new eden - 67
*67*
When Lili and Kyle arrived back at the cabin later that morning, the sound of their footsteps immediately caught the attention of the other two men, who had looked to be in the middle of a heated discussion outside. Jared was holding his small computer in his hand and Ian was holding one of his many guns in his hands.
“What the hell, Lili?” was Jared’s greeting as she and Kyle cautiously came nearer. Kyle kept well behind Lili as his eyes couldn’t help being drawn to where Ian angrily shoved a clip into the pistol he held, the older man’s gorgeous eyes more than a bit cold as they moved over Kyle in return.
“And may I add,” Ian began, “what the hell is he doing here?” he finished his question with a growl. “Did you force her to allow you to follow her back? Is that it?” he accused with further anger as he took a pointed step closer to the two who approached.
“Yeah, cause I really wanted to be near you again,” Kyle scoffed with a mix of sarcasm and sadness as he began to just as quickly turn away to head back to the tree line they had just emerged from.
“All of you stop it!” Lili exclaimed with her own anger easily emerging, which did cause Jared and Ian to turn their attention back to her, though Ian’s expression still didn’t soften by much. She then turned to notice that Kyle was still moving back towards the woods deliberately. “I said all of you,” she directed her statement at Kyle with even more volume.
“He obviously doesn’t want me here. Surprise, surprise,” Kyle responded, speaking at a much lower volume, as he did halt his steps, while still refusing to turn back to see any of their faces.
“Oh look we’re in agreement once again,” Ian returned smartly. “How could you even bring him back here, Lili? He’s doing it again, isn’t he?” he asked then with another growl to his words as he quickly moved his attention back to her, though still did not relinquish the tight grip on the gun.
“I said stop,” Lili repeated more angrily, “And stop means stop, now doesn’t it, Ian?” she asked him pointedly, the connotation behind the words managing to cause him and Jared to both look down, momentarily caught by her obvious point. She then took a deep breath before turning slightly back to Kyle. “Come back here,” she ordered, though gently.
“I’m pretty sure he’s got a good enough aim to hit me all the way over here,” Kyle grumbled from his place now several feet closer to the tree line. Though, once he saw Lili’s scowl, he let out a slight sigh of concession and forced his feet to carry him a small distance closer to the other three once more.
Once Kyle did finally rejoin them, though still at a reasonable distance, Lili took a breath and spoke again. “First of all, we don’t even know that Kyle did do what he’s afraid he may have done,” she began. “The only reason he even thinks that he may have done anything wrong at all, is because he looked inside my head to determine if I was any closer to recovering, and what he saw there let him know that I do feel differently about each of you. That was his sole ‘proof’ that he may have done something wrong,” she repeated the facts pointedly.
“Sounds like a good enough reason to me,” Ian grumbled, his hands still clasped on the gun as tightly as his gaze was locked onto Kyle.
“Are you fucking serious, Ian?” Lili asked him loudly.
“Excuse me?” Ian returned, Lili’s tone and words both causing him to re-center his gaze on her at last.
“So, you slept with all of those people up there on the ship cause you felt exactly the same about every single one of them, huh?” she told him plainly. Those words did in turn cause both Jared and Kyle to look down in thought, their expressions making it clear that they immediately realized she had quite a valid point.
“Excuse me?” Ian repeated as he scoffed with disbelief and more than his fair share of discomfort at her scrutiny of his own actions during their former life.
“And before you answer,” she continued, not allowing his discomfort to sway her. “Remember what you told me that day when I asked you why you tossed them all away so fast? I believe you admitted that you didn’t feel any real connection to any of your previous lovers, now didn’t you?”
“And our first night here, what you told me when I asked you about your sex life. And what you said about the way you usually felt afterwards,” Kyle couldn’t help interjecting as though just remembering that conversation again himself.
“Don’t help, Kyle,” Lili interrupted the youngest of them, though quietly, before Ian could retaliate. She then quickly continued making her point. “So, if you freely admitted to us that you made love to people without feeling the same way about any of them that you may feel about…other lovers,” she added, looking down with a slight blush when referring to she and Ian’s own love life, “then how can you stand here and say that if I don’t feel the same way about all three of you, that must mean he forced me? Seriously, Ian. Think about it.”
“It’s---“ Ian attempted, only to be interrupted by Lili again.
“So help me, Ian, if you say it was different, I will smack you myself,” she told him plainly, causing the other two to look down again to hide their own reaction to her threat.
Ian let out a heavy sigh to attempt to compose himself before speaking up again. “So, you honestly trust him, and think it’s perfectly ok to have him around all of us. You are that convinced that he won’t pull any of his fucking mind control bullshit on us? Truly convinced?” he asked again, his own eyes glancing over Kyle with continued distrust.
Though it was Kyle who answered, rather than Lili. “If I was controlling any of you, would we even be having this conversation right now?” he returned pointedly.
But it was then Jared who finally spoke up. “It doesn’t matter Ian,” was his plainly spoken response as he took a deep breath.
“Excuse you?” Ian had to respond to that, his voice reflecting the same surprise that Lili’s and Kyle’s expressions both showed in response to Jared’s strange statement.
“He can’t control my mind, no matter how much he might ever want to,” Jared said with an eerie calmness to his tone, which did well to keep them all quiet as he continued. “So, rest assured that there will be consequences if I ever see any evidence of him trying to do that to either of you,” he stated plainly as he took a slight step closer to Kyle, allowing his dark eyes to move over the younger man. “And Kyle knows damn well, that I can and will make him pay if he ever tries that. And I won’t need my fist, or a knife, or a gun to do it,” he promised as he centered his gaze directly on Kyle. “I can put you in a world of pain, by only thinking it. And you know I will if you ever hurt anyone here, in any way.”
Jared finished his statement coldly as he simply allowed the slightest nod to accent his words before moving back from Kyle. The promise easily left the seventeen year old with an expression of unease which was also mirrored on Lili’s face at the weight of that threat being made by the most docile and least confrontational of all of them. Ian also looked not as much uneasy as shocked by the words, as he tried to weigh whether to be impressed or worried by such a warning being issued by the one who had always seemed the most peace-loving of the group. However, peace-loving or not, Jared was easily the most truly powerful out of all of them, if he were ever to let himself embrace those abilities, which were indeed frightening, even before his recent nineteenth birthday,
“Jared…” Lili began shakily, though even she wasn’t sure what the rest of that sentence was meant to be.
“Kyle is not our biggest problem right now. And that’s what we need to talk about,” Jared responded in a much softer tone as he set his computer aside now that Lili had returned from the trip that he had just found out about prior to their reappearance.
“We have another problem?” Lili asked worriedly as Ian looked down once more, seeming already aware of what problem Jared could be referring to.
“It’s been a week and a half, and we’ve tried,” he began with a heavy sigh as he turned back to where Lili and Ian had both moved their gazes to the ground awaiting the rest of Jared’s statement. “We don’t have a real bottle, and the goat’s milk that we can get into her system at all despite that; it still isn’t what she needs, considering how small and weak she already is,” he stated sadly, as he attempted to keep his gaze on Lili rather than giving in to the urge to cast his eyes downwards as well.
Lili swallowed hard as she felt all of their eyes then move to her, awaiting her response to such a dire diagnosis. “But you’re a doctor. You must know about some plants or something that you can crush up in the milk and help her get the vitamins she needs that way, right?” she asked in a shaky tone.
Jared sighed heavily. “She is barely eating what we try to get into her anyway, vitamins aside. It’s not what she needs to get strong enough to survive much longer,” he told her sadly.
His words caused Kyle to look down sadly as Ian turned away to hide his own upset over Jared’s statements. Lili sniffled a bit as she looked around at all of them before attempting to find some response to the weighty words. “But your vision,” she began. “You saw her, three years from now. She was fine. She was healthy and happy. She’ll be fine. Your vision said so,” she repeated again, her voice breaking on nearly every word.
Jared shook his head as Kyle moved away in an attempt to busy himself with getting their lunch ready, or anything he could do to keep himself occupied in the face of every conversation that he had been party to so far that day. Ian continued to look away to hide his own feelings at that particular moment, though he still could not force himself to leave the conversation completely as Jared made Lili aware of the seriousness of the situation.
With another deep breath, Jared continued. “We’ve had this conversation before, Lili,” another breath. “Just because I see a vision of the future, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen automatically. Our actions today, right now; those are what lead to those visions. None of them come true without our help, whether they’re good visions or bad. Everything we do now leads to what I see then. You have to realize that by now,” he finished softly.
Lili sniffled again. “But if there’s nothing we can do to save her, how the hell does anything we do now matter? You’re contradicting yourself!” she argued weakly.
“You’re right,” Jared returned in a tone as quiet as hers, which did cause Ian to look quickly back his way. “Ian and I can’t save her. But you, Lili, you’re the one who can, not us. And if my visions always come true, like they always have, then you know I’m right. No matter how helpless you feel right now, my vision proves that you can and do save this little girl. And considering how close she is to not being able to be saved right now: Today must be the day that you do finally realize that too.”