I’m not sure I ever will be. I close my eyes and remember what I can about the village I grew up in. It was so long ago, and my memories are mere suggestions of colors and scents and sounds.
The smell of the charred remains of the Cathedral that burned long before I was born, the sound of my sister giggling as we fell asleep at night, her hot sweaty hand resting on my arm. The grassy hill we used to climb so that we could stare over the treetops.
I shove my fists against my eyes as images from the past roll over me. The stupid fences that we felt the need to sneak past. The stupid stone my sister tripped over. The stupid me who chose to leave her there alone, preferring to follow Elias on more adventures that only got us lost.
Curling into a ball, back pressed into the corner of the room, I cover my head with my arms to block out the maps and the light and the thoughts of things past. But there’s one memory that won’t stop spinning through me and I grit my teeth as it unfolds, hating myself even as I relive it over and over again.
Once we escaped from the Forest and found our way to the Dark City, Elias began to call me his sister—it was easier for people to believe we were siblings who’d lost their parents to the Unconsecrated. People asked fewer questions and for the longest time it felt so natural that I began to believe it.
But in the months before Elias left for the Recruiters, something began to change in me. I started feeling embarrassed when he was in the room while I had to change. It was hard to sleep, I was hyperaware of the sound of his breathing at night, his shifting under the worn quilts. I started caring more about the scars running along my face and body, trying any concoction I could get my hands on in the black market to make them fade.
One night Elias teased me about the smell in the flat. I confessed it was a cream I’d traded for in the Neverlands to lessen the scars. He turned to me in the dim light, the moon somehow reflecting deep enough in the alley to illuminate us both.
“Oh, Annah,” he said, his voice a whisper filled with an emotion that I couldn’t identify but that made my stomach drop.
He reached out and with one finger he traced along the scars. The feel so different from anything else between us before. He started at my face, drawing his finger along each one, trailing down my neck. Pushing aside the collar of my nightshirt so that he could reach my shoulder, along my arm and down my side.
I tried to hold my breath but I couldn’t; it came out shaking. So much building inside me, my skin so alive under his touch that I thought I would combust. Every time he reached the barrier of my clothes I thought he’d stop. I thought it must be some sort of dream. But he kept going. Along my hip, down my thigh. Curling around my calf and out to the very tip of my little toe, my feet arching under his touch.
By this time I was gasping and he was trembling. He pulled back and looked at me, the air so charged between us I felt like everyone in the world must be feeling this heat.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered then, and I felt tears pricking my eyes. Because I believed it. Because in that moment under the moon, under his gaze I felt it. As if just by his touch, he’d erased every scar that crisscrossed my flesh.
In that moment I felt like everything was alive. The world was new again and nothing but hope. When he pulled me down to the mattress and pressed against me, it was the first night in my life that I drifted into an easy sleep, a smile so wide on my face I was sure it would break me.
When I woke up, Elias was gone. He finally came home as the afternoon sun burned down around me, as my entire mind had been consumed with a frantic worry. In his arms he carried a Recruiter uniform. He’d signed up that morning and would leave for training in the evening.
Every day, the pain of that moment has scored through me. The humiliation and anger and misery and rejection. So many emotions that churn over me, always forcing me to feel it all fresh again and again—never in my life had I felt so ugly and unwanted.
And what took root that day has done nothing but thrive and bloom ever since.
I’ve drifted so deep asleep that the shift of air in the room and the sound of footsteps doesn’t wake me at first. It isn’t until hands grip my arms that I’m able to struggle awake, muscles tense to lash out until I see who’s holding me.
Elias. He kneels in front of me, shaking me gently. “Annah,” he says softly. His voice makes heat flare across my skin and my stomach drop.
A look of relief flickers across his face when I open my eyes and he falls back until he’s seated next to me, legs crossed, knee brushing my thigh. My mind flashes to the memory of him—the feel of his hands on my body—and I take a deep breath.
“I was terrified something happened to you,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I wasn’t sure where else to go.” There’s only one lantern lit and it casts weak light around us, making it seem almost as though we’re underwater.
After Elias left for the Recruiters I dreamed of this moment: him coming home. Me seeing him again, finally. I’ve had this conversation with him so many ways and in so many places. I’ve imagined his voice, his expressions, the feel of his hands along my body.
And yet I’m so lost. There’s something missing between us—the quiet intensity that bloomed just before he left.
I want to talk to him, to tell him everything he’s missed for the past three years. But when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. Because what has he missed? Endless gray days of monotony. Mondays gathering food, Tuesdays baking for the week, Wednesdays scavenging for goods, the in-between time nothing. Waiting. Fighting. Surviving.
What’s different about me since he left? How can I explain how lonely and scared I was? How in the beginning I spent every hour wondering about him until that was all I was: endless hours of wondering about someone other than myself.
That I ate when I had to, not because I was hungry but because that was how I was going to stay alive and be there for him when he came back.
How long it took for me to stop thinking about him every moment of every day. How hard it was to push him far enough away that I could recover from his absence. How I vowed that I’d never go through that again.
“I thought about you,” Elias finally says, and I crumble inside. I look away from him so he can’t see it. I have to bite my lip to keep from making a sound.
“All the time, I thought of you, Annah.” The edge of his hand brushes my hip as he shifts his weight, and I close my eyes.
In my most secret dreams, this is what he always said to me. But we weren’t in some barren room in an old abandoned building, we were out in the sun on a grassy hill with white apple blossoms twirling around us in the warm wind.
My legs feel jumpy and I push to my feet, pacing back and forth between the scattered tables. Needing to get away from what’s so familiar: the smell, the buzzing nearness. In my dreams this is where he’d take me in his arms. This is where he’d run his fingers over my face, magically smoothing away the pain of our past.
This is where he’d tell me he loved me and that he’d never let me go again. He’d tell me he’s sorry, he never should have left. That I’m everything to him.
It used to be what I thought I always wanted. And him being near is too tempting, it’s too easy to want to fall back against him even now when I know the absolute absurdity of it. He’s practically a stranger to me and me to him.
I refuse to let him do this to me again. I won’t keep wanting a man who can never be mine. I deserve someone who wants me as much as I want him.Elias simply sits there, hands in his lap as he watches me pace back and forth. I can’t tell what he’s thinking or feeling and not knowing chokes me.
“Where have you been?” I finally ask, and the question comes out as a desperate ache.
“I was with the Recruiters,” he says. He opens his mouth to say more but the sound just dies.
“I know, but …” There are too many ways for me to finish that statement. But what took so long? But why didn’t you come home earlier?
But why did you leave me?
And I realize that I’m going to have to ask him, because otherwise I’ll always feel this uncertainty. “Why did you go?” I whisper.
Chapter XIX
I feel it fresh all over again: the moment he said he’d joined the Recruiters and was leaving. How ugly and useless it made me feel.
He sighs, and when I look at him he’s jumped to his feet and is standing by the door with his hand on the back of his neck. Only it’s not his gesture anymore—it’s Catcher’s. I clench my teeth against the flood of emotions as thoughts of Catcher begin to invade the moment.
I refuse to let these men unsettle me this much. I’m stronger than that. I’ve had to be determined and independent—it’s who I am now.
I cross my arms, waiting for Elias to answer. Finally, he drops his hand from his neck, rolls his shoulders as if to ease tension. “I was scared,” he says. He shrugs and looks over at the maps covering the walls.
I’m silent, waiting for more.
“That’s the reason I left at first,” he continues. “I didn’t know how to take care of you. I’d …” He swallows and I take a step toward him. “I’d failed you before.”
“What do you mean, failed me?” I ask. He’s now just a few feet away and he glances at me. His eyes flicker along my scars. It’s so fast, such a small deviation of his gaze that I’m sure he doesn’t think I notice.
But of course I do. It’s the way people have looked at me most of my life. Usually I scowl back, but Elias knows me too well for that to work on him. I start to feel cold, my insides icy.
“It’s my fault we went on the paths,” he says. “It’s my fault we left the village and didn’t stay to take care of Gabry.” His voice grows louder with each statement. “It’s my fault you and I got lost in the Forest and barely found a way out. All of this—all of it!—is my fault.” He sounds almost out of control and he takes a long breath before saying, “It’s my fault you’re …” He gestures at my face, trying to find the right word.
“Ugly,” I say for him.
“You’re not ugly!” he snaps. “You’ve always refused to believe that and I couldn’t stand the pressure of having to believe it for you.”
I jerk my head back, surprised at the outburst, but he keeps going, oblivious to the way his words tear through me. “You wanted me to be a hero and that’s what I tried to be. That’s why I left.”
He rubs his hand across his forehead, his eyes closed tight for a moment. “I knew what we were doing to survive wasn’t going to be enough—it was never enough. I had to find a way to make life better for us. I couldn’t stand to just keep plodding along—I wanted something better. I was selfish.”
I say nothing. Just stand there. I’d never thought of him as selfish. If anything, I’d never thought enough about what he wanted, who he truly was.
He lets out a long slow breath. “I was scared, Annah, can’t you see? I left because of my own failing. Not because of yours.”
I’m shocked by what he’s saying. I’d had no idea. No idea he’d ever felt that way.
“I was never going to be able to be the person you needed.” He sounds defeated and tired all of a sudden. “I wanted to come home and tell you that I’d taken care of everything for us. That we were safe and had a home and we didn’t have to worry about skinning or going hungry or not having a roof over our heads or getting evicted from the Dark City. I wanted to be able to tell you that you were safe.”
He grabs my shoulders and I wait to feel the heat before I remember that it’s Catcher who burns me with his touch, not Elias.
“I did it for you, Annah,” he says. He shakes me a little, as if he can force the words into my consciousness.
I stare at him. His eyes glisten and his lips tremble. I’d never told him he was enough for me. I was the one who failed him. Inside, I feel numb—so many emotions battling that they cancel each other out to nothing.
“Why didn’t you come home?” I ask. “After your time was up with the Recruiters, why didn’t you come home? It was only supposed to be two years and I waited for you and you never came home.”
He lets me go and turns to the wall, staring at one of the maps for so long that I wonder if he even heard my question. “Elias?” I say, stepping toward him. Discarded pins crunch under my feet, scattering across the floor.
He shakes his head, keeping me at bay. “I didn’t come home because I never stopped working for the Recruiters.” He reaches out, tugging on a series of black pins and letting them fall to the floor. “I still haven’t.”
I exhale like a laugh, fully understanding. “That Recruiter—Conall—he was right, wasn’t he? When we were on the cable car and he said something about you getting Catcher to the island—he was right.”
“It’s not like that, Annah,” he says, holding up a hand, but I shake my head.
“You betrayed him. Us,” I spit at him angrily. “You said it was the only way—you made us think we had to come here in order to survive—”
“It is the only way for us to survive!” he shouts. A vein bulges along his forehead, his face red. “I had to find a way to keep all of you safe and this was it!”
I grimace, startled at his outburst, wondering who this person in front of me really is. Wondering if there’s anything left of the boy I grew up with and once thought I might love.
“Please, Annah,” he says. “You have to understand. I fought for the Recruiters against one of the hordes and we weren’t making a difference.” His voice is strained, desperate. “They say there were over eight billion people in the world when the Return hit—eight billion—and how many do you think died? Half? More? And now most of them are out there somewhere wandering around or downed, just waiting to infect us, and we were useless trying to kill them.”