One day you'll understand why I pushed you away.

"When I was a kid, the whore kept me in the closet." smoke blew out before he spoke.

Brown-green leaves rolled and dried into a tight bundle. Nothing much more but for the twine that kept it together. Didn't quite get them high but it was something. Took the edge off, loosened the ever-present tension.

"Before I was old enough to crawl out of there, they kept me in the closet as they worked. Like I was a thing."

The insects sang their chirping summer songs. Under the canopy of the dark void, full stars, they fell under an illusion of temporary peace. That was one thing they had out here, the unpolluted night sky. Such a sight was almost unreal.

In the nights of good weather, they could lay out there indefinitely.

"Like something to be used when convenient," but memories always dragged them back down, it was the way humanity was made.

Sophie doesn't respond any more than a breath and exhales of smoke. That was the only right answer.

"It was dark, stuffy, but it was fucking safe. Being in the closet, or cabinet or wherever meant no one could see me. I could ignore the noise, screaming, fucking, whatever. But being in there meant I was still hidden." the juvenile delinquent smoked.

He spoke as if he were speaking out loud to himself. Something he would never do in the presence of others never had the luxury to, and most likely never will. To pry open even a crack, to see even a speck of the hidden secrets inside the boy called Leon was harder than finding a pearl in all the oysters under this island's watery graves.

There wasn't much to tell he would assure, either with an ever guttural growl or the silence in his glare. Eyes of once molten lava left to cool for centuries till it was but the forgotten land they walked on.

"There was this fucker that just knew. Smarter than the usual lot and that was the problem. Figured out the signs a kid was living there and actually messed up enough to do something about it. He opened the closet door and light streamed in so fast, I never remembered his face."

Laying down like that, smoke trailed from his face like a pluming volcano. Dormant but for who knows how long?

"Dying in the dark would have been better."

Fire lights up the sky.

That night ended in a blaze of flames.

The sound of rain clattered noisily, blowing away the smoke of the star burning memory. There is no fire here, timeless years left behind. But Sophie can still feel her lungs heaving, burning. The damp darkness is nothing compared to carbon and ashes, blinding flashes all around. A stark contrast.

She lights the cave up.

The flashlights wobble as she runs.

A light. A marker.

She yells behind her for her siblings to follow through. To light the makeshift oil lamps and torches where they pass. To light the way up brightly.

Leon always hated that.

Yet there was this instinct. It was as human as it was stupid. Like the shutters of light that peeked in between the closet doors. Like a moth to the flame. You can't help but be attracted, curious. No matter what you may have learned to say and stay alive.

"Leon!" Sophie shouted out.

The dark path she always felt was no issue, the maze to any unwelcome strangers, though there never was any, suddenly felt to her as foreign and confusing as if she were the intruder. That this place, with it's hidden cracks and crannies, was no longer hers.

It stopped being hers the moment she let anyone in. It stopped being hers with this lifetime reset.

Leon could be anywhere.

She could have already passed him. Already ran so far she overshot, running blind into the neverending darkness and water. Once she hits the wave pools it would be nothing but flooded seawater. If that whole section of the cave wasn't already raised and drowned from the storming tides.

Still, she runs. Even beyond where Mattie's and June's voices can reach. Goes as deep into the rock and pit as she possibly can. Looks in the worst corners, the cramped stalagmite closets, and lights them up.

First with her flashlight, quickly scanning. Looking for anything, any traces at all. Something broken, something left behind. When there showed to be none, she left a light.

Oil soaked bundles worked best, given the resources that they had out here. Could be used as a smoker, a light, or even something a bit more combustible given the contents they were made out of.

That's what they used then.

Lit and hidden around. Just little lamps. Nothing too out of place. Left burning out for a little too long. Lighting up the night.

Leon hated the light. He must have hated how much he couldn't have it. No one really wanted to stay in the closet, the room, their prison. No one.

Even monsters wanted to be let out to play.

Water dripped. Splashed.

It shouldn't have stood out very much in a winding hollow cave of all places. It dripped and drained from the ceilings, the walls, the rush of the sea floor below.

Drip. Drop.

Like a pebble being thrown into a shallow pond, causing hypnotizing ripples. Disturbing the peace. Creating a new one in the patterns. A sort of zen.

"Leon?" Sophie almost stumbles as she rushes over, desperation eating away under her skin. Too unscarred, too smooth.

No calluses to handle anything.

The rocks dripped too smooth. Too loose over the natural progression of time. Erosion rounding out whatever it could reach with its patient touch. One could easily slip and fall into the unknown. Washed away into the tide that rises and dies.

How much easier that would be.

Drip. Drop. Splash.

Flashlight reached further but there was something about firelight. That certain almost comforting shade, the flicker of shadows outlining the surroundings.

"You won't drown in that...it's too shallow," Sophie whispered, she felt like gagging.

As if she were back in her old body, acid reflex a constant issue with her damaged digestion system. The bile sat at the back of her throat. Not quite burning, but neither going down to where it belongs. The heat of her lit torch wasn't far from her hand, her face, yet she felt as cold as a draining corpse.

As cold as graveyard dirt, high proof alcohol pouring down into the soil uselessly. After she tracked him down, it was too late for a drink. So she took a swig and poured him out the rest.

Leon stayed crouched, bent over his perch, right in front of her. His skin stretched thin but too soft over protruding bones. He gave the impression of a little goblin, a vile little thing. But underneath the fire and vice, the uninterested air as he ignored all the world, there sat the sort of person they knew. Knew what a wounded animal felt like. Knew how it was always better to just...put them out of their misery.

There's a lot of things Sophie could say at this moment.

Like how he shouldn't play with those snake heads. Shouldn't play like that. It was a waste. They're dangerous. What were you thinking? What are you thinking?

But there he was, grasping them by the bloody ends and tossing them as if they were skipping stones. Across the watery ponds before the reach of the wave pools. Seemingly without much care at all.

There's a lot of things she could say.

There were no open skies and stars here, but smoke burned in its own way. While blood still ran, drained and tossed as Leon tossed and threw away each little head.

"You know, I thought maybe I was on crack again. Seeing shit that wasn't there. Would explain a lot. That and how you're probably one of that cult shit people." the boy finally spoke.

It was a little scratchy, as if from disuse. Sounded like the mouse living behind the wall. Always hiding. Always keeping silent.

Once again silence was the correct answer. Sophie held her tongue, making no movements. Nothing that would unhinge either of them any further.

"Glasses clean freak looks like he could use a whole line of dust, with how twitchy he damn is. But it was 'normal'. Those other two are what they would call 'normal'. And normal people don't just follow cults of one. " he glanced back, barely a few seconds over at Sophie.

She nodded and smiled, because yeah. Yeah, they were. Mattie and June were still ok. Still unbroken from all this. Good normal kids.

Not like this one.

"You knew I was there. Somehow, like a fucker, you always knew when I was there. How? Some cult shit? Poltergeist? Even when I was damn far away. It was more than a little fucked up. " he tossed another head, one of the tiniest ones, getting it to bounce before sinking.

Of course Sophie knew. Her senses weren't so renewed she could sleep without knowing exactly what went on under her territory. Her control. Even if it was just a cat.

Besides. He was too young and sloppy. Not bad. But not yet...Leon. Not yet.

"Then the big shit started popping up. By the time you're all rolling around a fucking couch stuffing your face holes with ice cream? Yeah by then, I either licked a toad made of LSD or, you had some game logic bullshit up in here. "

Maybe the ones who would best adapt to the very end of the world wasn't the strong and mature. Maybe it would be the very young. The very malleable and adaptable sort, who couldn't always tell fiction from reality. Games and media so ...graphic. The lines were so blurred sometimes.

"I still think you're insane. Bi-polar or some shit, if not straight out fucked in the head. You switch too fast. Too calm. Too crazy. Like a switch button. Went all kookoo after the vending machine and pulled out a box of this shit." he tapped down to the plastic box between his legs, most the contents already gone. Half floating half sunk in the pools a hand-thrown distance away.

"But you think this is it. This is your power up. Fucking freak pickles." he tosses another, a bitter hiss already between his teeth.

Sophie doesn't interrupt, doesn't stop his rant or pace. There's a mountain, a volcano always laying there, seemingly dormant. Capable of wiping out the surrounding area should he ever finally feel like it.

"The problem is the sister. The only one not initiated into your fucked up snake cult. You save these and you let them sink their teeth into you like they're good shit in a needle."

He's not wrong. Technically everything this little brat said wasn't wrong.

To be fair he was probably still wrapping his head around it. Sadly sober. Sad that a kid that young even had to get sober. Withdrawal pains have been with him since he left the womb. Followed up and crashed full force when child services took him. A cycle of abuses that ever quite ended.

The world was a cruel place. Everyone already knew that to some capacity. Not so deep down, you know you're already in a little globe called hell.

The problem was saying it didn't happen.

That after you slap a processed sticker on and call it a day, everything was all fine and dandy. Problem solved. Get the kid out and away from his crack whore mom. Legally sell him out to the next fucker in line in the foster system. Then the one after that. Problem child that couldn't break quite right.

Those social workers probably sleep with a smile, thinking they saved his ass. All they did cheapen it. Before he could at least charge his mother's stolen Jons for everything they were worth. Pit them against her.

Power in their desires, their sins.

Either way he was just a thing. To be used.

"Either way I'm fucked. Either way, I'll die." he sounded too burning and bitter.

Dry and burnt as ash. Ashes already infiltrating your lungs. Can't breathe. Night full of screams. It all burned so beautifully.

Bitter. Bile and acid tasted so bitter in the back of Sophie's throat. She can't deny that. She won't give him false hopes for this wretched life.

You cannot stop a natural disaster. A volcano from its miasma and molten earth, under pressure for far too long.

Sophie couldn't ever really stop him in the end.

"So why the hell not?"

Sophie exhales, wishing it were smoke between her lungs that makes it contract so sharply. She watches, reality blurred from dreams. The switch of emotions never working right, never on time.

It's with a shit eating grin, that Leon sticks his whole arm into the remaining pool of snakes. Just their heads. More than enough. Fire lit mania behind hardened lead eyes as they clamp down.

He burned them all down the very same way.

He falls with a violent splash at the same time Sophie pounces. Timing as good as it will ever be.

She ignores the slip of wetness, the slide. Ignores how they trudge and slow of it all. It must be what Mattie feels. It's what she sees at the moment of every hunt. Adrenaline pumping, the world slowing.

She ignores the flaring stings of pain in the water. Dead snake-infested water. So one of the fangs got her. Scratches. Latches on partly through the momentum and her shirt. If she gets bitten three or more whatever times, she could still live. Probably.

But the boy she just caught was already going into shock. A bark between a mad laugh and a scream of pain escapes his lips before bleeding into a low groan.

There's no real procedure for this. No set plan.

But nothing in life was ever set.

Sophie acts fast, adrenaline and venom already pumping. She drags his out the shallow tainted water and pries what things she could off his arm. The limb quickly turning colors, veins darkening.

At least five puncture points.

She's not as fast as she would like, never fast enough. It takes time and effort to safely snap those things out. Too much so. As tedious as pulling staples from a wall of tender flesh and skinny limbs. . She could scream from the annoyance, the pain, the failures. Maybe she does.

Not enough. Never enough.

How do you forgive yourself for all the things that slipped through? The cracks. The gaps. How do you live with all the things that you failed to live up to, failed to see through? All that you failed to let come to pass.

You don't.

You don't take it on yourself.

You can't.

Because no part of the universe centers around you, it isn't so small. One person, single insignificant little heartbeat, does practically nothing in the blink of time against the tide. A single person is not a system. A person isn't a society that puts the great and horrible into power in the first place. A single fucking messed up piece of shit like Sophie wasn't going to change a thing. Not even her own deranged life.

Leon was still going to die.

The world never goes as planned. It will fuck you over, painfully and repeatedly. That is the only guarantee life gives you. For the most part.

Don't take it personally.

"You little shit." Sophie hisses, tasting blood behind her own teeth.

Fire licked and fire burned. Spewing its fumes up in the space of Sophie's head, the hollow of her chest long ravaged and burned. It left ashes its wake as layer and layer of the poisoned substance cooled her already hardened heart.

That's the thing about scars. Sometimes it hurts like a lingering phantom, a ghostly pain with no real rest to cure it. Sometimes, it's numb. Dead and numb. So much so you can't feel a thing.

That is how Sophie survives.

If and when her siblings find her, quickly carrying that limp and discolored figure, even smaller than her own, they would think her demeanor was the same as ever. Face blank in between flashes of light, lithe body moving, shouts of plans and orders perfectly in line and ready to go.

The standard picture of calmness and control.

It's not.

They move him onto Mattie's strong steadier, faster, shoulders. Then book it the hell up and out of there. Back to the surface. Back to where they could actually try to save this kid's life.

Keyword try.

Mattie seems to leave them behind in the rain and dark, baffling June with his unseen speed. Just the way Sophie needed him to move. Her brother has been through this before, much to his displeasure. He knows a bit more about what to do. Cleaning the wounds, letting it spread evenly, boiling away the right herbs and detoxes. How to get it done even just a minute faster.

Leon was going to need every second he could get.

Sophie instructs June to not only hurry back up, but to gather. Split up and run to the nursery they've only barely started, gather up exactly what Sophie tells her to while she herself rushes straight back to the cave.

Back to where Mattie would undoubtedly need her for the next set of instructions. Or when his rebound hit. Whichever came first.

Fire. Boil. Bubble. Toil.

The earth is melting inside her as does the venom continue to liquefy whatever is inside the passed out child. His breaths pained and anguished despite losing his conscious mind. They force one yellow-tinged brew down his mouth, between dry bitten lips and gaps of tight teeth grimaced in pain. Another thick mixture of Sophie's orders pours over his wounds, as does hers, the entry puncture oints. It's a little too late. The poison is too much. But as long as he's breathing, they will still act. Sophie will still keep trying.

Sophie hopes he suffers. Hopes he burns and suffers in this hell till the end.

A single person is insignificant trash. No better off dead nor alive. So why the hell now? Why bother?

Why bother living when it already hurts this much?

It was stupid. So stupid.

There was a pain inside that boy that no one could ever touch. The island took everything from them. Took them and turned them inside out versions of themselves. But it did not cause this. It was not the first touch of cruelness that first raped a soul like Leon.

Didn't create the boy that was already there.

"How did he die?"

She had never asked anyone that. All but one.

"Found his system traced with heroin and loaded in cocaine. Too much shit mixed in there. Must have been a hell of a last ride." reported the investigator, years from now. The one Sophie paid to dig up the ugly buried truth under concrete scandals and cover-ups.

Shined up and romanticized, a tale of adventure and endurance. The sick sad world always in need of suffering, watching, being entertained.

It was a set of old, but not too old headlines. The tragic planned death of one of the infamous 8 year lost survivors. The youngest one too. Too broken to resist the lure of substance abuse, too mangled and skewed after what spending what must have been his formative years in such a dire place. An island surrounded by need and desperation far crueler than death. It can drive a boy to murder.

How shocking. How sensational.

"Leonardo Maliah, age twenty two. Cause of death? Well, you didn't need to pay me to find out that news story. Drove a Rolls Royce out the lot, jazzed it up like a black tank, and rammed it through the crowds at that press event for the movie. What a way to go. In any state of mind, I suspect he was feeling a little upset."

"How did he die?" Sophie traced over the transcript, like she didn't know, didn't read it over a hundred and more times.

"The other survivor? Mr. Willingham? Well, that old friend of yours was rammed through a wall and backed up over. Repeatedly. Much to the deranged laughter of Mr. Maliah, who rolled down the window to throw a burning cigarette before the explosion, or so says two up-close witness reports. Hard to tell credibility, they were very drugged up in the ICU."

"But Leon?" Sophie lit up her own cigarette, the private investigator not minding in the stressful line of work.

Good of him to take out one more of those dammed assholes on his way out. Good of him to remind them all just how broken their little fantasy was. Instant fame. Sellouts. A movie deal? Good of Leon to be that one worthless person to light it up in flames and mangled bodies.

Sophie has no sympathy even for the 'innocent crowd goers', absolutely none. What were they doing lining up to consume a nightmare that ate away their humanity? Sick fucks. All of them. Herself included.

All Leon did was give them a taste of the real deal. Of what it was really like to fear and hate, never knowing when you'll be hit next. Never knowing what they'll do to you if you were caught, even as collateral.

"Crazy bastard. Drove up and off the theatre sign in the end. Exploded his own car before running off, well-prepped. The attacks were sporadic, took hours to get rescue properly in then alone clean it up. But the total time it took to find Mr. Maliah? Less than three hours, most of it in the infamous car chase. Abandoned the stolen vehicle for another. Checked in at pre-booked hotel in another name, paid in cash, and overdosed himself there."

"And?"

"Report's all there lady. Why? The crime scene photos not gruesome enough for you?"

A closet.

They found him in the closet. Locked up and barred from the inside.

Drip. Drop. Found him dripping in his own sickness, curled up till the open door dropped his dead body out like a sad toy doll.

Leon died the way he lived. In an utter shitshow of chaos and destruction, are you not entertained? Taking lives, damaging an uncountable about more. Through self-induced fire and wreckage, the demons chasing his mind with flashing red and blue siren that sound like all the forced that failed them.

He died causing panic.

He died having a hell of a wretched good time.

He died in the dark.

"He's not breathing?!" Mattie's voice broke her out of her own fog. His hands already pressed to feel the boy's neck and chest where they laid him down. Hesitating, no awaiting orders, to try and start anything.

"He will," Sophie warns, feeling increasingly disoriented.

Venom was still venom, and Sophie just received a fresh dose herself. Obviously doing much better than she did the first time, having built a resistance. Holding out to function as well as possible, to get Leon through the critical stage. But for how much longer?

Who was going to drop first?

Of course, the best bet would be the boy with purple veins angrily pulsing under his skin, heart beat slowed to a pause.

Between the three siblings, they were all exhausted. Drenched in cold water and high on confusion and panic. In order...

Sophie had barely started getting better from her cold, and now had maybe one and half of the aged venom bites. The fact she hadn't keeled over already a testament to her willpower. That or the adrenaline running over her scars. There would be worse, she's been through worse. But her mind was going hazy.

Matthew however a full test run of his abilities today, the last burst especially. Time slowing down for everyone but himself as he knew this kid's condition took first priority. He did what only he could do, and then what he best tried to recall of every first aid bullshit he's ever received in his life. Stabilizing the boy, keeping him steady and starting the rolling boil of the fire and pots. He did his rounds, pacing and fussing. He doesn't know how much time he has left.

And last of all June. Poor weak and very confused June.

She watches with a certain doomed sense of knowing. Curses, when it comes out true. Mattie's headache making him swoon as Sophie wearily wears herself out empty, over a very much dead boy. Not far from the dark call of snake induced sleep herself. And June the only one left to take care of this shit.

"Well, fuck."