Ashes

Fourteen: Of Needed Conversations

A/N: Things are calm. For now ;)

I wake up late at night, judging from the moonlight filtering through the window, confused and disoriented.

There's a fuzzy blanket over my shoulders, and Echo is slumped over her couch, fast asleep. The TV is running on an almost inaudible volume, some rerun of a show from before the earth died.

With a yawn, I pull the blanket back up to my chin and close my eyes.

Seconds later, the air fills with yelling.

I fling the blanket off and stand up with a start, sucking in a sharp gasp of pain as my back reminds me of why I can't move too fast.

They're not loud enough to wake Echo up, but I hear them all the same. With hobbling steps, I make my way out of the house and to the gravel outside, and quickly realize it's coming from Kyros' house.

With panic filling up my lungs, I half-trip, half-run to my ghost's house and push the door open. Surprisingly, it's unlocked, and the yelling is coming from upstairs. I run upstairs and narrowly avoid a vase that collides with the wall and shatters into a million pieces.

Kyros is yelling with choked tears in his eyes as he trashes the upper floor of his house. There are table and chairs strewn about in every which position, with broken glasses, vases, lightbulbs, and other breakable objects shattered everywhere.

"Kyros!" I yell, hoping to catch his attention, but he completely ignores me as he continues to lay waste to the house. Despite the repetition of his name, he continues his rampage without so much as looking at me.

"Kyros, stop it!" I scream, and a plate shatters right near my feet as he shoves a set of dishes off the nightstand.

My ghost slumps against the wall in a heap of bloodied hands and sobs, and my heart breaks with his as he buries his face into his shaking hands despite the carnage he's performed on them.

"Hey, shhh. It's okay, it's okay," I say, huddling up next to him and running my hand up and down his back as gently as I can.

"I'm here now, Ky. It's okay," I tell him, and his shoulders shake beneath my moving fingers.

The desert broke him, too. It broke him beyond what any of us could see; it took his friends away, it took his family, and it took his innocence.

"I'm here, Kyros. I'm here. It's okay," I hush him, and he buries his face into my shoulder and just cries. I never thought this would ever happen, but here we are, and before I know it, we're both curled against each other in a mess of injuries and sobs.

We don't ask each other what's wrong, and there are no questions about sanity, because the answer is all too simple: we've both lost everything. Everything but each other.

"They deserved to be here," he finally says, his voice hoarse and choked with loss.

"Kara, and Garrett. Mikhail and Thea and your mother. All of them. And they're gone because of us," he says, and I have to let out a sniffle before nodding a little. We both carry burdens of guilt on our shoulders.

"Where do we go from here?" he questions, and I can only shrug weakly. I don't know. I'm starting to think I don't deserve to go anywhere, with all the blood on my hands.

"I used to think that I was the raven king. Surrounded by darkness, but safe nonetheless. I had a kingdom, a home," he says, and I can almost feel his sorrow as I look at his broken face. He's got a crescent-shaped scar about the size of a quarter on his right cheekbone, and a stitched scar over his left eyebrow. His eyes, once the color of copper, are now blue as a crystal sky, and he's looking at me like there'll somehow be answers in my suddenly mismatched eyes.