Caring

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Hurst never argued. Usually.

Arguing meant caring.

He had stopped caring (and arguing) in his early teens. The arguments had always been with his mother. Why was he skipping school. Why was he in detention again. Why did he think it was a good idea to get into that fight. The list went on, and after a certain point, he stopped, because he just didn’t care.

Into adulthood, he found that he could count on one hand (with half those fingers missing) the things he did care about.

His niece, Noah, was one.

That’s why he was arguing right now with his sister.

It always bothered him how much Cordelia and her husband worked. How often Noah was home alone if she wasn’t with him. Hadn’t his sister learned from their childhood? Their deadbeat father skipped out and as a result, their mother had to work multiple jobs just to keep them afloat. He would have rather gone hungry to see his parent a little more than to have what they got. Money didn’t make up for presence.

He had instigated it, visiting his sister during one of those rare times she was home and Noah was out playing Pokemon Go. Some big event at one of the parks or something. His sister knew when he instigated. She had partially raised him until he went off the rails and was rarely home growing up. It got heated fast. It was a minefield for the both of them.

Though the younger of the two, he towered well above her, and stared down at her was they verbally went at each other’s throats.

“You’re not her father, Cooper.” Cordelia hissed, wagging a finger harshly under his nose and she knew she struck a nerve, on top of the fact she knew he hated that name. One of his hands was pressed flat against his jeans, while the other was balled into a fist in his jacket pocket, but he didn’t skip a beat. While his sister knew him well, she could never stop herself from setting the platform for him to quip back.

“Oh?” He feigned surprise. “She has one of those? I rarely see him so I tend to forget.” The corner of her mouth twitched, an indication she was livid, but he kept rolling. “I spend more time with her than both of you combined, so I might as well be.”

She slapped him then, but it didn’t bother him. It may have stung for a bit, but he let her have it, because he knew he stung her more with his words. In this contest of who could hit the hardest, he would win. He always did.

“We’re busting our asses so that she can have a better life! Better than what we had!”

Hurst didn’t need to look around to know that the Starly home was tons better than their childhood one had ever been.

“She doesn’t need caviar and egyptian cotton sheets, Cordelia---” He could hear the edge in his voice. “She needs her parents. All that time you’re pissing away working is the time she’s growing. You’ll blink, and she’ll be eighteen and out that door, and what will be the point, then?”

They went back and forth more. She said all the things he wasn’t surprised by. How would he know how to raise a child. He wasn’t a parent. He didn’t have his own. She even went so far to say he was still a child himself, but he knew that came from her running out of steam and lacking a leg to stand on. He earned himself a few more slaps, and after a spell his sister ended the argument by telling him it was over.

She said that because she couldn’t keep up with him, and because he had hit her hard enough with his words.

Cordelia slammed the entry door behind him, and Hurst didn’t slow his stride as he climbed down the stairs to the driveway and over to his bike. The man paused to the side of it, and released a deep breath. He drew his clenched fist out of his jacket pocket, and uncurled the fingers. They ached as he flexed them, and with his other hand he curled and uncurled. After a time he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.

His sister would never understand what he did for Noah that she and Ashley could never do. His sister didn’t know that her daughter was sneaking out at night to go battle monsters in the night, and those monsters took the shape of creatures and people. His sister didn’t understand that she needed to spend more time with her daughter, because literally one of these nights could be Noah’s last in this stupid war. Just one mistake. One slip up, and it was done.

Even worse than dying, she could be taken by those monsters, once she was old enough. She could be shattered, warped, and twisted, and turned into a shadow of her former self. A tool to be used. What happened to Nadia and Sergei’s friend bothered him to the core. The implications and logistics of it---knowing she was there, physically, but knowing that what roamed wasn’t her. Would possibly never be again. That in a blink of an eye, Nadia lost ten years of memory life with that person, and had to live with the knowledge she was out there. A fragment of what she used to be.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it happening to Noah.

It terrified him.

And he didn’t know what he would do if it did happen to her. He didn’t know if he could live with himself if it did. He went to bed some nights thankful that if something bad had to happen, that it had taken Nadia and Sergei’s friend instead of Noah.

He didn’t want this burden. He didn’t want this weight. He didn’t want to care.

But he did.


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Word Count: 1,002