizing. I'm not doing too hot myself just yet. Though I don't think I need to tell you to do that Mattie. Leon, recuperate and eat everything we give you. Take some of these meds. You''ll be less of a gremlin asshole when you're not in so much pain." Sophie clapped and ordered, shaking over a bottle of painkillers and fever reducers.
"Yes ma'am." June played along with vigor.
By that, she got the hell out of there. Glad and free from any strange or awkward atmosphere. Perhaps later, she would dare to poke the feral...thing, her sister had picked up. At least she made herself useful by rummaging through the kitchen part of the cave, with prepping a good meal for the rest of them to eat.
"Yeah, I'm out, got a shelf and new chores to do. " Mattie waved off as if he didn't just hear about how brutally he died. How horrifying or gross it all was.
That was then. This was now. They were just going to make the best of it.
"Drink your medicine down, it will hurt less. Take it like you have a cold, but you know how the venom goes. Oh and I think there are nutritional shakes somewhere in that vending machine. Multi-vitamins? Let's start with two a day. " Sophie smiled at the only remaining person.
One who was too weak and lazy to run.
Besides, nowhere else was going to be as comfortable as here. Even if there was a crazy lady beaming down at you, not too unlike a creepy witch that fattened up children to eat.
When Sophie pinched his skinny arms, redoing his bandages and checking for strength, that's exactly what it looked like as much as it felt like.
"Why?" Leon spoke, without a hint of his usual aggression or insulting way.
There was nothing to defend here, not when it was already this much a mess.
"Why what? There's a lot of ways that could be taken." Sophie shook the painkillers again, a minute away from shoving it down his own face.
"...Why us? " he hisses when the bandages wrap over a still open wound. The snake bites, still sore and bruising.
Why did we remember anything at all?
"...I don't know," Sophie answered honestly, still feeling sore herself. Working through the fresh dizziness that still wrapped around her head like a fog.
"What I do know, is that after the snake bite, I can make these things appear. Out of nothing but my own memories." her fingers roll a marble, from out her pocket and into reality.
"What I know is that Mattie can make everything slow down, just for him. He can take his sweet time with anything and everything so long as he has the energy to," she speaks quietly, so only one other person can hear.
Quick eyes, careful glances. No one else was listening in. Not June humming over making a simple but substantial brunch. Not Mattie who disappeared to god knows where deeper inside the cave. Probably rejoicing in the addition to their inventory.
"What I know that no one else can know. For as long as possible. This is my, our advantage, and I intend to use it fully." she speaks like it's a threat.
In a way, it is. A persisting threat to both their lives. At least the new ones they could have here.
Leon hissed but agreed.
If he could 'remember', thrown back from the last days of the future in this present, what was to stop someone else. But he roughly knew the timeline just as well as Sophie did about the early days. He knew what could be done, and what wasn't.
"We need more venom. We need to go hunting, as soon as it's safe to. June hasn't gotten 'vaccinated' yet, and if we're going to make it over everyone else, we need every person. " Sophie started to go over the plan.
"Did you have to keep them like that? They were rotting foul. " Leon took over in caring for his own sore injuries, only after gulping down the pills dry.
"Do you think that you, in this small child sized body, could take a full fresh dose? Or most people? I don't want us fucking up and having someone go blind, or forced to amputate or worse. You know how bad it can get." Sophie reminded.
Leon didn't respond. Words as hard to get from him as pulling teeth. But his silence spoke volumes when it was just between them. It was in the glaring burn of his eyes.
Burn too hard it will go out, hardened over black.
"What did you wish for?" Sophie breathes between that silence, and the heat settles.
Burning eyes simmered to something that could be called questioning if they weren't so demanding. 'Tell me more now' they seemed to say in the sharp furrow.
"You're here now...because it's something you wished for. In some way. That's how it worked for Mattie and I, after the bite. I wished it wasn't a dream. Mattie wished it could all slow down. We didn't know this would happen but it did." she sighed, headache only lingering rather than going away.
Like a bad cold, they were just going to have to get used to this and recover. Well enough to go on. Somewhere, somehow, something was always going to hurt. If not their physical bodies then the thing they might call a soul.
"So? What did you wish for? What terrible thing did you silently wish for?"
It is no surprise with silence stretched. Everything always felt too long and too quiet with Leon. What a blessing as it was a curse. This peaceful nothingness in the eye of the storm.
You either get nothing from him or everything.
"That's stupid....I didn't wish for anything." his lips cracked dry in a dark unprecedented smile.
"Oh?" Sophie responded, not going on further. Not pointing out her obvious.
If you didn't wish for anything....how did you get here? How did we all get here? Just by magic?
Yes but...nothing was truly random. And as something as weak as human beings, they were just going to have to make their own sense of it all. Their own rules.
"I just wanted to disappear. That's all. " Leon bit and barked out.
He usually didn't make much of a sound. Not when fucking, not when killing. But when he did, that was something to witness. That was something to revel in the show worthy chaos.
"Disappear..." she repeated slowly after him.
How Leon died. A final last act. A bang.
One moment he was everywhere. On the news. On the stations. The police radars, being tracked and chased down yet fully in control. Even on his way to die, everything was fully in his control.
One moment you saw him. Practically had him.
Then he was gone.
Forever.
"I wanted to disappear. Now I'm here. Lucky fucking me, right?" he smiled bitterly, somehow still not dry of venom and bile.
The young face betraying his fear, that pathetic child in the dark that he never grew out of. Never would.
He threw the blanket over himself, covered and gone from the visible world. What he could see. What Sophie saw of him. Threw it over and fell down on the couch, a small lump turned away. Signaling the end of this conversation. At least for today.
"Get some more sleep....I'll bring something when it's time to eat. " Sophie got up, patting the lump as roughly as her own weak limbs generally could.
She thinks she hears a grunt down there, and that was good enough.
No one figured it out right away. Definitely not them. But they were going to figure out something, or just die.
"Need help?" she asked June when she made her way over, watching the younger girl busy herself. Trying to be useful where she could. Still awkward in her own limbs, but unweighed with the harshness of the world.
"Uhh you're a better cook with these rations and all but I think I got it. Not much here for me to mess up. Go rest up yourself Sophie. " June said honestly, adapting the best she could all this time.
It wasn't just about not being scared or unsure. It was about doing it anyways.
Sophie nodded, leaving her to it. Ready for a quick nap herself, even if it was barely a start to the dark day. Some days really were just like that. Bad.
But they made do.
"Oh." Sophie passed, eyes lingering on a certain black walkie talkie.
So much to do still. Like getting Leon his own device on their system, let alone all the work to be done down below. Would have been easier to set up something, could she trust anyone yet.
Sophie played with the box, pressing down the button to a strange clarity of static.
"If you're there, Kazehaya. If you can hear me. Get ready. Not today, but soon. Get ready. I have so many more good things ready and planned for you."
Static crooned.
She fell on her makeshift bed with a small sigh of relief. A moan uncontrolled when her back straightened out with her spine, sore in spots all over.
Static played back with a chuckle.
"Copy that, Miss Quan."
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CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
CCmei
CCmei You heard it before and you'll hear it again.
There's a lot about this novel I would like to go back and fix up. But then I'll never get anywhere. I'll look back 3 months from now and want to change this or that.
Sometimes I even hamster desk smack my head to myself like "oh god this is horrible, I should just delete this right now and spare everyone."
But there's something to this story I want to see out. Even as the more time goes on, the more glaring things I see and can't 'fix'.
Thanks for reading along with terrible adventure.
I can't put into words how much I appreciate the stones and attention that still goes into this unconventional try too hard story.
Stay safe and healthy folks, until next time.
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