No Rest for the Wicked (thinking about deleting idk)

#5 Confessions

I woke to the sound of chirping birds and the smell of the ocean. A breeze must have travelled through the valley, for the ocean was miles from here. It was a new day, no worries, no danger. Just Fiona, Arriane and I... and them.

Everything just came flooding back, so quickly that my head was throbbing from it all. Blood, bomb, soldier, gun, explosion, camp, Bren and Max. He didn’t remember me, yet I was the girl he had saved. He didn’t even know my name.

Light filtered through my tent. It was a pretty spacious little thing. My backpack, boots, journal and my semi-automatic Makarov pistol lay next to my sleeping bag, in case of an emergency. In the next small room, which had a couple of holes in the roof, I had food stored in a small cardboard box and some old tattered clothes which I hadn’t picked up from the ground. 

Arriane was already up, I guess she was making breakfast. Fiona was still sleeping, so I decided to get up and help Arriane. From what I knew we didn’t have that much food left.

“Eggs, get your eggs! Fresh from a bird’s nest, get them scrambled or fried!” My stomach rumbled. Where did she get those? I unzipped the door and stepped onto the sand. The campfire was keeping the cavern nice and warm, I didn’t need a jacket. “Hi Victoria! Look what I got cooking,” and she let me have a smell. Oh, so good.

“Where’d you get the eggs?”

“Oh, on one of the branches sticking out of the cliff is a big fat nest. It was unoccupied, so you know, I helped myself.”

“Well, it smells amazing. I can’t wait to have some.” She smiled at me politely. Something had gotten into her this morning. 

“Whoa, is this breakfast?” It was Max, he came walking behind her from his ‘hospital bed’. It looked like he had recovered well. 

“How’s that hand of yours?” I was about to ask the same question, but she beat me to it. It was on.

“Better. I’ll probably have a permanent scar from now on, but hey, things could be worse.”

“Yeah,” I butted in. “You’re lucky Bren didn’t shoot you twice.” Damn, that was a sick joke.

Not that it mattered, they ignored me. Arriane could not lay her eyes off of him, and he could not lay his eyes off of her. It made me upset, to see that one of my best friends didn’t care to ask how I felt about her flirting with the one guy I liked. And it also hurt me, it hurt me so much to see him flirting back, and not knowing who I was.

I grabbed a now burnt egg from the pan, and put it on my crappy plate. It tasted so sour, and it didn’t improve my mood at all. I couldn’t stand this torture anymore, already they were configuring nicknames for each other. It was time for me to take a stand.

“Max, could I speak to you for a minute? Alone?” He didn’t trust me. I was still a mystery to him, clearly.

“Uh sure,” he whispered something in Arriane’s ear. “I’ll be right back.” He said to her, and he followed me out of the cavern. We walked all the way to where the cliff turned slightly to the left, so Arriane or anyone else couldn’t see or hear us.

“Max, I’ve got a lot to explain to you. And you’ve got to believe me, despite what you think, Bren hasn’t filled you in on everything. Just listen to me, ok?” He nodded slowly, and we sat down on the sand. “And if you’ve forgotten,” I said to him miserably, “my name’s Victoria.” He looked at me for a moment, for a second I thought he recognised me, but then it faded again. “Ok. Yesterday, you found me in Targin Forest. I had made your friend, Bren, a little angry by pushing him into a hole and he attempted to shoot me,” He stared at me in such a way that I could tell this was all new to him. Bren hadn’t mentioned this part. “Now, I don’t know why, but when I thought it was all over for me, you saved me by covering the muzzle, therefore he shot you in the hand. It was purely accidental, don’t remind him about it.” Had I forgiven Bren? Should I forgive him? “Do you remember anything so far?”

“‘I don’t know-”

“Look, I’ll keep on going. While I was trying to help you, one of the soldiers planted a bomb  where we were standing, so we all ran as fast as we could, until we were just out of range. And then you collapsed,” I recalled how selfish I was towards him, how I thought I didn’t care. “So Bren and I took you all the way down this valley, back to my camp.” I drew a picture of our journey on the sand with my finger. “And by using Fiona’s medical supplies, ba-boom! You came back to life.” I stopped there, to see how he was taking it all in.

“And your point is?”

“I, well, I want... I want to know why you saved me, and I wanted to say thank you.” Every word I said was pure truth.

“I don’t really know, honest. It was just reflex or something like that-”

“So you do remember?”

“Yes, yes I do remember! Oh god, oh hell I do!” My heart filled with joy, maybe there was a chance after all.

“I love you.”