"the last day of pompeii" oil painting by Karl Briullov, 1830

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H A Y D E N
....

"I've been in foster care almost my whole life," I whispered. There was a sharp edge to my voice as I struggled with what to say next. "Fuck, I don't even know where to begin... but I guess I need to explain it all; it's so all interwoven anyway."

Alys gazed at me quietly, carefully watching my face as I forced the words out.

"My uncle and my father come from old money; I think back in WWII some great-great-grandfather invested in the right companies. Either way, the family line was set. It probably doesn't surprise you considering my Uncle went to Harvard and was once a lawyer from Graydon Gates. As the second son he was free to do whatever he wanted, but his brother; my father, took over their father's mantle to the estate and share holds."

I wanted to laugh bitterly at the thought but held my tongue tightly in my mouth. Alys stared at me unsure, her nervous eyes darting back and forth between mine. My knuckles clenched tighter as I stared into those depths. I wanted her to know. But I didn't want her to understand; there was nothing to understand- the words I would speak would only reveal me for the truth of what I was. Of why I was a monster.

Even still, for some reason.... I still wanted her to know.

"I suppose it's my blood." I laughed angrily.

"What is?"

I shook my head slightly, ridding the internal joke. "My mother, as dear and sweet as she likes to pretend to be- is nothing more than a selfish druggie who only got pregnant with me to tie down someone with money."

Alys' brows creased together uncomfortably. "Is that what your father told you?"

"My father?" I looked at her incredulous, "He had no idea I even existed until I was six."

"But if she used you for his mo-"

"I'm afraid my mother used more than one guy," I cut her off abruptly. This wasn't something I liked talking about, nor cared to even remember. "She was a druggie with a pretty face. She clawed her way into a few lives but cared for nobody; she only wanted more cash to fuel her luxuries and intoxicated tastes. After I was born she was too fucked up to get her facts in order and decide who my father was. I think she probably knew... I shared many similar features, but she was in no shape to demand that money. She held off hard drugs while pregnant with me, but once I was born she couldn't last long enough to make her case to the State for the money."

"My first memories of her are disturbing; eyes blackened, crooked teeth smiling as she wailed nonsense; puking and passing out in the middle of room or while driving the car. When I was just about three years old, she was arrested for having left me alone in a car for an entire night. When they found how she had been taking care of me, the deplorable house we lived in, she was arrested and I sent to the State."

I stared down at my hands, determined to keep a tight restraint on them; refusing to let them take over my emotions and control.

"The sobrieties of jail gave her enough clarity and lucidity to finally realize she had yet to sue my father. I don't think she realized it had been three years- I think, in her drug induced haze, she thought that I was still a baby. She filed for the support for her baby, which confused that State at first as I was three, and belligerently harassed them to contact the man who was my father."

"They wouldn't though. Come to find out she had no legal grounds to file child support anymore, and I don't think they believed her when she said who my father was.   She had lost all custody of me after she was charged and prosecuted under State law for child endangerment and a few drug felonies. I wouldn't hear from her again until I was five- and even then it was only because she wanted to use me for money."

I slid my head into my hands and tried to compose my breathing. I didn't want this- I didn't want to have to relive this. I could see her there so easily, so painfully; my mother's pretty face telling me that she always loved me, telling me it was the State who took me away. They were the monsters that did this to us; they were the ones who had ruined our lives. I had believed her in the beginning. With her guided whispers I had tried to run away to be back with her. But whenever I did... she would plead with me- asking why I never brought the money from the nice fancy Foster Homes I stayed with. Another shudder moved throughout my limbs. Something soft touched my knuckles.

I broke away from my grasp and stared at Alys. She had scooted a little closer at my sudden silence but now paused as I was staring at her. Those thin fingers moved more firmly across my skin and she pulled my hands away from my face.

"You don't have to do this, Hayden. I'm sorry for asking, but please- you don't have to do this."

I gazed high and low across her features. Her blue eyes took me in, decisively calculating my emotions and movements. Her blonde hair was spilling down her shoulders and towards her waist- I hadn't realized how long it was until that moment.

I reached forth and grasped a loose flowing tress, turning it idling in my hands. A small tint of red dusted her cheeks and I watched it greedily. She would have never done that before when I had first met her. Just as I had already told her, I had known there was something off about her- something not quite right. But it wasn't as simple as how her hands shook and fingers trembled. It was her. She wasn't there; she was nothing more than a background image- refusing to be found. The only thing I could feel from her was hatred. It was so easy to whisper the words of revenge and watch how it took ahold of her eyes. But nothing else lived inside of her. It didn't bother me then. Not until that night at dinner with her mother... not until she held my gaze and shattered my every assumption about her.

Ever since then I had been reeling from those words; in the hurricane of all because of what she had said to me. Those words ricocheting through my head.

And now before me were expressions never seen. And I wanted them all.

I swallowed roughly and found the concentration to continue, despite her offer to stop. "I don't know the details. I don't know what happened outside of my own walls-but somehow my dad got wind of my presence. One day I was called in from the school yard and there he was- just standing there staring at me. He looked like me, though I didn't realize who he was."

"He sat there and talked with me for a while. He asked questions about my mother and how many times I had seen her. He asked questions of simple hobbies and who my friends were and what the foster families were like. The whole while he spoke, those grey eyes patiently watched me. He never once talked about himself; he seemed to be pondering only me as he engaged me. Finally, after talking with him for an hour, he quietly rose and left. I remember watching his form through the windows- unsure of why he had come and wondering if I would ever see him again...

And I never did."

I smiled tightly at those last words. What a fuck fest. I shook my head, laughing more to myself at how this all came to be. He had been right there, so close, but I had never even known who he was. My eyes found Alys' face again, expecting to see her pity as Kinsley had once looked upon me with... but to my surprise she was glaring at me. I leaned back startled.

"Do this." she commanded point blank, stretching her lips aside to make the most stupid and challenged looking grin I've ever seen. It was only worsened by the dead seriousness of her eyes.

"What." I asked dumfounded. "Are. You. Doing."

"I said do this." she said again, this time reaching forth and pinching my face somewhat. I fought her in agitation, but yet having her touch my face again felt good. I grasped her wrists to pull her away, noting her eyes narrowed slightly. She pulled back her hands and slunk one into her blankets wordlessly. I looked down unsure of what she was hiding, but finally realized she was still shooting me dirty looks of impatience. I flashed my teeth at her again, giving her my dreadfully handsome smile that I knew she hated. "Can't resist my charms, huh?" My lips worded amused.

But instead of a flush of color as I was expecting, a spark of challenge flashed through her eyes and before I had time to react she sprung at me. Her force and momentum knocked us backwards and I fell square on my back onto the floor- Alys painfully on top of me. She recovered faster than I did, and once again smiled like a maniac as she tried to get me to mimic her face. I fought her blasted fingers, cursing at her from under my breath but she was surprisingly stronger than I was expecting. She forced me to smile a little wider, and again I growled in frustration before snagging her wrists and finally pulling her hands off me again. My jaw line and skin hurt from her prodding, and judging by the gleam in her eyes, she didn't regret it. The little shit.

She resisted me, of course, pushing her arms forward even more; fingers dangerously close to skimming my skin again. Alys breathed tauntingly at me, "What's the matter Hayden? You're not smiling anymore." My hands tightened in their struggle to hold her at bay.

"Because it hurts, you rabid little shit." I snarled softy at her, finally deciding just to lift her entirely into the air and off of me. But instead of struggling more, those blue eyes seemed to cool softly above me. I felt the tendons and muscles in her body relax within my grasp.

"Exactly." she whispered gently above me, and my brows creased together in confusion.

"Don't smile at me... if it hurts," she whispered again, "Don't smile at me unless you really mean it."

My body froze watching her, realizing what she had been doing.

Jesus.

....Don't smile at me if it hurts...

What was I doing? Why wouldn't the ricochet stop?

....I won't draw your suffering. I won't capture your burden. I have no right....

...Even if I hate you...

I couldn't stop myself.

"Please don't hate me," my roughened voice broke suddenly. In an instant I leaned forward with her still on top of me. Her eyes widened in time to realize what I was doing, but I didn't care. My lips covered hers quickly, my heartbeat destroying itself in my chest. Her gasp broke through against my lips and I claimed the opening it provide greedily, letting go of her wrists and sliding my fingers through her hair.

Alys squirmed for a second underneath me, her warm lips still pressed tightly against mine, and I opened my eyes realizing what I was doing. But she wasn't fighting me. Her eyes were pressed closed but her hands had risen up my back. I felt those devastating fingers slide along my shoulders and to my neck, and a shudder broke through me suddenly.

I pulled her away at that. No. Don't lose control. You have to tell her.

"I'm sorry." I forced roughly, struggling to keep my hands pressed into the floor boards on either side of her head. We had entirely flipped positions.

"No... I'm ... I'm sorry..." She whispered breathlessly, her nervous eyes jumping back and forth, "for everything." she finally said. "You don't understand, you don't have to tell me. It's fine. I had to tell you because... because I needed help dealing with my father... but this? This isn't a pain I need to cause you. This should stop. " Those large blue eyes bore into me, "We should stop..."

My fingers traced along her earlobe and against the side of her neck. I enjoyed watching the emotions it caused sweep across her eyes.

"You're avoiding the kiss." I said back instead.

A small frown appeared on her lips as she mumbled not true. The reddened tips to ears told me all I needed to know. She watched my shirt in avoidance but I patiently waited for her to meet my eyes again.

"So, what you just said though..." I murmured unamused, "Is that you no longer want my help? You want us to both to stop, is that it? I don't need to finish telling you my story because you're apparently withdrawing your plea for help?" The dryness of my voice grazed the room around. I watched her cringe slightly, my abrasive words hard on her ears.

"You don't understand..." she finally whispered, "I'm scared of you."

Something tightened inside of me. Every ounce of muscle and flesh on my body froze painfully. "I've told you before." I barely whispered, "I won't hurt you."

I rigidly leaned off of her, putting much needed distance between us.

"I know that..." she whispered back without meeting my eyes. "At least I've rediscovered that. But you make me feel... you do things..." those red rimmed eyes rose to mine and seemed to waiver. "You're a sun." she whispered. "You're too bright, too hot...too everything. I'm going to fall before you; my wings will melt and I'll fall into nothing again. I'm scared of you because I was never meant be this close; I'm unstable and you're an ignition. That's what you don't understand; I agreed to this because I was never meant to be more... I was never meant to be anything more than a pebble before you... an irrelevant relevancy."

She thought I was a sun and her a pebble?

"I'm that star." I whispered back in realization, remembering those words of Apollo she confessed to beneath the mural. She nodded. Ever since she whispered those words, I had been endlessly wondering what it was that Alys saw with her eyes, for I had always known her drawings and tick still corrupted her mind. But this was not the answer I was looking for. She thought I was untouchable and dangerous, while herself nothing before me.

Anger pooled behind my veins. "So you asked me to help you because you were going to break when you're father came home? But now... now you've revoked that and want to keep your distance?" I asked incredulously.

She nodded again without meeting my eyes. She held one hand oddly over the other- as if protecting it. "I'll find the strength. I'll figure it out."

"You're lying." I whispered. She still didn't say anything.

"Did it ever occur to you that I would catch you if you fell?

Alys looked back at me caught off guard.

"You can't."

"Your father won't get to you." I growled lowly, "Doctor Augustine won't get to you... No one will while I'm around."

"You can't control these things," she shouted back, "And what the hell do you expect to happen once this mural is revealed?! I'm going to be arrested and sued. Yes, we're using Randal as a means for information so hopefully I won't be charged with cracking someone's computer- but I'm still going to destroy my future! How can you claim no one can harm me?!"

She was yelling it now, and that instability I had seen in her eyes before seemed to be swallowing her whole again. She shuddered and collapsed heavily against her palms. "Alys-" I hissed, moving to grab her, "please listen to m-"

I froze. There atop her wrist... blue tinted lines bled within her skin. Bruises. I knew instantly they were in the mark of fingerprints.

Her eyes rose in horror as she realized what I had seen. "Hayden... please..."

I straightened instantly, claiming those few feet she put between us. She stumbled as she stood too, desperately trying to hide her hand away.

"Give me your arm." I growled savagely. I knew how harsh my voice sounded, but couldn't stop myself as I forced her to face me.

"You can't save me." She whispered again. "You never could."

She didn't fight me as I pulled her hand into view. The handprint was too large to have been female. But I knew her father wasn't out yet.

"Tell me who did this." my voice broke. I fought the confining tendons in my own hands- desperately trying to keep my grasp around hers gentle. But still, my battle with my emotions was hardly won. For years I had learned to control myself- calm my nerves and use words instead of movements. But suddenly it was all breaking down.

"Please..." I finally whispered.

Alys looked at me surprised and guilty. "I can't. You... you weren't supposed to know. Please I've got this handled- I can do this. I don't want you to get involved...."

"Because I'm going to break the jaw of whoever did this?"

Her eyes widened at those words before she finally broke free from me.

"You're not my boyfriend Hayden," She hissed, angry tears threatening her eyes. "You keep asking me to lean on you, to trust you- but this..." her hand shot out towards a journal, "is all we share between us. Nothing else. Do you hear me?"

My eyes tracked her movements intently. "Loud and clear." I whispered quietly. My fists tightened in my grasps, my eyes still absorbing the bruises on her wrist in my peripheral.

She didn't seem to believe me. I didn't blame her. But she looked so scared again, so close to breaking before me. Her broken face made me forcefully release my fist and step towards her.

"You've always thought the worst of me, did you know that?" I asked slowly.

Guilt and shame flooded her eyes. Making her angry always worked better for me when it came to getting her to open up. Every emotional outburst, revelation, or secret she had ever confessed to me was because she let her guard down enough to yell at me. I couldn't stop myself from using it to get to know her; the real her. Whatever Alys was... she was not an irrelevant relevancy.

"Please Hayden, stop. I'm sorry for saying those things to you... I'm sorry for ever having hurt you or yelled at you."

I laughed dryly at that. My tone made her falter. "Oh no, Alys." I shook my head, "You've always thought the worse of me for something else." my hard gaze bore into her unrelentingly, "You see, you've been so sure that once this mural debuted I would claim no fault- that I would try to convince everyone that I was somehow innocent."

Her brows creased together uncertain. "I thought that because I knew you wouldn't throw your life away like that; that you wouldn't let it all end at the hands of the people you'd come to despise. And you chose me partly because I was willing to throw it all away...."

But now some new doubt and hesitance crept into her eyes. She watched the cold lines of my face unsure, thinking she knew me so well but yet now wondering what she was missing...

"I always intended on going down with you Alys." I whispered softly, knowing the truth wouldn't be missed in my voice. The shock wave of those words washed over her.

"The only difference though," I said with deliberate calmness, knowing this would hit her harder than anything else. I wondered agonizingly why this was something she could have never fathomed; comprehended.

"....was that I intended to pick up the pieces afterwards."

.

.

.

She sat against the bottom of her bed, staring quietly at the floor. What are you thinking, I wondered. I remembered again that painfully destroyed face before me, the words "nothing" slipping free from her mouth when I demanded what she was beyond this mural.

I clenched my fists tightly before finally walking quietly towards her. I braced myself against the wall by the window, now only a few feet from her. She didn't want me to continue now that she was trying to keep her distance. Not a fucking chance sweetheart. I thought darkly.

"By the time I was eight..." My voice was soft, and I noted her head perk up ever so slightly. "I had been sent to five foster homes. Each one was worse than the other. No matter how I screamed and yelled and cried to my Child Services rep, he wouldn't hear my words. Every time I acted out- I was sent to a more experienced place instead."

"I hated them all. All those people who adopted me into their lives. Some were fools who merely wanted to help. Others were looking to shove their religion down your throat and enjoy the righteous sense of being someone else's salvation. But finally there were those who were in it for the money. You never had to leave your mother right? Well you're lucky there. Do you know how much they pay people to foster the unwanted youth? A lot. Sometimes a couple grand a kid for just a month, not to mention the tax breaks you get."

"If you can learn how to do it right, if you can control your mentally damaged flock- than you've hit the jackpot of money. And the State doesn't care. These last people are usually the ones who have the means, attitude, to handle even the most aggressive and troubled teens. But surely the State would have a limit to the number of kids, right? After all, most children come from some screwed up experience or another; they in themselves would be hard to handle. But no, that isn't the case. The houses I bounced around had five sometimes seven kids. And when we were all fucked up, I can assure you none of us ever got any time of day to address or cope with what happened to us. And even if we did try and talk... it was all for nothing."

"Whenever you opened up to the few who were in it truly to help- how could they cope with so many kids whispering and crying of molestations or drugged parents who died before them?"

"Whenever you opened up to those you spared you because of religion- how could you speak when all of your past was a sin and only acceptance of their god would save you from your very life?"

"Whenever you tried to speak or resist the experienced families, how could you overcome the pills and drugs shoved down your mouth and into your veins to keep you from acting out, to keep you nothing more than a shell who no longer functioned without that family's... State funded... aid?"

I didn't relent my words even though Alys tilted her head back and watched me horrified. I paused as I contemplated her face, comparing it to that of Kinsley's when I too had told him this all. My arms were crossed tightly, my gaze steady. Finally I continued.

"After fighting with so many different people; all these faces who meant nothing to me yet all seemed to hold the power over my life... another kid asked me why? He was an older teen who had learned to get everything going for him. After watching me and my punishments, he finally just beat me up himself. Apparently I was making life hard on him too. But his words never left my skull each time he had hit me."

"Why do you fight them? Why do you resist? You're just an idiot... you need to listen to them, watch them, and learn how to manipulate them. You want out of this system? You want to be sane when you leave? Then you've got to take over the control, you've got to wrap them around your fingers and entice them. If they resist you; threaten them. Uncover their secrets and destroy them. They'll learn soon enough to give you your way."

"And so I did..." my eyes felt hot, my fingers rigid against my skin, "Years and years of watching, observing, practicing self-control... I learned the rhythm of people's minds. I learned how to doge them, manipulate them, corral them into doing what I want. And I learned to hate everyone."

"The only friend I found was Randal. He rarely looked up from any computer he could get his hands on, but his uncaring silence was more than enough to draw me in. He even helped me fend off my mother the few times she tried to visit me. Unfortunately though... we both got into trouble for downloading a pornographic video," I cocked Alys a sly grin as she narrowed her eyes at me, but small smile tugged on her lips, "And the family we were currently with happened to be very strict Catholics. I'm afraid they did not take well to such a video entering under their roof."

"Randal was sent to a family east of town... but I... I had too much already on my record. I was sent to another family... The Russells'." I faltered, the name seeming to burn in my mouth. "They had seven kids total, I was the eighth. They were the most experienced of families. And so they had the worst of the worst."

I stared quietly into those blue eyes. Her gaze held mine back with resolute soundness. Where when I told this to Kinsley, I had plastered my face with a self-mocking smile... here... here I didn't have to... didn't need to.

"I was there for only about 7 months. But still... it took its toll on me. You could sway most people, but when a foster parent like that already has what they want- their cash in hand – you find yourself in the darker parts of your mind; seeing the things you would never forget- even in your sleep."

"His name was Tucker. He was fourteen at the time but hadn't really lived much until that point. He was nice though, funny and sarcastic in all the right ways that even when he got hit on the back of the head... you knew he didn't regret it. Unfortunately, like many of us, his past still haunted him and a rage took over his mind. He was very easily angered to the point he couldn't control himself. Most times it was the rightful response though; at that house we were not taken care of or treated right."

"But whenever an episode would take him, those emotions and anger contouring his face- they'd beat him down and strap him to his bed- shoving pills and needles into his body to sedate him for days on end. I couldn't stand watching him try and endure it all. Those groggy days in which he'd have to find the light and reason to live again... it became almost too much. He would confess to me how he felt trapped in his own mind and those drugs were the lock and key. He told me it made him want to die."

"One day... We had been out back cutting wood and Tucker threw the ax and broke a window. Mr. Russell came out screaming and yelling- throwing large rocks and hitting Tucker, which was honestly normal for our life there. But while they were screaming and fighting, Tucker began losing control of himself. His face was reddening, his neck straining and he was clawing for Mr. Russell. Russell left and returned instantly with a hypodermic needle filled with some type of drug."

"I couldn't stand it... I couldn't bear to see it anymore. Tucker had barely found the strength to recover again... to keep this world of ours at arm's length away. So I tackled Mr. Russell. I beat him with my fists as he tried to claw at my neck and eyes. I could feel his nose breaking beneath my knuckles but I couldn't stop myself. I wanted him to feel every hit he had given us, I wanted him to know every blackened lack of consciousness that he himself had slipped into our brains."

"But the thing is... Tucker attacked me from behind. I was surprised, what the hell was he doing? I was saving him from the drugs. He was flailing wildly and grunting words I couldn't understand. We fought on the ground for a bit before I got him off of me had shoved him down against the dirt. By then Mr. Russell was trying to drag me back up and screaming at me, but all I could feel were his nails driving through my neck, his right fisted punches into my ribs. Tucker's hand grabbed my leg and I kicked it away from me."

I froze now... watching Alys. Scared to say these next words but knowing I had to.

"And if I would have just looked over my shoulder. I would have seen him staring at me...

Pleading....

The seizure racking his body in excruciating waves, for he desperately needed the epilepsy medication Mr. Russell had in his hand. But I didn't. I thought he was having a panic attack... not a seizure.

And so he died. A slow, agonizing.... death.  He had watched me until the end...."

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"Hayden..." Alys whispered quietly. She was before me now, her gaze tracing my face desperately. "You're okay." she whispered," Her eyes filling with tears. "I'm so sorry" she slipped her arms around me, pulling my head and neck down to her. I let her do it. "What have I done? I should have never accused you of anything." Her wavering voice murmured into my neck.

"You've done nothing wrong." I said back rigidly. I couldn't hold her back, just stood there fighting my own hands.

"I did this." She shook her head. "I made you relive this. I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry. I should have never said those things to you- made you have to explain this."

"Explain?" I breathed dryly, "I'm not innocent Alys. I was charged with Man Slaughter. I killed a kid."

"Trying to save him!" She snapped her head back and watched me angered and horrified. "I had those drugs too Hayden. I know what it's like to live through that excruciating haze and painful nausea- unsure of your own identity and very life."

"Then you'd have been a murder too..." I said quietly, my hard eyes holding her gaze, "But it was me that day... not you."

Her arms slid down away from me, but I caught one in my hand. Tenderly I turned her wrist over and gazed at the blue lines that marked her skin. I'll kill him too, I thought darkly.

"What happened afterwards?" she asked, pulling her hands back slightly. I didn't let go but looked towards her instead. I knew she was trying to distract me.

"After realizing what I had done? I ran away."

Her eyebrows creased slightly... her gaze unsure of mine.

"It's all connected, remember?" I said softly. "See, back when I was thirteen, my mother came to me again. But this time with a lawyer. All previous times she had come alone, uncaring, demanding money- but now she was sweet as sugar pie; wanting me to officially come home to her. The lawyer was a sleazy nobody, but he let it out that there was a chance I was to receive an inheritance. My father had died they told me. He had been dead a few years, taken by cancer. It happened a few months after his first visit to me. My mother and her lawyer found out he had visited and were hot on the trail of using me as a money bank. Did he leave me anything? They had no idea... but his death was now a free ticket to peruse and demand money from the living relatives."

"By then I had realized what my mother truly was. After hearing it all, I patiently waited for them to stop. Then I told her to go fuck herself and I left. Of course she was screaming at me and all that, but what did she expect? Even if I was to pursue my father's relatives, and hope I could weasel a home out of nothing- maybe even some money- it had nothing to do with her. She had lost all legal ties to me. I think she finally realized that, realized I would never bring her back into my life and so she left. I haven't heard from her since."

I watched Alys' wrist in my hand, fighting to be careful with the tender skin. I wondered if it was her Doctor; William Hathaway. But she wouldn't have seen him this close to her last appointment, right? It happened after I left school today. Sometime between then and now... somebody had hurt her. I would find out who.

"It ate at me. Day in and Day out." I whispered down to her. I could feel her warm breathing against my chest as she watched my grasp around her wrist. It ceased slightly at my words before cautiously beginning again.

"That he really had been your father?" She said back softly, but yet somehow it wasn't a question. I nodded.

"I had seen him, met him. I think somehow I always knew who he was because it angered me he had never come back. I tried not to give it the light of day, I told myself he was a stranger, but yet why had he gazed at me so intently and patiently. Why had he sat with me so long? Why did he look so sad?"

"Somewhere deep inside of me I hated him; he was sad because he knew he was going to abandon me. That's what the younger me knew. Come to find out it wasn't far from that childish truth. I realized that, after my mother came, he knew he was going to die; that he really was going to abandon me. I hadn't misinterpreted the look- just the reasons behind it."

"He could have adopted you still," Alys hissed as she glared up at me. "He could have done a damn number of things to get you out of there."

I smiled slightly at her aggression and tilted my head to watch those narrowing eyes. "I told Randal all of it. I couldn't stop myself, it was destroying me on the inside. He recommended I go to the public records and see what I could learn of my father. I wanted to know who this man was who had abandoned me."

"And?" she whispered.

"And my father intended to bring me home," I said slowly, watching her eyes widen instantly, "But none of the papers were officially filed through the State. Randal had to help me after that and through what was publically available and through bribing the secretary for access to more files... we found something. You see, my father listed me as inheritor after he would pass. He claimed me as his son and was going to file for a motion of adoption."

"Then why didn't it go through?" She asked incredulous.

"Simple," I shrugged lightly, though my eyes held no casual emotions. "The lawyer hired to follow it through, never filed the paperwork."

"The Lawyer?" She asked suddenly, her eyes widening at those words.

"Yes." I said with the blank expressionless voice I could never seem to break myself of,

"His name was Mark Donovan."

.

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..

A/N:

In case you didn't see my profile update, I'm off to Japan!

In literally six days from now. Lol and my fear of flying is definitely kicking in but hopefully it will be as smooth as last year's flight to Korea. It's a sudden decision too, so sorry about another chunk in updates going to be gone. After I get back (towards the end of February) I will begin on a new chapter, I promise. Until then I made this one long (it was just shy of two normal ones)

Edit: some fun shots from Japan!

On another note; a reader messaged me a song that she felt was awesomely similar to Hayden's current point of view of Alys. It's a pretty popular rock song, so you may have already heard of it, but I'll ty and link it to the video option here on this chapter. If I can't:

Title: Fallen Angel

Artist: Three Days Grace

Thanks for the support guys,

-Helium