Dwindle

  Chapter Twenty-five: Impossibility

  I thought everything would be different for us after that, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. I was still leaving. She was still staying.

  I felt misery for the fact.

  She treated me without the caution that she had. My old, cooled vendetta with her was not her largest concern – not immediately. It couldn’t be. It was the salvation of herself that she focused on, and I knew that we would deal with our problem when the future let us.

  But I ached with thoughts of her. I hated myself for the things I’d said. For the way I’d spoken to her. I wished I had the balls to apologize. I knew I couldn’t. I was a coward.

  Paige walked in.

  “I’m an asshole,” was all I said, only to my lap.

  I couldn’t even look at Paige.

  “Come on, no you’re not,” she said softly.

  “Yes, I am,” I said back. “Everything I do. Everything I am…”

  “What happened?”

  I just shook my head. I couldn’t shake my self-loathing. And my shame.

  “She was mine,” I finally said. “She was mine, and I blew it.”

  I saw it when she dared meet my eyes. She had been mine, and after that long confession, I’d lost her.

  “What happened between you two?” Paige asked gently. “You should be spending your last nights with her.”

  “She doesn’t want it.”

  My features crumpled.

  “She wouldn’t want me anymore.”

  Paige walked in.

  “Dark,” she said sadly, like me. “What did you tell her?”

  “I…”

  It was so hard to speak.

  “Tell me this is all just a horrible dream,” I whispered softly.

  “You told her, didn’t you?”

  I said nothing.

  “I saw her – she’s crying again…Ollie…”

  “I want to take away everything that I’ve done,” I whispered to her, and we both heard my voice waver.

  Paige put a hand on my shoulder.

  “I want everything I’ve done to go away, I…I never wanted her to – to cry for me, like that I…”

  For the first time, talking about it, the burning sensation made it to my eyes, and I tried to cover my eyes with two tight fists.

  “Did you tell her?” Paige persisted.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I whispered softly. “I didn’t want to…and I – why did I?”

  “You were afraid to lose her,” Paige whispered.

  And she was right. I didn’t know how she knew this, but she was right.

  That mind doctor stuff had something to it, after all.

  “I made it about me,” I said through clenched teeth. “I made it all about me, and she was so scared, so…”

  I couldn’t continue.

  “Her name is Ellie?” Paige asked softly, with a sadder smile.

  She looked up from the book. I hadn’t bothered to change the page. I read and reread the pages over and over again, her name over and over again.

  I closed my eyes tight.

  “That’s a beautiful name, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “I think it is…very appropriate for her – Elizabeth. Ellie Fisher.”

  I felt the wetness in my eyes fall.

  “She’s going to die like the rest of them, isn't she?”

  I was almost afraid to hear the answer. I just needed to hear it. I had to hear it. Someone had to tell me. I couldn’t tell myself. I found it odd that I couldn’t get around my own barriers and yet Fisher, the Aio, could. There was a silence. I leaned forward and stared at her intensely.

  “Please – Paige, I need to hear –”

  “Yes, Ollie.”

  A tear fell down the corner of Paige’s cheek as she searched my eyes.

  “She’s going to die.”

  “But…but she’s a – an Aio!”

  I nearly begged with her, a subordinate. I was Exterior Oliver Dark, denying the truth, ignoring the light, and I was begging with an underling…Times certainly had changed me.

  “She’s designed to be stronger than everyone else – more immune – more powerful!”

  “Almost nothing can survive a nuclear bomb,” Paige whispered quietly.

  “So she’s going to die?” I asked softly. “Just like that? After all that?”

  “Ollie…”

  Paige reached out a hand to me, squeezing the tips of my fingers.

  “She probably knows…She’s not stupid…why don’t you go talk to her?”

  “I can’t,” I whispered, shaking my head, holding her hand. “I can’t talk to her…I can’t –”

  “She’ll want to hear your voice, Ollie.”

  “I told her who I was, Paige…” I rolled my head over to look at her. “I told her I was an Exterior.”

  Paige said nothing and nodded grimly, almost as if she had suspected that I was as much. I had never told her, not really. But she knew.

  “I thought you would…” she said quietly. “Eventually…”

  She squeezed my hand.

  “But she’s different. She’ll listen…”

  “I can’t, Paige…Even if I wanted to. I can’t. She’s too…” I sighed. “Good.”

  “Why don’t you just talk – show her your best?”

  “I can’t,” I said, more frustrated than anything.

  I looked at my hands and then squeezed them.

  “My best is…I don’t have a best…”

  And in that moment I wished that I did – just for her.

  “Yes, you do, Ollie,” Paige whispered comfortingly. “Never forget that.”

  She finally let go of my hand. There was a pause. She sighed.

  “Why don’t you just go to sleep?” she asked me softly. “It’ll feel better in the morning.”