The Guardians - The Collapsing of the Wall (Book 3)
Chapter 8: Innocent Lies

The evening falls over the Base R, and the shadows are playing in the sand carried by the wind, looking like something floating in the air, right above Brook, who looks up to the sky. It’s reddish, more with an orange tempt, and she doesn’t know for sure what color she sees. Anyway, it’s something that looks like her hair’s color. In the wind, with Leo’s arms on her back, and with the noise made by the Guardians who were gathering the tools behind them, the view seems a sad one. She would have considered it beautiful if there weren’t so many lost lives. Now, the red bloody color of the sky reminds her of the deaths of the Guardians, so she enters inside the Base soon, pulling Leo’s sleeve.

“I would ask you if you are okay, but a lot has happened”, he says.

“She was so weird and volatile, but she was still my friend. One of the closest souls to mine. I judged her…”

“Stop thinking. It’s no one’s fault.”

“Oh, but it is. It’s our fault for not making a good team, as Guardians are supposed to do, it’s our fault that we’ve fallen apart from each other, and Leonor’s for taking away our freedom. Now I understand.”

“What do you understand?”

“I know damn well for what I’m fighting in this war.”

Leo looks at her overwhelmed, and she looks up with her wet eyes, she ties up her red hair, and she answers determined.

“For freedom, for love and friendship, and I will not accept a victory from Leonor.”

He approves her, and Tamara does the same when she passes by them and hears their conversation by accident.

Isaac passes along the corridor too, rushing and carrying with him some tools, which he had used in the restoration of the Base destroyed by demons and dragons. He throws them into a corner and he takes round two, and then the third, and so on until he finishes the job. Then he heads to the main corridor, but when he passes in front of the library he sees Addison arranging some boxes on a metallic shelf.

“Hey”, he says getting close to her.

“Hey yourself.”

“How are you?”

“I can’t say that I’m okay. I will live. What about you?”

“Same”, he says with something in his throat.

The silence becomes strange between them, and she puts on her back her long and blonde hair. Isaac had always seen in her a special femininity, a rare beauty, but he hadn’t considered her until recently a good-hearted person. Something had changed on the way, but he didn’t know for sure the moment when that had happened. All that he knows is that he sees her differently, and some of his thoughts make him shiver.

“What you did for Alice…”

“I said those things because…”

“It was so kind and beautiful”, Alice continues interrupting him.

He swallows his words and sadly looks on the ground. He remembers the moment perfectly, and the tears try to make room to the surface, even if he tries to keep them inside. He feels them like thousands of broken glasses stabbing his eyes, like that kind of pain which goes a long road from the bottom of your heart and it becomes unbearable when it’s closer to the surface. The same is with the guilt he is feeling, and he needs to confess in front of her so he would feel released.

“I told her lies. Well, not all of them were lies…” he excuses.

“I heard what you told her. You knew that she loved you, didn’t you?”

“Yes…”

“And you told her what she needed to hear. You made her happy.”

“But I never loved her the way she wanted me to. This lie makes me a bad person?”

She grabs his arms and squeezes them strong. They are eye to eye now, and they both feel the wave of energy taking control. The brown-green from her eyes mixes with the blue from his and, for a second, the sky seems to mix with the sand.

A box full of tools, demolished by Gloria from the shelf, makes the two of them wince and pull back from each other. Their hands are not together now, and Addison feels some of Lily’s memories coming back to her mind. She remains without air, her hands start trembling, and she runs between the Guardians so she wouldn’t be betrayed by some feeling.

In her run, she pushes Tamara, but also Mark, who yells at her. Isaac follows her, but he can’t keep up with her, and he ends up face to face with Mark.

“What’s up with Addison?” he asks.

“I have no idea. Did you see where she ran?”

“No. She passed like lightning. She almost put Tamara down, and she pushed me. What did you do to her?” he asks amusedly.

“Nothing. At least I hope so”, he says a little bit shocked.

He couldn’t recognize the tough girl who was pushing everyone aside, and her behavior seems too odd for him. He has his guess, but he can’t possibly imagine that Lily is her main problem.

“Oh, why can’t I replace the right time?” grumbles Mark spinning around.

Isaac moves forward, looking for Addison in her room, but he can’t replace her in the next hour. He has no idea where to look, and he is so curious about what had caused that strange behavior of hers.

His legs finally carry him to his sister, for that’s the place he knows he can replace the right answers. But Lily can’t help him this time.

He walks inside embarrassed, like a little child who had done something wrong and is afraid the parents might catch him. He feels ashamed now, with every step he takes to her, for her eyes are worried, and he has no idea why he is there.

“What happened?” she asks.

Isaac starts walking across the room, calm and quiet, but with his heart beating too fast in his chest. He stops at a certain point, and when he looks again at Lily he completely forgets that piece of thought that had brought him there.

“I miss you.”

“But I’m right here.”

“I know, but I miss bumping into you in the hallway, surprising me when I train, when I’m just sitting in my room. When did all become so complicated? How did it come to this?”

“I wish I had the answer for that, but it seems that all happened in a blink of an eye.”

“How are you in here? You’re sitting locked in here for so long. It must be awful. I would go mad. That thing behind you barely seems to be a miniature bath”, he says pointing at the dismembered door from the corned.

“Believe me, I had moments when I couldn’t bear this. I wanted to scream, to literally climb the walls… but I realized that everything happens for a reason. If this is how it is supposed to be, I need to hang on in here.”

“I don’t know if the purpose is the right word. Dean insinuated you to do this. But did you considered the theory where he didn’t think that far? What are you doing? How long are you going to sit in here?”

“Isaac, I will stay here as long as it takes. Have you forgotten that you were the one who sticks to the plan and locked me in here when I wanted to get out?”

He doesn’t say anything. He has no idea what he wants, what he feels, where he wants to be. He sits on the floor, with his head between his knees, and Lily follows his example and takes the same position.

“Why are you here?”

“What do you mean? How can you ask me this? You’re my sister, and I came to see you as I do every day!”

“Yes, sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. The point is that you walked in here sad. Something happened. I know you.”

“Honestly, I have no idea what happened. I don’t understand anything.”

Lily remembers what she had seen inside Addison’s mind, but she doesn’t say a word. They were her feelings, her life, her thoughts, and she doesn’t want to tell Isaac that he had been there to tell her about what he had done for Alice because, in a weird way, she doesn’t want him to change his opinion about her. She has an impulse to hear his thoughts, but she feels that she is crossing the line again by scattering through his mind and his privacy, so she makes the decision to let him tell her or not what is bothering him, blocking her powers and keeping the distance from his mind.

“Look what. I know this is tough, I know that you fought well and brave, and after the fights where we lose close friends we may remain with some traumas. I won’t invade your privacy, so relax. I am here if you want some advice, and if you don’t, I’m still here. I have nowhere to go”, Lily tries a joke.

She makes Isaac show a little smile, followed by some teary and lost eyes. He doesn’t know how to answer to that, but some words that he considers weird try to come out from his mouth, but he can’t tell what he feels in another way, so he speaks them:

“Thank you for existing.”

She gets emotional and hugs him, walking her hands on his warm back. She has no idea when and how, but Isaac had become a part of her life, and she couldn’t imagine living without him. She had always missed a brother, and when she had found him again she had passed from agony to excitement, she had felt too many mixed things, but what she had felt the first moment she had been close to him was that she had truly loved him. She had never lied when she had told everyone that she was choosing what she wanted the most, and she wasn’t lying to herself either when she had followed Isaac everywhere he was going.

He manages to get over that moment without dropping a tear, and he gets out of the room looking at his sister until he closed the door behind him. He remains there for some time, staring at the door, thinking about too many things at once.

Without knowing when he arrives in the library, and he replaces himself near the shelves, with a hand on the thick books. It’s no one here because it’s too late in the night. But he can hear some swords from the training room, a sign that the Guardians are always ready for an attack.

Addison is three shelves away, looking in a book in silence, without noticing Isaac’s presence there. The images that had crossed her mind made her scatter through the history books, to read legends, and she had finally found an old and broken book, which she was wondering about how could it still be on the library’s shelves.

The moment when she sees the Dragon’s Sign on one of the pages she stands up. Even with the proof in her face, she replaces it so harsh to believe that Lily is the Marked One. Again, her mind is invaded by images and she drops the book. She leans with her hands on the shelf, and she manages to demolish a row of books on her fall.

“What’s happening?”

She looks up and sees Isaac next to her, helping her to get up.

“Nothing.”

“This doesn’t look like nothing”, he says emphasizing the last word in an ironical way.

“It’s fine, really.”

“Crap. How can I tell you that your sister is keeping the biggest secret from the Universe? Or that I know everything that no one knows? That I know all that she has been through? Of course, it’s all right! Come on, don’t let me down now and stop asking silly questions!”

“I was studying. I like legends.”

“And I found myself in here holding a book, which is a weird thing for me.”

She smiles and puts her hair behind the ear, in a gentle and shy way. She wonders what’s happening to her and when did she become so insecure.

Isaac hadn’t moved his hands from her arms, but they’re sitting one in front of another, and their looks seem to be in a trance from which no one can take them out, neither the approach of their faces. He feels her warm breath, he touches her nose with his, and she doesn’t back off. She is blocked, staring with big eyes straight into his, but when he grabs her chin with one hand and kisses her out of the blue, she closed her eyes. She grabs his hands and forgets everything, she feels free, she becomes herself again, she gains trust in herself, and she continues what he had started. The books are falling from the shelves, pushed by her body when Isaac lifts her up on one of them. The tension is released in the end, he becomes the old Isaac once again, and she becomes the old Addison.

They throw their clothes on the shelves, leaving the passion take them over completely, and she lets her neck fall on the back when Isaac gently kisses her neck. They don’t care if someone will walk inside if they will be seen, because it’s all permitted in the new Base, and they feel too damn good to notice if someone would walk in any way.

A strong pant ends their intimate moment, and they are lying on the floor, looking at the dust from the air and the books from the floor. The clothes are too far away for them to get them back.

“Yes, I did a thing that I am proud of because I made Alice happy”, he says.

“Are you seriously speaking of this thing now?” says Addison shocked, but a little bit irritated too.

“But I wasn’t in love with her. I just loved her as I loved the rest of my friends. I know that she loved me, that she wanted more, that she gave her life for me…which hurts so badly! You know that I would do anything to change places with her? But I can’t! and I have to live with it!”

“Isaac, I didn’t want to sound like that… I…” she apologizes as soon as she realizes what had come out of her mouth.

“Some people do crazy things when they fall in love, I know this. I did some of those things for Lily too”, he says ashamed.

It’s silence upon them now, for Addison can’t judge him, but she hasn’t the right words in her pockets to answer him either.

“I know”, he mumbles.

“What do you know?” she asks exasperatedly.

“I know the exact moment when I fell in love with you”, he suddenly says.

She seems to swallow a hiccup, lifts up on her elbows and stares at him.

“Is it true that you weren’t expecting this?”

“Actually, I was expecting to tell you first”, she says and kisses him again.

When old people come back to the surface but mixed with the new experiences, new people are formed, some better and crazy ones. And they are so good together because it’s about the love, but also the passion which lights up right away, exploding between their closed bodies and their soft lips.

“What’s that moment?” she asks curiously.

“When I saw you fighting.”

She doesn’t ask for more details for she knows well that the moment when he had saved her from dying was the moment when she knew that she was in love with him.