Hellbound Hearts

[Ruggahissy]

((Jonah Heartgrave continued from Phantasm))

Jonah and Darlene had made decent enough time returning to the area of the Inner Circle, or so the map called it. It was where Jonah and Arizona had waited for Darlene and Max, hoping that they would follow the Hansel and Gretel trail of marshmallows he'd left. Perhaps he should have remembered how the bread crumbs strategy had worked out for them.

The two of them wound through the gardens trying to follow what remained of the path. Exotic flowers poked through the devil's ivy. The birds of paradise and black calla lilies struggled to escape the ivy's green, choking grasp, trying to touch the pair. Jonah reached out, picked a black calla lily and gave it to Darlene.

Jonah and Darlene sat down on some rocks that looked like they had been placed in the garden for exactly such a purpose. Vibrant star gazer lilies framed them as Jonah offered to take a look at Darlene's head bandage.

"You said you read a lot? What's your favorite story?" he said, tilting his head to look at her head and gently exploring the bandage with his left hand. His right held the dessert eagle.

[MurderWeasel]

((Darlene Silva continued from Phantasm))

"I, uh, I sort of... it's hard to decide just on one favorite," Darlene said, vacillating. Then, because that was pretty lame as answers went and made it sound like she didn't read much at all, she added a few that she hopefully wouldn't have to explain too much. "I like Harry Potter and the Narnia books—all of them, not just The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe—and the Golden Compass books, and I read this one about a boy who steals and trains a dragon that was okay but I can't remember what it's called and the sequel got really weird and everyone died."

Whoops, that was maybe not the avenue she was intending to go down!

Darlene's hands were both occupied. Her left squeezed the stem of the calla lily Jonah had handed her probably a little too hard. She'd never seen one such a beautiful dark shade before, and she wished she was more able to settle into the moment and focus on the flower for purposes besides making sure she didn't pop its head off. Her right hand was a lot more loose and relaxed, index finger resting lightly on the trigger guard of the revolver.

The rock she perched upon was low and wide and comfortable, warm in the sun in a way more friendly than all the rest of the heat she'd encountered here had been. Jonah's touch on her head was gentle, and even if the contact made little spikes of bigger pain pop up, Darlene wasn't really worried about it. He wouldn't hurt her on purpose. He was helping her, and if things somehow went bad it would be an accident and that would be what was important, the intent, so she'd still be happy.

She wished she could be so relaxed about everything else.

Darlene's secret rumbled around inside, just looking for the right moment to jump out of her mouth, but it wasn't here yet. There were too many lilies everywhere, coloring the whole world pink and white and yellow and black, and she couldn't ruin that so casually. Not on purpose, at least.

"My favorite character in Narnia is Susan," Darlene added, not sure if Jonah had even read those books or had any idea what she meant.

[Ruggahissy]

The area they were sitting in was cooler than where they'd come from, probably due to the cover of trees and plants. Jonah opened his bag and took out some bandages so that he might re-dress Darlene's head injury a little more neatly.

He carefully unwound the bandage around her head while nodding to acknowledge that he was listening to her. His eyebrows drew together in concern when seeing her head without the wrap, but he didn't want to ask her about it. He wanted to know what happened with Max but he wouldn't do that to Darlene. She was a good kid. If he could avoid causing her more pain, that's what he would do.

To add to this sentiment, his fingers worked as lightly as they could to put on the new dressing.

"Oh yeah. I liked the Narnia books too -- also Harry Potter," he said while focusing intently on the work.

Truthfully, he couldn't really remember which of the Narnia kids was Susan. Well, she wasn't the very young one, he thought to himself.

"I -- I checked them out from the library. Sometimes I'd check out the Harry Potter audio books so I'd have someone to read to me when I was a kid." Jonah had no adult to read to him until his mom had given him away at the age of 12. And by then he didn't need it anymore. Having someone read to you was for babies and at 12 he was used to shouldering more responsibility than the average 12-year-old. He wondered if perhaps he'd been kind of a hardened little kid by then.

He completed the work with some medical tape and looked at her with a bright smile.

"What's your Hogwarts house, then?"

[MurderWeasel]

"I didn't ever listen to audio books," Darlene said. "I don't really know why."

Maybe it was in part that she'd always had a bit of trouble with how other people read things. The places where they put their emphasis, the ways the embodied characters' voices—these were details that could actually change the meaning of a story, and few things were as jarring for Darlene as somebody missing the mark. She wasn't ideologically opposed or anything, and she knew a lot of authors did the readings for their own books and so presumably the way they read it was the official and correct and true way, but even that didn't change her mind that her interpretation was best. So maybe she did know why, but she didn't want to say it because it seemed like a good memory for Jonah.

His touch was so much more gentle than hers had had been, as he dealt with the clumsy padding and wrapping she'd used to cover the wounds to her ear and scalp. Once a long time ago on the internet, Darlene had read that scalp wounds bled an awful lot but usually weren't very dangerous, and she hoped that was what she was dealing with now. Certainly that wasn't the part that hurt the most, and all of it felt better under Jonah's attentive care than it had last time around, even though back then Darlene had been mostly numb.

And of course, talking was a very welcome distraction that let her focus on other things, including the most important question in the conversation thus far, which made Darlene turn a little bit red probably. She would've maybe been shy to talk about it if anyone else was here, because she knew she'd definitely get teased, but Jonah she thought would understand.

"I'm Hufflepuff," she said. "I don't know, I wish I was smart like for Ravenclaw or brave like for Gryffindor but I don't mind. I think they have the most fun besides."

While she spoke, Darlene finally took the opportunity to remove her glasses. She wet her fingers with a generous coating of spit and rather carelessly slathered it on the lenses, then swirled it around on them with the bottom of her shirt, before drying them on a different part. She held them up to the sky, saw they were still pretty smudgy, and repeated the process, finally giving her a clear view of the world for the first time in what felt like a week. This meant leaving the flower and the gun side by side next to her on the wide flat rock, but just for right now that felt okay.

"What about you?" she asked, but she thought she already knew the answer.

[Ruggahissy]

Jonah pushed down on the center of his lower lip with his index finger as he thought for a moment.

"You probably think I'm going to say Gryffindor, right? I don't know, maybe not. But I really think I'm a Hufflepuff too," he said finally. He took the black lily and pushed it behind her un-bandaged ear, making a little hair decoration.

He leaned back on the rock he was sitting on with his left arm supporting him and his right on his gun.

"They're hard working, they're patient, and they're loyal. I think those are all the things I try really hard to be. Sometimes I had to be that way because of circumstances and sometimes I... could have been better," he said faltering, but smiling still. He thought of Abel and Max.

"If there's anyone I want to be, it's a Hufflepuff. So maybe I'm one in training."

He leaned forward and tilted his head.

"What do you say, fellow badger? Senior badger?"

[MurderWeasel]

"Fellow," Darlene said, decisively.

Because, of course, she'd had a pretty good idea that Jonah was a kindred spirit before she'd even asked. It was part of why she'd been so upfront and open, even though it was a silly thing that didn't mean anything, except actually it kind of did. Houses weren't perfect, and even in the books there was a lot of overlap and a lot of ways in which characters felt mismatched at points, but they were still something like a personality test. They pulled out aspects of yourself that you valued, and validated those things as core tenets of identity. Jonah was undoubtedly brave and dashing, but that wasn't what had gotten Darlene to trust and listen to him. What mattered most was that he was patient and understanding and kind.

Darlene shifted around a little after the flower was tucked behind her ear, getting more comfortable and almost incidentally letting her hand rest on the gun once more. She felt different, somehow. She felt clean and refreshed, even though she was still stinky and sweaty and probably had smears of blood in a bunch of places. But right now that didn't matter. The garden was wild and lush, devil's ivy creeping everywhere even as patches of brilliant flowers burst from the tangled sea of wide-leafed green. It could've been Hogwarts, or Narnia, or some other magical realm. It made Darlene feel like herself again, and it didn't get rid of the sorrow over Max or the fear of everything around them, but it let those things not be all-consuming.

She looked down to her right, where the gun lay, her fingertips making oily smudges on the smooth, shiny cylinder.

More than anything else, Darlene wanted time to just stop and leave her in this moment forever. She couldn't bear the thought of it being ripped away, much less being the one to do it. But, at the same time, there was something more important than what she wanted. Jonah had talked about patience and loyalty, and he'd admitted he wasn't always as good as he wished, and Darlene thought he must've had some real unrealistic expectations then because he was about the most patient and loyal person she knew, but she understood how he felt because she screwed up a lot of the time too. And by virtue of the very qualities that made her cling to this moment, she knew she had to risk it, because even if it hurt Jonah he deserved her honesty.

"...can I tell you something bad I did?" Darlene asked, eyes still locked to the gun, but attention more on the impressionist explosion of colorful plant life beyond, indistinct because it fell beyond the borders of the rims of her glasses.

[Ruggahissy]

Jonah chuckled in his deep resonant voice at being accepted into the venerable fraternity and sorority of badgers. He stood up and stretched, reaching up as high as he could with the gold desert eagle in hand. He shuffled around, pushing the thick flora that carpeted the ground. His arms dropped down again to sides like arms of a rag doll. A flower he hadn't seen nudged his cheek and he closed an eye and happily rubbed his face where it had intruded.

The heat was no longer oppressive but kind of comfortable. Jonah felt a little sleepy surrounded by the swirling, dream-like colors of the garden. The floral scents were strong enough to taste just a little. He was pulled out of his pleasantly unreal state by Darlene's voice floating by. It took him a moment to register what she had said.

"Of course," he said as his last pain-free words.

"Whatever --"

A sound so loud it deafened him for a few seconds cracked the sky. Birds from the trees around them took flight, creating a dark cloud overhead.

Jonah's arm was searing with hot pain and no longer holding a weapon. He had dropped it somewhere in the overgrowth when he was shot. A dark trail of rich red started just after his elbow and caressed his skin before dripping into a rapidly expanding puddle below his fingertips. He felt sick as he stared at his forearm.

"G--G--G--et behind me," Jonah said, shaking. He swallowed deeply, tasting blood. "Please," he said.

[Kermit]

Michael exploded out from the wilds, eyes burning; fixated on Darlene fucking Silva.

"YOU FUCKING MOVE AND THE NEXT ONE'S IN HIS GUT," he half-muttered, half-screamed, letting the words bleed together. His entire body shook. He could hear this weird dull buzzing noise in his head, like his skull was full of bees. He still had a pretty clear shot at either one of them — they were maybe fifteen feet away. It'd been easy getting the drop on them while they were fucking around with flowers, pretending like they were allowed to be okay.

He recognized the boy she was with as Jonah Heartgrave. He and Michael had been something-close-to-but-not-quite-friends, in an earlier, better life.

"BERYL MAHELONA," it still hurt to say her name, "BERYL FUCKING MAHELONA. TELL ME WHAT YOU DID TO BERYL MAHELONA," he spat, voice breaking over and over.

He felt almost like he did that first night on the beach, watching Nick floating her into the sea. This time, though, everything was already on fire.

[MurderWeasel]

Perhaps the most surprising thing was that Darlene didn't just freeze.

There was an abrupt crack of gunfire, a flash of vanishing gold, blood and Jonah giving instructions almost like he was begging, and in all of her imaginings outside the most blatant of fantasies, Darlene had considered herself the sort to struggle to react promptly and appropriately. She was not the type for grace under pressure, for quickness on her feet or in her thoughts, but in this moment the process was so smooth as to barely be conscious. She scooped up the revolver and slid around, half behind Jonah kind of, ducking down so her knees pressed into the vines and waxy leaves below her, too-long grass prickling at her legs.

The boy who burst raving from the woods was not who Darlene had expected. She hadn't really properly expected anyone, hadn't had time to think things through at all, but somewhere in her brain she'd been anticipating mustache back again for a repeat maybe, or some other interchangeable huge sports guy. This boy was tall and very thin, ragged to the point she thought he might come apart at the seems, and yet even as he'd attacked them—no, as he'd attacked Jonah—his true focus was on the unsteady words he spat at them.

At her.

There was no real cover. The garden had piles of rubble here and there, overgrown planters and the collapsed remnants of small structures or piles of material once meant for unknown purposes, but Jonah and Darlene had set up far away from those, in the closest thing left to an Elysian grove. The only real place of concealment was the thick foliage from which their assailant had emerged.

Darlene was shaking just a little as the meaning of the demands caught up with her. She opened her mouth, but her throat seized closed at first. It wasn't fair. None of this was fair at all. Whatever bad things were going to happen to her, they were supposed to happen to her personally, and they weren't supposed to be about this. It had been almost a week. This was over. Beryl was gone and everyone was over it.

Darlene forced a big gasping breath, forced herself as close to still as she could.

"W-what do you want?" she stammered, her pitch warbling almost as badly as her questioner's. "Who are you?"

Her eyes darted back and forth between where the boy's eyes were invisible behind dark lenses and the rock she'd been sitting on so recently, where a speckles of blood slowly spread and bloomed.

[Ruggahissy]

The figure that had shot him quickly emerged from the brush in front of them and was screaming about Beryl.

"Michael," he said as calmly as he could manage given his pain. It was an attempt to deescalate but coincidentally also served to answer Darlene's question. Any resemblance to the Michael he remembered at school though was passing, at this point. Jonah tried to remain the steady focal point between Michael and Darlene, though he struggled to keep himself calm above the baseline of pain.

"I know this isn't what you want to hear, but it was an accident. Beryl was our friend and she was trying to teach us to shoot."

Jonah slowly took hold of Darlene's arm and moved her a little further behind him.

"It's not too late," he said to both Michael and to himself.

[Kermit]

"NOT TOO LATE FOR WHO, JONAH?" he snapped, "BECAUSE IT'S TOO LATE FOR ME. TOO LATE FOR BERYL. TOO LATE FOR NICK. AND HENRY," his voice calmed somewhat, though he personally did not calm down in the slightest, "and Nia, and Alexander, and Jeremiah, and Morgan, and Lizzie, and Catherine, and Erika, and SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE."

It was taking everything he had not to shift his aim over to Darlene and shoot her over and over and over again until there was nothing left to shoot.

"BECAUSE OF HER," he glared through his sunglasses, letting his face twist in utter contempt. "SO FUCK YOU, JONAH. SHE CAN TALK FOR HERSELF. I WANT IT IN HER OWN FUCKING WORDS."

He already knew what had gone down during gun practice; he'd been there, after all (plus Henry had snitched out Darlene as the one who'd shot). He wasn't here for the truth. He was here because he needed Darlene to understand everything she'd taken a single fucking second to destroy.

There were no accidents; only acts of calculated negligence.

[MurderWeasel]

Darlene didn't really think of herself as an angry person. She got upset, but more often than not it was the sad or distraught variety. When she did get mad, it usually came in sudden flashes coupled with silly impulses, the urge to take whoever upset her and squeeze rice into their hair or something obnoxious but harmless like that. Usually those times passed quickly.

As the boy—Michael, a name that sounded kind of familiar but made no greater impression—spoke, Darlene was becoming angrier than she had ever been before.

She was livid over how he was talking to Jonah, how he'd treated Jonah, and not just the shooting part. She was furious that he threw the blame at her for so many people, people whose names she didn't know and whose faces she likely wouldn't have recognized. She was incensed by the way he demanded things of her even while talking about her like she wasn't a part of the conversation. But all of those things paled in comparison to the biggest piece that made Darlene tremble now with outrage more than fear.

It was over. It was done. Beryl was done, and Darlene had felt bad about what happened, still felt bad about it, but it hadn't been her fault. It had been a horrible accident, a tragic twist of fate but it could've happened to anyone at any time given the situation they were in. Jonah had forgiven her for it, had told her not to let it happen again and that had been the end. Max had forgiven her, had held her in the grasp of the mancatcher but had come to understand the truth and had realized she was trying her hardest and had stuck with her the whole time, had died because he wanted to protect her, which he never would've done for some murderer. Darlene had forgiven herself, maybe even before either of the others had, because she knew the truth and the truth was she wasn't trying to hurt Beryl, in fact she was trying to be careful and make sure nobody got hurt and if that wasn't enough then nothing was. All she'd done was follow instructions.

The bright flowers all around were no longer happy. They were like multicolored flames now, drawing a circle from which there was no escape. If Jonah wasn't here, Darlene wouldn't have even wanted to. She was holding the gun wrong, around the barrel, and that was yet another mistake but it wouldn't have stopped her if Jonah wasn't in trouble, she would've flipped it around like a cowboy and just started firing, like at the chainsaw boy. At least if this had been about him, she might have kind of deserved it.

Darlene shot to her feet, glaring from above and behind Jonah.

"Beryl told me to," she bellowed. "Don't you go making assumptions because I asked Beryl what to do and she told me to pull the trigger."

[Ruggahissy]

Jonah stayed quiet during Michael's rant, feeling that to respond would push him further in the wrong direction. And in any case, Michael said he wanted to hear from Darlene.

Then Darlene stood and spoke.



How did we get here?



Oh no, he thought.

"Oh no," he then said out loud. He was stunned for a moment.

He looked from Darlene to Michael with his eyebrows drawn together with worry. The chance to change tracks slipped through their fingers. He didn't blame anyone, but it had happened. They had been set onto a track that would speed them towards the death of at least one of them and those were just the facts that he saw laid out before them, as if he had stuck his head out of a train window and saw what was coming up on the horizon. He'd never been on a train in real life, but he imagined it like a movie in his mind, rushing past fields of blurred color.

"Michael, she knew it was an accident. Everyone did and does. You do too, I think. You feel everything, and I'm sorry," he said.

He put as much effort as he could into pushing them back off their current track, even though in his heart he knew that this time he couldn't escape the specter of death.

They were rolling downhill now and now it wasn't a matter of if, but who. He took a deep breath that he felt travel through his whole body and escape out his wound.

[Kermit]

Michael opened and closed his mouth a few times. Didn't hear Jonah. Words stopped working. Choking, wheezing noises broke from his throat. The buzzing was really really loud now. Stumbled forward a few steps. Less walking steps and more falling steps. The earth around him was starting to cave in again. It hurt. It fucking hurt. It would never stop. He didn't know how to stop. He didn't want to know how to st-

He adjusted his aim to Darlene, and pulled the trigger three times, screaming until all the air was gone.

[Ruggahissy]

Michael looked like a fish trying to breathe out of water. Jonah felt the energy shift in the fingertips of his uninjured arm. He saw him shamble forward like a zombie. A malevolent vibration like a swirling lightning storm sparked off of him.

Okay.

A split second to think:

Are you sure?

I'm sure.

Of course you are.

It's only fair, y' know?

...

Jonah pushed Darlene and felt himself get hit. He looked down, hearing only Michael's screaming still echoing around them. Blood effloresced vibrantly from his white shirt.

"Finally," he said quietly to himself, tears spilling over his eyes.

He launched himself at Michael grabbing him in a sort of hug and turned to Darlene.

"RUN! I'LL MEET YOU IN AN HOUR. FIND ARIZONA GO NOW."