Chapter Text

Chapter One:

Caleb

He couldn’t remember exactly when it happened. It seemed to have slowly crept up on him like those early days of summer did—when the sun suddenly felt too warm against his skin and the shadows stretched endlessly across the slick asphalt like creatures on the hunt.

Gran had raised Caleb to be a dutiful son, and he took those responsibilities very seriously. 

She had not been his blood, but he considered them kin all the same, and when that same little girl he found at the shelter had joined them at Gran’s place, he knew the first thing he was expected to do was to care for her as well. Like any family would. 

The girl could barely keep any food down. She was malnourished with wide, deep-set eyes that seemed to sink into her face like portholes into an endless cosmic realm. Due to her shrunken size, it was difficult to tell how old she truly was at first glance. He had guessed that she was maybe a year or two younger than he, the wiser elder at all of twelve years of age.

She was quiet, skittish even, and he wasn’t entirely sure of what horrors she may have already seen. 

The girl had built up many walls around her. Impossible to climb. 

He tried to climb that fortress by gaining her trust, sneaking her forbidden treats, making shadow puppets dance on the kitchen wall for her entertainment, drawing apples on post-it notes and leaving them on her door.

Yet she was stubborn. A tough nut to crack.

The girl would often retreat to the living room during stormy nights, tucked into the corner of the room for safety like an abused dog. She was fearful of the way the thunder would roll through their neighbourhood like a ravenous beast, and the sky grew furious with rage, throwing bolts down mercilessly against its innocent victims. 

He observed her, noticing her fear and tentatively passed over a blanket for warmth. 

She was resistant, but her tiny little hands peeked out from her sleeves to grab it anyhow. Her eyes told him that she didn’t trust him yet. But she wanted to.

“The sky isn’t scary, is it?” he queried, tracing droplets on the window pane as he passed the living room window.

“Then why is it so angry?” she asked, more of an accusation than an actual question. She curled her knees into her chest for comfort.

Caleb’s smile was as effortless as the rising dawn. “It’s not angry.”

She wrinkled her brows in confusion, distrustful as to his response. “It sounds angry to me.”

“The sky is just trying to get some sleep,” he explained, rubbing his palms together as if trying to start a fire.

She watched in fascination, the sound of the friction like crinkled paper between his hands, when suddenly he clapped them before him with a loud smack.

Danica stumbled back in surprise and drew the blanket closer.

His grin was sheepish as he displayed his hands to show that he meant no harm. “He’s just catching pesky flies, is all.”

She looked at him like he was crazy, and he would soon come to know that look when she was entirely unamused by his antics, but she could never resist breaking into a smile. She couldn’t hold in her displeasure. Not for long anyhow. And when she had finally managed to smile at him, it felt like the skies had rewarded him—that they had sent him an angel for all of his hard work. He thought that it was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen. 

He’d always enjoyed sweet things. Those Honeycrisp apples, sticky on the fingers in the summer heat and the bubblegum ice cream melting like pink tears on the pavement. 

She’d always smiled for him, and the sight of it had warmed his heart more than he’d care to admit. It wasn’t until she began to share that smile with others that something inside of him had twisted a shade darker. Like a knife plunged into his gut, stuck so severely, the blade began to bend at odd angles, cutting him deeper and deeper.

In high school, she’d smile shyly before tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as the older boys passed her way.

He had always assumed that the smile was a hidden secret. One that had been made specifically for him, and that she had slipped it on for him every day like one slipped on a uniform before going to school. It was his umbrella against the rain, a shield against the raging winds. Caleb felt a sort of ownership over it, and the thought of another boy taking it for his own made him sick. 

Perhaps it was then that he knew, but he couldn’t be sure.

Maybe it was when she began to grow distant from him. They hadn’t seen each other as often during his time at flight school, and he missed her so fiercely that it felt like his heart had been wrung in two. He missed the crinkle of her eyes when she laughed, and the candies she’d leave under his pillow as a surprise, and the little notations she’d doodle in the corners of his notebook when he wasn’t looking, and the way her eyes sharpened with immense focus as she bent forward to put her hair in a ponytail. She always had those little baby hairs that would stick up, too stubborn to slip into her scrunchie. 

When she called him that day, it had been raining. She was so drunk that he could barely understand her. She only called when she needed something.

“Please, Caleb—”

“Where are you?” he demanded.

She had pitifully replied, “Don’t be mad.”

He was, but he wouldn’t let her know that. It wasn’t her fault. He was angrier at himself than anything, as he was letting her slip away from him. “I’m not mad. I just need to know where you are so I can come pick you up, pipsqueak.”

She was at a frat house for a college party, of all places. She swore up and down that her roommate had talked her into it, but the rowdy scene had made her so uncomfortable that she wanted to leave as soon as she came. 

He found her in the corner of the room, next to empty solo cups and beer cans. He eyed the nearby boys with distrust, their shirts slung over their shoulders like beach towels. But they were otherwise engaged with the other girls at the party. They eyed her with disgust. 

She was crying, and he wanted to kill someone. He kneeled down and put a hand on her knee, instantly relieved to see that she was okay. 

He examined her for any defensive wounds, taking her hands in his. Did anyone try to?...

The fury rose in him like a tidal wave. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“I’m fine. I just want to go home, Caleb. Please take me home.” 

She was so desperate.

He knew not to pry, and his heart fluttered at that very word. Home . He always had that dream. Wishful thinking that they would never grow apart. That they would remain family always and live together happily, never able to leave each other’s side. But he always knew they would grow up and be forced to leave their childhood dreams behind, that she would find a partner and settle down, maybe have kids of their own…

And it wouldn’t be him. The image was always hazy, someone tall and dashing—princely even. Someone who could take care of her when he couldn’t. And at that wedding, who would she have to give her away but him? And when he thought of passing her hand to another, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

That’s where he had failed. He brought her out of the frat house and into the moonlight, and she leaned into him for support, so trusting and warm against him, and he felt riddled with guilt. He wished that he could wash his sins away like an antidote to the poison that was his love. Caleb couldn’t remember where it began, whether it was that day or any other, because it had been fated. 

He was always meant to fall in love with her. But where he knew it would have to end was when he couldn’t let her go, and the officers and scientists had used that—they twisted that dark desire against its original purpose.

They used all of his hidden darkness against him—his possessiveness, his greediness, his overwhelming need for control. They reprogrammed him, warped him, fiddled with his mind. They used his need for her against him, fabricating memories, distorting moments stretched between them. They saw the seed that had been planted and watered it until it grew into something unimaginable. Something dark and evil, like vines growing tight around her wrists, cinching her close, holding her down, keeping her warm and close, and safe and soft. 

His longing became a knot in his heart, twisted together thousands upon thousands of times. One that could never unravel, no matter how deeply he tried to forget her, to purge her from his mind. He thought of her always, in the supermarket where he saw the apple hairclip he gifted to her for graduation, in the bookstore where her favourite books smiled at him, mockingly and mercilessly, in the cockpit where his mind drifted to their almost moments. Moments where he thought there had been more. 

He was sick with want and worry.

The more they worked at him, the larger that knot of longing grew. It was parasitic and violent and lonely. It was a long-held desire like a festering wound at his side. Every time she grazed his hand, brushed his skin, called his name in her sleep, she poked at that wound. Because he was never able to let her go, it was never able to heal correctly. He held himself so still, so composed, he was a tightly-wound wire ready to snap. 

It made him more breakable for them to snap him in half like dried bark. And they did, they broke him in ways he never thought possible. In ways he never thought a man could be broken. But all it took was for her to bring him back, to mend him, to sew him together into some fiendish creation, a monster of her design, for still—he would return, for he was hers. The boy was hers. Because he was made to protect her. And he would.