Richard watched as Lyon approached with two soup bowls perched on a tray, Callum close behind.
Richard focused his eyes on the stranger. He had yet to hear Callum say anything, but he'd watched Lyon exchange a few words with the man. Then the weird way they'd looked at each other by the soup bowls. Lyon looked almost as if he had been caught in a trance and had been leaning in closer to Callum, just as the newcomer had leaned toward him.
Richard felt greatly unsettled by the exchange, but also slightly curious. Unsettled in that they knew nothing of these two people. Curious because--
He quickly shook his head, chasing away the ridiculous notion. Nothing was going to happen between the two of them.
Maybell glanced at Richard, then followed his line of sight. "Ah, Lyon!" she called. "I see they still had some soup left."
"Yep, and it's still warm, too," Lyon said, placing a bowl down in front of Robert. "Eat up. It's good stuff."
Robert nodded gratefully to Lyon and tucked into the food, taking care to eat politely, despite nobody else in the dining room using any sort of manners. Richard cocked his head to the side, both curious and suspicious at the same time, as to why Robert should worry about his manners.
Glancing at Callum, his suspicion only increases, as Callum had followed suit and was eating his soup with all the grace one could use when not in possession of eating utensils.
"You don't need to use manners here," Lyon laughs. "Nobody will judge you if you don't use them." Lyon hadn't touched his own soup.
With a scowl, Richard shoves away from the wall and strides up to him.
Lyon looks up. "What is it, Richard?"
He slides the bowl of soup in front of the raven-haired boy. "Eat, Lyon."
"I'll eat when I'm hungry," Lyon responds, pursing his lips at Richard.
"No, you'll eat now." Richard's face sets into a determined expression. "I know you've been skipping meals for the last few days. You need to keep your strength up or you'll keel over."
Lyon mutters a string of curses under his breath as the table explodes with questions.
"You haven't been eating?" Shion exclaims, staring open-mouthed at Lyon. "You need to eat! I don't care what's been happening, but you really need to eat."
"Why haven't you been eating, Lyon?" Maybell asks. "You shouldn't be skipping meals. It will only make you sick."
"Thanks a lot, Richard," Lyon mumbles, tugging on the long sleeves of his black, floor-length jacket uncomfortably.
"Just shut up and eat your food, idiot." Richard picks up the bowl and presses it to Lyon's lips, forcing him to gulp it down. Choking, Lyon struggles to push him away, but fails in doing so.
Richard had been watching Lyon at each meal. He’d noticed that Lyon had just pushed the food around on his place many times, only take a few bites, and then pass the rest of it off to some kids playing hide-and-seek under the tables at every meal. He refused to let Lyon keep doing it, seeing the teen’s face grow slightly more sickly every time.
And it wasn’t just Lyon’s lack of appetite that had caught his attention.
* * * * *
In the Night Branch of the caverns, where most of the cave’s population slept, their sleeping quarters were right next to each other. Often in the middle of the night, Richard would hear a low whine slip into his own bedcavern and interrupt his sleep. He would drag himself off his mattress and find himself lifting the blanket covering the entrance to Lyon’s bedcavern. Each time, he’d tip-toe to Lyon’s sleeping form, and discover the teen to be shaking and covered in sweat. Lyon would whimper and Richard would take the boy’s hand in his own, and, using his other hand, take the washcloth he’d taken from his washbasin and blot the sweat away from Lyon’s forehead.
The boy had been having nightmares every night for the past seven years. On the first night, when they first arrived in the caverns, Richard had attempted to wake him, but no matter how hard he’d tried, Lyon wouldn’t wake up.
“Richard.”
He’d whipped around, his body strung with panic and tears falling down his cheeks. When they’d first arrived, instead of having bedcaverns, they’d used camping tents of varying sizes for sleeping, and in the entrance to the blue one he shared with Lyon stood Suoh and Tom.
“Richard, don’t.” Suoh strode quietly to kneel beside the then young Richard, who was barely 13 at the time. “It is bad luck to interrupt dreams, not to mention it is impossible to interrupt these Dreams.”
“But Suoh--!” Richard cried. Suoh interrupted him by placing a finger to his own lips.
“No need to shout.” Suoh gave a small smile. “Trust me. The best thing we can do for people having Dreams is this.” Suoh then proceeded to wet a washcloth in a small, cracked, ceramic bowl and dabbed it across Lyon’s face, wiping the sweat away.
As Richard watched, to his surprise, Lyon’s breathing turned from desperate pants to slow breaths, though his face still contorted in a troubled mask.
After a few minutes, Lyon’s face had relaxed and he now slept peacefully. Suoh stood.
“C’mon, kiddo,” Tom called softly to Richard. “Let’s leave the kid to sleep.”
The boy hesitated, but soon stood and followed the two masters from the tent, but not before turning to glance back at the sleeping form. Lyon had turned on his side, the tousled black hair atop his head spilling across his pillow.
That thing is the wrong size for a child to wear, Richard thought as he caught a glimpse of red peeking from between the strands that fell across Lyon's face.
* * * * *
A small, warm hand falls gently on Richard's arm, pulling him from the memory.
"Richard stop, you're drowning him," Maybell said.
He looks down at Lyon's face. His aquamarine eyes were bulging and the color of his skin was turning a dark shade of blue.
Richard quickly pulls the bowl away and Lyon begins gagging.
"New--" Lyon breaks off into a coughing fit again, but it doesn't erase his half-smile. "Technique--to kill me?"
"Finish that soup or I really will drown you with it," he responds, sitting down next to Maybell.
"Yes sir," Lyon said, picking up the bowl.
"Can't you be nicer to him?" Maybell whispers behind her hand to Richard. "He is your brother, after all."
His eyes focus on her lips, remembering when they'd first met, six years prior. He'd been much more clumsy and was majorly shy. He had moved forward nervously to say hello, tripped over his own feet, and crashed into her, knocking them both over. When he'd opened his eyes, he'd found his lips crushed to hers. She'd been mildly shocked by the sudden first kiss, but Richard had flipped out and apologized to her for weeks whenever he saw her.
Lyon even made fun of him for it every chance he got. Out of nowhere, he'd start talking about it: "Hey Richard, remember that time you tripped and assaulted May's lips?" He even went so far as to mimic Richard's embarrassed reaction to it, and every time, Lyon would dissolve into fits of laughter as he ran away from Richard's swinging sword.
It still embarrassed him to this day, and ever since, his crush blossomed into love. He still had yet to tell her, of course.
Blood rises to his cheeks and he looks away, right into Lyon's eyes. Lyon waggles his eyebrows at Richard over the soup bowl he holds to his lips, clearly knowing exactly what Richard had been thinking about. His eyes were glittering with barely controlled laughter and Richard had the sudden urge to reach across the table and dunk those mischievous aquamarine eyes into the steaming soup.
Richard glares back at Lyon. Brother...Hmph. Right.
Maybell glances between the two having a staring contest across the table from one another. "Are you guys fighting?"
Richard was quiet for a moment longer. "Sort of. It's kind of complicated."
"Alright. I won't pry then." Maybell takes his hand and starts playing with his fingers. She rests her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. Which was a good thing because Richard could feel the blood rising to his cheeks and knew his entire face was turning scarlet.
There was a splutter and a choking sound across the table and he glanced up just in time to watch Lyon fall off the back of his bench. Richard knew Lyon had made the mistake of laughing when trying to swallow some shredded chicken in his soup, and was now paying for his error.
Shion turned to look at the boy now sprawled on the hard ground. "Geez, Lyon. What's with you today?"
"I'm ok," Lyon said, his face contorted in such a way that Richard could tell he was trying not to laugh at his bright red face. "Just got a little carried away is all."
Why am I related to somebody so crazy? Richard sighed inwardly.
Lyon quickly brushed himself off and sat back on the bench. Robert was looking at him with a concerned expression.
"Are you sure you're ok?" he asks. "That looked quite painful."
Richard didn't hear Lyon's response, focusing instead on something away from the table. A tall man was approaching, flanked on either side by a woman and another man.
The three were artists, if Richard's memory was correct, before the mass genocide seven years ago. Yumar, the man in front, had been a sculptor. Behind him were Allen and Herma, both painters.
Their attention was focused on Callum and Robert. None of them looked like they were part of a welcoming party, but Yumar in particular, worried Richard. He knew Lyon was definitely not gonna be happy when Yumar came closer.
He watched as they drew closer, leaning towards Lyon. "Don't look now, but I think we're gonna have some trouble."
Lyon turned and Richard knew the moment he spotted them. Lyon's eyes turned to steel, rage evident in his features. He stood up, facing the three.
Richard cursed. "Calm down, Ly."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I heard Richard tell me to calm down, but I was already tensed up. I clenched my fists and pressed them to the table. My muscles were wound tighter than the bandages around my wrists, my instincts to fight kicking in.
I had never hated anyone, not even the creatures that took over our world, as much as the man walking towards me. He was rude, self-absorbed, and proud of it. Everything about him, from his dark, greasy hair, to his sleazy face, all the way to his bare, grime-covered feet, reminded me of the sticky toxin that used to spill from oil riggers in the ocean, killing anything that came too close. No, 'hate' wasn't the right word for how I felt about this scum bucket. I despised him.
"Whatever it is, Yumar," I spoke through clenched teeth. "The answer is no. Now go drool over some rock formations."
Richard hissed. "Oi, Ly--"
"Shut up," I growled back. Each step Yumar took, I dug my nails deeper into my palms, ignoring the pain that slowly blossomed throughout them.
"Oh, but rocks don't make nearly as good sculptures," he replies, his usual insane smile plastered to his face.
"Neither do living creatures." My words fly at him like a barbed spear, but he remains unaffected by them.
"It was just a rabbit," he grins. I badly want to sock him in the face. "Nothing to get worked up over. There's millions in the world."
"There were millions," I snarl in a low voice. "There hasn't been for seven years now."
"You're just upset that it was a baby."
The raw image of what he'd done flashed through my mind once more. The poor creature's corpse had been mangled, dismantled, and placed in Yumar's grotesque form of what he calls 'art.' Its back legs had been sliced from the rest of its body and glued haphazardly where its ears had been. The rest of its body had been so drastically destroyed and soaked in blood, I couldn't tell which body part had been which any more.
Arranged around the carnage, crystals and flowers from the underground fields had been placed in a disgustingly beautiful way that had made me want to hurl. And when the coppery tang of blood had filled my nostrils, I really did wretch. I could not quit crying for days after seeing it and had even been confined to my bedcavern after falling ill from the sight. It hadn’t been the first time he’d done something like that, but it had been the most horrifying one he’d ever made, and I would make sure he never did it again. I could not and would not forgive him for what he'd done.
Pushing down the memory and my returning nausea, I felt the skin on my palms tear under the pressure from my nails, making my hands feel wet and sticky. I heard Callum's sharp intake of breath next to Richard, but I didn't look down.
"I'm upset because it was a living creature and that what you did to it is unforgivable." I was glaring enough to burn holes through his head, but he wasn't listening. Instead he was focusing on Leo (who was laying alongside Mai) and the look in his eyes was despicable.
"Hm...That leopard of yours is no longer a cub. Maybe he should be my next--"
I didn't let him finish. I was grabbing his shirt and pulling him down to meet me in the eyes before he could so much as blink.
"You so much as look at him funny again," I growl in a low, deadly voice. "And I will gut you like the squealing pig you are."
For emphasis, I held one of the daggers from my wrist sheaths barely a millimeter from his stomach. I could see a bead of sweat roll down his forehead. He glanced towards my eyes, then quickly away. Whatever he saw in them, frightened him more than any Nightwalker could ever hope to accomplish.
"I won't touch him," he murmured. "You have my word."
I didn't believe him, but I sheathed the dagger and let go of his now severely wrinkled shirt. There was a large, dark stain where I'd grabbed, and I stared at it in puzzlement. I dropped my hands to my sides and stepped back from Yumar, realizing how close in proximity I was to his foul stench.
"What do you want, anyways?" I ask, watching him warily.
"I want to ask our 'guests' a question."
I stiffen. "You're not allowed to ask them questions."
"It's a simple question," he said, his smirk returning. Before I could reconsider about not punching him I turned back to the table. "The question I want the answer to is this: is there still color on the surface world?"
Because I'd turned back to the table, only Richard, Robert, and Callum saw the look on my face. I froze at the word 'color,' staring at the table in front of me. I felt a dark expression creep across my face. I caught a glimpse of Callum's eyes before I hid my own behind my hair. I silently thanked Callum and Robert in my head for not answering his question, before my mind turned to ice. My lips formed a thin line, teeth clenching behind them.
"Color," I hiss through my teeth. "What a ridiculous notion. Why do you care about if there is any?"
"Nobody wants to see color more than an artist," Yumar responds. "Color is my inspiration. Especially red, like the blood of that rabbit."
Without warning, the section of the table that rest beneath my closed fist collapsed in on itself, forming a small crater. Richard stared at it in shock, Robert in amazement, while Callum's eyes remained focused on my face. I straighten up, still not facing Yumar.
"Don't make me laugh," I said, lips curving. "I knew someone who wanted to see color more than anybody, and she wasn't an artist."
"Who was it?" Yumar asked, sounding almost annoyed.
"You don't deserve to know." I say, shocking him as I turn to face him with an infinitely sad expression. "All you need to know, is that she was the most important thing in the world to me, but nobody even remembers her." I turn away from him and gesture to the group sitting at the table. "Come on, you guys."
I walk away from Yumar and his groupies, the five from the table following close behind me. We walked into the Big Room and I didn't stop until we were halfway across it.
"Sorry about that," I say, turning to look at them.
"You should be." A voice from behind them says. Angel. "Everyone in the Dining Hall was focused on your little episode there. They all thought a fight was about to break out. Liam was about ready to smash your head into the counters. What the hell happened back there?"
Richard whispers in her ear. She looks back at me when he finishes. "You can't tell me? And why not?"
"It's our problem," I respond. "Mine and Richard's. It doesn't involve anybody else, so please don't ask anymore."
"Fine," she said, throwing her hands up in the air. "But you will tell me in the future."
I nod. "When I feel it's necessary."
We stood staring at each other, a battle of wills raging between us. Callum clears his throat.
"I really do hate to interrupt, but his hands need tending to." He nods toward me.
"Huh?" I say, confused. I lift my hands and examine the palms. I stare at the dark liquid coated over them, trying to figure out what it could be. I remember the dark stain left on Yumar's shirt and wondering what it was.
"Good God, what did you do?" Angel gasps, hurrying over to look at them.
I look up at Richard helplessly, searching for an answer as to what I was looking at. His lips formed one word.
Blood.
"Oops," I mumble, looking back down at them. I could just make out four small crescent shaped cuts in each of my palms, all bleeding non-stop.
"'Oops' is an understatement," Angel said, tilting them this way and that, trying to get good light. "You're gonna need bandages wrapped around them for a few days, plus you'll need to clean them out regularly to prevent infection."
"Angelique--"
"Don't you 'Angelique' me." She took a hold of my wrist. "We need to wash it out now and stop the bleeding."
"I have to show Callum and Robert around--" I try to get out of it, but she refuses to let me.
"I'm sure Richard, Maybell, and Shion can take care of it until we get you fixed up."
"Damn it." I knew it was no use. "Fine. Don't let anyone ask them questions, guys. They're exempt from having to answer any."
"Yeah, yeah," Richard said, waving me away. "Now go before your hands fall off."
I sneak a quick glance at Callum. He was watching me, and our eyes met. His eyes were just as beautiful as they had been before, in the Dining Hall. From this distance, I couldn't clearly see the silver sunbursts around the pupils, but I knew they were there, brightening the outer cobalt of the irises.
I could've stared into his eyes forever, but just then, Angel pulled me around a corner and the cave wall obscured my view.
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