118 Stares

"Next up," Vixen pointed to the bandage, "something less desperate. Try using the word please a lot."

Ryder nodded as he leaned into Regan to write on her new bandage. It was warm next to Vixen. Excessively warm. It was kind of scary in a way how close and warm he was but Ryder didn't know why. He knew he was definitely not going to do anything but Vixen… he felt threatened. Like he could be attacked at any second and be unable to guard himself. He was threatened but didn't know if it was in a good way or a bad way.

His hand quickly wrote over her band-aid words of pleading to get her to not open it. In seconds he was done with the band-aid. He looked at Vixen as he turned to see what Ryder wrote. 

Now Ryder understood why people were so obsessed with him. He hated it.

Vixen nodded to show that what Ryder wrote was ok. Then he unwrapped the second of the large band-aid and wrapped it around Regan's wrist. There were no band-aid wrinkles.

"How do you do that?" Ryder asked looking up to Vixen with curious eyes.

"How do I do what?" Vixen asked, his hand gently laying Regan's on his. 

"How do you wrap the band-aid on her hand so smoothly and they're no wrinkles?" Ryder pressed. 

"I just… do it?" Vixen answered. It was a simple answer with no explanation after. It was out of his role to explain and Vixen knew it. 

"How descriptive," Ryder sighed. 

Vixen turned to him for a moment to see him flinch when they looked eyes and then turned back to Regan. 

Ryder began to write again on her band-aid. "What happened earlier in the morning?" Ryder asked. 

"No. That's a question you should answer for me. What happened this morning?" Vixen interrupted, asking Ryder the same question. "Do you remember the last thing that you did or she did before she started to panic?"

Ryder flinched, his memories traveling back to that time. He shivered. 

Vixen cocked his head to look at Ryder, his moving hand had stopped writing on Regan and instead started to shake. 

"We were having pancakes," Ryder began, "I talked to her about seeing you in the hallways and she flipped, threatening and begging me to open the door to you. She said she didn't care, that she needed to check if you were gone, if she could still talk to you."

He hated dependent people. He always wondered what was going through their heads when they acted the way they did. Why they'd beg for someone completely unrelated to their life to stay, while they'll call someone else their rock to balance on and why they felt their world crumble when the person they were dependent on decides to leave.

He knew he was selfish in his own way when he decided to leave but he had known it from some point that she had started to depend on him and he couldn't let that happen. He was selfish for leaving her there by herself and being forced to deal with her own broken emotions. It was selfish for him to give no reason as to why he was leaving and just left her alone and it was selfish of him to have tried to help her to begin with, to have yelled at her words of truth and tried to force them into her mind. 

But the only reason why it was selfish was because she depended on him.

"She sounded so desperate," Ryder muttered, looking up at Regan, "like you were some life-line she needed to speak to. Later I was able to subdue it with food, pancakes to be specific."

"Good," Vixen nodded looking at Regan and brushed a piece of hair behind her ears. "Don't ever tell her anything about me until you feel like she's calm enough to speak to me. Whether that'll take days, weeks, or a year, keep her away until then."

Ryder finished what he was writing and looked up to Vixen. "Why do you want to keep her far away from you? Did she do something wrong? Did you do something wrong? I don't understand."

Vixen's grip on Regan's hand tightened a bit. Ryder noticed it. "Because it's useless. Her presence to me and mine to her. It was useless to begin with."

That didn't help quench Ryder's thirst one bit. He only grew more curious but before he could try and intrude on Vixen's privacy again, Vixen cleared his throat. 

"What happened next?" Vixen pressed. 

"Ah, right. I fed her the pancake and I don't really remember the topic of the conversation. I think it was you but I think it was someone else too," Ryder muttered, "then for some reason, she almost choked on a piece of, and as I was trying to help her with the choking, she just started to shake and tremble. Then she started to scream like her head was being split into two, she seemed to be crying and begging through her scream. She seemed horrified."

He looked at Vixen. "She was horrified."

"Then I tried to get her to step out of it but she didn't seem to want to notice me or rather she couldn't notice me. Her eyes did this weird things where they would be looking straight at me but she wouldn't see me. Like she was trapped somewhere or she was looking at something that was in my position but wasn't me," Ryder explained, getting confused at his own words as he said them. 

Vixen simply nodded to show that he was following along. 'Hallucinations.'

"Then she started begging to the saved, begging to be given the chance to live. Begging to be forgiven," Ryder continued. "Then she'd start screaming, shaking in the eyes of the person who was in front of her. She'd push me away when I tried to help her and then shriek 'NO… don't do this,' Almost like she was being chased."

"Then she started to hyperventilate, breathing heavily, and soon foam formed in her mouth. I was so confused and worried about what happened to her but I was also paralyzed. I didn't know what to do, my body wasn't able to move and I just sat there, frozen like a fool," Ryder chuckled weakly, his fingers clenching into a fist. His eyes narrowed as he despised the way he reacted to her. "Why would I do that? At the moment she needed me the most, I wasn't even able to do the last I would do for her.

"Was that your first time facing something like that?" Vixen asked. 

"Y-yea…" Ryder muttered.

"Then there you go, the answer to your question," Vixen shrugged. His eyes were focused on Ryder. "So what happened next?"

"It sounded like something was being forced down her throat or like she was being choked. She looked up at me… through me and whispered, begging for help," Ryder shivered as he remembered the moment. "That was when I snapped out of it and began to run for help."

"Why didn't you stay? Fix it yourself?" Vixen asked.

"I was scared. Scared of her and scared of what she would… do to me and I was also scared of what I'd do. I didn't want to make the situation any worse since I was so illy prepared for something like this so I went looking for someone who had been here for a while and could get to and through her quicker," Ryder looked up at Vixen. "It was you."

The pieces fit. Vixen understood what happened.

"Then I found you with that girl and dragged you with me to her room. Then you kicked me out and that was all," Ryder sighed. Now that he was recalling the moments, he felt like an idiot. 

He had just sat there, paralyzed while Regan suffered while Vixen ran into the room immediately and scooped her up in his arms when I couldn't even come to her. How arrogant of him to have questioned anything Vixen did. What right did he have to do that? How couldn't even help her when she needed it immediately? He felt pathetic. Hw as pathetic.

"Try better next time," Vixen muttered.

"Huh?" Ryder flinched, turning to Vixen. 

"I hope there will be no other time but if it does, you'll do much better this time. You've been through it once, it's stick to you, keep you thinking about the best ways to help them when it happens," Vixen smiled.

Ryder looked up at Vixen, examining his face. Despite the fact that he was ridiculously handsome, there was just something about his face… maybe the alignment of his features? His lips? His eyes? There was something about him that seemed surreal to the eye. Like he could be seen but wasn't really there. Just like he was looked at by Regan, Vixen felt the same to him. Mysterious and untouched. 

"Is that how it happened to you?" Ryder asked his head cocking to the side. 

Vixen chuckled, "Yea, let's call it that."

Ryder stared at Vixen for a second, focused on his face for longer than needed. His eyes were staring into Vixen's.

"Ryder? You're zoning out again," Vixen called out.

Ryer snapped out of his phase and turned away from Vixen immediately, his hands flying over his lips and his cheeks heating up. The thought repeated itself in his mind. 

'He's cute…'