these thoughts will multiply

 
 

She stayed in Chicago in the end. It’s funny, how this city has its habit of pulling people back in. The Rifts, the violence, the memories. It always pulls you in again, when Chicago gets a hold of you, it sinks its claws in deep. Scarlett tried to leave forever, forever ago – but she was back and felt obliged to stay. For a while, at least.

Raff understood. She’d spent ten years with him, scouring the country for his brother, learning her Calling, controlling it, using it. He promised he’d come back, although sometimes she wondered if that was ever going to happen. As important as she was to him, Simeon always came first.

Sometimes, she goes to visit the grave of the father she murdered so many years ago. It seemed only right, considering she moved into the house she once shared with him – the house she killed him in. It seemed the old bastard was keen on staying dead and she preferred it that way. She never once regretted it. Claude Langford lived his life abusing people. He abused her mother, making her love him, forcing her to love him. In turn, he would use his Calling on his own daughter to keep in her check, scarring her in ways she never realised for a long, long time. It felt right, in the end, to smash his skull in with a blunt object – after he’d screaming his voice raw with terror. Police never suspected her; she’d ran away long before that – returning for a night before running off once more.

Now, she lived in his house, spending his money as if it were some form of compensation. She hated him still, but sometimes – and only just sometimes – she wished he were still alive so he could see what she’d become. She was a force of nature; terrible and cruel, a force not to be reckoned with. A woman of pain and fear and horrible secrets wrapped tightly around her throat.

And then, there’s Leon.

The boy who grew up and became twisted and broken by staying in his city. Who the fuck think it’s right to give a Guardian a dying kid for a Ward? The thought twists up her insides, knots her stomach until she can taste bile in her mouth and feel rage in her fingers. This was the boy she didn’t know how to feel about. The boy she used to beat bloody, grip his face in her hands, digging her nails into his bruised skin and felt like crying because she didn’t know what to do with the feelings she had. The boy she ran away and left; who grew so old in her absence. She couldn’t begin to imagine what losing a Ward would mean, what it would feel like. It hurt to see him like that, when they saw one another on the street that day. She could barely look at him. He was almost swallowed by this damn city.

She won’t let it happen. Not again.

Well, she can start by scribbling her old address over the journals. He can find her if he wants. Who knows what happens after that. She hasn’t gotten that far yet. How on Earth could she begin to help? She feels the need to, knows that she owes that much for leaving him. Maybe it’s why she can’t barely look at him. He doesn’t blame her, of course. He never did. But she blames herself. Maybe that’s why she wants to put things right. Maybe it’s that decade-old obsession that never left her.

Who knows?