Page 103 of Legendary

“Nick, the circumstances for what happened with Jonah was out of our hands…”

I whirled around, my chest heaving. “So many families had to know that their children weren’t coming home because of something we did, somethingIdid!” I pushed my index finger into my chest. “That’s onme. And I’ve tried my best to move on. Be this sentry angel Jonah, my father, and everyone else wanted me to be. I’ve moved on to the next thing, spent my time mourning the loss and compartmentalized. I just keep seeing their faces…their blood…” I trailed off, wobbling a little on my feet. The burning in my chest continued and the darkness danced around my skin and scorched my veins. “They won’t leave me alone. I was too weak to stop Markus, too weak to help Jonah, too weak that someone was able to go inside my fucking head at some point and mess with it.” My voice was shaking, and I backed up against the wall, the wood hitting my back that was starting to sweat.

Dani crowded me against the wall. “Jonah didn’t want you to save him.”

“I shouldn’t have let him make that choice. I should have saved him. That would have made me good, that would have made me everything he thought I was. He would still be here. Markus would be dead, but Jonah wouldn’t be.”

“Markus did this. Lilith did this. Fucking Isabel did this Nick, not you.”

I punched the wall from behind me with my fist. “What did I do to stop it!? I fought and wasn’t good enough. I bled on the lawn and for what? I did all that just to be stuck with this.” I waved my hand over myself. My voice cracked at the end, my throat felt constricted, but not from the weight of the darkness, but from my own emotions. My eyes burned; they burned so fucking much. “It’s like trudging through life day after day. Every time I feel like I get closer to feeling better, I get sucked down to feel like shit. I’m weak and it knows it. I proved it to myself that day and it’s been apparent every single fucking day since.” I placed my hand at the back of my neck, lifting my head to the ceiling again. The darkness was screaming at me.

Shut up. Shut up. You did this.

You weren’t good enough.

I blew out breath after breath, the view in front of me slightly blurring. I didn’t know what was happening. “I’m not a hero, Dani. I hate Markus for what he did. Isabel, Lilith, everyone involved. I do, I really do, but I—I hate…” I wanted to hyperventilate over the rapid-fire images that were happening through my blurry vision, but the blur was making them less noticeable. They were there, but they weren’t so threatening. “I hate myself. I’ll go back to Heaven’s Gate if that’s what you want. I just want to stop seeing their faces, I just want to stop seeing it all…” My cheeks felt wet as I felt myself being pulled forward and into her arms.

Dani held onto me as the wetness on my cheeks grew and I closed my eyes. We were both dirty and bloody, but I still wrapped my arms around her lower back and squeezed, holding on like my entire existence depended on it. Like my sanity depended on it. Maybe it did. My shoulders shook and I buried my face into her shoulder as she stood on the balls of her feet. I felt her shirt getting wet under my face, but she didn’t pull away. My voice was muffled, and my words felt like they came out choked. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that I’m not strong enough, I’m not good enough. I want to tell Jonah I’m sorry, but I can’t. I can’t do that, Dani. I won’t ever be able to do that because I wasn’t enough. You deserve someone who isn’t fucking broken and holding you back. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m fucking sorry.”

She reached up and rubbed my back. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. I may not understand it all, but I know pain and I can feel yours. It knows you’reaccepting things, and it isn’t happy, but let me ease it.” It was a strange feeling as the darkness started to remove itself from me. It was its own entity, slow moving and wispy. It tumbled within itself as it flowed into her body. She took it with ease, as if it knew exactly where to go even though it didn’t enjoy the fact that it was being pushed out. It wasn’t completely gone from me, it probably never would be, but there was a lightness to my body now and the tears flowed harder at the relief. I felt my hands heat from the light generating itself back into my system, no longer diminished by so much venomous darkness.

Dani ran her hands through as much of my hair as she could. “You are always enough, Nicholas Cassial. Broken and in pieces, you are enough. Heroes are allowed to be broken; it doesn’t make them any less of a hero.” I shook against her, thinking that I was holding her too hard, that I would break her along with how much I realized I needed her. “We’ll figure everything out, the secrets, your dad, and whatever else there is, I’ll be right here.”

“I’m so fucking tired of trying,” I said between the tears flowing down my cheeks.

She kissed my cheek again and again. “Then stop for a minute. Breathe. Just be here and think of nothing else. Just exist. Exist with me.”

I couldn’t stand on my feet anymore, so she fell with me onto the floor, holding onto me the entire time. She held me like she couldn’t imagine herself anywhere else but wrapped up in me. And for the first time in months, I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

My body felt numb when I woke up. I had a moment of panic thinking I was back in one of my nightmares. When I tried to stretch out my arm it told me that the numbness was from sore limbs, likely from the fight or possibly from being so wound up for a long while and finally letting it go. Or at least speaking it out loud so that it wasn’t trapped inside my own mind any longer. My arms had dirt on them and cuts and bruises in various places, most of them turning into scabs already. I felt a body underneath me and I peeked up from where I was laying, noticing that I was resting my head in Dani’s lap. I could feel the hard wooden floor beneath us, telling me we hadn’t moved since I’d broken down. Her eyes were open when I looked at her and she was just staring off into the distance, as if she was lost in her own thoughts. Her hand was absentmindedly petting my hair. I moved my body a little more, letting her know I was awake.

She blinked down at me and gave me a small smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I didn’t know what to say to her. I was mildly embarrassed at what had happened, but also grateful that it had. It was overwhelmingly painful to speak the truth, but in the end, it was worth it, like she kept trying to get me to understand. “How long have I been out?”

She shrugged. “Around two hours maybe.”

“And you’ve just been awake this whole time?”

She brushed a piece of her hair behind her ear. “A lot just happened alright. I wasn’t going to just take my eye off you, just in case.”

“Your verdict?”

She slid one of her fingers down my cheek. “I’m proud of you.”

For some reason, that tugged at that beating organ in my chest. “I might be a little proud of myself.” I pushed my body off the ground, feeling the undeniable knot in my neck from the position I slept in and mimicked her position against the wall. She watched my movements skillfully as if anything and everything could trigger something. Nothing happened though, I just leaned down and kissed her. One soft, quick peck on the lips. “Thank you.”

She waved me off, giving me another kiss. “Angels are allowed to make mistakes, Nick. You are allowed to fight and draw blood when necessary. You will watch people die. I just don’t understand why you didn’t talk to your father or Reese. Maurice Cassial doesn’t seem like the type to spread toxic masculinity.”

I let out a short humorless laugh. “He isn’t. And Reese tried to get me to talk, I mean they all did, but I just thought I could handle it. I thought Iwashandling it. Things weren’t as bad back home, but here, it just got elevated. I was overwhelmed and by this time it was just too late to try to explain it all.”

Dani hummed. “I think Reese feels sad over everything, but I do think he has more anger over what happened. He thinks more straight ahead, a blatant disregard for anyone in his way. I also think he’s kind of obsessed with your well-being. The darkness loves the angry and resentful, but it thrives on the sad and regretful, and the untapped pain that an entity harbors just so they can exploit it for themselves.”

“I should have listened to you. I know.”

She narrowed her eyes at me playfully, but there was a hint of worry in her eyes. “I can understand wanting to fix things yourself, needing things to maintain order or you’ll lose all control, but sometimes while you’re trying to ignore the issue, you end up not seeing that control is being lost anyway. You are allowed to do things on your own time, but not at the expense ofyour sanity.” She placed her hand on my chest, turning her body and pulling her legs up so that she was cuddled into my side. She was scolding me in the gentlest way. “I don’t know much about grief, Nick. I don’t mourn the loss of souls or cry when Lilith rips people to shreds, even if I knew them. I’ve never attached myself to someone so fucking much that my chest ached over them.”

I brought my legs up so that they were parallel to my chest. “It’s an exhausting feeling.”

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