Day 50:

Your recovery is slow. You stumble through your fitness reqs every morning, trying to prove that you're not the weakest in the group, and you spend your afternoon meetings trying to hold your mother's gaze when you can barely sit up. By the time you slog down the stairs to bring the monster his dinner, the bags under your eyes are thick, mind all but spaced out. You mumble something and slide the food onto the tray.

He doesn't ask for his jacket back. Actually, he doesn't mention it all, which you're grateful for, except for "stay inside" and "go get some sleep" reminders. He always asks what he can do to help. You don't have to convince him that you're okay.

It's a new feeling, being soft, you think as you curl up in your bed, his jacket wrapped around your shivering form. Part of you wonders if it's as dangerous as it feels.

Day 54:

"B12, a C complex, D, and the basic one," you rattle off, recounting the vitamins you've taken that day. "I'm doing everything I can."

Afua nods, although he frowns thoughtfully. "And the Hyde. You can control him?"

"Yes," you say blearily, rubbing at your red nose. "And being sick won't impact my fitness schedule, either. I can still show up to fitness reqs."

Afua nods, turning back to his clipboard, pencil scratching a few lines on it. A small thrill of boldness crackles through you, and you lean forward.

"Has anyone ever tried rehab for these monsters before?" you ask him tentatively. You're curled up on the couch, a blanket wrapped around you, a mug of steaming tea on the coffee table. "I mean, other than my father."

Afua looks up sharply. "Why?" he asks.

A part of you shifts uneasily. "No reason," you say.

"You know why these monsters are here, Y/N," Afua says, hand tightening on the mug he holds. "They're here because they hurt people, killed them, even."

You fumble the blanket under your fingers. "Yeah, but-"

"It's not summer camp, it's a punishment. That Hyde is going to suffer the way he made others suffer. I know he looks human, but you need to come to terms with the fact that he isn't."

"But who does just keeping them here benefit?" you ask, your voice echoing through the empty halls of the pure white Bubble. "If we can help them-"

"It doesn't matter if-" Afua starts, but you continue, not letting yourself be cut off.

"-then that helps them as people, and when they see what they've done, they can make amends to-"

"It's not about amends!" Afua cuts you off, shouting the last words. You flinch back, and he retreats back into his chair. He leans back, breathing heavily, his voice going softer. "Y/N, this has never been about amends, and it's not about helping murderers, either. This is about justice. This is about that Hyde getting what he deserves. That's the point. That's the whole point."

Your fingers shake, curling around the threads of the blanket around you. You are not bold enough yet to wear your monster's coat anywhere near USOAT, but your fingers ache for it, to smell it and breathe him in so he could protect you here.

Afua sighs. "I don't mean to yell, Y/N," he says.

You say nothing, but you can feel your heart beating in your chest, blood rising to your skin like black oil to the surface of the ocean.

"The Hyde you are guarding now deserves his sentence and more," Afua says, staring off into the distance, voice heavy. "He killed three of our agents trying to bring him here. Good people, Y/N. Innocent. How would they feel if he were ever to be released?"

The words echo as hollow in your chest as the howling wind outside.

"How could their families live with that?" he adds, looking up at you.

"I don't know," you say eventually, looking up at the screen, at Afua in his study with the snapping fireplace. "I don't know."

It doesn't seem right to keep Tyler alone, locked up forever, you think dimly, sitting in the dim lighting of the Bubble, shadows cast in ombre tones on the dancing walls. But it's not right to leave the victim's families with nothing. How can we? How is that right, either?

Afua nods, sighing heavily. He pulls a heavy book, a dusty brown photo-album -style book, out from behind his chair. "There's something I need to show you, Y/N," he says, voice gruff in the way people do to block all emotion from getting out. "Do you know what this is?"

Your silence speaks for itself, the rustling of the pages filling the lukewarm silence.

"It's a book," Afua says, pausing on a page, eyes drifting across it. "My book. All the people we've lost under my command."

A pit rakes down your throat, into your stomach like gravel in your airway.

Afua turns the page, the world silent except for its eternal sound. Flip.

He turns the book to the webcam. The top of the page on the left- thick, cream-colored, with the kind of paper and ink that seems to have existed for an eternity past- has a name written in at the top: Declan Urmazd.

The top picture shows a smiling agent in USOAT uniform, raising a hand as he races forward with his compatriots, mouth frozen open in joy.

The paper pasted right underneath it is an obituary.

"Declan Urmazd," Afua reads quietly. "Bold. He was a natural leader, led his action team. I helped train him."

He turns the page to show a picture of a woman dressed in pink athletic gear. "Olivia Black. Combat specialist, only child, spoke four languages." Afua sighs. "Her parents won't leave the house now that she's gone."

Words catch in your throat. All that comes out is a strangled sound. The world around you seems floating, dreamlike, almost not real.

"There is one more," Afua says heavily, turning the page to another of the doomsday pages full of obituaries beneath pictures of people with lives ahead of them, lives to be lived.

He turns to the next page, of a picture that seems to be candid, of a man with a short beard looking up from a newspaper. He sits in the green waiting room chairs at USOAT headquarters. "Eli Amahan. A top field guide for action teams, a specialist who was visiting Jericho to study the Hyde."

He shows you the next picture, and a scream builds in your throat, eyes going wide. It's his body.

It's Eli's body, torn open at the throat by gaping red claw wounds, blood pooled around his wide and bloodshot eyes, mouth open in the kind of scream that never saw air.

"Stop," you say, reeling back, the world dizzy and spinning around you in the candlelit haze. "Stop, I don't want to see this."

Afua glances at the empty pages left in his book, waiting to be filled. "I wish it would," he says, almost too quiet for it to be audible. "But there are more pages, and there will be more who fill this book, or the one after it, or the one after that. These people are evil, Y/N. They aren't like us. Maybe he can saved, but people like him aren't worth saving."

His eyes flicker up to the webcam, up to you. "Somewhere, in one of those books, is your father."

The hot, candle-smoky air presses in on your chest and lungs, oppressive like tongues of flame down your throat, leaving you cracked and parched.

Time seems to slow down around you, melting in sluggish waves of candlelight.

Afua closes the book, closing his eyes. "Those three that I showed you are just the people the Hyde killed on the way here. This is why you can't get too close. I don't ever want to see you clawed open like that. I can't lose too many more."

You shudder, the room's chill washing over you in waves.

"He promised he wouldn't hurt me," you say, voice small. Even as you say it, you realize how ridiculous it sounds. Of course he did.

Afua sighs. "Y/N."

The words he doesn't say settle heavily down onto your chest like dark smoke.

You dip your head. "I'm sorry," you say stiffly, looking back up. "I've been stupid, Commander."

Afua shakes his head, putting his book back on the shelf with bone-weary fingers. "Sympathy will kill you in this line of work, Y/N. You'll learn."

You nod, unable to meet his eyes as he ends the call, leaving you in the candle-crackling semi-darkness of the Bubble.

You trace your hand along the smooth fabric of the couch, trying to push yourself up to your room, but you know deep in your heart where you were going next. It's as inevitable as the dark sky outside of your Bubble, the way the moon pulls the tides.

You go to your room and grab the jacket before you go, inhaling a deep draft of that warm scent that melted your defenses and gave you comfort this week. You pretend for a moment that you're going to stay in your room and just go to bed.

But as the coffee-and-fresh-sheets-smell wreathes around you, you already know where you're going. Heart wrenching in your chest, you pad towards the submarine door at the other end of the Bubble. You creak it open. 

"Is it true?" you ask the monster, peering past the door and stepping down his stairs on cautious feet. "Did you- did you kill them on the way here?"

The monster stares down at the floor, shadows caught in his neck like the dark, draping brood of a fallen angel.

After a while, he bows his head, forearm pressed against the wall. "Yes, Y/N," he says, voice low, eyes far away. "I did."

A surge of boiling anger rushes through you.

"Why?" you cry out, storming into the room. "They weren't going to hurt you. They had families, and- and goals, and people who-"

Your voice is breaking out even as it leaves your throat, hot tears prickling at the edges of your eyes. "They had lives, Tyler. Afua showed me those pictures of their bodies. And you- you just-"

The words are just whispers, raw and torn from your throat. "You just killed them."

"I did what I had to do," he says, turning to you, fists clenched. "Y/N, they were going to take me here, they were going to keep me here my whole life-"

"No!" you shout, swiping at your eyes. "You ripped them up like useless paper, and you'd do the same to me if you got the chance."

"I promised I wouldn't hurt you," he says, walking up to the glass. "You're never going to feel my claws, Y/N. Even if I get out."

"And am I supposed to believe that?" you say, the pictures of the blood and the sightless eyes making you retch forward. "You were just saying whatever it took to let you out. Now Afua thinks I'm just an idiot girl at risk again, and I- I was so stupid to trust you, and-"

Your voice is so torn up by this point, words breaking off into a heaving gasping that just barely avoids a sob.

He is frowning as he stands there, but he shakes. "Do you think I'm a monster, Y/N?"

You look up, chest heaving with sounds that choke your throat like flame. "That's it? That's all you have to say to me?"

He doesn't move from where he stands.

"I don't know you at all, do I?" You ask, wrapping your arms around yourself as the tears drip down your face, and he shakes his head.

"No, Y/N. You don't. Somehow, you still think I'm the kind of monster that can be saved."

You throw his jacket on the conveyor belt, flicking it over. "Take your stupid jacket back," you say, voice hoarse and choked as you walk back out to the stairs. "You didn't need it to manipulate me."

You climb back up the stairs, pushing the submarine door shut with a creak. You expect him to call you back, to say something, but the Bubble is as quiet as the depths around it.

You glare, anger at him, at yourself, at the Bubble radiating through you like knives, into the space beyond the couch. You don't remember falling asleep, but when you wake up, disheveled and with eyes that feel like sand, you get up and do your fitness reqs.

It's your job.

Author's Note:

never fear, the angst is here!

Hi, everybody! Updates are weekly now, on Sunday nights at the latest, although I'm going to try for Friday mornings :) (we'll see, LOL) As always, thank you all for reading, and you are so loved! Take care until next time, and I'll see you then! <3