Promises, Swear Them to the Sky

by: singyourmelody

Author's Note and Disclaimer:I don't own any of The Nine Lives of Chloe King characters. Title is from The Naked and Famous's "Young Blood," one of my favorite songs ever. This is my second post-finale story. It's still a little raw and is making my writing turn kind of dark. Darker than usual at least. This will be a two-shot, I believe.

Trying to Find the In-Betweens

They take a lot of walks in the after.

They go after dark, when most of the world (including her mom, and Amy, and Paul) are asleep and unaware. She'll lie on her bed, staring at her ceiling, until two, three, four o'clock in the morning when he drops in at her window. He always comes. She won't say anything and neither will he, but they'll tiptoe down the stairs and they'll use the front door to find the grayish trees and parked cars and sidewalks.

Sometimes their hands brush up against each others' in the murky darkness, sometimes not.

To people driving home from bars or dance clubs or whatever people do at two in the morning, they look like solid people. But they're not, are they? If those people passing by ever really looked at them, they would see they are as paper-thin and wispy and removed as ghosts roaming the streets. But that's not quite right, she thinks to herself. Ghosts can't be haunted, while she can still hear Jasmine's laugh and see Valentina's kind eyes and feel Brian's arms around her. For all she knows about apparitions and the afterlife, she thinks that maybe the two of them are not the only restless spirits on this street.

They pause for a moment under the Elm Street light and she recognizes that she's become accustomed to the shadows the pale yellow streetlight makes on his face. She refuses to think of the shadows that line her own. They are both exhausted from fighting and planning and pretending it's all okay, but he nods in the direction of Taylor Avenue and they continue to walk until dawn.

The exhaustion is overwhelming, but it is still feeling, so she'll take it.

For a longest while, she hasn't felt anything at all.

Summer arrives and she gets a job as a camp counselor. It'll be nice to give back and to just stop thinking for once about everything that's happened. If anything can get her mind off of her own scarred life, it's twelve-to-fourteen-aged girls and all of the drama they will bring.

(She decides she needs to pull it together and that being responsible to someone other than herself is the way to do it.)

Her mom doesn't really understand her decision to be away for the entire summer, but she doesn't push it. She's grateful.

The Tuesday before she is supposed to leave, he appears in her room.

She's sorting the clothes she is planning on taking, when he walks right up to her and says that he's found his brother. He needs this closure, she knows that, so she asks him about it (although a part of her doesn't want to have anything to do with that night).

"I need to leave," he says simply.

"Okay, for how long?" she asks, resuming her folding.

"I'm not sure."

She looks at him then, surprised. "Okay, so. . ."

He cuts her off. "Chloe, I need to leave and you have to come with me."

"What? No."

"I can't leave you unprotected, but I have to do this."

"Alek, no. I have camp in two days, you know that," she responds.

"Chloe," he says, and the sound of his voice, the way it sounds unsure and yet also firm makes her stop what she is doing. He's not confident about this. Since that night, he has been a pale imitation of the boy she once knew so well and she hadn't realized how damaged he really is until this moment.

"Alek, I want to help you with this, but I can't. I already committed to this job and I need time away from all of this Mai stuff," she says, looking directly into his eyes.

"Time away from this Mai stuff?" he asks, disbelievingly. "Chloe, you don't get 'time off' from being a Mai. You are a Mai. You're the most important Mai!" his says, his voice getting louder. "And I. . ." he says, more resolved now, "I am asking for your help. I can't leave you here and I need to set things right with Zane."

"Set things right? What exactly does that mean, Alek?" she asks, narrowing her eyes.

"We both know what that means." He sounds grave, his voice low.

She knows that they should not kill Zane, that taking one life for another is not the answer, but she also doesn't care about what they should or should not do. The rulebook went right out the window with Jasmine and Valentina and Brian's final breaths.

She continues folding her shirts and jeans as he watches her move around her room.

Finally she finishes and zips her suitcase shut.

"What am I going to tell my mom?" she asks him quietly and he smiles a small smile when he realizes that she's going with him.

"That you're still going to camp and that you needed to leave a few days early?" He's always been good at thinking on his feet.

"And then I'll just call the camp and tell them I have to back out of the job," she finishes. "They're going to hate me."

"I know and I'm sorry about that," he says, and he looks like he means it.

She pulls out her cell phone and makes the call. Thankfully it goes straight to voicemail. She tries hard to not sound like too much of a jerk, but she thinks she will still come off badly.

Thirty minutes later, she says goodbye to her mom, who freaks out of course, even though she assures her she'll be back before they know it. She has to keep reminding herself that she has to do this to her mom, that if they don't leave now, they won't be able to catch up with Zane. She loads her suitcase in the back of Alek's car and sits in the passenger seat with her feet propped up on the dashboard. She doesn't say goodbye to Amy or Paul, but texts them when they are already on the road. She owes them more than a lame text, she knows that, but right now, it's the most she can give.

Fifteen miles out of town, he's still staring straight ahead. "Thank you for doing this for me," he says finally.

She nods and doesn't say anything. She's completely uncertain about everything: death, justice, her own free will in choosing anything about her life, her dad, her feelings towards Brian. It's all a jumbled, confusing mess and she knows she shouldn't be making big life decisions in her present state. She shouldn't be lying to her mom or backing out on her commitments or taking off on an unknown trip with a boy.

But when she looks over at him, eyes concentrating on the road, always so focused on whatever he is doing, she realizes that maybe she can be sure about him. Her life's a mess, but so is his and at least, at the very least, their messes are mixed up together.

She listens to the soft hum of the tires on the road and decides that if they can take their messy lives and just keep moving, that maybe the laughter and kindness and warm embraces won't be able to find them.

It's like a road trip, but not.

The sun is shining and the windows are rolled down and she's periodically handing him Twizzlers, while eating some herself and, oh God, is that "Life is a Highway" on the radio? Come on.

She can't see his eyes because they are hidden beneath his aviators, and his eyes are always his most telling feature, but she's assuming he's thinking about how surreal this all is.

In the before, she would have loved something like this. As long as they had a plan. And a destination. And didn't have to lie to everyone.

But this is the after, and plans are highly overrated.

"Where are we going?" she asks after a couple of hours of silence.

"Seattle."

She nods. "Good music scene."

"And coffee."

"And weather systems?" she offers.

He looks over and gives her a small smile, and for a fleeting second it seems like there is no before and after, no dividing line that somehow managed to split them right down the middle so that there are now two Chloes. Two Aleks. Two halves, neither completely whole. Neither knowing how to be anymore.

They spend the night in a small hotel after they cross the border into Oregon. He refuses to get her her own room, for fear of what may happen if someone is tracking them. She hadn't even asked for it and doesn't protest when they enter their small shared one. She calls the bed near the window and forgets to brush her teeth or even put her pajamas on as she pulls back the covers and quickly falls asleep.

(She dreams of amber streetlights and shadows on sidewalks, but for some reason she isn't afraid.)

He gets them to Seattle in record time, but they are still too late.

His contact informs them that Zane has already moved from his location, but is most likely still in the Seattle area, in cooperation with a rogue Mai cell there. They check in to the hotel and start searching at his last known whereabouts.

Three weeks later, they are no closer to finding him than they were when they got there. He was right about the coffee, though, she realizes as she orders two cups for them. She hands him his cup (one sugar, two creams) and takes a sip of her own. "Now what?" she asks.

"They're supposed to be meeting tonight."

"And we are just going to break into their meeting and take down all of them?"

"Yes."

She turns to face him. "Alek. That won't work. I know you're running high on emotions and caffeine, but impulse isn't going to be the way we take Zane down."

"And what do you suggest?" he asks. She looks for sarcasm or snarkiness in his words, but she doesn't find it. He truly wants to know what she thinks.

"I think we wait till he's alone and then, what was it you said, 'set this right'?"

He nods and looks back at his cup. "I'm sorry this is taking so long."

She lies back on her bed and shrugs. "I've got nothing but time."

Her plan works. They wait until Zane exits the abandoned warehouse where the Mai group was meeting and they knock him out, load him into the trunk of their rental car and drive out of the city.

It's all surprisingly easy.

When he comes to, he is tied to a tree and looks more than a little surprised to see the two of them.

"Oh, this is rich," he says. "Hello, brother."

Alek scratches his claws across his face and says, "Don't you ever call me that."

She knows this isn't a great start. Zane has said six words and Alek has already begun to lose control. She knows that she must be careful, for both of them.

They spend the next hours pumping Zane for information, asking who he was working for, how he even got mixed up in all of this, and why he targeted them.

He looks at them incredulously, through his now bloodied eyes when they ask why them.

"We know she's the uniter. How do you best get to the uniter? Through the people closest to her," he says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"Then why didn't you come for me? Why Jasmine, why Valentina?" Alek asks.

He actually laughs, a hollow, rattling laugh. "Because we wanted you around still. We couldn't completely devastate the uniter. Then she wouldn't put up a fight. It's easier to steal her lives when she's fighting and we knew she needed something to fight for still. And like it or not, brother, she'll fight for you."

Alek's eyes blaze when he says this, so he hits him again and this time Zane loses consciousness.

"Alek. . ." she says, quietly. "Enough."

He turns back to her. "Enough? Enough? He killed Jasmine. He murdered Valentina. There will never be enough things for me to do to him."

"You don't think I know that?" she asks, stepping right up to face him. "You don't think I want to do this too? I do. I hate him. I hate him so much it hurts. And we will never be able to set things right. You know that. The only way for any of this to be right would be for Jasmine and Valentina and Brian to still be alive. But that's not possible. And at the very least, we still need to be operating within the realm of possible, okay? We have to hold on to that."

He's staring at her and she's hoping she's getting through to him, but then he starts breathing hard and shaking almost violently as if he is fighting a war within himself and somehow losing. He bends over trying to catch his breath, so she slowly steps forward and wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him closer to her.

"Listen to my heartbeat" she begins, her voice echoing the words he said when he was trying to teach her how to really hear. "Just that, and nothing else. The rest of the world doesn't matter. There's only you and me. Now make it all go away. You are in charge of the world around you. I know that this is going to be one of the hardest things we ever do. And I know we are both numb and hardened and jaded, but you and me? We are both strong. We have to be. For them."

He's clutching onto her so tightly that she can barely hold them up, but she manages to get them to the car before he finally breaks down. In all that's happened in the after, she's never seen him cry, but here they are. And she thought it would be uncomfortable and awkward, but she's crying too and she realizes that she's not as alone as she thought she was.

They leave Seattle that night. They are both completely emotionally destroyed, but they know that the anti-Mai cell will realize Zane's gone and eventually find him tied to the tree in the field and they need to be as far away as possible when this new information comes to light.

She suggests Yellowstone. It's far away from Seattle and even farther away from San Francisco, and he raises his eyebrows, but doesn't object.

They make it into Idaho before exhaustion overcomes them and they check into a rather seedy hotel that somehow only has one double bed available. She laughs when the guy behind the desk tells them that, the cliché-ness of it all hitting her at full force. Alek tells them they will keep looking, but she says they'll take it.

"Chloe . . ." he says, but she stops him.

"I'm exhausted, you're exhausted. You're the only person I've seen in the last month, it's three o'clock in the morning, I don't care that we have to share a bed," she says. He must be tired, because he doesn't argue and they collapse into the bed and she doesn't dream at all.

(She wakes up once during the night and he's holding onto her so tightly, yet also so gently, as if she is something precious that he is terrified may be taken from him. He shouldn't be so worried, she notes. She's not going anywhere.)

Camping is fun, she discovers. She's never been an outdoorsy type of girl, but she likes hiking and sitting by the river and building fires. It's something different and she needs that. They both do.

He's been quiet around her since the whole tying-Zane-to-a-tree-incident and the Chloe of before would just keep talking about anything and everything to try to assuage whatever is bothering him. But this is the Chloe of the after, so she asks him what's wrong.

They are climbing up a small mountain and he turns to offer his hand to help her over a large ravine.

"Nothing," he says, not looking at her.

"Aren't we passed the point of lying to each other, Alek?"she asks, as she pulls herself up.

"I'm just still processing everything," he says, finally.

She understands the need for time, so she lets him process and they finish their hike in silence. The Chloe of the after likes the silence, as long as she knows she can talk if she wants to. Having him there grants her that.

At the top of the mountain, they can see how far they've come. It's beautiful, shades of evergreen and hunter and sage lay before them and she instantly loves the thin line where the azure sky meets the far off horizon.

"You know what I think we need?" she says finally.

"What's that?" he asks, inhaling the fresh air.

"I think we need to let it all go. We're standing on the highest point I've ever been on and I feel like I could touch the clouds and I don't want to come back down the same way I came up here," she knows she probably not making much sense, but he seems to understand her.

"So don't," he responds and it sounds so simple.

She lifts her arms in the air and closes her eyes and breathes deeply.

When she opens her eyes, he is staring at her, amused.

She walks over to him, throws her arms around him, and says, "Starting now, we do this better."

"Do what better?" he asks and she can feel his words reverberating from his chest into hers.

"Everything. Breathing. Eating. Feeling. Sleeping. I don't know. All of it. We do it better."

He pulls back and looks at her eyes. "Okay. Better."

They stay there for hours.

He suggests they keep moving, for safety's sake, and asks her if she wants to go home.

"I can't. I'm supposed to be gone for the entire summer. What would I tell my mom?" she asks as he pumps gas into their car. She's leaning against the side of the car, watching him. She does that a lot, she notices.

"That you took an extended vacation with a boy so that he could protect you and so that you could prevent him from doing something he'd regret?"

She looks at him skeptically.

"That you quit?" he suggests.

"That's even worse."

"How is that worse?" he chuckles to himself.

She shrugs. She's lied to her mom a lot since her transformation, but she doesn't want her to think badly of her daughter.

"So, what should we do then?" he asks.

She's struck with a sudden thought. "You, um, do you want to go home?" she asks. She had never thought that maybe he wanted this trip to be over.

"No," he says. "Don't have much waiting for me there. I'd rather be here with you."

It's not even a compliment. He's telling her that she's better company than the ghosts that follow them down empty streets, but there's something in his words that makes her heart speed up.

But she forces herself to ignore it, walks into the convenience store and emerges with strawberry licorice and a map.

They return to the car and when he suggests Vegas, she doesn't protest.

Vegas is bright and flashy and way too brazen for her tastes, but she's trying new things and letting other things go, so why not?

They're not old enough to gamble and the Celine Dion show is sold out (he looked so relieved, not that she would ever actually make him go), that they quickly run out of things to do there.

One night and three trips to the free buffet later, they leave the bright lights behind.

"It's huge," she says as they look out over the Grand Canyon.

"I know. This sounds stupid, but I never believed it when I saw pictures of this place. It's just enormous," he agrees.

He wants to ride mules down the trails, but she starts in about animal cruelty and the poor living conditions of some of the mules used and he covers his ears and walks away.

She smiles when he comes back a moment later and it all feels normal. She didn't think that a normal could exist in the after, but they seem to have stumbled upon it.

They eat lunch at a nearby restaurant and he steals some of her fries without asking and that feels normal too.

She narrows her eyes and tilts her head and tries to figure him out, but can't seem to.

"What?" he asks, wiping at his mouth. "Do I have ketchup on my face?"

"No, never fear. Your face is still perfect," she mutters sarcastically and he half-smiles at her.

"As always," he says, and she thinks that maybe they will be okay.

They are in Phoenix a week later and it's her birthday. She buys a new dress (red and slinky) and he takes her out to a fancy dinner and salsa dancing. She doesn't know how to salsa dance and neither does he, so they make it up as they go, tripping a bit and laughing a lot. They don't think about anything except the fact that she is seventeen and that anything is possible.

He's so close to her when they dance and he steps on her toes more than once but it's the most fun she's had in a long time, so she goes with it. They talk about everything and he pulls out her chair and he actually spits water out all over the table when she tells him a joke Paul told her. It all seems, well, like a date.

But they are still broken and broken people don't date, right?

Right, she thinks to herself, but when the saxophone solo begins and she spins back into him, his hand naturally finds her waist and hers lands perfectly on his shoulder as her hair swirls around to tickle their pressed-close faces and as much as she might want it to not mean anything, it does.

It does.

Later, back at the hotel, they are standing in the elevator and the tension is palpable. He's at her right side and there's no one else in the lift and she is very aware that his hand is only two inches from hers and that her breathing is anything but even and steady.

She looks at him from the corner of her eye and he is also breathing erratically and the synthesized music humming from the speakers is all wrong, but she thinks he's finally going to do something when the doors ding open and two elderly couples walk in.

They step back to make room and are pushed back into the bar that lines the wall of the elevator. They are closer now. He stretches out his fingers and the backs of his fingertips brush hers for just a millisecond, but it's enough that she knows now. She knows what she is going to do and she may just be adding another item to her long list of questionable decisions, but she really doesn't care (although perhaps "not caring" is questionable decision number one).

Two more floors light up on the buttons and she has never wanted anything to move faster in her life. The couples get off on floor twelve and then the doors shut and once again, it's just the two of them. She tries to smooth out her breathing, envisioning silk blowing in the wind and cream pouring into a glass and all those eloquent and graceful things she always wanted to be, but it's not working. She's almost panting as if they have just finished a long run and she finally looks over at him, the buttons lighting up to indicate floor thirteen and fourteen and finally she just says it aloud. "Screw it."

And she turns to him and places one hand behind his head and one right above his heart and she kisses him harder than she's ever kissed anyone before. She backs him further into the wall of the lift and he is returning her kiss and they were never supposed to end up here, but it somehow seems like they never would have been able to escape it, even if they had wanted to.

He pulls her closer to him and they are kissing the way they do most things: intensely, passionately and competitively. She's definitely winning since he still is reeling from the fact that she kissed him. It's usually the other way around and it's usually her who puts a stop to it, but right now, she's not stopping anything and her hands are in his hair, then on his face, then pulling him closer at his waist.

He's giving it right back to her though and she realizes that in all the other times they have kissed, he was holding back. This is deeper, longer, more. It is something new, something different and as they stumble out of the elevator and towards their room, he fumbles with the key, dropping it on the floor. She bends down and picks it up and after she places it in the slot, she hears a soft click. She turns and looks at him triumphantly and he's looking at her with such intensity, such fire in his eyes that she's not sure what to do. But then he kisses her again and backs her into the room, the door swinging softly shut behind them. As she falls backwards onto the bed, his lips on her neck, she feels a soft click, much like the one she heard at the door: the click of two pieces, both jagged and irretrievably broken right down the middle, fitting together to form something new. Something whole.

End of part one.

Thanks for reading and reviewing. Love to all.