So apparently even though I've only been on summer break for three days my brain is already being a fucking letdown and forgetting the days of the week XDD whoops

well at least it's here now :D

CHAPTER 31: KISS THE STARS WITH ME

March 21, 2014

Killjoy Headquarters, Zone 4, California

11:21 PM

She is poised on the railing like an eagle, arms straight out, toes arched. She stares straight out into the gray sea. Heat bathes her back, and it rows closer.

She jumps. There is glorious freefall, wind rushing around her streamlined figure as her arms straighten into a point above her head. Then the water hits her, and it is cold and shocking and the impact reverberates to her bones.

She cannot breathe for a terrifying moment. Then her head breaks the surface and her nightgown tangles around her legs as she realizes she is facing the ship her family is stranded on.

With an earsplitting crack, the ship's hull breaks in half like an eggshell. The screams of dying humans drift over the water with too much clarity.

The scene suddenly disappeared as if a connection had been cut. Lacey shot straight up in bed. The waves pulling at her legs became twisted sheets, and the burning ship faded away into a small room lit only by moonlight. A few feet to her left, Terry slept soundly in his own bed, unaware of his daughter's distress.

The screams echoed in her ears as Lacey fought to control her frantic gasps. As the dream's reality faded from her mind, her heartbeat slowed its' frenetic pounding. Her eyes slid shut and she fell back.

She'd thought maybe, now that she was here in a relatively safe environment, the dreams would stop. But they were worse than ever. She'd felt the heat of the flames on her back, tasted the salty air in that precious moment before she took the dive. She'd heard the screams as loudly and clearly as they had been on the day she'd seen the ship sink.

Lacey trembled and clutched the pillow with her left hand. There was a spot of blood on the sheet, and she realized she'd bitten through the skin on her lip as she slept.

There was no way she'd be able to fall back asleep that night. She was terrified of the nightmares. If she fell back into slumber, they would only come again—and she couldn't stand the screams a moment longer.

As quietly as she could, Lacey slipped out of bed. She tiptoed to her suitcase and traded her pajamas for her well-worn skinny jeans and a brown camisole—even in the relative cool of the warehouse, she could feel the dry desert heat was too severe for anything else. Her hair was already matted with sweat from the heat and the nightmare-induced fear. Not that it mattered—nobody was going to see her.

She forewent shoes in favor of staying silent and snuck out the door while Terry remained soundly sleeping. The metal catwalk was cold on the bare soles of her feet, and she tiptoed past three closed doorways until she reached the ladder that led down to the bottom floor. One doorway on the end of the other side of the catwalk hung open, and she caught a glimpse of a soundly sleeping Fun Ghoul as she began her descent.

The bottom floor of the Killjoy headquarters was completely dark except for long rectangles of moonlight that shone through the high windows. She fumbled through the minefield of furniture, weapons and assorted debris that covered the floor, managing to only trip twice on the way to the warehouse doors. It was cooler down here in the massive open space, and for a moment, she considered simply waiting in the darkened room for the sun and the Killjoys to rise. But the walls were still there. Eventually, she would grow claustrophobic of this space, too. She needed out, needed free air and endless unconstrained miles and exploration. She needed a quiet place in the Zones she could call her own.

Lacey had always had an innate need to wander. Exploring fascinated her, and here in the desert, that fact certainly hadn't changed. She slipped between the double doors and into the night air, quiet as a ghost. A wisp of warm breeze kissed her cheeks. It felt good on her upturned face, as if urging her to go on. Encouraged, she slid out of the warehouse and into the vast, empty desert.

Grains of sand slipped between her bare toes, chafing the skin but not uncomfortably so. Lacey dragged her feet through the small drifts and dunes as she walked. The motion left a noticeable trail behind her, but she figured it would help her find her way back if she became lost. The night was warm, maybe even warmer than she'd expected, and the thick heat fell around her shoulders like a blanket.

She lost track of time. It could have taken minutes or hours, but after some length of time, the lines she dragged in the sand began to loop around and double back on each other. She was starting to recognize landmarks—the tall heaping sand dune and the two intertwined yucca trees were most common; she must have passed them five times each.

Eventually, her path straightened out, and she caught sight of a tall tree in the distance. All of the plants had been scrubby bushes and stunted, gnarled yuccas so far. That lone testament to survival caught hold of her attention, and she began to walk more quickly towards it.

She could barely see the warehouse once she reached the tree. Her new home was only a dot on the horizon, hundreds of feet or maybe even miles away. The tree was not as large as it had seemed but it loomed over her head, a good deal taller than any other she'd seen. It rested on the edge of a small cliff. The rocky outcrop hung over the desert below, and if Lacey hadn't been careful, she would have walked straight off the edge.

The girl pressed her back to the twisted trunk of the tree and let herself slide down until she rested on the gritty sand. The desert bloomed below and around her, moon-washed and colorless under the diamond-studded velvet that covered the scene. Stars winked down upon her. They were so close it seemed as if she could reach up and brush them with her fingertips if she wished.

Sage bushes tickled her bare arms and pressed into her lower back, but the sand was soft and comfortable and the old Joshua tree supported her. There was nothing else, just her and the tree and the sand and the stars. No city lights obstructed the jeweled night sky. She could drink her fill of the gorgeous scene; spot the constellations her father always used to talk about.

What was that rhyme her mother used to recite? Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…

"I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight," Lacey breathed. She fell silent, entranced once again by the bright beacons of the heavens.

"You're not going to make a wish?"

Lacey gasped and whipped around towards the intruder. Gerard was standing a few feet behind her tree, his head tilted towards the sky. The light from the diamond stars reflected in his eyes and caused them to sparkle.

"Sorry if I scared you," he murmured. "I was calling your name, but I guess you didn't hear."

She stood hastily and brushed the sand off the back of her jeans. "Did you follow me?" she asked harshly.

Gerard tipped his head back down to look at her. His gaze caught hers, and suddenly, her lungs felt very tight.

"I heard you leave—my door was open because I was still awake. I figured it would be you out here."

"You followed me the whole time I was wandering?"

He took a tentative step towards her, and she still couldn't break his gaze. Her breath hitched in her throat. She wasn't smiling, but neither was he. This moment was fragile, like glass. It could shatter with one wrong movement.

The electricity was back as he moved closer. "I got curious," he said. "These are danger days. You've got to be careful…I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"These are danger days," Lacey repeated quietly.

She didn't remember making the conscious decision to move forward, but she had met him halfway under the Joshua tree. A small, lopsided smile had snuck its' way onto his lips. She wasn't quite sure what to say, what to do, and she had never been this unsure about anything before. She hated the helplessness, but at the same time, there was something so thrilling about this—about him.

"I'm supposed to be training you, remember?" he said humorously. "It wouldn't look very good if my recruit got ghosted on her first day out here."

"No, I guess it wouldn't," Lacey agreed softly.

Gerard studied her for a moment, his eyes roving silently over her face. She bit he bottom lip again. A harsh sting ran through her, and she realized she'd bit through the scab forming where she'd already wounded herself.

He reached out slowly as if she were a skittish horse and brushed the droplet of blood away with his thumb. "I think I'd miss you too much," he whispered. "If you died, I mean."

"You'd better take good care of me, then."

"I promise I will as best I can," he murmured.

His right hand slipped from her mouth to her shoulder, and then to hang empty at his side. Lacey desperately resisted the urge to lift her own hand to her lips to cover the bare spot his fingers had left.

"You're different, Lacey," Gerard said. "I can feel it. I don't know why, but I remembered you. Every little thing about you. Your hair, the way you smelled like sea salt, your voice. There's something about you."

"I felt it too," Lacey murmured. "It's a bond."

"A bond?"

She sighed and slid her eyes closed, letting her other senses take over for a moment. "Close your eyes and I'll close mine," she whispered.

And then it was just them two, blind and trusting, falling headlong into this new feeling.

The tension between their bodies was incredible but Lacey knew better than to move even the slightest bit for fear of shattering the soap-bubble moment they had created. There were so many feelings coursing through her, sensations of excitement and fear and being alive all swirling and crashing into a heady combination. Without sight, all of her other senses were heightened. The slight wind ruffling the branches of the Joshua tree and the call of desert birds and Gerard's soft breaths were all ten times as loud. The earthy scent of lift pervaded her nose, and she breathed deeply, letting it rest in the back of her throat so she could almost taste it.

Warm air caressed her face, kissed at her eyelids, her nose, her lips, and the tension tightened. There was a rubber band between them, pulled taut, ready to snap and catapult them into whatever this was growing into at any moment.

"Magic," Gerard breathed.

And just like that, the tension broke. The rubber band snapped and Lacey's eyes flew open. He was motionless except for his chocolate-hazel eyes, which searched her face rapidly.

"The desert is magic," he repeated. "This moment is magic. Do you feel it?"

"I don't believe in magic," Lacey said.

There was a ring of light from the moon flowing forward from behind his head. His shining hair was crowned with a halo of stars, and she thought he looked a bit like how she imagined God to be.

"But I believe in dreams. I believe in you."

"I'm not a dream, Lacey," he protested quietly. "Far from it. There are no dreams out here."

She shook her head. "Where there's hope, there are dreams. And there is hope here. I see it in Sunshine and her family. I see it in Kobra and Jet and Ghoul. I see it in Grace, and I see it in you."

"Maybe you'll remind us how to find that hope," he answered.

Lacey suddenly felt very weak at the knees, as if her legs were failing to support her anymore. She stumbled backwards, away from Gerard, and crashed onto her knees near the edge of the cliff. His forehead wrinkled slightly in confusion—he must have felt the fragility, too, and realized she had just broken their bubble into shards of moonlight—but all the same, he followed her to the edge.

She felt, rather than saw, him sit down next to her, but she determinedly kept her gaze locked on her own feet as they hung off the lip of the sandy outcrop. They swung in small circles in the empty space, her heels grazing the rock with every pass.

Time was a foreign notion that night. Gerard and Lacey said nothing more, for voices would clutter the enchanted silence that had fallen over the desert. Words weren't enough to convey anything.

Instead, Lacey focused on the details—on the sand beneath her thighs and the breeze lifting her hair and Gerard's steady heartbeat. The sky showered the scene with glimmering stardust, pouring down on the two and scattering starlight over Gerard's shining hair and his pale milky skin. He was a moonbeam himself, bright and pale white under the refracting diamonds of light.

She could only imagine how they would look, these two supposed rebels letting themselves become lost without protection in the desert and in their own feelings. There was something about the night—it brought emotions to the surface that she hadn't known she was capable of. Whether it was that electricity that was flowing through the desert or Gerard's presence or even that magic that he had suggested, she didn't know, and really it didn't matter. All that she could be sure of was that this was too new and too raw and too real.

They sat in silence until the diamonds faded away and the shining moon disappeared under the mountains in the wet, bringing the gray-purple skies that only existed in that period of limbo between night and day. A strange sense of loss flooded over Lacey as she realized that the night was coming to an end. She and Gerard would have to go back soon, before the other Killjoys woke up and became worried over their absence. But she didn't want to break the peace that had descended over them—the first peace she'd known since before Day Zero.

When the sun began to peek over the horizon and spread rosy-red rays over the sand, they knew they couldn't ignore it any longer. Wordlessly, Gerard stood and offered his hand to Lacey. She took it gratefully and allowed him to haul her to her feet.

Lacey searched for something to say that wouldn't compromise whatever it was they had just experienced, but her brain came up empty. What could she say about it? The same words that had been unnecessary for the past few hours were failing her now.

"Why'd you come out here?" Gerard asked as they began to walk back towards the distant warehouse.

His voice startled her. Half of her was glad that he'd broken the silence so she didn't have to, but the other half mourned the fact that his speech marked the end of their night of amiable peace.

"I had a nightmare," she answered quietly.

He sighed sympathetically, but kept his gaze straight and didn't look down at her. "What was it about"

"Just…just a recurring dream. Day Zero. It keeps replaying in my head."

"How'd you survive Day Zero?" he asked. Then he caught sight of the small shiver that ran through her body. "If you don't mind me asking," he amended hastily.

"No, it's fine," Lacey sighed. She wrapped her arms around her torso protectively, rubbing her palms over her bare skin. "I was on a cruise ship with my family. The sea was turbulent, and the ship was tipping all over the place. There was a giant wave when I was on the deck and I hit my head on the railing. It knocked me out and when I woke up, the ship was burning."

She took a deep, shuddering breath to steel herself. Gerard was looking at her with concern, his eyebrows furrowed. When he noticed her pause, he offered her a supportive smile. The small motion helped to soothe her nerves.

"I—they said—they were saying we would have to jump ship, before it sank. The lifeboats were gone. I wanted to find my family, but the boat…it split in half. And people were dying. I saw them. It was all I could do to hold on to the railing, and somehow—I have no idea how I did it, but I got over the railing. I jumped into the sea and swam away. But I saw them, I heard them, all those people on the burning ship and—" her voice cracked. "And my family."

She didn't even realize she was crying until the quivering teardrops hit her cheeks. They left wet trails on her skin, but she was shaking too much to wipe them away, because it was all too much. The screams were echoing in her ears even though she was wide awake.

She was trembling and shivering and falling apart and all these emotions were tugging her in a thousand different directions and they would tear her into millions of little pieces, she was sure of it, and she was nothing but a broken mess held together by a weak, cracking shell. She was shocked she'd been able to hold on to her sanity for this long already. The brush with the Draculoid and Terry nearly being killed and the frantic escape and the rush of new information the Killjoys entailed and the memory-dreams combined with this new-found vulnerability she'd shown Gerard that night, and she was sure he'd run away as soon as he saw the mistake he'd made in rescuing such an emotionally unstable person.

But he didn't. Instead, she felt calming hands on her arms and then she was enveloped in warmth.

"Sh, sh, you're okay," Gerard whispered. "You're fine. I've got you."

His arms wrapped around her protectively and her world was enveloped in Gerard. She pressed her hands to his chest and all she could see was his black t-shirt and all she could hear was his soothing voice and all she could smell was his musky desert scent and all she could feel were his strong arms wrapped tight around her, supporting her, shielding her. And he gave her the strength she hadn't been able to find.

"You're here now," he continued. "You're here, Lacey Mosley. Here in the desert at dawn. Here with me. And I'll never let them hurt you, I promise."

Lacey whimpered and clutched his shirt tighter, because what else could she do? He'd pulled her back from the edge and he'd held her when she was about to fall apart. She needed time to rebuild those walls.

A few minutes later, she pulled away and brushed the lingering tears from the corners of her eyes. Gerard watched her carefully as if to make sure she didn't lose it again. She smiled weakly at him to try and prove she was alright and started walking again, pushing past him without a word. She had none to give.

The silence had returned, but it was no longer comfortable. It was the awkward silence o left in the wake of not knowing just what to say, and Lacey found herself hating it.

"So what's your story?" she asked for the simple sake of breaking the stale moment.

"Nothing as exciting as yours," he replied humorously. "It was just a combination of recklessness, superstition and pure luck. Frank and—oh, um, Ghoul and Jet were arguing about the apocalypse and I got this fucked-up idea to climb Mount Lee—y'know, Hollywood Hill?—cause Ghoul said we'd only survive if we found higher ground. None of us really believed that anything was going to happen, but then LA started burning. We were up there for three days living off beer and potato chips."

"Jesus," Lacey murmured. "That was some fucking good luck, then."

Gerard nodded amiably. "Ghoul's a lifesaver."

"What about the Killjoys? Why'd you join them?"

"That one's a bit longer," he smirked. "But then, you already know some of it, don't you? You saw the opening for Hawthorne Towers—you saw what Ghoul and I did there."

"What were you doing there?"

He laughed. "Well, it kind of all starts with a shopping mall and a radio…"

Gerard's story took nearly an hour to tell. By the time he had reached the end of his and his friends' tale, the two were back in front of the warehouse and the desert light had brightened from crimson red to the sunny bright yellow that was common in the Zones.

"Shit. What time is it?" Gerard muttered.

"Probably late," Lacey sighed. "Let's just get inside before anyone sounds the alarm."

Neither one of them needed to say that the meeting would be a secret, kept only between them two. They climbed the ladder up to the catwalk together and turned to face each other at the top. For what felt like the thousandth time that morning, Lacey was at a loss for words.

Gerard grinned at her deviously as if he had just shared some immense secret and waved before turning his back ad slipping back into the bedroom he and Fun Ghoul shared. She stared at the door for a few seconds in silence before following his lead.

Terry was still asleep when Lacey entered their room. As quietly as she could, she made her way over to her unmade bed and lay down, still fully clothed. There was no way she'd be able to fall back asleep that morning. Instead, she lay there and traced her fingers over her lips until Doctor Death came to wake them.