Home

Three days. It had been three days since Elias last spoke to Karina.

Three days since he had confronted her in front of that flower kid’s shop. And since then he had been avoiding her like a little boy avoids cooties.


To be fair, she had also been avoiding him. Terrance had told him he had seen her at Aiden’s shop ranting about something, rather animatedly, while the flower boy nodded his head in sympathetic understanding.

“So,” he grumbled as he plodded around his room dejectedly, “She’s avoiding me by spending time with that kid, who is the entire reason why we ended up arguing in the first place, and complaining about me. Well that’s fine. I was sick of her being around here all the time anyway.” With that, he slumped down onto his bed and put his face in his hands.
His head hurt. He didn’t remember much about last night but he knew he drank himself into oblivion and woke up some time in the late afternoon with a splitting headache and feeling like he had spent the whole night crying.

“You should just make up with her,” Terrance’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
Elias looked up to see his blond partner leaning against the doorway of his room with his arms crossed lazily over his chest.

“Wha- I have nothing to apologize for!” he exclaimed.

“She thinks you do,” he shrugged. “Besides she’s probably been staying over there at night too. I don’t trust that kid. Something’s off about him. He doesn’t really fit in. That aside, do you really want her sleeping in the same building as him? It’s safer for her to come back and stay with us again.”

“Psh let her do what she wants. I’m not her nanny,” Elias huffed, seemingly unconcerned, as he lay back on his bed with his hands laced behind his head.

Terrance sighed and opened his mouth to say something but stopped short when a frantic knocking started on the front door of their hideout.

“Wonder what that’s about,” the older bounty hunter questioned under his breath before shoving off the doorframe and going to answer the door.

Elias tried his best to ignore the conversation taking place in the hallway, especially when the other voice registered in his head as belonging to Aiden, but his curiosity got the better of him and he found himself walking to stand at Terrance’s side.

“No, I thought she was with you,” the blond was saying.

“What’s going on?” Elias asked, trying to sound disinterested.

“Karina’s gone!” Aiden said worriedly.

In less than a moment Elias had the shop owner by the collar of his shirt, lifted up so that he could glare eye-to-eye at him, the brunette’s feet were barely touching the ground. “You better be joking.” He ground out in a deadly even voice.

“I-I’m not! She went out a couple hours ago to get something to eat and she hasn’t been back since! I assumed she came here to talk to you!”

Elias roughly hauled Aiden out of the way of the door, sending him crashing into Terrance, and was outside heading for the town in less than a second.

He was angry. With Karina. With Aiden. With himself…

How could Aiden be stupid enough to let her go out by herself? Couldn’t he tell that she was air-headed enough to get herself into some sort of trouble? How could she be stupid enough to go out by herself? He had told her to be careful. It was one of the first things he ever said to her. Be careful.

With an agitated sigh, Elias turned in the direction of the bar; it was the only place in town that served decent food.

He tried to calm down. He really did. He told himself that she had just lost track of the time. Maybe the weird flying bartender had snagged her into some deep conversation.
As he neared the bar, however, he heard a ruckus coming from an alley and a sickening feeling descended on his stomach.

“Get off me you pigs!” the voice of a girl yelled. An all too familiar voice belonging to an all too familiar girl.

Elias stormed into the alley way and was met with the sight of two, more than likely, drunk men, one of them holding Karina with her arms behind her back while the other had his grimy hands on the bottom hem of her shirt, about to pull it up over her head.
The two men stopped when Elias approached though and Karina looked up in shock at him. It was then that he saw her split lip and the bruising that was already starting to show on her cheek.

The next thing anyone knew, Elias had punched the drunk closest to him square in the jaw. While he was down, the bounty hunter took the chance to pull Karina from her captor’s hold and take him out with a solid kick to the diaphragm. He then proceeded to pull the first drunk, who was already trying to get back up (really Elias was just doing him a favor), off of his feet and give him a few more well-aimed punches.

“Stop! Elias, Please!!” Karina yelled desperately trying to get his attention. “I’m okay, really! You don’t have to keep going!”

Elias sighed and dropped the now whimpering man.

With both of Karina’s assaulters effectively dealt with and groaning on the ground, Elias had no outlet for his fury other than the nearby wall of the alley. His knuckles were bleeding by the time Karina managed to get a firm hold on his arm.

He was panting with rage and it was a long moment before he looked up to meet her gaze. “Are you okay?”

Karina nodded. “Yes…”

Elias nodded in return and after a brief awkward pause he pulled the traveler into his arms and held her tightly. “I… I thought I was going to lose you,” he said shakily.
Karina hugged him back and smiled a little. “You’ll never lose me. I’m too important to you.”

Elias ignored the reference to his outburst three days prior and held her at arm’s length. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he questioned again.

“Yes. They only hit me once. Nothing else happened. I promise.”

After he was satisfied that she was okay, and making sure that her attackers were going to be picked up by good old Officer Giraffe, Elias took Karina by the hand and started walking her back to the hideout.

“I don’t care if you want to go back to stay with flower boy, you’re coming back home,” he said firmly.

Karina simply nodded and smiled a little, not pointing out that he had implied that their hideout was her home as well. “Okay.”

When they reached the stairs leading to their home, Elias paused.

“Look… about the other day… I…”

Karina smiled. “I forgive you.” She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek. “And I’m sorry too,” she said before going ahead of him.

Elias allowed the smile that was tugging at the corner of his lips to play out there for a little bit before following her inside and going to bed.

She was safe.

She was home.