That was more than a year ago.

He had fallen hard and fast.

She had not been of any help, either. She had wanted him, too.

At the end of the night they first danced, she had taken his hand and led him to the darkened, empty backstage area of the auditorium, and kissed him.

He had kissed her back, among other things. He had tried to find his way through their sweaty clothing and bodies, her scent of cologne, something fruity and warm, undeniably overpowering his reason and control. She had tasted of something fruity and warm, too, all of her.

Since then, he had been unable to distance himself or stop thinking about her, no matter how hard he'd tried.

She had been his first, in so many ways.

Nobody knew anything about what went on between them. It had been a perfectly hidden secret, until the time Lexie, Jerann's best friend, had seen them kissing in an empty classroom before the citywide football championship last year.

But whatever Lexie saw was never mentioned. She was, after all, a journalist who respected privacy above everything else.

"The first time I saw you, you were practicing alone in the field," Jerann was now saying. "You never missed a shot at the goal. You were wearing this exact same shirt. It was kind of new then."

He smiled in the darkness. Only very few had seen him smile.

She felt the slight chuckle rumbling through his chest. "What the hell are you so amused about?"

"You." He pulled her closer. Jerann's small frame fitted his bigger one snugly. "Why do you always have to be so perfect? You remember, know, and do almost everything."

Her breathing seemed to stop. It took moments before she could answer. "I was raised to be like that, as an only child. No one could make up for my mistakes, if I was stupid enough to make them. That was my first lesson in life."

She paused, as if gathering momentum. "When I was little, they had my tutor slap my hands with a stick when I couldn't spell a word correctly. Or sometimes they wouldn't let me have dinner unless I could recite an entire declamation speech without any mistakes. I got good at all of it. Then better. By the time I was eight, there was no more need for such discipline. I delivered everything they wanted."

The words had a bitter edge. He could taste them in his own heart. If there was someone who understood, only too well, how it was like to rise to the nearly impossible expectations and demands of their family, it was him.

"It gets exhausting. I'm doing a great job at it, though. There are so many people expecting so many things. I had to do all those things. I feel guilty when I couldn't. Sometimes it's like digging your own grave. But you feel the need to do it anyway." Her voice sounded raspy and strained. "At some point, the need becomes a want. It becomes a part of you, killing you like some kind of cancer."

The first few raindrops fell. He felt them on his arm. Then he realized they weren't from the sky. The droplets were her tears. In all the time he had known Jerann, this was the first time he had seen her cry.

Something bubbled inside him. It wasn't rage, but a calmer desire to kill. It was a part of him, his lifeblood. Although he had vowed to himself never to take a human life again, he would break that for her in a heartbeat. He would murder anyone in cold blood to spare her from getting hurt. But there was no one entirely responsible for that sort of torment. Just like no one had to pay for his past, except perhaps himself.

"I'm sorry..." His voice trailed off. He felt lame and helpless, as the familiar cold numbness ran the length of his spine. It was a feeling only pulling the trigger could relieve. "I shouldn't have said–"

"It's not your fault. Sometimes I just couldn't help remembering things like that." She bravely swallowed back her sobs. He gently wiped her tears away, careful so his rough skin would not scratch her face. "I had it coming. I had it coming all these years. It was only a matter of time before I burnt out."

He waited for her to calm down. She could so easily collect herself, or at least appear to have done so. He was the only one who could feel the trembling of her hands, the uneven beating of her pulse, even if she appeared perfectly composed.

She had looked like this during political debates when she ran for the student council, when after she felt as cold as ice to his touch. Everyone else had praised her composure and quick thinking, never considering the amount of control it took on her part.

"I was raised to be the best, too," he said, slowly, cautiously. "I became the best."

Jerann's tearstained face had a look that showed the struggle to comprehend his words. She said nothing, but spoke volumes with wide eyes.

He knew at that point he had to explain, to make her understand.

"When I was in high school, I was known as Cain in the underground. My father chose that name for me. I was born with a twin brother, but it seems like my cord was around his neck when we were cut out...I choked him to death in our mother's womb."

"I didn't know..." She was groping for words. "You never-"

He squeezed her hands in his, shaking his head slightly, feeling his lips turn in that slight, almost imperceptible smile he could give to no one but her.

"I'm the youngest of us four brothers, but I could outshoot all of them. I could take them all down hand to hand, too. I was faster and stronger. A lot of schools offered everything from bribes to scholarship packages to my parents so I would go their place, just so they could get all the football titles, even a national games medal."

"My father then told us that the mantle of the Eagle-Eye had to be passed down. He was almost sixty and it was about time for him to mentor the next one. All my uncles – everyone in my family - wanted me to take it. I was fourteen. The Eagle-Eye tattoo meant the world."

"That explains the eagle mark on your chest." Jerann placed her hand over his heart. "It's more than just a tattoo."

"I belong to the most powerful vigilante family in Mindanao. The Aragons have been around for more than three hundred years in the country. We were loyal to no one, except our own blood and kin and land. That's how we had roots. The Eagle-Eye is the best of the present generation. He was entrusted to carry out the most dangerous missions."

He said everything without any pride. Then again, there was nothing to be proud of.

A series of frozen frames flashed in his memory. He drew in a sharp breath at how vividly he could remember the events of five years past.

"My initiation rite was to kill a priest who had sexually abused the son of one of our workers in the corn farm. The boy was eight, a sacristan. It was three-thirty in the morning...the priest was walking to Church to prepare for the misa de gallo. I got him with one shot, right between the eyes. It was Christmas when I became the ninth-generation Eagle-Eye. That's when I got the tattoo. 'You will be Cain now,' my father said."

"There are twenty-seven others on my list; two of them were very young, like five or six years old. They were the children of a drug lord who thought he could smuggle shabu through one of the canning companies in town. They saw me shoot their father. Leave no witnesses. That was in the rules."

"You killed people." Her voice was toneless. Not angry, afraid or accusing, just clear and audible.

"I left Surallah thinking I could somehow lose that part of me. I bargained for four years to finish school so there's time to think about it. No matter how hard you try, that side of you stays right where it is. If you try to get rid of it somehow, it will eat you up alive. You could shed your skin, but not your blood. You wouldn't have the strength to survive."

He realized she had not backed away, or showed any sign of fear or disgust. Before he could say anything more, she looked straight into his eyes, unblinking. He could see the clarity in gaze behind the sheen of dried tears and the oncoming sunrise. The clarity that his pain was hers, too.

"I love you, Nick. Nothing can change that."

Nick.

His Christian name was Nicholas, but no one called him that. It was always Aragon to everybody else. Only Jerann called him by his first name.

He swallowed hard, completely mesmerized. "I should have told you. I'm so sorry-"

"There's nothing to be sorry about." Her voice rang with certainty. "You may be a killer, you may be the most feared vigilante in the whole world, but I love you for what you are. I found in you a part of myself that I thought I would never find in anyone else. Don't you know how good it feels to finally hear you talk about your past?"

She stood up and put her arms around him. She then took a step back and placed a hand on her own belly. "I love you for being the father of this child."

It took a second for him to understand what she meant by both her actions and words. When he finally did, he felt all the air leave his lungs.

He could only stare at her, speechless, as a sudden glow began to form in the pit of his stomach. It was a warmth he had known only when he met her.

When he could finally muster some kind of self-control, he said, "You are..." His voice trailed off. It was difficult to put into words.

She smiled. "Maybe six weeks now. A doctor who doesn't know my family confirmed it yesterday afternoon. That's why I had to see you. I could no longer keep this a secret." She clutched at his shoulders. Her face, so breathtakingly beautiful to him, was a study of mixed emotions. "I had to tell you."

"I'm going to be a father," he said slowly, as if tasting the word. He put his hands on her stomach, above her own. His own blood, with hers.

Father, he repeated inwardly. Not a mentor or a predecessor. A father.

She nodded. "And I'm going to have this baby. Our child."

This time, the first real drops of rain started to fall.

A droplet landed on his lips. He tasted sweetness and warmth. It bore none of the bitter taste and spilled blood of the past three hundred years. At the corner of his eye, he spied a bolt of lightning streak across the sky, followed by a muffled rumble of thunder.

By silent mutual agreement, neither of them suggested to take shelter in the nearby gazebos surrounding the campus quad.

Jerann stepped back and spread out her arms, giggling as she turned her face up to the downpour.

As he watched her spinning in the rain, he realized that he was still half-stunned by her news.

"Nick," she said, "come with me. I want to dance with you."

In that moment, his head cleared, as if someone had shone a light on the shadows of his burden. He stood up and took her hands. "I love you. We will have our child."

She smiled and stood on tiptoes, pressing her lips to his. "I would never have it any other way."

He placed her palms over his heart, on the very same spot where his body bore the Eagle-Eye mark. "That is my vow."

She reached up and touched his cheek. "For the first time in our lives, let's not be the perfect vigilante or the perfect girl. Let's do the right thing and just be us."

"Yes." He put his hand over hers and kissed her fingers. "Us," he repeated, trying the sound of the word rolling off his tongue. He realized he liked it.

The rain fell harder.

He basked in the sight of the woman who had looked him in the eye and never crumbled, even after his confession and the deaths he had brought.

Instead, she embraced him and his blood.

She was looking straight back at him, the way she had the night they first danced. The night she opened the door to his heart and, unwittingly, to his freedom from the shadows of the past.

Nicholas Aragon embraced her then.

Nothing more was said. The rain crashed around them, drenching concrete, earth, galvanized iron and their bodies.

When the sun finally rose, the thunderstorm came to an end. Only the wind was left howling, singing a dirge to the shadows as they became one with the light.

Image courtesy of Christopher Sardegna at Unsplash.com

This work is copyright 2023 Shirley Siaton. Please do not take, repost or distribute in any form without express written permission.