It was never effortless to love Aaron Warner. He was a difficult teenage boy who seemed to forget a lot of the time that that was what he was-a teenage boy. He'd always felt that loving or even caring for him would be impossible for all the world to...
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aaron warner.
MY SUNSHINE TATTOO is the only thing keeping me sane at the moment.
I let my gaze bore into it every now and then to remind myself of why I'm not letting this prison cell kill me. Why I won't let the poison get to me and why I'm sure I'm on a supreme commander's base. I have been for two agonizing weeks and I don't quite understand what's happening to me. I'm sure I'm in the southern hemisphere somewhere and I'm sure whoever is keeping me doesn't want me dead. They're keeping me alive because they know this is easy for me—I'd be a pathetic Chief commander if I couldn't survive something as basic as this.
Still, my worries don't lie with anxieties about myself. It's never about me. It's always about her. About my Mara. Dreams have been attacking me of past memories—either that or I'm slowly going insane—and I can't get her face out of my head. I never want to.
I trail another finger along the sun tattoo and close my eyes. Her smile. The way her eyes light up when she sees my dimples. Her goodness. Her brightness. She is everywhere and nowhere. I've seen this film before—we've been torn from one another before. Last time, I nearly fell off the deep end and never thought of climbing back up.
Now?
I'm merely furious.
They can torture me. They can tear out my heart and my lungs and they can even scar me for lifetimes to come but they will never be able to erase her from my memory. She is imprinted on my skin and she has taken up the penthouse of my mind. She is everywhere and yet I can't find her. She is everywhere and nowhere.
I've never longed for her idiotic jokes more. I've never clung more to the idea of seeing her again. I only know that I will find my way back to her, regardless of the amount of corpses I will leave in my wake. If the world isn't happy with us being together, it can shoot itself straight to hell.
More footsteps sound outside my cell. They're heavy and no doubt male. It makes me wonder—if I really am on Oceania's base, is it Max overseeing my imprisonment himself? The unbiological father of the girl that I love?
The door creaks open and I watch him step in, my lungs expanding as if they believe they have the right to do so.
It's my dead father.
Except he's not dead at all.
He smiles. "Hi, birthday boy. Did you miss me?"
———————— m̶a̶r̶a̶ l̶o̶c̶k̶h̶a̶r̶t̶ eden sommers.
"Eden, darling!"
The shriek of my name pierces through me and I have to fight the urge to rest my head on the curved back of the tub so that she doesn't see my vexation.
