32. Pandora
PANDORA
The rest of the night is a blur. Firefighters, cops, EMTs, ambulances.
Blaze’s entire face, covered in blood.
I slip away from the EMTs before they can force me to the hospital.
I lost River’s finger.
I lost Blaze’s eye.
I drive to Blaze and River and Asch’s house. I park down the block, and then I reach below the driver’s seat to pull out Papa’s present to me.
A business card.
A gun.
I heft the gun and check the chamber. Six bullets. I could have taken care of John Allers with a single bullet.
That would have been faster. It would have been easier.
He wouldn’t have suffered, but neither would the rest of us.
Blaze would have kept his eye.
My phone buzzes and buzzes. I ignore it as I stare at the gun.
Who did Papa want me to use it on? My enemies, the note said, but he doesn’t even know who they are.
The worst enemy is the thump-thump-thump of my heart.
Why does it hurt so much? It’s not allowed to hurt. That’s why I don’t have a heart. Nothing hurts if I don’t feel anything, if I’m just some wild, manic creature who doesn’t care about the consequences and lets the world burn around her.
I blink, and tears fall from my eyes.
This is me now. I’m crying, because Blaze’s beautiful face was marred—all thanks to me and my stupid, insane, fucking crazy schemes.
Anastasia had given us that warning.
I could have left. I could have run.
But I needed to see Allers suffer, all for fucking what?
I lift the gun up and aim it through my windshield, then up at the mirror.
The easiest way to make sure River, Asch, and Blaze never get hurt again is to get rid of the one hurting them.
Maybe Rachel wouldn’t even have gone to some stupid college tour and hung out with stupid Zayden if she’d trusted me more. If I had been better at listening, and actually paid attention to her problems instead of dragging her along to cause new ones.
“Probably not what you meant when you gave me this gun, huh, Papa?” I say with a sardonic smile. “But Pandora isn’t immortal. She was probably consumed by all the horrors she unleashed on the world, too.”
I’ll make such a mess if I do this in the car. Blood and brain everywhere, and poor River and Asch and Blaze will need to clean it up on top of everything.
They’d be really pissed at me then.
I sigh and put the safety on, then get out of the car and head into the house. The spare key they’d given me works like a charm, and I take my dirty scrubs off before I track soot into the nice and clean home.
I take everything to the basement and run the laundry to clean up the mess. There’s no reason to leave DNA evidence behind if I don’t need to. The gun clatters on top of the laundry machine.
It would be kind of funny if it went off by accident.
I take the gun and my phone—it’s still fucking buzzing—and make my way back to the living room. There are still blankets and pillows here from when Ares and Kratos crashed on the couch.
That was yesterday. Wow, time slows to a crawl sometimes.
I lift the gun up again and aim at the ceiling.
Shooting my heart here would be an even bigger mess than in my car.
I hear a key in the lock, then the door opens to River and Asch rushing into the house.
“Pandora? Why haven’t you—” River begins to ask, but he cuts himself off when he gets a good look at me. “What are you doing?”
“Wondering if I should shoot the worst person in the room,” I answer. “But it would be a bitch to clean up.”
“Pandora, put the gun down,” Asch orders. He looks exhausted, but his eyes are fixed on me. Like River, he stays by the door. “On the coffee table.”
I sigh and sit up, but I keep the gun on my thigh. “Are you worried I’m going to shoot either of you? I wasn’t.”
River’s jaw clenches. “That’s not comforting,” he mutters. “Where did you get the gun?”
“Not important,” Asch says. “Why have you been ignoring our calls? We’ve all been worried sick about you.” He edges into the room, each motion cautious.
“Shouldn’t you be worrying about Blaze?” I stroke my thigh with the gun. “He’s the one who’s seriously hurt. I’m just the crazy bitch that caused all of this.”
“You aren’t a crazy bitch,” River retorts. He takes a few steps forward, only to hesitate when he looks down at the gun again. “Everyone’s worried. Your family is frantic. We didn’t know where you were, and now…” He swallows hard as he trails off, his eyes not leaving the gun.
I roll my eyes and finally put the gun on the coffee table.
They really think I’m going to kill somebody with it.
“I already told you, it’d be too much of a mess, and you’d be left cleaning it up. I wouldn’t do that to you,” I say. “And I’ve never been suicidal.”
Psychotic, sure, but not suicidal.
I would have needed a heart to hurt.
Although I guess I have one of those now.
River rushes forward, with Asch on his heels. River snatches me up in his arms, while Asch takes the gun, checks the safety, then retreats from the room into the kitchen.
Putting as much distance between me and the gun as possible.
“What the hell is going on?” River asks, burying his face in my hair.
The two of us smell like smoke, but he doesn’t seem bothered.
I take his hand, the one missing a finger, and rub my finger along the stump. “I lost your finger. I’m sorry. I was trying to treasure it. But now it’s somewhere under all that concrete.”
“I don’t care about the finger,” River says, kissing the top of my head. “Why are you naked? You have to be cold.”
“I’ll get her some clothes,” Asch says from the doorway to the kitchen. He disappears down into the laundry room.
Maybe he doesn’t want to be around me, and he’s using any excuse he can to stay away. I wouldn’t want to be around me either. I got Blaze’s eye poked out.
“She probably needs a shower,” River says when Asch returns with a pile of clothes in his arms.
“You need one too,” I point out. “Do you have a three person shower in this dump? Papa has a huge one in his primary en-suite. It’s big enough for an orgy.” It’s a stupid joke, and since River isn’t Blaze, he doesn’t laugh about it.
“We can make do,” Asch says. “Blaze’s… the one in Blaze’s room is big enough for two, at least.”
River gets up, still holding me in his arms. “Let’s go get you clean. It’ll help you feel better.” He glances at Asch. “Will you text Ares or Kratos?”
Asch pulls out his phone, tapping on the screen. “Sending a message now,” he says.
I let River drag me along, like he’s a real river and the current is too much for me. That would be a first, right? Usually I’m the coursing current.
Blaze’s en-suite isn’t quite luxury, but it’s big enough, and the shower stall is indeed large enough for two. I sit on the toilet while River turns the water on.
When the droplets first hit the tile, they drown out my heart.
Not for long, though.
“I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this,” I say.
“We know,” Asch says, setting his phone and the pile of clothes down on the bathroom counter. He goes to me, kissing me gently on the lips, before pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it to the floor. “None of us did. But it’ll…” His voice catches before he steadies it. “It’ll be okay.”
River undresses, too, and steps into the stall before offering his hand to me. “C’mon,” he coaxes.
I take his hand and step into the shower stall. The water is already the perfect temperature.
I bow my head and let the water pour over me.
It’ll be okay?
No.
It won’t.
I ruined it again.
I wrap River’s chest hair around a finger and pull on it. “I don’t feel better yet, River.”
River wraps his arms around me, squeezing me tight. “I know.”
Asch grabs a few washcloths from beneath the sink and passes one to River before he wets one of them and soaps it up. “Here, take a step back, River,” he says. “You bathe. I’ll take care of Pandora.”
River shoots him a glare, but he reluctantly steps back so he can start to get clean.
“Blaze is going to be fine,” Asch says, but I’m not sure if he’s trying to convince me or himself. “And the people who died… No one’s going to miss them.”
“I definitely won’t,” I mutter. “But…” Shit.
Anastasia, and Reaper, and Fenrir.
Ares, and Kratos.
Mel.
“Did the others get out?” I ask. “Mel?”
River nods. “Yeah. The building collapse didn’t get that many people. Anastasia and Reaper’s crew evacuated most of them, and the blast was concentrated in the back, where… where we were.”
Oh.
I start to laugh, and then I sob, and it’s full-on crying like I’m a pathetic child.
I didn’t get my family killed.
If I had, I bet Papa would have taken me out himself.
I’m still covered in soap, but Asch pulls me half out of the shower stall and crushes me against his chest anyway. “Shh, shh, it’s okay,” he murmurs. “Everyone’s safe. Everyone’s alive. Except Allers, and George Bouchard, and… and Ezio Romano, and no one gives a fuck about them anyway.”
We’re making a mess, water spilling out onto the floor, but no one seems to care about that, either.
“I don’t want a heart,” I tell Asch. “It sucks. It hurts. I don’t like this at all.”
“I know,” Asch says. His body is slick with soap against mine, and he nudges me back into the shower stall even as he takes a step closer. “But you’ll get used to it. They hurt sometimes, but they can be full in a good way, too. Like when I see you smile.”
River touches my shoulder. “We’ll help you, Pandora,” he says quietly. “Just… don’t scare us like that again.”
I lift my head and give him a broken smile. “River, that’s a stupidly big ask. I can barely go a single day without scaring somebody.”
Asch lets River pull me away from him, and he somehow manages to squeeze into the two-person stall with us.
“Yeah, well,” River says. “Let’s try to do it a little less, okay? Now lean back. I’m going to wash your hair.”
I let River get my hair fully soaked, and he and Asch take turns shampooing and conditioning my hair.
My eyes are wet the entire time, but that’s probably from the shower water.
Lies.
I know it’s tears.