Something Comforting

When Edward woke up, his head hurt like hell. Slowly sitting up from where he lay on top of the bar, he groggily let his legs fall down, then lightly touched the ground. He looked up at the clock on the wall at the opposite end of the room, which read 11 AM.

            "Damn..." he muttered as he slowly made his way downstairs, entered the kitchen and retrieved an aspirin from the cupboard a bit ways to the left of the double-sink.

            Fortunately he could remember all that had happened, regardless of his alcohol induced headache. Unfortunately, he remembered losing his 100 Rand to the drinking game he and Ian played the night before, feeling his pockets just incase his head deceived him.

            After getting a glass from another cupboard, and filling it with plain old tap water, he gulped the pill down along with the water in one go. A dry tongue was normal for mornings such as that. He then proceeded to check the garage, and after seeing that Ian's Subaru was gone, continued to make breakfast for himself only as a big breakfast was the cure of all cures when it came to hangovers.

After eating, Ed stood up and started cleaning up, but as he lifted a plate, a sudden pain in his right arm caused him to drop the plate, causing it to shatter as it hit the tiles.

Suddenly, his mind went blank again, and when he came to, instead was filled with images of gore: slaughtered townspeople and burning houses all around, with burning flesh and more dead bodies marring the roads.

            Gunshots to his right. He twitched, grabbed at his back for a sidearm. Found none. He twitched again. Silence. He was back in his kitchen again, the broken plate and shattered glass lay at his feet.

            "Damn it," he said, "I'm getting too old for that kind of thing."

            And as if to mock him, another pain shot through his arm, which only caused him to curse even more. Pain in his limbs was a usual after effect of too much alcohol. Something which had only started to occur more recently.

After cleaning his mess up, he headed upstairs and jumped in the shower, where he felt like he had managed to wash everything away temporarily, and could start a new day.

            Once in his room, he dressed, and walked over to the huge mirror where he sat down on his bed and looked down at the silver band around his finger. He had to get his mind off things, which meant that he would either clean the bar area, or recalibrate his bow and clean his pistols. He opted for the latter option as he really did not feel like tackling the bar area just yet -- and in his own.

An hour or two had passed while Ed was cleaning his weapons when he heard a car screeching to a stop in front of the house. Recognising the signature sound of a custom-built Jeep Wrangler, he already knew whom to expect. And by the sound of it, he had to hurry.

            "Dev," Ed said as he opened the door and Dev stormed in.

            "Hey Ed," Devon replied and got straight to the point, "have you checked your mail today?"

            "Uh, email, yeah. As for the actual post box..." Ed walked out the door and a little ways down the driveway, where he opened the mailbox and retrieved the few mail that were inside. He sifted through everything on his way back.

            Pacing up and down, Devon watched anxiously as Ed read from where each post had come.

            "Crap, crap, crap... What's this..."

            "Yeah! That! I received exactly the same one at the Project Eight offices this morning."

            "What's it say," Ed mumbled as he cautiously opened the thin envelope and pulled out the letter inside. "We are closer now, we will find y--"

            "Shut up!" Devon practically yelled as Ed read the letter aloud. "You know what that means, right?"

            Ed dropped his hands to his sides and gravely looked up at Dev, who was staring back with exactly the same emotion on his face.

The moment Ian arrived, they showed the letter to him.

            "The Others," Ian said.

            "Fuck the Others," said Devon getting up from his seat, "if they want to try their hand at this again, I say let them come,”

            "This isn’t North Africa, Dev," said Ed solemnly.

             "It’s damn near close enough,"

             "If only," said Ian.

After Ian had asked him where the letter had come from, it was pretty clear that they were not safe any longer. Ed knew that this would either mean running again, or standing up again. Whichever option they were to choose, however, would mean heavy losses for all three of them. All of their personal lives would change one way or the other, and Ed knew that both of the others knew that too.

As they were talking, they heard the door. All three of them grabbed what knives they could from the knife block on the island counter, and stood ready.

         "Woah!" JR said as he threw his hands into the air.

Ed might have become a bit rusty, but he heard Devon swore under his breath. "Don't sneak up on people like that," Dev continued as all three of them put the knives back again.

They tried to downplay what had happened like a joke and told as little details as possible to JR about what was going on. They had decided that they would all take turns keeping watch throughout the night. With Dev first, Ian second and Ed last.

When Ed came to, he stood up from his bed, retrieved one of his pistols from underneath his desk and headed toward the balcony, where Ian was bound to be.

         "I'm not leaving her, even if that means I have to kill every last one," Ian had said right before Ed sent him off to bed. Those exact words kept resounding through his head, even as he relaxed a little bit and attempted to write.

         JR had woken up a few times throughout the night, which was unusual for him. But after Ed merely said that he was out there writing, he quickly went to bed every time.

As the sun rose in the horizon, Ed closed the cover, which caused his iPad to lock. Somehow he knew that he would have gotten nothing written that night. Every little sound had him overanalysing for the best possible vantage point, and how to get there at the fastest time. Every barking dog made him think that it could be used as proximity alerts. Every taxi and siren in the city in the distance had him think of the life that he had finally grown to love.

         And then it all went to shit, he thought as he stood up and leaned on the railings as Ian had done. "I'm not letting them take this away again," he continued, then echoed his friend: "Even if it means I have to kill every last one." And he was comforted by that.

Devon hated the idea of continuing with their day as usual, but complied after being talking into it by Ian and Ed. And the truth was that they really had no other option but to carry on with life as usual. It could be weeks before the Others would even act on their threats -- as was usual for them in the past where they had a way to build tension, and try to play mind games first.

          Ian had gone together with Dev to the Project Eight offices to do a few things before heading out to the Scorpions HQ, where he continued his head hunt for the Cyber Criminal, Thor. While Ed went to see his sister at her studio, and then carried on to a lunch date he had with Aaliyah, the girl that he had met at the Agent's office a few days back.