Alienus

Chapter Fifty Seven

"Is this is how you want to repay him, after everything?" I asked Miesha.

"I just want him back..." she whispered, the tear that had been building in her eye, slipping onto her cheek, silently.

My eyes narrowed, "What are you talking about?" I asked her as my wrists throbbed from where they bled and my head throbbed. 

"I just...I want my brother." she said and it was this she held on to as her shoulders squared, her resolved strengthened and the hold she had on that gun steadied. 

"By killing me?" I asked, eyeing her weapon with eyes that I hoped looked dubious, than the frantic and desperate that I truly was.  

Would she fire it? Did she have it in her? 

I hope I never had to find out.

"By doing what needs to be done to pay the price that will save a loved one." she said, her english no longer rough around the edges, but much much better than before. She was enunciating almost perfectly, the only thing giving her away was the slight presence of an 'accent', as I'd like to call it, almost as a residue of having spoken the C'Riel tongue all this while. But my brain seemed to acclimate better to the way she spoke than before, because some part of it recognised the C'Riel way of talking. It's funny how the brain goes about searching for something familiar, something to hold on to, something to make itself feel better, in situations that often don't require them. Or was this a situation that required it most? While I was made to pay the price of someone else's need.

"And Rafe? What about him?" I asked, my eyes narrowing, "Do you know he bears a wound for you?" 

I watched her jaw clench, "I did not ask him to." she said simply. 

I nodded my head, agreeing, because she was right. But she was also wrong. 

"That's the thing about him, you need not ask him. He would do it anyway." I said, my eyes locking on hers, not letting her look away. The least I deserved was to be looked in the eye when she was telling me that everything that my ethrés had done for her meant nothing to her. 

Her gun shook again and she closed her eyes as another tear slipped free. My eyes narrowed a little, waiting for her to open it. 

"And you would repay the kindness of a seven year old with a gun to the face of his ethrés?" I asked, leaning forward in my anger, forgetting that any movement caused the digging of the metal binding my hands together further into my skin. I gritted my teeth against the pain, leaving my eyes locked on the woman before me. 

"You are no ethrés of his." she said, her teeth gritted. 

I leaned back, laughing, wincing when the stupid metal cut deeper into my skin, blood slipping easier down my fingers and onto the floor. I could hear the almost silent drip drip of my blood onto the floor. 

"You would say that, wouldn't you?" I said, "Gosh, he speaks of you with so much affection, you are tarnishing it wit-" 

"You cannot move me with your lies!" she said, "Humans do not possess-" 

"Fine. Don't believe me, but what possible reason does he have to lie about this?" I asked, raising my voice above hers to be heard. 

"I do not know what you have done to make him lie for you-" 

"We went to register ourselves today! Would we do that if we weren't really-"

"They were made to accept your claim only so that you could be captured!" she said, gesturing at me fiercely with her gun.