"Come at me"

I take a sharp intake of breath and run at her with all I have. For a minute I see the body of a girl I once cared about, and for a minute I think I'm about to stab her for real, until suddenly I am flipped over and the knife is knocked out of my hand.

When I look up at Ariah, I am relieved to see her face and relieved to find that the knife is a long ways away.

I kick her off of me and do my best to look unphased by this whole experience.

"Damn you're kinda scary, you know that?"

"Not too scared to continue are you?"

I laugh at this statement. "Of course not.'

"Then why are you running away?"

"Nature calls."

*

I stand in front of the mirror at the sinks and splash some cold water on my face to snap myself out of it.

I look down at my hands. They're shaking. Goddammit this can't happen now of all times. I need to stop thinking about the past.

After taking a few minutes to compose myself, I get ready to walk back out into the clearing, as vibrant, radiant and as handsome as ever.

However, as I'm making my way out, I hear the scuffle of footsteps move away from the room. Was someone spying on me? It could've been Milo as we share this room with the ensuite bathroom but why would he run away? Was it maybe Imogen, who just cares about me, or Casey, the sneaky snake?

Well whoever has spying on me took time out of their day to do it, I'm not gonna stop them. I can find out who it is later.

*

The rest of the day goes fairly smoothly. After learning how to disarm someone with a knife, I learn how to aim at a target with a knife as well, which I'm worse at than aiming with a gun, and that's saying something. My shaking hands doesn't help me whatsoever. After it goes completely dark, both me and Ariah give up for the day.

Imogen, being the caring leader she is of us 'Angels of Death', decides to ask "So how did the rest of his training go?"

"He can fight well, but he can't aim to save his life."

Of course, everyone laughs at me just like Ariah did. This doesn't really affect me because "I can still kick everyone's asses you know."

Everyone stops and looks at me, just now realising that I'm right. After all, I did just kick Ariah's ass this morning, and she's the best fighter here.

"But its not like you would actually do that, right?" Theo asks with a hint of fear lacing his voice.

I smile at them and grab an apple as I'm leaving. "You tell me. Would I?"

I walk out of the room, leaving the group to question everything they've ever known, and as I pause for a minute I can hear Ariah saying "Look who's being scary now."

I smirk once more. Mission accomplished.

*

The next morning I'm up early. I got to sleep quite early; although I'm curious to find out who was sneaking around it doesn't really bother me too much. I don't blame them for wanting to find out more about me, I am amazing after all.

I decide to practise my knife throwing while I'm up, I have nothing else to do. I hate using a knife, but I need to get used to it, and using a gun will make noise and wake everyone up.

A kitchen knife does it. As long as its sharp. I take a bunch outside and sit on a log, trying to get used to the feeling of holding it. I try everything, I shift the hand I'm holding it on, spin it around, I even try just staring at it.

But nothing works. I can't stop my hands from shaking. I can't stop the memories from replaying over and over. I can't stop thinking about how I once killed someone with this weapon in my hand. How I killed the girl I said I loved.

That's it. I can't do it. I throw the knife away from me, not caring where it goes, and bury my face it my hands.

"Hey Benjyyyyyyy, are ya here?"

Crap, its Imogen. I take my face out my hands and lean on them instead. Just play it cool and you'll be fine Benjamin.

"Oh here you are! I was wondering where you were!" She sees the knives sitting on the floor beside me. "Oh were you trying to improve your terrible aim? Any luck?"

"Nope. I'm hopeless"

"I'm sure with practise you'll be fine. Here, lemme see how you throw your knives."

Oh no, why does she have to be so nice. Now I have to show her.

I stand up and pick up one of the knives, my hands still shaking, then I hold it as if to throw it. Before I can even think about letting it go, Imogen stops me.

She sighs. "This is why I don't like Ariah to teach the newcomers. Sure, it's great that she can do these things, but she can't teach other people to save her life. First off, you cant throw a knife if you're scared of holding it. Steady your hand. Secondly, you're holding it wrong."

She comes up to me and moves my hand to a different position. Strangely enough, with her touch, my hands stop shaking. I don't what it is about her, but whenever I'm scared, she always calms me. Her touch helps me to concentrate more too.

"Okay, that's better. Now move your elbow back a bit and bend your arm. Now as you move it forward release the knife."

When I watch the knife fly it's like it's going in slow motion. Don't ask me why, but I'm scared to see where it'll end up. Without meaning to, I close my eyes.

After a few moments Imogen speaks up and says softly "Hey Benjy you can open your eyes now."

My eyes open and to my surprise the knife is pretty close to the middle of the target. Not perfect, but its definitely better.

"See, how hard was that?"

"Extremely hard."

"You think you could do that again without my guidance?"

"Definitely not."

Imogen takes a brief pause to think before continuing. "Ya know, Zara was like that with guns when she first learned to use them. But over time, her hands stopped shaking whenever tried to hold one, and now she's great at shootings guns. That can happen to you too."

"I can't see it happening."

I turn to walk away from her but she spins me right back around.

"Benjy, stop being so cold. I can see you're hurting inside, you don't need to hide it."

She grabs my hands.

"Don't worry, I promise we'll get through this, together."

This is kinda very forced and its 03:18AM but eyyyyyy after like a month and a half I finally wrote a chapter. I didn't mean for this chapter to go this way and get all deep but there ya go. But can u see where this book is going?