12. What You Believe Ronan/ Silene
12
What You Believe: Ronan/ Silene
Ronan:
S uddenly, we’re in the small little apartment that we called our own. It was away from everything. Her hair is knotted in a messy bun on the top of her head, and she’s wearing one of my old t-shirts with the sleeves cut off, work-out shorts and a sports bra underneath.
“I think this might be my favorite version of home,” she says as she fiddles with the radio by the stove top. Food is splayed everywhere on the counter, but she always said —
“The messier the cook, the better the meal,” she interrupts as she straightens and looks me directly in the eyes. “Now that we’re here, ask what you’re wanting to ask. You don’t have long to do so.” I watch as she heads back towards the counter and begins chopping up onions, tomatoes and bell peppers while the chicken, broth, feta cheese, lemon juice and every other ingredient is pushed to the side.
“Chicken Orzo?” I ask with raised brows
She just throws a soft smile my way before answering with a cool, “It was always your favorite meal to make together. Naturally, it’s what you would conjure up. Next question.”
She doesn’t look away from the food or the knives as she speaks. She doesn’t need to.
“Where are we right now? Not the two of us, but when I wake up, where will I be? Your dagger, where did it come from? When have I been to the house before we all woke there? Why does everything I’m surrounded by feel so damn familiar?” Every word feels more rushed and frantic than the last, but she doesn’t once turn away from the food, only slows her chopping as if she’s working out the answers in her mind.
Or my mind, I suppose.
“Everything is familiar because you’ve seen it all before, Ronan. You’re smart. Circumstance may have stripped certain memories away, but it can’t take away the way certain things will make you feel.” The sound of the blade slicing through veggies continues at a punishing speed but I’m wholly focused on her and the truths she’s speaking.
“The house: we used it as a safe house after a job went wrong a year ago. It was the first time we really talked outside of work. You tried to cook, I saved the meal, we stayed up the entire night talking under the guise of not letting our guards down. Really, we were just enjoying each other’s company and didn’t want the night to end. We left a few days later and decided it would be our permanent safe zone when needed. And we’ve needed it a few times.”
Once everything is chopped, she looks at me expectantly, but I just shake my head and reach for the pots and pans I know she’s wanting me to give her.
“Thank you. The dagger. That was a gift to me a couple months ago. While I loved it, I thought a nine-month anniversary gift was ridiculous, so you said I could wait for the rest of it when a year came around. Which should be in a few days, actually.”
“What was the rest of the gift?” I know that the hopeful sound of my voice is for nothing when — in true Silene fashion, my subconscious or not — she doesn’t tell me. Not really, at least.
“You know, Ronan. Just look for it. The answer is on you. You just have to look.” Her gaze is all knowing and there’s a pit forming at the bottom of my stomach and a monster tearing its way through my chest whose claws grow sharper and sharper with each breath I take as it catches on my ribs. A monster that’s trying to free itself of its misery and touch her.
It’s my heart, I realize. Beating and bloody and desperate for the answer to one more question.
My fingertips caress her cheek before grasping her chin and forcing her gaze to me.
“What did I do to you?” The words are soft leaving my lips but her gaze hardens and cools.
“Don’t ask stupid questions, Ronan. It’s not what you did to me, it’s what you didn’t do for me. It was the lies, and the secrets and — ”
“What do you mean!? You can’t seriously believe that I — ” I start, but she throws her hand up as a sign for me to shut the hell up.
“I don’t believe it, Ronan. Not really, or else you would be dead and you know it. But you believe it. I haven’t said anything here that you don’t already know or believe.” Then she drops everything she’s doing and wipes off her hands before walking to the door.
“Si, where are you going? We’re not done here. I need to know more, please.” I’ve caught up with her in just a few steps and grab her hand to stop her and turn her around before I drop to my knees before her.
“Please, Si…” It’s the last bit of pleading I have in me. I realize that it won’t mean much, though. Because she’s right. There’s nothing that’s happening that isn’t my own mind’s doing. There’s nothing she has said that hasn’t been hiding in my own head.
“You need to wake up now, Ronan.”
And then her hand is out of mine and she’s walking out the door of the small little home we called our own. I already know what’s going to happen when I stand and follow her out.
* * *
Silene:
The sun is rising, and skittering gold dances across the ground around us. The wind blows the leaves surrounding our feet with every step, and I can’t help but stare at the beauty of it all. For in this moment of quiet, no matter how deadly this situation may seem, there is still a graceful waltz of nature that we cannot stop.
I woke up for this, I realize. When I heard Carmen shuffling about to take watch, I took it instead. The sleep I got was more than enough, and I found myself a bit restless in the midst of our new company.
Knowing two of our three companions should set me at ease, but the knowledge of how we got here puts a vile taste in my mouth. One that should eventually diminish with more time together and his head separated from his body, but something tells me I need to leave now rather than wait. For some reason, I feel more in danger with those I know I trusted at one point than I did with just Carmen at my side.
Don’t trust anyone. That’s what I was told, and yet here I am surrounded by the very people I was warned against. Though, I also wasn’t given much of a choice in the matter, given the course of events yesterday, and I can’t help but look to my left at where Carmen’s petite frame rests against a tree. She’s fiddling with the hem of her jacket while staring off in every which direction while the others get in their last bit of sleep when I hear deep, heavy breathing. The kind of breathing one does when they’re running or panicking.
My body stiffens on instinct as I check our surroundings, but there’s nothing. I finally look down at the three other sleeping forms, and I see it’s him.
Ronan.
His hands are clenching and unclenching, legs jolting slightly, and I’m about to wake him from whatever nightmare seems to plague him when his eyes snap open, his body jerks upright, and a barely audible gasp of my name escapes him.
His entire body seems to slump back for a moment as he exhales a long, slow breath. He still looks tired as his skin has lost its normal flush and darkness lingers beneath his eyes. Like whatever was haunting his dreams, followed him back here and he can feel its weight on his shoulders like a burden he never asked to carry. Something that seems to be incredibly heavy.
And for a moment, I find myself wanting to care.
For a moment, the part of me that knows who he was to me before wants to lift the weight off of his shoulders so he can sit a little straighter and sleep better in these bitter-aired uncertain nights. That woman would’ve held him every day if he needed her to carry the weight of the world in her arms. She would have given him everything should he have asked for it. But then I remember what he did to me, and realize that woman died the second the barrel of a gun was pressed against Carmen’s head.
Or maybe it was prior to that moment. Maybe when he kissed my hand out of jealousy that I would even listen to another man’s words before we knew each other. Maybe she died then. Or, what if that was the start of her death?
What if her death was slow and sickly? It was one of false promises and proclamations that wasted her away slowly—day by day—until she was finally put out of her misery with the betrayal of her heart and the loss of her mind.
So when our eyes connect, I just raise an irritated brow at him for disturbing my peace. When he doesn’t look away, I finally decide to speak.
“Do you remember yet? Looked like you weren’t having the best time in your own head, and if my name was any indication I can only assume it was one of two things.”
His brows raise in response, head tipping to the side before a raspy and deep whisper answers back.
“What would those two options be, Silene?”
If I could describe the way he looks at me as he asks the question, I would say it was something of wonder. Maybe even curiosity. It was deep rooted and overgrown and a seed of emotion that had been planted long before we woke in that house.
“I would say you dreamt of what I asked you yesterday.” He shakes his head inquisitively, gaze locked on my own. “Or I would say you dreamt of all the ways I could kill you, now that you know your death is imminent.”
The chuckle that he lets out is soft, quiet even and he shakes his head again. “Why would you assume that my dreams have anything to do with you?”
I wait until he lifts his chin back up and our eyes are locked together before I respond. “Well, the way you were saying my name when you woke up was the first hint.”
“And the second?”
His question holds no heat behind it like one might expect it to. Instead, it feels sad—like an intense unwavering of his mental state has settled into his bones. Sad with just a little hope dusting the edges and I almost falter.
Almost.
“Does there need to be another reason? You saying my name is undeniable reason enough.” He chuckles and looks me up and down, drinking my appearance in like my lips aren’t horribly chapped and cracking, or like my skin isn’t paling from dehydration, and lack of any real sunlight in days. Instead, he looks at me like I know he always has. A heaven-sent gift made of honey and emerald isles with hair so brown it resembles life. The same color as the soil that I grip between my fingertips as we speak.
He looks at me like I wasn’t moments from stripping him of his life yesterday, and for some reason I hate it. I hate that I’m burdened with the truth of what happened while he remains unaware enough to look at me like I’m something to adore when he so easily turned his back on all of us when we needed him most.
“Let’s say I was dreaming of you…who’s to say your options are the only two that are possible?” He questions, a smirk playing at his lips for a brief moment. Any real feeling gone and replaced with humor. “What if my dreams were of you with that dagger to my throat again? What if we were both wearing far less clothes? Would that be an appealing option to you, Killer ?”
Red hot fury blinds me. A flush spreads across my entire body as heat envelopes me—confused by the sudden change in the way that he looks and speaks to me.
“I hope that I haunt you. In every single dream that you have, I hope I’m there. That you’re never able to escape me.” I recognize that my words are harsh and venomous as I speak them. I don’t even mean it. But for some reason I can’t stop myself from saying them when he’s looking at me the way that he is.
His bravado falters.
“You do.” His words are warm, the cadence of his voice unwavering. So much so that it seems like he expected me to say what I had, and that it was right on par with who he knows me to be. Like the idea that he would dream of anything or anyone else would never have even been a possibility, and for some reason, it makes me so damn unexplainably mad.
“Good, I’m glad.” It’s out before I can stop it, and suddenly I want nothing more than to run away—to crawl within myself and find the part of me that hates so deeply and tuck her away—the second his face morphs as if my words had landed upon him in a physical blow. I know they were petty and childish, and I can’t bear to look at his reaction as I suddenly feel a violent grief over the loss of something that the current me hardly knows. I know what happened, but for some reason…
I hurry to my feet in a rush to get away as the other two begin to stir awake. I give Carmen’s shoulder a light reassuring squeeze on my way past her before stalking away to check our surroundings and clear my head, but when I do, I swear I hear the faintest response. Two words that might just be a trick of my mind. Because why would he? Why could he possibly…
But I know I heard it, no matter how insane the response would be. I know I wasn’t imagining them. Two quiet, measly words that should mean nothing to me, but deep down, no matter how much I wish they don’t, they do. They’re an all-encompassing everything that washes me in confusion and longing.
For what? I’m not sure. But I do know that two words should not hold as much meaning to me as they do.
Two whispered words.
“Me too.”