“Evelyn?”
She turned, giving him a curious look. “Yeah?”
Derek glanced around at the student body meandering through the halls. No one was paying attention to him or Evelyn, but it was still a conversation he wanted to keep private. He sighed, dropping his voice. “Was I… wrong?” he asked, looking at her. “Was I wrong to support Rafael so early? Do I…” He sighed again, his shoulders sagging. “Do I need to apologize for… hurting you?”
Evelyn studied Derek, blinking a few times. Derek felt something like disappointment in his gut. Not toward Evelyn, but toward himself. “I shouldn’t have to ask that. Of course I hurt you. I’m sorry.”
Evelyn tore her gaze away, searching the ground. “Um… thank you, first of all. That… helps. I accept your apology.” She gave another small smile. “I think… I still want to acknowledge something, though.” She sighed, then leaned against the locker again. “I’ve had so much time to think about this. And talk about it in therapy. Yet it’s still so confusing. Right and wrong, labels like that, they meant something fifty, sixty years ago,” she whispered. “Now? Everyone has their own version of what’s right and what’s wrong. When I first heard what you did, I would have screamed at you months ago, told you how horrible you were. And… it did hurt. It was… wrong.” Her eyebrows screwed up in confusion. “But… if you had come to me, I would have wanted everyone on my side all those months ago. And when everyone was listening to me, we would then all abandon Rafael. Kick him to the curb. Shame him publicly. Make sure I got my revenge for what he did, but… I too admit that is now…” Evelyn scratched the side of her head. “Wrong? Could I possibly use that word to describe this? Of my justified anger? Yet it wasn’t justified. Because I see now Rafael couldn’t have everyone abandon him like I wanted. He’s… doing better with certain support, too. Even though a tiny part of me still wants him to suffer.” Evelyn let out a sigh. “I don’t know. This entire thing is complicated.”
Derek sighed. “So if I came to you first, you would have wanted me to abandon Rafael?”
Evelyn shrugged. “Yeah. But that would have been wrong. But what Rafael did was wrong. And I’m hating this right and wrong label even more, because I still don’t feel like it accurately—” Evelyn froze mid sentence. Derek stared at her, confused. He could almost see an idea churning in her mind, and she opened her mouth again as she looked at him. “It was… chaotic… what Rafael did to me all those years ago. I assumed if I said nothing, I could keep the… order… I craved. But I eventually couldn’t, and it collapsed. In that collapse, more chaos than I could handle entered my life. I thought chaos would rule my life, and it was so painful. What you did, going to see Rafael so early and being with him, ignoring me, it… added to the chaos I was feeling. It hurt. Like a physical, actual pain inside my soul. And I thought order was what I needed. Almost like Nick’s sort of order with revenge, but… his order would have meant murdering Rafael.”
Derek blinked, realizing what Evelyn meant. He remembered what Neal said back in September. Chaos and Order, the perfected beings, were above the labels of right and wrong. Evelyn was trying to explain what happened by using Chaos and Order instead of right and wrong. Derek took in what she said, then thought of his own emotions that day when he went to see Rafael.
“I… understand. It was quite chaotic what I did. When I heard what Rafael did, I wanted to know why. Straight from the source. If I wasn’t satisfied with his answer, I would have dropped him forever, but he seemed genuinely distraught by what he did.” Derek rubbed his neck. “Still does, honestly.” He sighed, leaving his hand on his shoulder. “I suppose… Justice and Mercy. No doubt children of Chaos and Order. I wanted to pick through the Chaos and see if I could Order it. Show Mercy where I could.”
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Evelyn listened, then shook her head. “Mercy is Chaos’s child. Justice is Order’s.”
Derek couldn’t explain it, but what Evelyn said felt right. Derek’s shoulders slumped. “So… I guess I did bring far too much Chaos to your life by my actions.”
Evelyn glanced at him. “Too much Mercy, Rafael would have walked free. Would you have let Rafael walk free?”
Derek shook his head. “No. God, no. He felt horrible. That much was clear. Is still clear.” Derek sighed, glancing away, searching his soul. “If he felt like he could get away with it, I would not have been his friend anymore. But… I also don’t know what more I would have done if he was a jackass. Maybe gone to your side? And yet the fact of the matter is, I went to Rafael first to see if he was the jerk. I think he was craving Order for himself, too. Every time he talks about it, he’s almost angry he’s not getting more punishment for what he did.”
Evelyn raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
Evelyn nodded. “And yet too much Order, bringing in one hundred percent Justice, Nick would have killed him that night.” She looked away again. “Even that was too much Justice for me, despite how much I craved Order. It’s as Neal said. We need both. Chaos and Order. Justice and Mercy. That month was one of the hardest months of my life, but I see now we needed both.” Evelyn’s eyes widened. “I realize that now. You gave Mercy to Rafael, but… gave none to me. It wasn’t that it was too merciful, it was… you didn’t grant that mercy to me. You didn’t balance it.”
Derek glanced down at his fingers. The prickly part of his soul grated against him. “Yeah, you’re right. I should have come to you, too.”
Evelyn shook her head. “I might have screamed at you, though.” She glanced away. “Even if you came, I think I might have ruined our relationship if you visited me after I heard about you seeing Rafael.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a lot of what ifs. But… I accept your apology now. We’re on good standing now, and I’m glad you apologized.”
Derek nodded. “Just took me getting kidnapped and almost tortured by the crime lord of Osvoroth to shake some morals out of me.”
Evelyn laughed. “Well, hopefully you won’t need that traumatic of an experience for next time.”
He rubbed his temples, closing his eyes. “God, I hope not.”
“Well, thanks for seeing the good in me, Derek. Even when I hid the truth from everyone and was too scared to talk about it. You’re great at that. It’s why we want you on our team.”
“Thanks for not screaming at me.”
Evelyn smiled. “Tyler helped me through a lot. And therapy, too. It helped me get the order I needed, and also a bit more chaos. Despite how much we want one, the other always comes along eventually. And we need both.” Evelyn lifted her two hands, moving them like they were on a weight scale. “Between the children of Chaos and Order, balancing between Justice and Mercy, we get… healing.” She looked up at him. “For everyone.”
Derek stared at Evelyn. He had no idea how Nick’s little sister became so wise. She was barely sixteen years old. “Did they teach you this in therapy?”
Evelyn laughed as she dropped her hands. “Therapy is pretty amazing. But no. If anything, therapy taught me to talk about things and work through them. I spent three years keeping something secret that almost destroyed me, and I cannot keep secrets anymore.”
“Therapy sounds awesome.” Derek remembered the experiences of the past weekend. Remembering Saturday. His smile flickered before it disappeared. “Wish I could go.”
“I’m afraid if you do, they’d send you to a room with padded walls.”
Derek chuckled. “Yeah.”
“So, since you can’t, don’t forget you have friends in your team you can rely on.” Evelyn patted his shoulder. “We’re all here for each other.”
Derek patted her hand. “Thanks, Evelyn. For everything.”
Evelyn smiled. “Thanks for apologizing. And thanks for that time at con when you treated me like you always had. It in no way solved everything, but that was nice. It was something we could build on.”
“Running away from hard conversations is something I’m fantastic at. But I will try to do better,” Derek said.
Evelyn smiled. “You are quite chaotic that way.”
Derek laughed. A laugh that was genuine and loud. One of his laughs he didn’t think he could produce since Saturday. Not so soon. But he felt a bit of the weight lift off his shoulders as he did so.
The first bell rang.
“I’ll see you around, Derek,” Evelyn said.
He reached forward and gave Evelyn a hug. “You’re pretty merciful yourself, Evie. Thank you. I will promise to do better.”
When he let go, she was smiling. “Thanks, Derek.”