The Fallout

Oli's P.O.V

“OLIVER!”

The abrupt scream was loud enough to silence the crowd of people that were once again flocking inside the large sanctuary; I whipped my head around in time to see a very, very, angry Austin storming across the stage. He waved a piece of paper in his hand, instantaneously my stomach dropped as if I was on a roller coaster. My eyes met his and almost immediately, I felt threatened. The piercing crimson was enough to set something off in my mind, and I instantly went into a defense ridden state of mind; I took note of every exit and every possible route of escape within the 10 seconds it took him to reach me. Though, I wasn’t prepared for him to pounce on me, which successfully sent my body to the hard floor as he fell on top of me, he viciously shoved the paper in my face.

“What have you done!?” he screeched as he removed the wad of paper away from my eyes, I blinked in fear as he tossed the small object to the ground and grabbed hold of my throat.

“Get off of me!” I roared as I used every bit of strength I had to send him flying backwards and off of my body, he grunted as he hit the ground, hard.

“What’s going on? Both of you stop this bullshit! People are terrified!” Matt demanded as he stood halfway between us in an almost crouched position, as if he was prepared to do anything to make us halt our advances.

“Oli’s a traitor! Your one of them, aren’t you? You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? And I trusted you! I trusted that you would help me, and help us! Tell me what you did!” Austin hollered as he staggered up to his feet while Tom helped me to mine.

“I didn’t do anything! Haven’t considered that they may know what I look like? Your considered a traitor too!” I rationalized but inside, my secret was eating away at me; begging for me to spill my guts to him, but it would destroy him.

“Lies! Didn’t you see the small print Oliver? This poster is from 2011, you’ve been at this for awhile, haven’t you?” Austin yelled as he tried to rush forward in my direction, without warning a swarm of shadows caught his legs and forced him in place. Matt shook his head,

“You will not move, neither of you.” He commented as I felt something clasp onto my legs, surely enough the shadowy vines were snaked around my body and holding me to the ground like I was made of concrete. Tom backed away from me and took a place at Matt's side, surely since neither Austin nor I could make any more move towards the other. I couldn’t hide it anymore, it was more than killing me, and it was psychically painful to lie to them like this.

“FINE,” I bellowed, shooting Austin the most pitiful of glances, in the background I could hear people shuffling away from us, clearly horrified at the monsters we all were. Tom and Matt shared a confused glance before looking at me,

“What have you done Oli?” Tom mumbled as he grabbed Matt's arm for assurance, he looked more upset then I had ever seen him, almost like he felt betrayed.

“I didn’t know this was going to happen,” I motioned to the outside world before clutching my arm to my chest as I prepped myself for what surely would bring my world crashing down. “But I…I hacked into the governments database in 2010 and found out that they were secretly testing chemicals, the toxins as we call them now, on people. I discovered notes from several hundred cases of it…two of them…two stood out to me,” I choked up as the tears finally spilled out from my eyes. “The Arteaga and Carlile names came up…funny how it works out you know? I sent the files to my government’s local agency; and their response was immediate. The UK brandished me a hero for saving the lives of the victims of the unorthodox practice…but as result, the United States named me a traitor for exposing their secret. It was kept quiet, but I was denied access to American soil…but I have a friend who worked at the Consulate and was able to give me a fake green card so I could tour…I'm sorry Austin, but it was me who turned your dad in to the FBI. I'm so sorry…I didn’t know it was really your dad until you told me about him, but if I had…I would have stayed far away; but you already knew too much. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt…I didn’t mean for those people to die.”

“Oliver…” Austin cried out, “Tell me it isn’t true…please, and just tell me you knew this would happen! Please tell me something else, tell me you’re lying! Cause you’re lying…you’re lying…” he was sobbing by this point, the church was long sense empty save for the four of us, and I couldn’t have felt more alone in that moment. Matt and Tom were standing closer to Austin than to me, and while the confides on Austin's legs disappeared, mine remained. I shared a painful glance with Matt, who held Tom close to his chest and allowed Austin to rest his head on his shoulder, as we locked eyes he tensed up.

“Oli, why didn’t you tell us? You could have gotten yourself killed over this…I know Austin is upset,” he turned to see the younger man bury his face into his shoulder as he sobbed harshly. I felt guilty for not saying anything prior to this, but I felt relieved in the sense that I knew that my lying was finally over. What I had done was wrong. I got hundreds of people killed because I exposed their “side project”; granted, it was wrong to test on humans…most of them being their own children; but had it been my place to say anything? The drummer cleared his throat, “but, really Oli? It’s not…it’s not that bad in comparison with what it could have been. You had me worried sick, and poor Tommy hasn’t stopped shaking; don’t you think about anyone but yourself?”

“I do think about you all! I was just worried because I thought you all would hate me! I didn’t know they would kill Austin's dad or anyone else involved! Please, you have to know that wasn’t my intention! You know how strongly against animal testing I am, how was I supposed to react when I saw that the US government was testing on their own people! Most of them defenseless children, I'm sorry but I did what I thought was right at the time! I love you Matt, you’re my best friend, and Tom, you’re my brother! Of course I love you and care about you both! Austin, I can't even begin to apologize enough, I could have never known I would meet you. I worry sick about you constantly because I know this is all becoming too much for you. I don’t go to sleep at night until I know your okay, I don’t turn my back on you for a second when were together because the thought of something happening to you devastates me…I love you, you know?” I felt a weight dissolve from my shoulders as the words were finally out in the open, the shadows sunk back into the ground and dissipated into that of my friends as I sunk to my knees, and silently thanked whomever that it was all over. I was ready to take whatever came my way now, now I didn’t have to be afraid of hiding that part of myself. I staggered forward tiredly; my legs were stiff from being held in place for so long and my body felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. After several intense minutes of moving forward I came close enough to Austin to lay a hand on his shoulder; to my shock, he didn’t flinch or pull away.

“Austin, can you ever forgive me?” I murmured as he slunk away from Matt before falling to his knees, I instantly did it too so that I could be on his level while I coaxed him towards me. I opened my arms and gave him a pleading look but his eyes were level with the floor and his head was bowed too low for him to see. I sighed as he plopped down on his bottom, but nonetheless I crawled in between his legs and curled up to him, laying my head on his chest and wrapping my hand over his; he didn’t move.

“I'm not mad at you for this…I'm mad because you lied, and I'm not crying because you did that. I'm crying because now I know my dad is dead…he was all I had left since Tino passed. All I had of my old life…I never knew if he was alive or not, but I hoped he was. Now I've lost my mom, him, Tino, my wife…their all dead…and I'm alone…I don’t want to do this anymore, I’ve never been one to think about ending my life, but I've given up hope, I don’t want to change the world anymore…I just want it to stop.” While his words pulled at my heart strings, I knew I had to do something to make him come to his senses, so without much thought I leaned back, and slapped him in the face. He gasped as my hand made contact with his skin but didn’t seem angry that I did it, in fact he raised his head and looked me dead in the eye, I was relieved to see their natural brown shade.

“Thank you for that,” he whispered as he grabbed hold of my arms and brought me back into his chest. I smiled into his skin as I wrapped my arms around his neck and breathed a sigh of relief.

“So now what do we do? We scared everyone off…” Tom laughed as he pointed at the empty room that was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop, Austin shrugged.

“We take over the world, just the four of us, everything else will fall into place.” Matt chuckled as he spun my brother around; Tom smiled like a goof ball.

“Despite what just happened…this is nice,” I commented as I turned all the way back around and laid my back flush against Austin's firm chest, he wrapped his arms around my waist and laid his head atop of mine. “This almost makes things feel normal, it’s nice to see you both so happy.” I wiped a stray tear from my eye as my best friend and brother clung to each other.

“Awh, Oli don’t cry!” Tom pouted as his eyes welled with tears, Matt and Austin shared a laugh.

“When one Sykes’ brother cries, so does the other!” Matt warned as he thumbed the tear off of Tom’s face, Austin reached around and kissed my cheek, causing my face to flush a bright red.

“Sorry, sorry, I'm just…happy.” I chimed as I wrapped my arms on top of Austin's, he squeezed me tighter.

“You know what? So am I,” Austin commented, the three of us were silent, mostly in shock.

“You are?” I inquired as I leaned my head back so that I could look at him; he smiled down at me before kissing my nose.

“I am, my dad may be gone, and so may everyone I used to know…but I have three new incredible people in my life. I wouldn’t trade you lot for the world, no matter how much we bicker or fight. Can we just agree that we should try to set aside all of our differences and pasts so that we can move forward?” Austin breathed in deeply as he finished his inquiry; I nodded my head in time with the others.

“Definitely, but if we’re going to move forward we need to have someone as a figure head of sorts. Obviously we will all have a say in the things we do and all of that, but we need someone…the strongest one of us to be in charge.” I reasoned as I placed my hand under my chin.

“I agree to that,” Matt said as he raised an eyebrow, “but how are we going to know which one of us is the strongest?” The room got silent once again as we were all lost in our own world of thoughts, after several moments, Tom cleared his throat.

“I have an idea…since I can heal you all and everything…I think you three should…uhm…” he looked nervous so he stopped talking immediately, I shot him a curious look as Matt pecked his cheek,

“Go on with it, will ya?” he mumbled, and if it wasn’t for the tense atmosphere I would have busted out laughing at how thick his accent could be; oddly enough, Austin couldn’t contain himself and ended up chuckling.

“Well considering that you all won’t die from this and the fact that I can heal you…I think you three…should have a fair fight, with each other.” After the words left Tom's lips, Austin wasn’t laughing anymore. I shared a concerned glance with Austin and Matt while my brother shot us one of knowing. Sadly, he was right, the only way to figure this out would be to test it.

Notes

Title Cred: of Mice & Men- Seven thousand miles for what?

sorry for being awol :c

i work 47 hours a week now and that leaves little time for updating, I promise I will try harder this week <3 I love you all and please comment/sub/vote! It makes me wanna update faster !

xoxo
Siren