Hangman Chapter 54

Chapter 54-

Mello fell over onto the street, his body as lifeless as a puppet. The air was knocked out of Sonsee’s lungs and her legs wobbled. She clutched herself and shook violently.

“W-what-?” she stammered. She lifted her leather tunic, which ended in loose tassels around her waist, and checked for injury, but found none.

“What the hell was that?” Gideon looked to Gallow with a baffled expression. “What did he do??” It was a rhetorical question, as he didn’t really expect Gallow to know the answer, but the younger man’s soft, stoic expression suggested otherwise; Gallow’s eyes were fixed on Mello’s body, as if he knew something the others didn’t.

“Gallow…” Gideon asked in a low voice. “Do you know what happened?”

Gallow didn’t say anything for a second, then returned Gideon’s look.

“It’s over, now, Gideon; he’s done.”

Gideon looked around, there were still patches of flame dancing in the street, but something was missing.

“Hey,” he started. “One of the bodies is missing!”

Gruse felt an immense, calming sensation come over her. At once, all of the pain in her body was relieved, and she felt the strength to open her eyes. What greeted her was the smiling face of a young girl, her blonde hair hung over her shoulders as she peered down.

“Who are you?!” she said weakly, her right eye twitching.

“My name’s Janna,” the girl announced with an even bigger grin.”You’re really lucky to have survived all of this, don’t worry, there’s an ambulance coming.”

Gruse sat up on the stage, holding her arm.

“Don’t worry,” she replied. “I don’t think I’ll need one.”

“Hm-?” Janna couldn’t say anything else before a shadow loomed over her. She looked upwards to see who was blocking out the sun, and the color drained from her face.

“Hey, kid,” Eroh growled.

Janna’s jaw quivered. Did he remember she’d shot his hand and set him up to lose an arm? She’d thought the carnage was over.

“M-mister,” she stuttered. “I wasn’t doin’ anything…” pieces of the Southwestern dialect crept into her words under the duress. Eroh cut her off gruffly.

“Do the same thing for this one, here.” He yanked Myst’s body by the collar.

“I-is he okay?” Janna looked at him closely, trying to deduce if he was dead or unconscious. “I can’t bring someone back from the dead-”

“Just do it, will ya’?” he cocked his head annoyedly.

“Okay!”

She clasped her hands together.

“[ARUARIAN DANCE]...”

Janna closed her eyes and the ribbons sparkled to life. Within a few seconds of Eroh shaking Myst by the neck, his eyes opened lazily.

“Oh, good,” Eroh muttered. “I really wasn’t sure, there.”

He looked to Gruse and tilted his head at her, putting on a thin smile.

“Alright, ‘banshee’, I can only carry one of you, so either you get up, or I get to grab around your thighs.”

Gruse muttered some obscenities as she got to her feet. She dusted herself off and felt the pain stinging in her arm.

“Gotta get that cleaned now, too…” she muttered further.

A voice from far away called,

“Hey! They’re getting away!”

Gideon hollered at the top of his lungs and redrew his saber. Eroh looked back and raised a finger; with a wave of his hand, he sent a jetstream of acid through the stage, burning right through it at an angle and sent great chunks of concrete sliding down all the way to the ground. A cloud of dust was kicked up, and when it was gone, so were the three of them, leaving only Janna, looking as confused as the others.

“God damn it!” Gideon cursed emphatically.

“It’s alright,” Gallow assured him, prompting Gideon to look to him strangely.

“The Tiger is dead,” he continued. “They don’t have a guiding line anymore.”

Gideon looked from him back to the stage.

“Hey,” he said suddenly. “Is that Janna?”

A minute later, she was apologizing profusely.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she pleaded beneath Gallow and Sonsee, who were wearing very unhappy expressions. “I just wanted to see the speech, but I wasn’t going to really see it, I was just going to be near it, so that I could hear it, but not be at it- Or maybe I could hear it on a radio in town-”

“There’s a radio at the Academy,” Gallow said curtly.

“But- but that’s not the same as hearing it with a bunch of other people, right?” she defended herself. “And I just happened to be around when all the commotion was going on, and I could sense all the Vocations, and there was some really strange stuff just a moment ago too- So I rushed over here once it sounded like everything had died down, and I really just wanted to see if I could help anybody- I mean, how was I supposed to know that she was one of them, I mean, you don’t read about many woman assassins in the serials, do you-?”

Gallow and Sonsee crossed their arms and sighed heavily. Then, from beside them, they heard a small giggle that bubbled up and then suppressed itself, before stammering out again.

“Gideon?” Gallow’s face was painted with shock and surprise. “Are you giggling?” He’d never heard anything even resembling a laugh out of his former commander’s mouth, and now…

Gideon stood reservedly, arms tight and looking to the ground, as if trying to restrain his outburst.

“It’s just- I’m sorry,” he laughed, turning his eyes upward. “Angelique’ll really like to hear that…”

They looked at him befuddled.

“You can imagine, right?” Gideon continued, noticing their confusion. “Risking your life to help someone? It’s a good quality for a doctor.”

As it turned out, Angelique did get quite a kick out of hearing what she’d done so brazenly. He arrived at the scene a few hours later, after the initial crew had shown up to tend to the few survivors.

An attendant handed Angelique a clipboard assessing the overall injuries, to be submitted to the city police department.

“Sorry, Captain, Professor,” an officer tipped his cap to the two. “We’re pretty thin right now, we’ve been scrambling the last few hours from what happened at HQ.” He looked visibly exhausted and pale from the day.

“HQ?” Gideon’s fears were set off by the anxiety in the officer’s face.

“Oh, God…” he rubbed his temples. “The whole building- agh… There was an explosion, fire department thinks it was a gas line. They’ve recovered some of the bodies already, it was bad, real bad…” He looked off for a moment; Gideon and Angelique both got the impression he’d known some of those in the collapse.

“HQ… That’s where…” Gideon looked at Angelique, then suddenly remembered seeing Eroh just an hour before. “Oh my-!” he cried, upset. Angelique and the officer were surprised by his uncharacteristic outburst.

“Of course!” he went on. “That was where they were holding- Gah!” He suddenly sobered up his emotions and said very straight-faced, “We’ve got to organize a search for the rest of the Fang Team.”

“The- the what?” the officer was lost.

---

Gruse held her arm tightly, applying pressure to the wound to slow the bleeding.

“This thing can’t go any faster?!” she snarled in a hushed voice.

“Shaddup!” Eroh snapped back in a similar low tone. The three were hidden under a tarp aboard a small passenger ship heading down the river that cut Hilltop in two. Eroh was familiar with a black market doctor in The Chaff who had decided that anesthesia was best used for patients in more critical conditions. The bullet in Gruse’s arm was removed and the wound dressed in under five minutes, a marvel of shady healthcare.

Myst’s condition was much harsher, and he was struggling to remain conscious aboard the ship. The doctor was able to remove the bullet from his chest, but the damage done by using Dome C twice in such a short span of time would likely leave irreparable damage to his body.

Gruse whispered to the older man of the two, “Myst, get some rest, you don’t need to be up all the time.” She almost laughed, but it was with a nervous energy; she thought back to his incessant exercise and figured it was some kind of perpetual-motion-machine complex he had. It was humorous, in the same way that soldiers tell dark jokes to lighten the mood. Nevertheless, Myst relented, and the last thing he saw before he fell asleep was her smile. Without knowing that it was a nervous expression, it gave him a little comfort as he lost consciousness.

Gruse leaned back against one of the many boxes of cargo stored beneath the tarp at the stern, and breathed a sigh of relief.

When night fell, they felt comfortable enough to poke their heads out of the back and watch the moon rise over the water. They were safely out of the city, and most of the passengers aboard the vessel had either been dropped off or were in their cabins.

Gruse lifted the tarp to allow the cool night breeze into their hiding place; she smiled.

“It feels like I haven’t seen stars in forever…”

“Yeah…” Eroh replied flatly, slumping over.

The sound of crickets filled the air around them, there had to have been several hundreds around in the trees; the ripples left behind by the boat distorted the clear reflection of the moon.

“Hey, Eroh,” Gruse broke the silence again.

“Huh?” he didn’t sound like he really wanted to talk, but she had something on her mind.

“Why did you come back?”

“What?”

She looked back at him. “Why didn’t you just leave us back there?”

Eroh was quiet for a few seconds.

“I just wanted to see if Mello had won.”

His answer didn’t sit well with her.

“Is that why you rescued us and got us treatment?”

Eroh grimaced. “Are you trying to say something?”

Gruse pouted and looked up at him with a crossed brow. “I just think it’s funny that you helped us out so much when you hated the team.”

He looked visibly taken aback by her bluntness.

“I don’t have anything against him,” he gestured to Myst, still asleep beside them.

“And what about me?”

His face relaxed suddenly and a wry smile came over it. “Oh, you’re hot.”

Gruse spit on the ground. “Ech!” she groaned. “That’s what I think of you.”

“I was kind of hoping that Myst was better and I’d get to carry you,” he continued, ignoring her growing scowl. “I really would’ve liked to feel up your legs.”

“Ick! Ick! Ick!” she sneered. Eroh let out a restrained cackle, trying not to raise too much noise.

“Is there a reason you’re like this?” she asked, almost rhetorically.

“Not really,” he retorted. “I think I was just born this way.” His hand rested comfortably on the dock floor, holding himself up as he sat leisurely.

“Good grief…” Gruse moaned. “I thought I was going to get somewhere talking to you.” She went on, venting her frustrations on a rather blase Eroh.

“Aren’t you worried at all about what’s going to happen now?” she asked as if pleading for an answer. “What are we going to do without Mello? He was like this guiding light for us; every time I got some kind of message from him, my heart just jumped alive-”

“I’m gonna cut you off, banshee,” Eroh butted in. “And, normally, I’d just kill you when I got annoyed, but just this once I’ll do you the favor and actually say what I’m thinking.”

Gruse was dumbstruck; Eroh’s “honest thoughts” were about as rare as a blue moon (of which she had never seen).

“You were way too reliant on him to begin with,” Eroh rattled off. “Anytime you saw him, you looked like a little girl seeing her dad come home from the war. Did you ever know your dad?”

She opened her mouth, shocked. “I-”

“Actually, I don’t care,” he interrupted her again. “All I’m thinking is, I think you need to be more like me.”

“Like you??” she sounded incredulous.

“Yeah,” he said coolly, looking off and smirking. “A self-made survivor.” His grin told her just how impressed he was with himself.

“You mean, you want me to be an ass to everyone I meet, kill a lot of people indiscriminately, and push everyone away?”

He looked at her as he scratched something out from between his teeth.

“It’s better than being a leech to someone else’s dream.” Eroh saw her expression and added on, “At least get your own, won’t ya’?”

Gruse sat back and looked over the waters.

“Whatever,” she dismissed the conversation entirely. “I’ll figure it out.”

---

Gallow waited patiently on the bench outside the exam room. The hallway had gorgeous marble floors and large windows on each end that let in piercing rays of light; the sun was so bright today that it was nearly impossible to see anything out of them. Every particle of dust was visible against the light that streamed in; it made him very aware of the air he was breathing.

When he tapped his foot, the sound bounced off the pristine walls with their high arches and echoed throughout the hall. After a few minutes, another echo joined his. He glanced over to see Sonsee approaching, one arm in a cast, the other holding a bag.

His face lit up.

“You said you went to the bathroom!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were taking a long time…”

She laughed and joined him on the bench.

“They had a cafeteria downstairs, so I figured I’d drop by,” she pulled a roll from the bag and reached it out to him.

“No…” he said, incredulously. “You didn’t…” He took a bite and let out a “whoo!”

She took out her own roll and began nibbling on it.

“You know,” she got out between chews. “If you eat it so quickly, you won’t be able to savor it.”

Gallow stopped and looked at his roll, already half-eaten.

“Okay, fair enough,” he admitted, taking a smaller bite and making sure to chew it thoroughly.

Sonsee watched him eating intently.

“You remember that woman who taught me Hopish?”

“Mm-- Yeah?”

“She told me that civilized people eat with their mouths closed, too.”

Gallow laughed, half-chewed bread on his tongue.

“Well, I’m just an animal, you know?” he chuckled.

Sonsee raised her eyebrows. “I was about to say…”

Gallow bared his teeth and gnawed on his roll like a wild dog to a bone.

“Ragh-ragh-ragh-ragh!” he snarled with savage eyes.

Sonsee thought his imitation was prefect, and began to laugh uncontrollably.

“Don’t- don’t do that!” she squealed. Eventually, he couldn’t even keep character, and ended up laughing alongside her.

Suddenly, the great oak door next to them swung open, and a grey-haired man wearing a tweed jacket poked his head out.

“Excuse me!” he barked with an ironically restrained voice. “There’s a test going on!” he had the kind of tone one dreaded hearing from a parent or teacher; even Sonsee, who had never had a regular schooling, knew that it was bad news.

As the door shut, they both fell into silence for a moment, a little embarrassed for their conduct.

“That’s a voice to put the fear of God in ya’...” Gallow muttered, prompting another, quieter giggle from Sonsee.

Eventually, they had both finished their food, and sat together without much noise.

“Hey, Sonsee,” Gallow broke the quiet. “When I was out above the…” he gestured awkwardly. “Outside of time…” He felt silly saying it, although he’d explained it to her once he’d had time to process the events. “Before I found Mello again, I stopped by the orphanage that I’d spent a lot of time at with Warren…”

Sonsee curiously watched him tell the story, as this had been left out of the first telling, and he wasn’t looking at her while he spoke, so it must have been something he was concentrating on.

“I wanted to see the night all over again, where it happened,” he continued. “It was weird, it was really… weird. I could see myself, and all of a sudden there was this… sickness I felt in my stomach, like I needed to throw up. It was this rotten, ugly feeling…”

She listened to him, watching the intensity of his expression and eyes change as he worked out the details.

“I figured that it couldn’t have been a physical reaction, like I’d eaten something bad and it was just coming up at the worst time,” he continued. “Because it was my spirit, so it had to have something to do with what emotion it brought up in me. That’s sort of how I figured out where I needed to take Mello, but it’s been on my mind ever since.”

“Does the memory still make you sick?” she asked; with an internal issue like this, the truth was already inside of him, he just needed the right help to bring it out.

“Yeah,” he said, laughing weakly. “It really does; I don’t know, it was just such a weird time, it still feels like a dream. I tell myself that it wasn’t my fault, and I know that it wasn’t, in a way- But that’s the problem!” He suddenly realized something as he spoke. “I kind of doubt myself like that, right? On some level… it’s like I know that it’s okay, but that’s not how I feel… Does that make sense?”

“It makes enough sense to me,” she replied, letting him think it through further. “How do you think you want to fix that?”

“Fix it?” he looked confused for a second. “I know what you mean, but I don’t really know, I guess I just have to keep going; there’s a part of me that feels like that night isn’t over yet.”

“Are you going back to Sigrit?” she asked, questions of the future stirring in her mind.

Gallow thought for a moment, staring at the window, blown out with light.

“No,” he answered after a pause.

“Where were you thinking, then?”

Gallow looked back at her with an odd look on his face.

“New Hopeland,” he declared.

Sonsee sat back, surprised. “New Hopeland?” she asked, finding it hard to believe. “Across the ocean?”

He smiled uncontrollably, his heart began to race with the same excitement he’d gotten when he first stepped into Sigrit.

“Yeah,” he said, grinning ear-to-ear. “To the Serpent Isles.”

Sonsee realized what he meant, and couldn’t help but chuckle. “Of course.” Her eyes floated around the hallway; then, after a moment of quiet, she returned her gaze to him. “I’ll go with you.”

Gallow’s smile turned to disbelief. “What? You’re going to go across the ocean for no reason?”

Sonsee sat back and rolled up the bag. “Well, I don’t have a reason to go anywhere else, do I?”

His smile returned, but before he could say anything, the door to the exam room opened. Janna stepped out, looking exhausted from the nearly five hours of testing. Gallow got up to greet her.

“How was it?”

She took a seat where he’d been on the bench and slumped over into Sonsee’s arms.

“I’m tired…” she groaned. “And hungry…”

Sonsee looked up at Gallow with a guilty expression. “Guess I should have thought of that,” she admitted, stroking Janna’s hair. Then emphatically, “Hey, let’s get something from downstairs, then!”

Janna perked up and got to her feet, stretching her legs out, and the three of them headed for the staircase at the end of the hall.

“I want to stand so I can stretch,” Janna said annoyedly. “But I’m tired so I also want to lay down…”

“It’ll be worth it, don’t worry,” Gallow assured her. “We didn’t come all this way for nothing.”

As they descended the stairs, he finally felt as if a chapter had been sealed shut in his life.

Some solace would come to Janna that night, as she lay in bed. Musing over the events of their long journey, she thought,

“All of the pain and suffering we had to endure was for me, but I never forced anyone to stay. I never told anyone they needed to be there for me, or protect me. They did it entirely because they care about me. And even now, they aren’t upset; the love they had for me was stronger than their suffering.”

The idea gave her some comfort, and she was lulled to sleep quickly.

As they left the Academy that day, there was something Gallow never got to tell Sonsee about the memory. When he left that shard of time, he moved through the glassy world between time and infinity. This time, and only this time, however, the journey was punctuated by something he couldn’t explain, that filled his heart with worry, longing, and nostalgia.

The scent of Roses.

---

And so, push on, push on, little ants!

I believe you can, I believe you will…

Break through the artifice you’ve found.

Never More, Never More,

Your Hearts will Never More be chained

By the glassy eye of Time;

For Time is mad,

And Time is Despairing.

The stars are a poem,

An endless soliloquy.

Tell me, when you stare out over the ocean,

Can you hear that poem?

Thus it ends…

Your HeartBlitzCrossing…