black veil ◦ scorch trials || thomas

10.

TEN ; COLD BONES

     It was cold. She expected no less, for it was still a desert and they were known to get quite chilly nearing the evening. Yet she wasn't entirely prepared for this kind of cold.

    Still, Evan didn't feel cold. Not in the way you would think. No, she felt cold in the way that it left her numb. Her bottom lip was quivering and her uninjured hand was shaking, and for the first time since, she didn't feel the throbbing pain of the wound on her wrist.

     Wrapping her arms around her knees, the girl curled up into a small ball and shied away from the others as they spoke in low whispers. Her eyes were fixated on the flickering fire before her. She felt a new kind of yearning for the warmth the fire could surely bring.

     It was cold, and she was numb. Yet she made no move as to actually get warm. Evan merely sat still in her place and kept to herself, captivated by the lifelines of that fire. Perhaps, if she stared long enough, she would start to feel its warmth.

     Evan felt strangely normal after what had happened, which led her to believe something was wrong with her. After walking away from him, after trailing behind the others with a heavy heart and her feet feeling as though they were chained to shackles – after hearing that single gunshot, she had shed no more tears.

     If anything, she felt overwhelmed, shocked. It was as though her brain had trouble processing what had happened, and left her in confusion. It occurred to Evanna, after blinking for the first time since minutes, that she had been frowning.

     Instead of the neutral façade she had no difficulty keeping up, she was furrowing her eyebrows and biting her lip. There was something about Frypan's tears and Teresa's words that made her squirm uncomfortably. There was something about the emotion that was so clear on everyone's face that made her feel sick.

     She didn't feel anything; no sadness, no emptiness, no anger – nothing. As if the event that had occurred hadn't affected her in the least, or worse, as though it had drained her completely. The worst part, in spite of not feeling anything, was that Evan was constantly reminded of it.

     The pain in Winston's eyes, the hopeless look on his face. The pale complexion and purple blotches on his neck. The shredded clothes and smell of rotting flesh. The gasps for breath and the whimpers of agony.

     Evan remembered it all. It haunted her. And everything, everything was a trigger. The simplest of things dragged her back to the moment she handed Winston the gun after having explained him how it worked. The smallest of actions brought her back to the moment when he genuinely smiled.

     Everything reminded her of him, and she despised it simply because she couldn't feel anything. Evan was incapable of giving the memories a place, because she had never encountered such a thing before, and thus she didn't know what to do with them. She didn't know how to feel or what to do to make it all go away, to make it better.

     The girl felt broken, as though she was missing something that would allow her to be just like the rest of the group. To have that sadness and overwhelming grief, because she didn't have any of it.

     All Evan had was the knowledge of the death of the only person she considered a real friend. All she had, were gut-wrenching memories she didn't know how to deal with.

     "I thought we were supposed to be immune," a voice spoke, she had been too tired to identify it.

     Evan had heard about the Munies; she knew they were hated. Though, she didn't know that they knew about them. Since the beginning of the utterly pointless escape and aimless wandering, the group she had tagged along without anyone having told her about what had happened to them. She supposed she could understand why. Still, it came as a surprise that they knew some had the luck of being immune to the Flare.