Austen hushed the very small yet ingrained part of himself that pitied the suit as he let out a surprised, but mostly agonising, yelp. He clutched himself, losing his balance and toppling over Salena and Austen to continue to roll donw the hill. When he was a metre away and picking up speed, Austen threw all of his weight into a lunge and tackled him. In what felt like slow motion he took to the air, colliding with the man as he bounced up from the ground. the suit's expression, still undeniably surprised and pained, was the last thing Austen saw before he wrapped his arms around the man, changing his course. They skidded across the leaves, coming to rest quite quickly at the base of a tree. A bit late, Austen raised an arm to shield himself, but was fortunately not on the recieving end of the collision. The suit's head clunked against the trunk, making his eyes spin. He let out a single gurgle before his eyes fluttered shut.
Afraid to move, Austen laid there hardly daring to breath. Then he realised he was hugging an unconscious, strange man and he jerked away.
Salena opened her eyes. "Oh my God."
"You got that right," Austen said breathlessly. He coughed weakly and scratched his face.
"Did you kill him?" There was a strange lack of fear in her voice that both noticed: it was replaced with a kind of delusional wonder that was starting to worry him.
"No!" he cried indignantly, before feeling the blood rush from his face. He quickly leant over, pressing two fingers to the side of the guy's neck. Two steady pulses and he was satisfied. "No," he repeated.
The man groaned before he could remove his hand and Austen leapt from the ground in one fluid movement, appearing several metres away only seconds later. He swallowed heavily and met Salena's dazed expression. "Let's keep moving."
She nodded, pressing her hands to the leaves and raising herself off the ground. Scrambling to her feet, she pointed over Austen's shoulder weakly. "You lost your bag."
Hesistant, he looked behind him. Sure enough, the sports bag was settled beneath yet another tree, half covered in mulch and he smiled softly at her. It was the same smile someone gave a kitten that brought them a dea bird; very cautious as not to upset the creature, but not genuine enough so that it kept acting weirdly. "And you found it."
She seemed to buy it though, and let her hand drop back to her side as he scurried to retreive it. Back at her side, he gestered ahead of them. "Well I guess we should keep going then."
"What about him?" This time she didn't point, so Austen felt they were making progress.
Both teens fixed their gazes on the unconscious man, trying to decide exactly what the right thing to do was in this circumstance. Funnily enough, it had never come up in their ethics classes. Deciding to be decisive, Austen slung his bag strap across his shoulder and marched back to the suit. Kneeling, he ignored what he was doing and focussed on one thing; gun. He started his frisk at the ankle, pulling up one pantsleg and then the other. The second, thankfully, revealed a gun, and he let out an audible sigh of relief. His next resort would have been the belt, but he thought his hands had spent enough time near the suit's fly for one day.
A shiver ran up his spine and Austen promised to never even think that sentence again.
Wrapping his hand around the weapon, and removed it from the man's calf holster, standing up quickly and backing away. He faced Salena again but her eyes were fixed on the barrel, her face devoid of colour once more. Her eyes followed the gun as he unzipped his bag and buried it amongst his cloths, only blinking back to the present once his bag was resealed and slung behing him.
She nodded, licking her lips and swallowing so hard it hurt her dry throat. "Let's go then."
Both knew that the other end of the cemetery would let them out just a block from MacDonald's but the fact that they still had to negotiate headstones kept the spring from their steps. Austen had chosen this path purely because it was the most direct route, but then he'd heard people running and had an awful feeling.
And awfully accurate feeling that something was going horribly wrong.
They picked their way across the plot in silence, every now and again indicating the easiest path to travel. With a point. Not words.
Both sighed with relief when they spotted the gate, quickening their pace slightly until they had scurried between the wrought-iron masterpieces. Austen briefly wondered whether they were as sturdy as they looked, they might need somewhere to old back an army.
"I doubt it," Salena said suddenly, brushing the metal gently before striding out onto the footpath. "They're more decorative than anything else."
It said a lot about the day he had that Austen didn't even blink. his step didn't falter, he didn't hesitate in replying.
"A guy can hope."
In the grand scheme of things, Salena responding to his thoughts was the least of his worries.
Then there was a scream.
The two teens didn't glance at each other, they just took off running, feet pounding on the concrete. Salena dropped behind, both slower and less graceful than the star athlete, but she arrived, panting, at the corner in time to see Austen staring at Phitz and Carrie.
"What the hell is going on?!" he demanded, taking the words right out of Salena's mouth.
Carrie was gripping the hair at her temples, looking like she just might tear it out if pushed, and her eyes darted from shadow to shadow as if she expected something to jump out at her. It was the first time Salena had ever seen the girl look anything other than in cocky and she was slightly ashamed of the twinge of satisfaction she felt. Slightly.
Phitz on the other hand was stone-white, his arms held out at odd angles as if to stop the world from spinning. Or to keep somthing at bay. He shushed Austen, pinning his friend with what could only e described as a 'holy-shit-dude' expression and that cause a cold weight to settle in Salena's stomach. Phitz was usually the guy to rely on, jovial, relaxed, carefree, but he looked absolutely panicked.
He swallowed, adam's apple bobbing. "Ebony?"
Instantly, Austen jerked upright. Salena would have found it amusing if she wasn't going out of her mind with fear.
"Ebbie's here? Where is she? Is she all right?"
Phitz grunted and gestured for him to shut up, his eyes carefully scanning the area. "Ebony? are you all right?"
Everyone waiting with baited breath. Austen was about to ask another question when they finally heard her.
"You're so right, Carissa."
He spun in a circle, trying to pin down the teenager, but when he had covered every angle and still not found her, he frowned. "Ebony?"
"But now you get to hear what I think." It was definitely Ebony's voice, Salena decided, she just couldn't tell where it was coming from.
Carissa apparently had the same problem. She wailed, spinning in desperate circles as she tried to track down the girl. She fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face. Salena hadn't realised that Carrie actually had emotions. This day was full of surprises.
"I think you're the one who's really the coward," disembodied Ebony muttered, each word said with calculation but no malice. "I think you feel unwanted, undesired, and unloved, so you seek out the affections of people who don't really matter. I think that you get a kick out of being noticed, for whatever reason, and you'll do anything to be who people are talking about. I think you'll do anythign for attention."
Austen's expression had shifted. He no longer looked startled or confused, he wasn't looking around any more. His gaze was fixed just above and to the left of Carrie's sobbign figure. And he didn't look worried or scared, he looked disappointed.
"And do you want to know what I know?"
He'd had enough. Striding forward, Austen stopped a few inches from Carrie, glaring into the space beside her. Phitz and Salena watched with wide eyes, slightly nervous that the stress had gotten to him.
"Don't finish that sentence, Ebbie," he murmured, anger alight in his eyes, "Don't you dare."
"I know that I should feel sorry for you..."
"Ebbie!"
"...because there must be something terrible in your life..."
"Ebony!"
"...to have made you such an utter bitch..."
Austen's hand lashed out, finding some sort of infathomable resistance in the air as it latched onto something. To Austen's mind, he had just clamped a hand across the mouth of the most beautiful distraught girl he had ever seen, a girl so shattered that she was striking out. As soon as he touched her, she met his eyes, apparently startled to find him so close.
She flinched away. "Don't."
"No, you 'don't'," he muttered, leanign his head forward to meet her eye to eye. "don't say something you'll regret, don't lash out because you're hurt, and don't play her game."
Ebony huffed, a strangled, withered laugh that died in her throat. "But I can't."
Austen struggled with that, head cocking to the side as he tried to interpret her words.
"Because," the girl stepped away from him, her eyes locked back on the whimpering teen at her feet, "you are the terrible thing in mine."
He knew he could stop her, that he could reach across the gap between them and drag Ebony out of this... trance... but Austen didn't. No matter how badly he wanted to shield her, this wasn't his fight. He understood how strange it was that the girl he wanted to save wasn't the one lying broken on the ground, but he knew Carrie. She was in shock, but later the claws would come out again and she'd be good, or bad, as new. But Ebony might never recover from this.
Still, he stepped aside.
"You were right," Ebony said, her expression bleak as she studied the girl on the ground. A part of her was confused that Carri had crumbled, but the rest of her was overpoweringly satisfied. She had wanted her to feel as small as Ebony felt every single day, and that was what was happening. "but you got one thing wrong; nobody even knows that I exist - it's you who they wish didn't."
Phitza and Salena exchanged a stupified glance, trying to figure out what was happening. They couldn't.
Austen knew exactly what was going on though, and he would stand for no more. Stepping back between them, he took ebony's upper arms in his hands, giving her a rough shake. "You're done now," he insisted, his heart breaking at her forlorn expression. A tear spilled out from her eye and he raised his hand, resting it against her cheek and brushing the droplet aside with his thumb. "It's over now."
Then he pulled her into his arms and held her. Reality seemed to click back into place; Carissa sat up, her tear stained face turning red with anger and embarassment, and Phitz and Salena stared at the strangely positioned Austen. All were looking in the right direction when Ebony faded into clarity, all except Austen who had never really notcied she was invisible.
cue the 'awwwwwwws'!!
xo SwimmingUpstream
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