Page 92 of Inextricably Tied

She doesn’t know how they did it. Harbinger could barely move, gasping in pain at the invisible wound in her chest. Poe and Omen carried her weight for miles before they found a ride to the train station. It was another hour before the train ran. Hours more before they arrived in Harbinger’s town, but Poe and Omen never took their hands off her.

“It was quiet at my house.” Details stay ingrained in her memory; the neighbors’ flowers bloomed early that year. A kid left their scooter in the front yard, covered in weeds. “Our front door was cracked, like someone was running inside. Like they’d forgotten something. Like it would just be a minute.”

Agony’s eyes burn against the back of her neck. She can’t stop now. If she does, she won’t say it. “I asked Poe and Omen to wait outside. I don’t know why. I guess I knew…” Heat pricks the back of her eyes. “I checked the rooms downstairs, calling for him, looking in the closets twice even when I knew he wouldn’t be there. I couldn’t go up the stairs. I knew. I knew when I couldn’t feel him.”

It happened so quickly. So slowly. All at once. She’s not sure where the gaps in her memory come from; her mind trying to protect her, or the Oracle stealing one more thing. In Harbinger’s memories, she can see the room. The things he used. But her father isn’t there, a blurry outline that she, mercifully and agonizingly, can’t conjure.

She begged Omen to bring him back. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t. She pleaded, desperate and screaming, but Omen just held her while she sobbed.

In the end, maybe it was an exchange, Omen’s power bringing Harbinger back from the brink instead.

Agony drifts beside her. Flint sinks low enough to look at her, and she feels as small as she was back then. “That’s not your fault, Harbin.”

Tears slip when her eyes squeeze shut. “I can’t let someone love me like that again. I can’t take someone else dying to protect me. Killing themself to make sure I’m ok. I can’t live through that again. I can’t carry another hole. I can’t.” Sharp grief blades through her chest when she looks at them. “Please don’t make me.”

Flint’s arms encircle her, pulling her down into his lap, Agony pressed against her back. Fear escapes her in the tears pressed against Flint’s chest. He and Agony cover her with gentle words, soothing circles against her skin until her jagged breaths have slowed.

“That’s why I don’t think about it,” she whispers. “What could happen to me. It’s why I’ve been reckless, taking risks because I hate what happened. What becoming this has caused.” Her forehead presses into Flint’s shoulder, and she tries to breathe. “So much of life was out of my control, but diving headfirst is one thing I had a say in.”

“You have a say in things now,” Flint murmurs. “Or you should. I know I’ve been overbearing…” His head tilts back at the realization. “I’ve been trying so hard to protect you, I didn’t recognize it was stifling. That it was hurting you.”

She swipes at her face. “You didn’t know.”

“But you tried to tell me.”

She sucks in a shaky breath, sinking back against Agony. Shadows weave through her hair, unbraiding it until the pain in her skull eases. They probably look ridiculous, the three of them on the ground next to the fire, half-wrapped in the blanket, but she can’t bring herself to care.

“That’s something else the Oracle takes.” Her fingers trace the knit outline in Flint’s sweater. “I didn’t keep anything of his, because one day, I won’t remember him at all. I’ll see a picture of him, and I won’t know who it is. I won’t know anything about him. Nothing except —” Tracks of tears dry on her cheeks. “The hole he left.”

Agony’s mouth presses to her temple. “How do you feel about him now?”

“I don’t know. Conflicted. Angry. Guilty…sad, but more for the things I can’t do now. Confronting him, or telling him how much he hurt me, or repairing what was there. Maybe those things never would have happened, but now I know they won’t. It feels wrong to love him. I don’t know if I do, but why would it hurt like this if I didn’t? And then I wonder…” Another shaky breath escapes her. “Did he care about me? If I was important enough that he wanted to stop hurting me, why wasn’t I important enough for him to stay? Why wasn’t I important enough for him to try harder?”

Agony brushes through her hair.

“I wish it were simple,” she murmurs. “That I felt one thing about him. That I could mourn the loss without lightness. Without being glad that I don’t have to hurt like that anymore. It’s a different hurt now. Relief that’s unfinished. I can never close the wound. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”

Agony’s chin rests on her shoulder. Harbinger’s lulled by the rise and fall of Flint’s chest until Agony speaks again. “Do you think you became who you are because of your father, or in spite of him?”

Agony doesn’t look at either of them, gaze cast across the water. She can make out his face next to hers, blending into the dark, shadows shifting around the light of his eyes.

“I’m not sure. A lot more of him worked its way into me than I wanted to believe. I thought I was living in spite of him; I was still here when he wasn’t. I didn’t leave like he did.”

Emotions swell from Flint and Agony, twining together to reach the empty places within her. They don’t fill the hole her father left, but for a moment, they cover it, a layer of reminder that the three of them exist. That the hole is not the only thing there is.

Her laughter is wet. “I went against everything the Convent tried to instill in me. Every rule they made, I rejected, because of what they did to me. What they did to him. But now…” She tilts her head back against Agony’s shoulder. “I’m realizing that every choice I made specifically against the Oracle, I made because of them. They still had a hand in things I didn’t want them to be able to touch. If I did it to spite them, I still did it because of them.”

Agony still doesn’t look at her. She probes their connection and reaches something like shame. His question seems less about her and more about something else.

“It doesn’t have to be like that, though,” she murmurs. “You don’t have to let the past hold onto you. At least, I fucking hope you don’t.”

Agony’s grin presses to the side of her neck. It tugs on her own, and when she lifts her eyes, Flint’s watching them both with that soft expression he’s only ever reserved for her.

There aren’t words for it: the complexity, the delicacy, the intricacies that don’t make sense. The steady thrum of contentment coming from both ends of her connections. A steady spark with her as the conduit, linking the three of them until the presence of their emotions is no longer a burden. It’s a comfort, a reminder of the things she’s carried and where she’s safe to set them down.

“We should head back.” Flint twists a strand of her hair and Agony’s shadows around his finger. “Agony has something to show you.”

They pull themselves off the ground, making their way back to the cabin where Agony leaves them on the deck. On the field in front of the pack house, the Timbers play a pickup game that mostly involves tackling each other to the ground.