Dom #2
“You suck it up and deal with it because you have no choice because...well, living life is kind of what we all have to do,” Levi said with a small smile.
“But you can try to make it easier... for yourself and everyone else. Because that’s the other part of life, trying to make the parts you have to deal with easier. ”
“Is this the shit that everyone is supposed to do?”
“Supposed to? Yes. Will people always try? No. Will they always succeed? Also no. But the point of trying is to show there might still be something better out there. You just have to be willing to keep going.”
“Damn, growing up sucks.”
“In my defense, and everyone else’s, we did try to tell you not to grow up so fast,” I said.
Micah turned and gave me a dirty look. “Like I was supposed to know what that…why is that car turning around with their lights off?”
I felt a little less dramatic when Levi twisted around just as quickly as I did.
Sure enough, under the cover of the shadows between two broken streetlights, the vehicle had turned around and had its lights off.
That would have been bad enough, but the moment the driver saw we were looking, they hit the pedal and floored it toward us.
“What the…” Micah began, freezing as the large van barreled toward us.
“Fuck!” I snapped, grabbing hold of both of them as the van reached us.
I did the only thing I could do, because there was no time for all three of us to move fast enough.
Micah wasn’t all that big, and I had always been able to manhandle Levi.
Basically, all I could do was pick them up and throw them out of the way, praying at the last second that the momentum of the throw would let me move out of the way.
I took a half-faltering step to the side, realized that throwing them aside hadn’t given me momentum and had just thrown me off balance, and I could only stare at the wall of metal coming toward me.
A horrified shout that should never come out of another person’s mouth rose in the air, and I wondered who it was when the force of.
..well, a van with its pedal to the metal slammed into me.
Pain exploded throughout my entire body, and my mind flipped as my body tumbled through the air.
I wondered just how much force was necessary to send someone my size flying like a rag doll, and then I felt a new wave of agony as I slammed into something solid.
It wasn’t the ground; it was something else, but the harsh scrape of the ground came next, and I flopped down like there wasn’t a single bone in my body.
Shouting rose, and I heard the roar of what could only be gunfire. Oh God, I really hoped that was because Levi had listened when I’d chewed him out about going out unarmed. There was no way I was going to be able to help him or Micah while I was roadkill.
Darkness.
More shouting.
“Dom!” someone called, and it sounded like they were crying. “Oh God, please please please. Dom, please don’t...oh God, he’s dying.”
“Focus. Here, call 911.”
“But I—”
“Focus! Alright, look at me, this is the only way we can help him, got it? I need to keep an eye out in case they come back, you understand?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Good...and Dominic, don’t you dare fucking die on me.”
Darkness.
I woke, and there were lights. Levi was above me, his face a smear across my vision.
I could see the wetness in his eyes, but there were no tears on his dirty face.
I didn’t know what happened to my brain, but it was making me see him as some sort of infuriated devil perched over me.
His features were stretched and pointed, but it was his eyes that made me want to look away.
They burned with a hellfire that made me wish I could cross myself and hope God took mercy on whoever might be swallowed by the pits of flame in his face.
Darkness.
I swam through the darkness...or I guess I floated.
Sometimes it felt like I might be able to come back to the surface, but I was never able to breach it.
I would come close and want to reach out, knowing that above the darkness was where I could think clearly and understand more.
But every time I tried to reach out, something dragged me right back down.
Sometimes there were flashes of pain, pain like I’d never felt in my life before. There was the image of the headlights coming for me and the sensation of agony that filled every inch of my body. Sometimes I was...dreaming? Or maybe it was remembering in a weird way.
Remembering holding Levi close as he tried to comfort me and him after I’d been hurt, but right outside the door was the two of us yelling at each other in his old apartment on the day he left me.
I could hear Mom’s voice, so warm and bright, filled to the brim with joy as she tried to welcome Levi back, to show him he still had a place, but I was distracted because Levi was trying not to cry as we stood over his mother’s grave.
There were voices, sharp and full of concern, but focused and deliberate.
“Hold him so I can get this…hold him!”
“I’m trying, but he’s so damned—”
“There!”
Darkness again.
Consciousness?
Beeping, a lot of beeping, and a fuzziness around my head that I didn’t think came from being hit by a damn van...or was it a truck? But, God, the beeping was getting annoying. And there were...things, pinching me. Something was poking at my chest, and there were...other things.
“Don’t,” a firm voice commanded, and I felt something soft and warm cover...my hand? Pulling it...pushing it actually, away? “You need that.”
“Levi?” I wondered, and I didn’t know if I said it aloud. Not that I had a chance to figure out if I did or not because the darkness was coming back and I couldn’t fight it off. It was too strong, and I was left to float again, wondering if I would ever be able to live in the light again.
God, I hoped it was Levi, because that would mean he was okay, and Micah. God, please, I know I haven’t prayed in years, and I can’t remember the last time I saw the inside of a church, but please make sure both of them are okay.
No, wait...I did remember. It was my parents’ funeral.
My mom had always joked that she was an impatient Catholic; that’s why she could never go to the funerals, masses, or weddings, they just took too long.
Dad, though, he went all the time, and even if he wasn’t in town, he would find a Catholic church wherever he was to go to mass.
So it had been in a large church that they’d had their funeral.
The smell of incense was as strong to me now as it had been back then, and it was so damn thick.
It hung everywhere, and...why was Levi in the pew next to me?
His face was paler than it had ever been, even paler and more drawn than when his mom had died.
There were dark circles under his eyes that made him look like a deranged raccoon, and he was so goddamn sad, why the fuck was he so—
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “This is my fault. I should have realized you would be a target at some point. And if you’re a target, that means your family is...I’m so sorry, Dom.”
“You didn’t kill them,” I said, confused but desperate to get him to understand. “It was an accident. They happen all the time. I was so mad at God back then, you know? How could he let something like that happen? I mean, shit, both of them? Why did it have to be both?”
“My fault,” he whispered, and I couldn’t tell if he was listening to me. “But I can promise you something. Something I should have promised before, and done something about before it got to this point.”
“You don’t have to promise me anything,” I said, because what was the point of promises?
My parents had promised they would always be there for me, but all it had taken was a simple accident, and their plane had gone down, killing everyone on board, in some shitty backwoods part of the world.
And what could Levi promise? His life didn’t allow for promises.
“I promise you this, those who would hurt you or your family will die screaming,” he said with a cold savagery that threatened to freeze my insides.
He shouldn’t be here. This was my parents’ funeral.
It happened before I even knew he existed.
This was the first time I had ever felt my world turned upside down and had to realize there was no safety, and God, if he even existed, or her, for that matter, had to be cruel, uncaring, or simply powerless if something like this could happen to a kid like me.
It wasn’t like I had deserved it. Hell, it wasn’t like my parents had deserved it, but they had died anyway, hadn’t they?
Good people who had been snuffed out in a moment, and there was me, left to carry all that pain, and never knowing what to do with it all.
So I had lashed out at anything and everything, making all that pain into something that felt like strength, but that rage was just grief with a different costume on.
And—
“Three days.” A voice, familiar but too weird in how furious it sounded, he had never sounded that mad.
“Three fucking days, Levi. That’s how long I’ve had to sit around and watch my brother lie there, barely waking up, and looking like something out of a fucked up science fiction movie, and now I find out it’s your fault? ”
Milo?
I was in a hospital room...wait, of course I was, that’s where people went when they got hit by trucks.
..or vans. Well, they went to the morgue too, but I guess I was very much alive.
I couldn’t really do much, though. It felt like I was locked in my body, watching the room through a camera feed, helpless to do or say anything.
“My whole goddamn family is in danger because of you!” Milo snarled, jabbing a finger hard enough into Levi’s chest that he forced him to take a step back.
“Milo,” Eli said softly, grabbing Milo’s arm and pulling him back. “Stop, not in here.”