Chương 32: Plant in the Vase

At one point, he longed to hear those words. "You are human." He'd been waiting so long to hear them. For over a decade, he explored the wasteland, convinced he wasn't human. He'd give anything to be human again, even if that meant dying.

Now he finally had someone to tell him he was human. Stella, if she could help it, wouldn't always be so serious. She liked to joke around. She liked to make fun of him, almost in a childish manner. She seldom spoke genuine words of care, but her words she spoke now were the most genuine he'd ever heard. She truly believed he was human. He didn't know how. She has seen him regrow entire limbs. If Lucas ever saw someone he thought to be a human regrow a limb, he wouldn't know how to react. He certainly wouldn't think them to be human. But when Stella saw Lucas, she saw a human. Living and breathing.

Lucas thought once he heard those words, "You are human," that something might change. Maybe he'd be a little happier. Maybe his desire to embrace death would be tempered, but none of that happened. Maybe because he knew there was no way someone could think he was human after seeing him regrow a limb. There was no way someone could still think he is human after seeing him jump of a building and see his body repair itself after having been crushed by the fall. He had a hard time believing what she said. He couldn't accept it.

Humans tend not to like change to the status quo. Stella after having known Lucas as a human for so long didn't want to accept the fact that he wasn't. At least that's what Lucas prescribed.

In any case, he didn't believe her. He didn't believe that she thought he was human. She wanted him to be human, and Lucas, by his own admission, simply wasn't.

Nothing could get him to believe he was human. Just by being immortal destroys any notion of his humanity. The day an immortal dies is when he'd believe he's human.

They sat around in that cafe for a while. They sat apart from each other. They couldn't even make eye contact. The angel stood between them. It's wings were outstretched. Stella stared at it. She didn't seem to react to its appearance.

Lucas had a hard time looking at it for a prolonged amount of time. It's inscrutable appearance made it hard for him to look it. It almost hurt his eyes, but Stella stared unblinkingly for a long time.

It was very quiet in the cafe. You could only hear the building settle every now and again, but other than that it was completely silent. There was no smell either. Lucas could remember the smell of coffee. He used to drink a lot of it. You could say he was addicted to it. If it wasn't alcohol, then it was coffee. He forgot exactly why he did that. Perhaps it had something to do with him being part of the Retriever Operation, whatever that was.

Lucas hated that he couldn't remember. There were gaps, sometimes huge, in his recollection of his history. He had hardly any memory of his own unit. He couldn't remember how he got lost in the first place. He couldn't even explain to himself how someone from Missouri could have ended up in California like that.

He doubted his own memory. You don't just forget stuff like that. It simply doesn't happen, even with time.

Lucas thought back. He didn't remember how he forgot all these things. That's the most frustrating part. If there was an event that happened that caused him to forget, he wouldn't know it.

He wished he spoke with Janice more when he had the chance. He could've learned a lot more about his past. She had his file and everything.

Stella looked away from the angel. Jonas was laying in her lap and he was sound asleep. It was absurd how quickly he could go from screaming and crying to peacefully napping.

She looked around the cafe. There were was a vase set in the corner of the room with a fake plant in it. It was green and lifeless, which sounds quite contradictory. But she looked upon it with a sense of wonder. It didn't matter that it was fake because to her, it was probably one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen.

Before Stella found Jonas, she used to wander the wasteland much like Lucas did. She would always go inside libraries. If there's one place where people didn't loot, it was the libraries. Books aren't exactly a necessity in the apocalypse. She would always go to the section with picture books. She looked for ones with colorful pictures of trees, bushes, grass, and anything green.

She envied those who born to see green trees and green grass. That was not a luxury she had. That fake plant in the corner was as real to her as the pictures in those books.

She looked at Lucas, who had is chin in his hand and was looking the other way. He looked to be about twenty years old, so he was around her age. She wondered if he ever saw green trees. She wouldn't ask though, not now. She had to pretend she was still angry with him because she didn't want to be the one to break the silence. Well— she didn't have to pretend. She was still angry with him. She didn't understand how he could look at himself in the mirror and not see a living breathing human.

She didn't want him bearing the brunt of burden. It was a painful burden. She hated seeing him disregard himself in favor of her. She was appreciative, not vocally, but she was happy he wanted to protect her. What she wasn't happy about was that he would hurt himself to save her.

Looking back on it, he has always said that she should save herself first and not worry about him. In hindsight it all made sense, knowing now that he can't die. But he was hurting. She could see that the very moment she first saw him. Those dry red eyes that hadn't seen a lick of sleep in what had to be weeks. She wanted to imagine she was making a difference. His eyes were no longer blood-red, but that hurt never went away. It probably got worse.