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Arc F1.9 | Chapter 5: Nothing Will Ever Soothe This Ache (and that’s what I deserve)

A blade of fire crashed into Rafe’s defensive barrier, a bright-pink thing that had been designed by Emilia during their first years with their Censors. The skill itself had been updated a million times since then—there were few skills or functions designed by the girl he loved that hadn’t been updated over the years, only those that saw little use or had been outright replaced by something so heavily improved that it had been given a new name falling into the abyss of obsoletion.—it had been a question she asked often, back before he had been forced to break her heart. The time that stuck within his mind the most, however, was the last time, back when they had been fucking and things had been good—perfect, even.

They’d returned from a rough day at school—Emilia and Halen had gotten into it during class and ended up in a tumble on the floor, he and Darrian left trying to pull them apart. As a result, they were both disgusting: sweaty and covered in Halen or Emilia—neither had fessed up as to had activated the skill in question—had summoned from the aether. So, they’d ended up at the treehouse, intent to shower.

Instead, the girl he loved had smiled, so sweet and loving. Then, her smile had dropped, her voice a tremble as she begged him not to hurt her, and they were off—running through the treehouse, Emilia acting the scared victim as though she couldn’t kill him with barely more than a thought.

Even back them, when things had still been good—when he’d still be all too happy to catch her, hold her down, bury himself in her while she kicked and screamed because he knew she would laugh and smile and tell him it had been great and they should go it again and again and again—Rafe had known she would never kill him, no matter what he did to her. This was the girl he loved, though. In no world would he ever even risk hurting her, until he had risked it, until he had hurt her.

It was a dangerous thing to know she wouldn’t hurt him, her love too strong. He could break her, and she’d smile and break and sob and never trust him again but still somehow love him. It wasn’t something he deserved—he wasn’t someone she deserved.

Anyone else was better than him.

“You okay?” Halen asked, stepping up beside him as Simeon used a skill to push the now-unconscious man out of their path, using {Stick With Me} to semi-permanently attach him to the wall. As they had no idea if these government workers were simply panicking due to the situation or not, they had decided not to kill anyone who wasn’t obviously an enemy—or, everyone had agreed, anyways.

Personally, Rafe didn’t much care—he would happily kill anyone if it meant getting to Emilia a little faster. Leerin hadn’t much cared either—she was both more of a backup member of their group and unlikely to need to fight unless shit got bad and killing became a necessity, and was actually somewhat cold-hearted and perfectly capable of killing anyone who got in her way, in his opinion—while Janie had done what she was increasingly doing: fading into the background.

In the end, Halen had decided that killing too many people would make things worse for them, while Simeon had simply said that Emilia would be sad if they killed too many innocent people. They both had a point. Rafe still found he didn’t care.

Rafe said into his and Halen’s private relay. It wasn’t something they used often, rarely communicating about anything other than Emilia. Sometime, Halen would let Rafe know if he and Emilia had been going at it especially bad, trusting that Rafe would either find her or talk someone else—Darrian, more often than not—into tracking her down—into cheering her up because Emilia loved fucking with Halen, but sometimes, the two had an energy about them. It was a difficult thing to explain, this fleeting feeling that anyone who watched the two of them closely enough could see. Coral saw it was well, Rafe knew, the Dyad having asked him about it once—Rafe was sure Coral knew that he was fully aware of Halen’s feelings for Emilia, a knowledge he intended to do nothing with. Not tell her. Not tell Halen to leave her alone.

Halen and Emilia loved messing with one another, but sometimes, it were as though a strike of pain would go through both, especially when things got too heated. It wasn’t guilt so much as a visceral crash of regret and pain and that Emilia could never explain and Halen passed off as his heart breaking because he’d pissed off the girl he secretly—previously secretly—loved so entirely.

Halen asked as they continued to move, Rafe defensive barrier popping out in time with Simeon’s abilities, letting them know yet another person was coming. Each time, Halen would release a skill or two—occasionally more, but few of the workers they came across within this new building had training enough to match them—and Simeon would seamlessly push their fallen body to the side of the hall and lock them up once more.

It was a rather efficient system, the result of their having known one another for so much of their lives.

he said, pressing a bit of the memory into their relay for Halen to watch.

There was Emilia sitting on his lap in loose summer clothes, her hair still wet from their shower. Summer break had been only days away—their break-up only a week off.

Rafe had noted, his nose pressing into her neck and making her giggle and clench her thighs as though she hadn’t gotten more than a handful of orgasms out of their prey and predator play and the handsy shower that had followed.

Emilia’s shoulders had shifted, soft words flowing out her, just as they always had.

Before they had begun hooking up—before Warren had driven her into a torrent of fear and his bed—Rafe had never answered her queries as to we never bothered asking her to change it. Later, she’d asked if he wanted it changed. Somehow or another, he’d managed to tell her the truth: that the colour reminded him of her and their connection.

the Emilia of his memory said, just as dozens of Emilia had said before this moment. The girl turned and smiled at him, looking for young and happy and innocent and it made Rafe’s chest seize up because he had taken that from her—had lost control of his urges and been forced to break her heart, steal that smile she had only ever given him from her.

Maybe it would have been better, had he told her the whole truth—not about he had needed to cut things off with her, but about how much that sparkle of pink meant to him.

It had been a joke, he was sure, Emilia making so many of his skills pink—making his Censor’s interface something bright and shining, just like her. Back then, though, Rafe had already been in love with her, always stumbling over his interactions with her because they had been friends forever, but he was grumpy, unlikeable. Emilia teasing him the glares he would level her way—partially a result of actual annoyance, mostly the result of how much he had wanted to chase the girl down and punish her—had always left a warm feeling within him.

It would have been so easy for her to step back and stop bothering with him as his personality became more prickly, his temper bubbling to the surface more often. Emilia had never stopped bothering him—even now, she still teased and poked, trying to take them back to their youth as though they weren’t both heartbroken and painfully in love.

All Rafe wanted was Emilia safe and happy and he couldn’t give her that—couldn’t give back the happiness he’d stolen from her. If he were stronger, perhaps he would be able to tell her the truth of his sins, but he was a weak man, unable to watch her love and adoration, pained as it was, turn to fear or loathing—or worse, not change at all.

To have her say or …

Rafe thought that would be the worst thing of all—a testing of his heart and impulses that would lead to him eventually breaking her completely.

Mostly, Rafe simply regretted that he’d never told Emilia he loved her—that she was his everything because he knew she questioned it now. Every time she looked at him, there was that question in her eyes, wondering if she’d misread, if she’d done something to make him stop loving her, if he’d just been using her body from the start.

He wished she knew, if only so her brilliant mind could pull together the reality that he loved her and the only reasons he would leave her would be huge and monstrous. Maybe then, she could settle her heart. He wouldn’t have to be a braver man and tell her—wouldn’t have to look at himself in the mirror every day and know that he was a horrible person for hurting the girl he loved and not even having the courage to tell her what he’d done and that he was the problem.

He was the problem and she had done nothing wrong and he couldn’t make himself say it because he loved her and he’d already lost her smiles and presence in his bed. How was he supposed to risk losing the entirety of her as well? Risk her forgiving him when he deserved to be sliced apart, not forgiven?

Halen asked, clearly taking in the timeline of it—cataloguing the way they were still together, the way Emilia’s hair had been cut to brush her shoulders. It was the shortest it had been since they were children and she had cut it so it wouldn’t bother her while they all ran wild. It was the shortest it had been since their breakup.

Sometimes, when Rafe saw Emilia clearly aggravated by her long hair—an especially common occurrence during the summer—he wondered why she didn’t cut it short again. Mostly, he thought it was him—thought that, were she to cut it short again, it would remind her of the summer he had broken her heart.

Rafe replied, yet more pink-tinted skills from Emilia rupturing out of him as several workers rounded the corner together, their jaws set in a determination that would be useless to them.

Halen finished, stepping a little closer, something telling Rafe that, were the other boy not so exceptionally awkward, he might have offered him some form of physical comfort, as though Rafe had ever wanted to be touched by anyone but Emilia.

In no world would Rafe ever want physical comfort from anyone else; unfortunately, Rafe might have taken the hug over Halen’s attempts to get the truth of he had broken up with Emilia out of him—it wasn’t exactly surprising that Halen would know there was more to the story, the other boy one of the few people who knew, absolutely, that Rafe loved Emilia. It didn’t matter—the reasons weren’t the sort of things he had shared with anyone other than Malcolm, and only in a moment of desperation. Rafe hadn’t even told Baylor when the other boy had quite seriously seemed inclined to kill him for hurting Emilia—really, Rafe thought the only reason he was alive was because Emilia likely wouldn’t have forgiven Baylor for killing him.

The truth was terrible, and Rafe doubted the day would ever come when he would feel safe enough to tell anyone else the truth.

Ten thousand years could pass him by, and Rafe knew he would still be a shell, meant to contain love and regret and self-hatred alone—always alone because his best friend now looked at him like every second she wasn’t falling into his arms was a scream of pain through her.

Rafe missed the girl he loved, not just because she had filled his bed, but because she had been his best—his only—friend for so long. Now he was alone and he deserved to be alone, but he missed her—missed curling up with her, missed her smiles and laughter, missed the millions of stories and theories she had once so happily shared with him and now held back because she had no idea where they stood. He might hate her, for all she knew.

Rafe didn’t hate her; he hated himself, and the reality that he would hate himself for the rest of his life for what he had done to her… it was a depressing thought, but he deserved no less—Emilia, after all, would likely spend the rest of her life with a broken heart, all because of him.