Billy Again (Part 1)
His whole life, Four has brought death and bad luck wherever he went. Now that he is no longer alive maybe his luck will change, especially surrounded by people who love him as much as he does them.
Or a story about Four’s Many names
A/n: This is for @billytheskywalker‘s awesome quote challenge! The quote I chose is “Here we are, born to be kings. We are princes of the universe.” Hope you guys like it, the formatting may be a bit weird, you can also read it on ao3 here
Word count: 5.4k
1. Billy
Four and Five were sitting on top of a roof.
That almost sounds like the start of a nursery rhyme, doesn’t it? The setting was right too, everything feels soft and fragile at sunrise. The sun looked almost shy as it peaked from under the earth, a faded red, the sky was pink and five was bathed in golden light.
They were sitting close but not touching, and there, in the cold morning air, Four could almost feel the heat radiating off of her skin. She was so close; if he shifted just the slightest bit he’d be able to press the line of his thigh against hers.
“-at’s why I got into medical school.”* He was only half-listening as she told him about her life before the whole fake death thing, they'd been trading stories for half an hour. He hated it, talking about his life before felt like playing with fire. But he’d never been able to deny her anything, or any of the ghosts for that matter.
“What about you, Billy?” Billy, he still wondered why he told them that damned nickname, why not William, or Bill, even Will; he’d been called each of those at one point or another.
“What do you want to know?” He smiled at her, couldn't help himself, even though talking about himself almost physically hurt.
“What’s your earliest memory?”
He hummed, deep in his chest, wondering how much he should tell her.
“My earliest memory, yeah? I think it was falling off the roof of my childhood home.” She punched him on the shoulder, giggling (and wasn’t that a thought? Five, their badass doctor, giggling.)
“You’re totally lying.”
“I’m not, I swear! My mum was so mad I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears. But it didn’t matter to me, the next day I was back on that roof, I’ve been climbing for as long as I can remember.”
She laughed, throwing her head back and he almost felt guilty for lying to her.
But after so many lies, so much secrecy, there were things he couldn't help but keep to himself, no matter how much he loved them all.
His actual first memory was of his mother, being held in her arms as a storm thundered outside. Her usual scent of clean clothes and lavender all around him and her quiet whisperings swallowed up by the darkness around them. He remembered with startling clarity the pain of his black eye, feeling it pulsate, and the words of his drunkard father.
Useless. Good for nothing. Dumb.
And yet, the pain hadn’t been so bad there. Curled up in his bed with his mother as she consoled him, late at night after his father had fallen asleep.
“You’re gonna do great things, my little lamb. Oh, Billy, people like you, born with stars in their eyes are meant to be great kings or rulers. One day you’ll see, the whole world will know who you are.”
He had barely believed her, back then. Even less so, a few years later, on his ninth birthday, newly orphaned and watching the still-hot cinders of his childhood home.
At that moment, he knew, he was destined to misfortune.
2.William
At the age of nine, with no relatives to be found and no will left by his parents, Four was sent to foster care. He lasted two weeks in the system before running away from his foster “parents” and never looking back.
Those two weeks were hellish, as Four constantly switched hands and institutions. Surprisingly, nobody wanted the bruised little kid who had night terrors that woke him up screaming and shaking every single night. The state-mandated therapist he saw only twice asked what the nightmares were about and he told her they were about the house fire (they weren’t, all he saw in his sleep were his father’s fists).
And they all kept calling him that, William, like he was a pet they had named. Nobody asked, it was just William here, William there. William was this new boy, a boy alone in the world whom no one would ever truly care for. Just another child of the system. And yet. And yet, a tiny part in him was relieved, because his heart seized in his chest whenever he thought about being called Billy, like he was disrespecting his mum, who had had so much faith in him.
He knew he would never be able to accomplish whatever hopes she’d had for him.
Midway through the second week, he was sent to the Whites, an idyllic little family with a charming father, a smiling mother, a little girl two years younger than him and a dog. They were nice, too much so, telling him they wanted to welcome him into their family.
“Hello, William, it’s great to have you with us. I’m sure you’ll feel right at home.” Said Mrs. White, running a silk-soft hand through his hair.
For three days he waited for the other shoe to drop, for the charming Mr. White to drink a beer too many and hit him. But he never did, instead, Mr. White (“it’s Gerard, kiddo”) called him champ and big boy, and tossed around a ball with him in the backyard. It was unsettling.
Billy’s father had been a charming man too, everyone liked him. He smoked cigars and laughed like thunder and everyone loved him. (“Oh Billy, why don’t you like your dad? He’s so nice!”).
So as nice as Mr. White was, Four, didn’t trust him. In his experience fathers weren't nice, at least not to their children. Instead, he tottered behind Mrs. White (“It’s Veronica, honey, or mum if you prefer”) and little Elysia, enamored by their twin heads of dark curls.
Mrs. White was nice too, prettier than his own mother and just as charming as Mr. White. She’d kiss his forehead at night and tell him and Elysia stories. She was strict but fair, assigning the children chores and explaining to Four how important homework would be once they got him enrolled in school.
For a few days, Four harbored a tiny flicker of hope. Of course, the universe promptly crushed it.
On the fourth day (And how’s that for an unlucky number?) Four dropped a glass of milk and Mrs. White slapped him across the face, her long nails catching on his skin and drawing blood. Elysia stood in the corner, watching them with wide eyes and a trembling lip as her mother devolved into a screaming fit.
“How dare you?! How dare you disrespect my family and my home like this?! We didn’t have to take you in you idiot!” Four stayed silent, looking her in the eyes as fat tears rolled down his cheeks.
She sent him to his room without dinner but instead of falling asleep he grabbed a plastic bag and shoved in the little belongings the Whites had bought for him, still crying, but furrowing his brows in determination.
Fathers, he decided, were not the only bad people there were. Mothers could be evil too, anyone really. And if parents could be so wicked, then he didn’t need them.
Not anyone.
He climbed out of the window with practiced ease, after years and years of climbing all over his own home. He slipped away on silent feet, distantly hearing Mrs. White berate her own daughter and husband.
After that, it was the streets, and Four learned about hunger, he learned how it felt to think you were going to die, for the first time in his life. Sure, at first people were willing to spare a few quarters for the cute little kid sitting on the curb, but as he got dirtier and scragglier they started shooing him away and shooting him dirty looks.
He ate fast food as often as he could, washed his face in McDonald´s sinks and changed into the least dirty of his clothes as much as possible, but he was still miserable. He felt weak all the time and he was just so tired.
And then he learned to steal.
3.Bill
Here’s the thing, most people are good at at least a couple of things, some talent is just innate and if you hone it enough then things start to get intense. And Four? He was good at stealing. Then again, stealing was more of an effect brought on by his talent at climbing and running, at moving.
He’d discovered parkour at twelve and started seeing the world differently. Everything, everything as just a way of enhancing movement, of being faster of getting just the slightest bit closer to the sky. He started moving all around England sometimes learning a trick or two from older guys who were like him. Fast and feeling the urge to move and bend reality around him like a constant urge under their skin.
So Four was good.
And people began to take notice.
Four was fourteen years old (and surely, whatever god there is must have laughed themself silly at the recurring number), and sitting on a roof, letting his feet dangle, eating a warm bagel when he heard footsteps behind him. Immediately he jumped to his feet, turning around and wiping the crumbs away from his lips. He’d met a wide arrange of people who hung out on roofs like him, but usually, there was some semblance of etiquette. The way this person had approached him and gotten so close before announcing his presence was just unnerving.
“Who are you?”
The stranger tilted his head to the side; he was half a head taller and probably a couple of years older than Four, with a generous smattering of freckles on his nose and dark, nearly reddish eyes.
“So you’re the little blonde kid who’s been stealing around town?”
Four bristled, he wasn't a kid!
“So what if I am?”
The kid gave him a cocky smile and extended a hand for Four to shake. Four didn’t move and the stranger shrugged before putting his hands in his pockets.
“My name’s Engel, what’s yours?”
Four took a wary step back, suddenly uncomfortably aware that he was at a disadvantage, only a couple inches away from a three-story fall, backed into a corner by Engel.
“Why should I tell you?”
Engel’s smirk widened, the look in his eyes nearly cat-like.
“Because, I’ve got a job offer for you, pretty boy.”
Four barely caught himself before taking another step back, instead tilting his chin upwards stubbornly.
“Don’t call me that!”
“Then tell me what I should call you.”
He bit his lip and his fingers unconsciously crushing the bagel. What was he supposed to answer to that? True, he was no longer Billy, but William felt crushingly unnatural. He looked Engel in the eyes.
“B-Bill. My name’s Bill.”
Engel smiled with an emotion Four couldn’t decipher and again extended his hand for Four to shake, taking a step closer.
“Nice name, kid. Now I’ve heard you’re good at stealing, and I want you to join my team.”
Engel's hand was warm as Four shook it.
Apparently, the group wasn’t actually Engel’s team, he was just a member who, like the others deferred to the eldest guys, a pair of twenty-year-old twins who didn’t bother introducing themselves to Four. He later found out through the grapevine that their names were Zaccai and Arlo, both sported shaved heads and looked bored nearly all the time. They only seemed to come alive during robberies.
Stealing with this team was completely different from the petty stuff Four usually did. The robberies were each carefully planned and they changed cities much more often than Four did, even countries. In his time with the twins, he traveled through most of Europe. The targets were also much bigger, even if the twins took the majority of the money. Four was sure that they could have retired with a mansion whenever they wanted, but they simply enjoyed their line of work too much.
The “team” was more than anything else, a gaggle of young people without any real organization, the members came and went as they pleased. Four never took off on his own but he sometimes accompanied Engel when he needed help with a side job. Sometimes Engel would leave him alone for weeks at a time and Four would wait anxiously, ignoring the rest of the team until he returned. Whenever anyone took too much time to report back, the twins wrote them off as dead and everyone got a free afternoon to wander off for a while.
The first time this happened, Four looked at Engel with wide eyes but the older one just gave him a bitter smile.
“That’s how things go in this line of work, Bill. You better get used to it.”
Engel was also the first one who put a gun in his hand. Four had been sixteen for two weeks and had finally grown a couple of inches taller than Engel. It was a handgun, small but unbelievably heavy in Four’s palm. Of course, he’d seen that most everyone carried at least one gun whenever they stole something but he’d never imagined he’d have to too. Everyone else did parkour but he was the best one, it was his thing and the reason Engel had recruited him, he didn't understand why he needed a gun like the others.
“You’re fast, Bill. But no that fast. You can’t outrun a bullet, the only way to stop it is to kill the other guy first.” A wink. “And I need you to cover my back too. You and me, yeah?”
And so, Billy learned, every day he would stand for hours, shooting targets until his arms were sore and he could barely keep his eyes open. But no matter how much he trained his muscles he never could bring himself to shoot anyone. His self-appointed mentor also taught him to fight, on dusty gymnastics mats the twins kept around in their hideouts. Engel would always win, but Billy was good too, fast and electric, wiggling out of chokeholds like an eel. But he never fought dirty enough for Engel’s taste.
“You’ve gotta go harder, Bill! Those guys out there are not gonna have any compassion when they’re fighting you. They’re gonna go in for the kill and if you don’t do the same, they’re gonna succeed.”
Four was seventeen, lying on those mats, sweat-slick and breathing heavy, when Engel kissed him. It was a hungry kiss, the kind that builds up for years and uncoils like an explosion. The kind of kiss where you feel the raw need in the base of your stomach, where air stops mattering. And you just want. They started… something after that, kissing in empty corridors and jacking each other off in dark alleyways, quieting their moans into each other’s necks. Four would never forget Engel’s face as he came, head thrown back and flushed cheeks, hair wild.
Despite it all, they never actually fell in love, Four didn’t at least. And Engel would still leave for weeks at a time, leaving him alone and burning. They started drinking together, sleeping with girls when the other wasn’t there and partying hard.
Meanwhile, their little skirmishes kept getting riskier, as Zaccai acquired a manic look in his eyes he hadn’t had before and Arlo kept shooting him worried looks when he thought no one was watching.
Suddenly one day, when Four was nearly twenty-one and easily a head taller than Engel, Zaccai announced he had decided he wanted to steal the Moussaief Red Diamond. At that moment, that meant nothing to Four, but he later found out it was the seventh most expensive diamond in the world, owned by a man named Shlomo Moussaief who lived in London. While everyone was extremely excited at the prospect of being set for life, late at night they could hear the twins argue in their room.
“We can’t do this Zaccai! We don’t have the manpower!”
“Don’t you see it?! It’s the ultimate challenge, the ultimate proof of skill!”
“You’re crazy! You’ve gone crazy, and I’m not letting you drag me down with you!”
Arlo stormed out of the abandoned apartments where the team had been squatting, leaving behind a string of worried whispers and bubbling panic. Zaccai smiled at them when he stepped out of the room.
“Don’t worry guys, we can do it without. When we pull this off, I promise you, we’re gonna become legends! We’re gonna be rich!”
Four shot a worried look at Engel, but the latter had a nearly identical look on his face to Zaccai, a demented smile, slashed across his face.
“Hear that, Bill? Rich. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Engel the millionaire.”
And so they prepared like they hadn’t ever before, scanning the building to find entrances and exits, paying for intel about the security personnel.
Finally, the day came when they silently entered the deceptively modest house where Moussaief lived, Zaccai at the helm.
And promptly walked into Hell.
It was obvious from that first moment that they had been given wrong intel or someone had ratted them off because they were immediately shot at. Men started dropping like flies in both sides of the fight, the sound of shooting deafening as Four gripped his gun so hard his knuckles turned white. They ran across hallways, Four’s teammates constantly shooting and dropping to flour, screaming with pain. Only Zaccai’s laughter rose above the rest of the noise.
“The diamond! Just get the diamond!”
There were only five of them when they finally got to the showroom, only to find it completely empty.
Of course.
Moussaief had probably flown out of town if not out of the country as soon as he'd been tipped off that something was brewing. And he's taken his fortune with him.
Zaccai stopped laughing; face blanching for just a moment before it exploded as they shot him in the head. The only lasting guard walked into the room and promptly shot the rest of Four’s teammates. He felt his heart stop as he watched almost in slow motion, the bullet headed for Engel’s chest. In just a couple of seconds he felt it all, nausea and sadness. And blinding anger.
He raised the gun, and shot, aiming directly at the man’s heart.
Bull’s eye.
The man fell to the floor, his last scream getting stuck in his throat.
Four shot again. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and ag-
“Bill!”
What?
“Bill!”
His hands began shaking, the gun clattering to the floor.
“I’m fine! It was just a graze.”
For a moment he stared uncomprehendingly at Engel’s blood-streaked side.
“You okay, man?”
He looked into Engel’s dark eyes, feeling numb as the older boy cupped his face with both hands.
“It’s okay, Bill. He’s dead. I’m fine.”
Four threw himself at Engel, winding his arms around his neck. He didn’t sob or make a sound, just shook as Engel rocked him from side shushing him softly. When he was slightly calmer, he and Engel took the fire escape to walk onto the roof, stepping over bodies, staining the soles of their shoes with blood.
Over them, the moon was nearly nonexistent, just a thin ribbon of light. Four licked his cracked lips before speaking.
“So, what next?”
Engel clapped him on the shoulder, pressing a hand against his injured side.
“Wanna go to Ukraine?”
4.Will
On the day they arrived in Ukraine, the day was overcast.
It was a few weeks after the failed Moussaief thievery, they had waited for Engel’s side to heal up, but Four was still wary of the new group they were going to meet. Apparently, they were friends of Engel that he sometimes helped for a little extra cash, though working for the twins had been more profitable. It stung, that in all the years of knowing each other, Four had never met them.
Besides, he didn’t want to belong to a team anymore. A team meant dead-weight and room for error, a team meant caring for too many people. Usually, Four thrived in variables. How many variables and different paths did the landscape have to offer? Human variables, though, he wasn’t so keen on.
When he voiced his opinions to Engel, the latter just laughed.
“They’re good guys, Bill. Well, as good as you’re gonna get for a bunch of thieves anyway.”
Kyiv was beautiful with high buildings made of white stone dark, lanky silhouettes of unlit lampposts. But Engel immediately led him to the bad side of town, where the buildings barely stood and the people lived on the streets. The smell of poverty was intense, but Four didn’t mind it, it had become home. The group had been living in an abandoned house, with no glass on the windows and peeling paint. Cigarette butts littered the ground outside.
The group inside was much smaller than Four expected, nothing like the twins’ group. There were only eight or nine people, sitting on metal folding chairs, the floor, and an ugly couch, around a deck of cards and three bottles of vodka. The first one to get up was the only girl, tiny and ballerina-like, with bird-boned wrists and lean strong muscle lining her arms. She raised an eyebrow playfully and fixed with an intense look in her dark, dark eyes. The other’s got up slowly, nothing remarkable about them except for a guy with tattooed lines streaked down his face like tears and the bluest eyes Four had ever seen and a man with a hulking figure that surely couldn’t be very good at parkour, hands the size of bowling balls and a gun hanging from his belt. The only one who carried one. Engel smiled wide.
“Well guys, this is Bill, the guy I’ve been telling you about for years.” A wink. “Bill, meet the crew. The scary fella over there is Axel, our gunman, and heavyweight. A bodyguard if you will.” Mr. Giant nodded slightly, his eyes focused on the street outside. “From left to right there’s Dima, Andrew, Andreas, Symon, Taras, Aleksander and the guy with the bad face tattoos is Mykola.” The latter frowned at Engel but didn’t say anything, before giving Four a shaky smile, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet.
Finally, Engel wound an arm around the girl and pulled her flush against his side.
“And this,” He bit his lip for a second. “Is the wonderful Oksana.”
She looked at Four with a smirk and he felt his knees go slightly weak.
“So this is the famous Bill.” She scrunched her nose. “Not a fan of the name, though. I think I’m gonna call you Will.” Engel frowned.
“Oh my g-d, Oksana you can’t just-”
“It’s fine!” Four cleared his throat, embarrassed. “I’m fine with Will.” Engel leveled an unimpressed stare at him.
“Fine, but you’ll be Bill to me. Now come on, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”
And so it was. The rest of the team stuck to calling him Bill, but that night when Oksana led him to her room instead of one of the communal rooms for the guys, she moaned the name Will.
Will. Will. Will.
Like a chant, soft and hoarse in his ear as her short, sharp nails drew blood from his back.
Will!
As she came, lovelier than anything else he had ever seen, her tan skin flushed all over.
It became a regular occurrence, more often than not he slept in her room and he stuck close to her wherever they went. At parties, he liked to have her closed, fingers grazing her elbow or her hip. When they stole something he usually kept her in his line of sight, more on edge than he had ever seen during a mission.
Of course, he still hung out with Engel. He was his best friend after all, but when the latter tried to go in for a kiss when they were sparring Four stopped him.
“It’s just, ya know, my thing with Oksana. You get it right?”
Engel stared at him and for the first time in a very long while, Four couldn’t decipher his expression.
“Yeah. I see how it is.”
The sparring ended quickly and awkwardly. Usually, Engel and Four fought as cleanly as they could, but at that moment, as Engel twisted his arm behind his back, straddling his hips, he was genuinely afraid he would break it.
“I win. See you later Bill.”
Four stared at his friend’s retreating back, genuinely wondering where he went wrong.
But it was okay. That night, Oksana took him to one of her favorite nightclubs and kissed his worries away. He felt like an idiot next to her, slow and lumbering, when she moved through crowds of people like a fish through water. Everywhere she went, she seemed to belong in a way he had never been able to. but she seemed to want him around and that helped.
And at some point, they started to spend nights upon nights just talking, about everything. Themselves, their childhoods, their wretched, awful childhoods. It was hard not to want when he was next to her. Not only want her but want to change to world for her, fix the injustices, the systems that had failed her, the streets that had sheltered her. Make her proud of him, like he had only ever wanted to make his mom proud.
Being with Oksana made him want everything.
Sometimes, he would whisper these dreams to her, like secrets, face pressed against the warmth of her sweat-slicked skin. She would laugh, quietly.
“You’re a dreamer, Will. I’m fine sticking to the earth while you search for the stars.”
She had always been much more realistic than him. She knew, that those dreams were nothing but fairytales. People like them didn’t accomplish miracles or even good things. He should have listened to her, maybe then the fall from the stars to the ground wouldn’t have hurt so much.
It was Oksana who took him to get his first and only tattoo, four big letters stretched across the knuckles of his right hand.
“What do they mean?”
“A letter for each of the people I have loved the most.”
M, for mum.
E, for Engel.
O, for Oksana.
And B, for the little boy he had once been, for the future his mother had seen in his eyes.
When Engel had seen the tattoo, he’d laughed himself to tears.
“Never get someone’s name or initials tattooed, Bill. It’s bad luck.”
And Engel was always right, wasn’t he?
A month later, they sat together, drinking. Oksana, was asleep, claiming cramps and a couple of the boys had gone out to a nightclub. It was just Andrew, Dima, Engel, and Four, drinking, a cigarette in each of their mouths. Usually, Engel was the best of them at drinking, but tonight he had been drinking much more than usual, taking generous swigs of two different bottles.
He kept asking Four about his relationship with Oksana, getting more and more aggressive with each drink he took. Finally, at four in the morning, he asked a question he’d been itching to ask, the words nearly flying out of his mouth without his permission.
“Aren’t you afraid of her?”
Four laughed, him? Scared of a small, cute girl like her?
But that wasn’t really what Engel was asking, was it? No, it went more along the line of, aren’t you afraid that you’ll fall in love? That you’ll give too much and she’ll take it without mercy? Aren’t you afraid that it’ll be too much, too fast, that you’ll be washed over by her tides?
Because girls like her, are the kind of girls who rip you open to feast on your heart and suck up your soul.
Because she had the power to ruin him.
This squirrely little girl, who looked like a gun made woman. His Oksana (except not his, never his), all muscles from climbing and starving, like him, all of them, street urchins forever and ever like his own group of lost boys.
“How could I be scared of her, I’m twice her size!” Andrew and Dima snickered, but Engel stayed silent, the flickering fire reflected in his eyes, casting strange shadows on his face.
“Whatever, Will” And he said the name like an insult, like a thrown stone. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you about her.”
“What’s his problem?” Asked Andrew and as Dima shrugged, Four took a gulp from the bottle of Rum at his feet and tried not to wonder how many times Oksana and Engel had slept together before he came to Ukraine.
From that moment on, he’d been expecting it, Oksana’s betrayal. Waiting for the fatal words to cross her lips: “I cheated on you” or even worse “I don’t love you anymore, I never did.”, asking himself if he would forgive her, shying away from the meaningful stares Engel shot at him and he dared not decipher.
And yet he was in love with her.
He could almost physically feel it, in the way he just seemed to breathe easier with her around him. In the way kissing her felt better than anything else in the world, that her presence brightened up a room. In the way he ached for her when she wasn’t with him.
He had killed for Engel, but he knew he would die for Oksana.
And they did stakeouts and ran to keep fit and listened to rumors. They kept stealing, here and there, but every single one of them was here for the big one. The necklace. Worth fifty million fucking dollars, the so-called “Garden of Kalahari” was even bigger than the Moussaief diamond. No matter how many participated in that robbery, they’d be set for life, and in this mission, the team was small. None of them could truly comprehend the amount of money the Kalahari was worth.
And it was going to be theirs.
There was a tension in the air, an itching in their veins, and at moments Four almost thought he could comprehend what had driven Zaccai to near-insanity. The feeling of adrenaline and expectation was nearly intoxicating. But still terrifying. The day almost snuck-up on them, there without warning. They had planned and re-planned a thousand times and yet, the Moussaief incident kept repeating itself in Four’s head. What if’s plagued him.
That morning, Oksana soothed him with a slow kiss.
“Welcome to the rest of our lives, Will.”
And so they went, the building was much older and unassuming than Moussaief’s home had been. But it made sense, the Kalahari belonged to an old rich woman, who hoarded her jewelry like a dragoness and who, after losing her businesses to younger more innovative competition, had let herself fall into poverty rather than sell her jewels.
Every morning she left the building unattended to go walk a decrepit old dog, both of them took nearly an hour for a short walk. More than enough time.
This group was much more acrobatic and parkour centered than the old one, so only the big guy, Axel, and Engel carried guns, the added weight wasn’t ideal for this kind of job. As soon as they walked into the building, Axel and Engel posted themselves at the door, guns drawn.
They had planned and re-planned a thousand times.
It wasn’t enough.
The first clue was the gunshots, the next one was the two heavy thuds by the door, Engel and Axel’s corpses falling to the floor. The final clue was Mykola shouting. Desperate, as if he wanted to tear his vocal cords out.
“Politsiya! Politsiya!”
Four never learned Ukrainian. He had meant to, he’d wanted to impress Oksana, but even he knew what the words meant.
When he found the Kalahari, it was almost like salvation. Maybe. Maybe, the mission hadn’t been for nothing.
More shots then, closer now, Four wasn’t keeping a head-count anymore. Just running, as fast as he could, until the oxygen burnt.
They were supposed to cross through the sign and he could barely comprehend when instead of doing that he was falling. Airborne. The only thing keeping him from certain death, from splattering like paint on the floor, was the too-thin cable in his hands. For the first time in a long, long time he was scared of falling.
And then she was there, Oksana. She grabbed the necklace and he knew that he was saved.
Except.
“Grab my hand! Grab my hand!”
His jaw hurt like nothing had hurt before, the jewels between his teeth felt like iron, like they would grind his molars to dust.
Oksana didn’t grab his hand. The look in her eyes was cold, empty, and Four felt himself go numb.
And then he was falling.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.