"-Not supposed to know! What are we going to do?" a female voice raved a sweet voice that seemed all too familiar. The motherly voice sounded so distressed that I wanted to offer a hand. She sounded so familiar but I could not place her voice. I listened as her soft footsteps paced the room as she spoke. I wanted, no, I needed to know who had spoken. I tried, with all of my might, to force my eyes open. The most I was able to manage was moving them beneath their lids.
"There is no way that he know's that we aren't human for sure. His subconscious probably put some of the pieces together but he is not certain." another voice answered, this time male. His words were meant to be a comfort but it seemed to do little as he tripped over the words. Not human? Someone had some explaining to do.
An odd sense of protectiveness washed over me as I listened to them. My eyes were glued shut but I could hear their worry-filled discussion. I wanted nothing more than to open my eyes but, as hard as I tried I couldn't. I recognized that these were the voices of people I cared about but could not place them.
"He is a very smart boy and he will ask questions! I won't be able to lie to him when that time comes. He will think that we are monsters!" the woman cried out and my heart sank. This entire time, she was worried about getting rejected, cast aside, or left behind. All things that I understood as I had grown up with the same fears.
"Sweetheart, look at me." the male said and I can only assume that she did. The pacing that had once echoed in the room had stopped. Only small sniffles here and there could be heard.
"We have cared for him all this time, just as he has cared for us. I have little doubt that he will forsake us for this. For something that we had no control over. Not to mention, I don't think he is as human as he thinks." the male said a few moments later.
These two were suffering and I wanted more than anything to comfort them. Time ticked by as I fought to open my eyes. Yet, the more I tried to open them, the more I seemed to sink deeper into unconsciousness. Until finally, I was lost in the dark abyss of sleep.
*
Waking to a panicked little brother and a room that quickly filled with smoke was heart-wrenching. Though, I had no time to think of it as I picked up my three-year-old brother. Just as our mother had taught us, I pulled some emergency masks from my bedside table and put one on each of us. I carried us both out of the room and into the flame-filled halfway. It blocked off all passage to the other bedrooms and the elevator. Not that I would have gotten into the giant moving box while there was a fire. I trudged as fast as my four-year-old legs would carry me down the stairs. My eyes stung from the smoke and my arms were tired from carrying my brother by the time we reached the first floor. I was out of breath as I helped my brother through the doggy door. I followed quickly behind and walked to the front of the house with Jace back in my arms. The house where I had lived my entire life was up in flames as firefighters scurried around us. Sirens blared as I looked around in search of the last missing sibling. However, Liam was nowhere to be seen and my heart sank when I looked back to the house. I put Jace down and tried to run back to the house to save him. I only made it a yard before my arm was grabbed and I was pulled back. Just then, the house buckled in on itself and I screamed his name.
*
An annoyed groan escaped me when my eyes finally opened to be met with blinding lights above me. It took several minutes and even more blinking before I was able to look around. An even more drawn-out and annoyed groan escaped me when I realized where I was. I was back at the very place that had just released me. The same white walls surrounded me, windows with a view of the parking lot, a couple of visitor chairs, and an old box tv on the wall. The only thing to signal I was in a different room was the pictures hung randomly around the room.
"This hospital will do nothing for you. Going to a psychic would do more good than these human doctors." the voice rattled off from the back of my mind. All I could do was sigh and roll my eyes at him as the door opened. In walked two familiar figures and everything came back to me like a flash.
They were not human.
They thought that I would hate them.
They thought that I would think of them as monsters!
For some reason, the fact that they were not human did not shock me. What did, was the fact that they thought I would not accept them for who they were. They didn't trust me to know their secret and treat them the same as I did before. They were like family to me! I would never turn away from them like that.
"Okay, I was serious when I said we should stop meeting like this." I croaked, my dry throat getting the best of me. They looked up from the trays of food in their hands and up to me. Their eyes were large, obviously surprised that I was awake and talking. I would have been amused, if not for the secrets that were kept from me.
Once they were over their shock, the two were by my side in an instant. I didn't want to feel comfort from the motherly hand that ran through my hair. Nor the fatherly hand on my shoulder as they both looked at me with worry. I wanted to be mad at them for keeping things from me. I wanted to be angry that they thought I would no longer care for them.
"Oh Jackson…" Kate cooed at me as she brushed some of my long hair away from my sweaty forehead. I could not bring myself to pull away from the comfort that they provided. That did not mean I was going to let it go, however.