Page 82 of Impossible

What use would I be withnofucking hands? How would I hold Joshua? Play video games with Risk, or braid his hair when he spends his nights draped over the toilet? How would Hollis ever trust me again, if he had to start taking care of me too? How could Indie ever love me?

Risk could lose himself in hitting this tree. He’d keep on going till he’s bloody and bruised and smiling, the intensity of his emotions reminding him he’s alive. Joshua wouldn’t make it this far out of the house. He’d be in bed, asleep. Hollis would be at the office, shuffling papers and talking to mid-level bureaucrats and pretending it’s enough.

And I’m here. In the woods. Alone. Unable to climb a fucking ladder. Heartsick for a nineteen-year-old anorexic omega I met a week ago who seems hell-bent on tearing me to pieces.

I want her. Like Risk wants his vices and Hollis wants his power and Joshua wants his numbness, I want my Indie.

I groan and flop back to the ground. The dirt is frigid against my back, and I hiss as it gets in the cut on my hand, burning as it burrows into the raw flesh. Just what I need. Sepsis.

I look at the sky and choose stars at random to focus on, watching them glitter. There isn’t much of a breeze, but what wind there is blows the boughs of the trees overhead, dappling the little pinpoint lights. Is this what Indie saw, when Risk pinned her down on Monday night? Was the dirt this cold beneath her bony frame, lacking any fat or muscle to protect her? The thought makes me nauseous.

And still, she wants him. Wants me. It’s clear as day, if she would just fuckingsayit.

Like it would do any good.

Fuck. I keep going in circles, worrying about one member of my pack after another, powerless to do a goddamn thing to help any of them. I can’t fix Indie. I can’t make her eat or agree to court other packs that aren’t her fated mates. I don’twantto.

I can’t breathe life into Joshua. I can’t give Risk all he needs. And I can’t make Hollis turn his back on his life’s dreams.

He’s always wanted the Coalition. For noble reasons, sure, but he isn’t immune to the draw of power. I’ve always supported his causes. In theory, I still do.

But Hollis will be no leader at all for our world if he can’t lead by example: pack comes first.

And I’m too fucking weak to fix ours.

I can’t make myself stronger. I can’t find any more to give.I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.I can’t put on a show of it anymore. I’ve duped them all for weeks, and now it’s time to pay the piper.

I’ve given patience, soothing words and cradled arms and sage advice. Endless hours spent listening, researching anorexia and PTSD and depression and the veritable alphabet of acronyms that is Risk. I’ve neglected my own physical therapy, my stump pulsing with phantom pain and muscle contractures, the flashbacks coming in waves and getting shoved down as I turn to other’s problems instead of my own.

I don’t know what to do.

The ladder makes a creaking sound as a particularly strong gust of wind blows. I shiver.

It wasn’t the attack that made us like this. Sure, it went ahead and dropped a nuke on our lives, but we weren’t all sunshine and roses before then, as much as I might like to pretend.

I had started building this treehouse alone. A gift for myself.

When Risk found out, he was like a kid at Christmas. He was all over it. He liked to climb the tree instead of the ladder to get up to the platform. One day he jumped from the platform, nearly thirty feet in the air, just to see if he could, and sprained his ankle. The next day he somehow made it up again while I was up there trying to draw plans for the actual structure. He whipped out a joint, joking that the doctor prescribed it for his pain.Whynot, I figured. This was for my inner child right? I was expected to be a Pack Alpha back at the Complex, I rarely got to cut loose with the other alphas like Joshua and Risk did. I smoked with him, and Hollis yelled at us both when we returned. Risk got his usual apathetic cuffing, but Hollis called me irresponsible, said I should have known better. Like I was Risk’s father instead of his packmate.

I went up once to find Joshua lying in the sun, writing in a journal. When he saw me pop up through the hole in the floor, he slammed the book shut, scurrying to the ladder and apologizing for ‘intruding’. I told him he didn’t need to go. I wanted some peace and quiet too. I could feel his shame in the bond, but I didn’t ask him about it. I didn’t wonder why my own packmate was so afraid to be caught by me. I didn’t stop him, or reassure him, or ask him to stay. Careless.

Hollis has never been out here. Never asked about it, never paid attention. He thought building it was silly, and I brushed him off, happy to have something of my own for once. To not need to be Mission Leader Leon. To just be Leon. Leon who was a boy once. Who liked climbing and building things and getting high with his friends and reading in quiet, companionable silence. All things I could share with my pack, if we weren’t so lost in ourselves.

I’ve been a fraud ever since the attack, a broken man masquerading as whole, with everyone abiding by my lies because they needed what I could offer more than they needed my dignity. I’m by far the most physically disfigured of us after the ambush, but if you asked anybody they’d probably say I was the least affected.

It’s bullshit. All of it. The Coalition, the Complex, Hollis’s ego, my own hang-ups and baggage and insecurities.

I consider trying to climb the ladder. Just to say I can. A fool’s errand. I don’t have a left hand.

I laugh.

I am an amputee. I don’t have a left hand. I am disabled.

Everybody’s been too afraid to say it. Myself included. But I’m fucking disabled.

Nothing and no one will ever give me back what I’ve lost.

Except.

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