CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: FROM THE INSIDE

10

"So, what's it going to be, Ella?" Five demands, his arms crossed, his head tilted in anticipation.

He's impatient. He wants me to make my decision, and he wants me to do it now.

But it's my decision, I should be the one to say when it's time to choose, not Five, nor anyone else. No one should push me, this is important.

"Ella?" he says, repeatedly tapping his foot on the floor.

"Ummm, I…I…" I stutter, not knowing what to do. My mind is racing, trying to come up with an answer.

"Come on, Ellie, it's not that hard," he urges me. Easy for him to say.

"I…I'll… have the two cheeseburgers with fries, please." I slowly tell the annoyed cashier, who grunts "finally," and types my order into a small monitor.

"See, that wasn't so hard after all," Five grins at me, and I shoot him a sceptic glance.

"It's only hard because you're always being so stressful," I grumble and nudge him in the shoulder. He makes an overly surprised face and starts sobbing loudly, rubbing his shoulder as if I'd seriously hurt him.

I grin.

When you see him like that, you could almost think he's a normal teenager, messing around and cracking stupid jokes. Living the life he could have had back on Lorien, if it hadn't been for the Mogs. Moments like this make it hard to believe that the friendly boy and the ruthless warrior Five turns into at the slightest sign of danger actually are the same person.

'It's all just one big act,' Crayton would sometimes say. 'He changes his mask quicker than you can look. The Five you know today will be gone tomorrow, and the new one will be nothing like the Five you knew. You can never tell what he's going to do next. That's what makes him so dangerous – not just to his enemies…'

Crayton never really trusted Five. He was too powerful, too quick, too smart. Always one step ahead.

I did trust him, though. I still do. And here I am now. Still alive, thanks to Five.

My order arrives and we sit down outside the small, shabby McDonald's, at the only table that isn't completely overrun by ants pouncing on food other customers left on their trays.

After days of hardly eating anything, I'm more than hungry, and since it's Five and he knows the truth, I don't have to act like the cute, well mannered twelve year old around him, which means nothing stops me from literally lunging at the two crumpled cheeseburgers and the mountain of French fries in front of me.

Five doesn't say a word as I tear through my meal in less than a minute. When I'm done I look up at him with ketchup all over my mouth and ask "More?"

He goes inside and shortly after comes back with another tray full of French fries.

"Bon appétit," he murmurs as I start mowing through the second meal the moment he lays the tray on the table.

"Bless you," I reply between two bites and he laughs.

"I didn't sneeze, that's French," he says, but I just shrug. Can't argue right now. Too busy eating.

Five hands me an entire pile of napkins when I'm done. "Fank you," I muffle, wiping the ketchup off my face.

"My pleasure," he sighs, leaning back in his chair.

I let out a loud, satisfied burp and look up into the dark sky. It's night by now, and out here, in the middle of nowhere, the stars sparkle like a thousand torches, casting their light upon me.

It's hard to believe that somewhere between them, there's my home planet. It all seems so small and insignificant from down here, so far away. Sometimes I wonder if it actually all happened. I mean, what if I'd just made it all up, what if I'd just imagined the war, and our flight from the Mogadorians, or the journey to earth. It's all so ridiculous, so pointless, the only logical explanation is that it's all just a dream. It can't be real.

"Thinking about home?" Five asks, and I sigh. Of course he knows what I'm thinking about.

"What about you?" I ask him, resting my head on my elbow. "Do you often think about your home? About Lorien?"

"I don't have a home," he shrugs and leans back even further until his chair almost tips backwards. "And if I had one, it wouldn't be Lorien. Lorien's dead."

"What are you fighting for then, if not to return to Lorien?" I ask, and he laughs.

"Come on, Ellie, you know the answer already. We talked about this so often."

"Revenge," I mumble and he nods.

Revenge.

Nothing has changed about that. He's still the lonely knight in a not so shining armour on revenge for an ideal he stopped believing in long ago. Nothing has ever changed his mind about that. And nothing ever will.

Except for me, maybe. At least that's what he said.

I sigh. A lonely airplane comes flying through the night sky, the small lights on its wings blinking down at us every few seconds. Left, right, left, right… As if it's trying to tell me something.

But before I can figure out what, the plane is already gone, and the stars are the only lights in an otherwise desolate black sky.

I wonder if any of the others are maybe staring up into the night right now, if they maybe even saw the very same plane fly by. According to Five Nine and Six are in a prison somewhere in Pennsylvania, so they probably got nothing but concrete walls to stare at. But maybe Marina and John have, maybe they have seen the plane, maybe they found out what message it carries through the world.

Because I didn't.

It's cold out here, and all I'm wearing is a T-shirt in the size of my twelve year old self. It's way too short on me right now, though. That's one of the downsides of being an Aeternus. You change your age and your body size changes accordingly, but your clothes stay the same. I lost count of how many shirts I ripped through because I had suddenly 'outgrown' them.

Right now, I wish I had a sweater I actually fit in. It's god damn freezing out here.

Without me saying a word, Five gets up, takes off his coat and puts it around my shoulders.

"Thanks," I smile up at him. He just shrugs.

"We should get going. Don't want to risk the army coming after their tank," he says and lays one hand on my shoulder.

I nod and struggle to get up. Oh god, why'd I eat so much.

Five puts his arm around my shoulder and we stroll back to the tank together. It's parked behind the McDonald's building so that no one would see it. But there hasn't even been a single car passing by since we arrived, Five and I pretty much are the only people out here. Out here in the middle of nowhere.

As we walk the few last steps to the tank, I lean my head against his arm and point at the bandage over his eyes.

"Did you see the cashier's face when he saw you?" I ask and Five laughs.

"Of course I didn't see it," he grins. "I got this, remember?" He taps at the bandage.

"Oh, yeah," I stammer. "I mean, not see, but… see." I wriggle around with my fingers in a mystical gesture. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah. Yeah, I do," he sighs and laughs again.

"How do you manage, anyway? I mean, can you actually see with your legacy now?" I ask and he tilts his head.

"It's not exactly seeing, I just know where things are, as if a thousand little voices in my head constantly kept telling me every single detail of my surroundings until I get a certain image in my head."

"Sounds… Confusing," I comment and he nods.

"Well, you get used to it," he says in a rather unconvincing way and I give him a long stare.

"Five?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I… see it?" I ask and point at the bandage. "I mean… what's underneath it?"

"You won't like it. It's kind of messy…" he says, but I shake my head.

"I want to see it," I determinedly repeat.

"Alright," he sighs and begins unwrapping the plain white cloth like a turban. "I warned you."

He takes off layer after layer, and after a while, the scars around his eyes become more and more visible. Red and purple lines in the shape of lightning cross paths like a spider web, and between them, there's scorched, crusted skin as black as coal with shades of dark red. Nothing else. No eyes. Nothing.

He takes off the last layer and lets the bandage sink down to the ground. I tremble as I reach out for his face. It's as if his eyelids had just melted over his eyes and all that's left is this huge scar.

He doesn't flinch as I cautiously touch his face with the back of my hand. His skin is hot, as if he had fever.

"How'd it happen?" I whisper, my voice shaking.

"Remember the Mog labs in Ohio? The day we last saw each other?" he says and takes my hand off his face. "Crayton got shot in the leg and I stayed behind to make sure you'd get out alive."

"The front gates closed, and we couldn't see you anymore," I whisper, a tear running down my cheek. "Oh Five, what did they do to you?"

"I think that day was the closest I ever got to death," he says, still holding my hand. "I almost didn't make it. As I painfully found out, they were testing a new chemical weapon in those labs, some sort of gaseous acid that enters its victim's bodies through the lacrimal gland," I have no idea what he's talking about, but I nod. "It then proceeds to burn you up from the inside, which, as you can probably imagine, is a terrible way to die."

I gulp.

"Anyway, the short version is, the two of you get out, they start spraying out the gas, I managed to lock the main gates so that none of it would get out and reach you. Then I sat there, slowly dying, the inside of my head burning up."

"How did you survive?"

"As I said, the gas enters the nervous system through your eyes. I don't want to get into details about what I actually had to do, but it involved a knife and a lot of blood."

A cold shiver runs down my back as I suddenly understand what he's saying.

"So it's my fault, after all," I conclude his story. "You lost your eyes to save me."

He stays silent, then leans his head on mine.

"It was my decision. I'll never let them hurt you, no matter what it costs."

I bite my lip. All the things he's done for me. All those sacrifices he's made. I never gave him anything in return and he never asked for anything. He just keeps on saving my life over and over again.

Why does every relationship have to be so one-sided?

"Thanks, Five," I whisper and he smiles.

"You are a one of a kind, Ella. You're worth it," he murmurs quietly.

We keep on standing like that for a while, leaning against each other, staring at the stars above.

Then Five sighs, picks up the bandage and starts wrapping it around his eyes again, covering the scars that once used to be his eyes.

"Don't feel sorry," he says when he's done. "It's a waste of time."

Then he jumps up the side of the tank, opens the hatch and climbs inside.

I stay out here for a couple more seconds, then I follow him.

"So what's the plan now?" I ask Five as I sit down in my cold leather seat.

"I'll get you back to Number Four and the others, then I have to take care of a couple of things," he replies while starting the engines.

I nod. He doesn't want to tell me what his actual plans are, and I don't ask.

I trust him, and he's never let me down.

I shift from side to side, trying to find a comfortable position. There's so little room inside the tank, I turn back into my twelve year old self, just to be able to stretch out my legs.

"Ready?" Five asks and I nod.

"Let's go then," he says and we roll off.

As we start heading cross-country into the middle of nowhere, the cashier steps outside the lonely McDonald's and watches with his mouth wide open as we slowly drive away in our fully armed tank.

We must be the weirdest kids he's ever seen.

Hey everyone!

A rather short chapter today, it's just a small scene that's been stuck in my head for a couple of days, so I thought I'd just write it down.

Couldn't find a way to make that conversation less cheesy. To those of you who like well-written dialogues, well, sorry :)

Review-answering:

Arctic Blue: Thanks a ton, I'm sure 11 loves you back! I believe there'll be some more of her in the future.

Sweet Lorc: There ya go.

I wonder if anyone is starting to figure out that Ella is not who she appears to be? Let me tell you this, your guess about who she actually is will probably be way more plausible than my explanation, but meh. It'd be boring if everything was logical, right?

Anyways, why not review today? It makes me happy, it makes you happy, it makes everyone happy. Reviewing, yay.

Have a great time 'til next chapter comes out, and thanks a lot for reading my story.