Things were, well, not going great after the Tomb. Outside of my injuries, we all made it back to Luna unscathed, including Megan and Alex. They both ended up in the training rooms down below the residences, shops, and restaurants. According to Alex, Megan was a wreck and bawling her eyes out. She had no idea if Lori and I were alive, so that made it hard on the poor guy to get her calmed down. Given how Alex wasn’t exactly the cuddliest guy in the world, I was just about positive he had to have Mrs. Carmichael come down to the training rooms and calm Megan down. I couldn’t begin to imagine how overwhelmed that little girl was.

Things were hectic at Luna for a few hours after that. Lori was driving us halfway across the country, Rebecca had been hurled around one hundred fifty years into the future, and I was having trouble coping with Eric’s death while trying to ignore the physical pain my injuries brought me. For the entire trip back—which was around twenty hours—I could hardly process anything. Lori was focused on driving all the way through after getting in touch with Luna. Rebecca was trying to take in her new world, her narrowed eyes darting around to nearly everything new she saw. The most I could bring myself to do was try and not whimper like a puppy every time one of my knife wounds hurt, which was a lot.

But outside of those few things I could distinctly remember, everything was just a bit of a blur. Rebecca would ask Lori some questions, but to me, it sounded like I was trying to listen to them while I was underwater. My body felt like it was on a sluggish autopilot. I could do normal tasks that had been so engrained into my daily routine that they were second nature, like eating, and that was just about it. Getting me to respond to questions or directions took a lot more prodding. I couldn’t even recall my responses to anything they asked.

That didn’t get better for me when we finally returned to Luna after our long drive back. After I got my injuries healed, there were hugs and warm welcomes passed around, and people could tell something was just a bit off. For one, I accepted every hug that was offered to me without any vocal or physical protest. Those included ones from Alex, Lizzy, Shelly, Megan, and even Mrs. Carmichael. That threw up some red flags for Shelly and Lori, with even Rebecca looking worried about me. Mrs. Carmichael had been apologizing nonstop about the unrealized dangers of the trip, alternating between Shelly and myself. I didn’t really care. What was done was done. The rest of my attention went to the concerned faces of my sister, my friend, and the century-old redhead.

Without the need to drive us for nearly a day straight, Lori ended up pulling me aside to check on me. She knew that my parents were killed and how much it affected me. At the time, I couldn’t remember if I told her about me slipping off the doorframe and my theory about how that was what made the gunman pull the trigger. In a way that had to make me look like a rambling mess, I told her about that too. If she already knew, she didn’t try to stop me. She just let me talk about it and how killing Eric made me feel that same helplessness.

She nodded and listened intently, being able to tell that I wasn’t looking for someone to tell me it was okay at that time. After that, Lori mentioned having trouble coming to grips with the fact that she killed Arthur. She seemed to be handling it better than I was handling my issues with Eric. I really wanted to ask her for help, and I knew she would be more than willing to try, but I was ashamed. Then I was ashamed of being ashamed. Every part of me screamed out that my life, Megan’s life, and Rebecca's life were all in danger with Eric there. It was us or him. I knew he wasn’t going to stop without killing at least me and kidnapping Rebecca. I wanted to rationalize it by doing what I had to do to keep everyone safe. I still couldn’t get it out of my head that I killed a normal guy because I didn’t have enough control over my own powers. There was no way that someone like Alex couldn’t have just incapacitated the guy and left the Tomb without adding another dead body to it.

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Maybe if I’d taken the time to push myself more during the more boring hours of the trip, no one would have had to die at all. I had made respectable progress in a short window, sure. I was able to save one of my friends from being shot! That meant a lot to me. It would have meant a lot to me if I had the control to avoid killing someone too.

So, things weren’t shaping up too well for me. It’d already been a month since we’d returned. I tried to keep up with social gatherings and look as normal as I could, using up all the energy I could muster in the process. The rest went into basic stuff that normally wouldn’t have been any trouble for me. Showering, shaving, keeping my room tidy, and things along those lines. Those sorts of trivial things that helped me hold on and think my mind wasn’t totally falling apart. I started to think of the flow of that routine as a river, and I couldn’t let it dry up or get blocked. I had to keep it going.

Along with those tasks, there were things I was actively battling throughout the days. Things that made staying afloat on that river feel like a crucible. I was having some terrible nightmares nearly every night. I had started sleeping with my light or television on just to see if the extra lights would help stop the nightmares. They did not. What bothered me most about my nightmares was that I couldn’t even remember them when I woke up. I would just jolt awake in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat with a massive headache, and fearing for someone’s life. I was pretty sure it was mine I was afraid for, but with everything being a jumbled mess in my head, I didn’t know for sure.

One thing that helped me out was school, surprisingly. Since I’d missed some while I was unconscious, and then I left for my trip to go to the Tomb, I needed to make up a healthy amount of work. None of it was difficult for me. It was just enough of a challenge that it took some time and it helped stimulate my mind in a productive way, temporarily banishing everything else that had been flooding it. Just having something simple and time consuming was a blessing for me. If the nightmares were the whitewater rapids in my Routine River, school was the sturdiest raft I could imagine, doing its best to keep me afloat. There wasn’t anything preventing me from working ahead either, so in the four weeks that I’d been back, I was actually able to get two whole months ahead. I was stunned when I checked the upcoming coursework to see that I was basically at the end of it. Not bad for a solid B student.

That made Shelly happy, even though I could tell that she had trouble seeing me in the state I was. There was no chance I was going to fool her by putting on a fake, tough guy act, not that I was going to try. Shelly was always there if I needed her and she never pushed me the wrong way, though, and there weren’t enough words to describe how much I appreciated that. But I could still see the pained expression on her face whenever I walked out after a rough night. Her stress about my stress wasn’t doing a whole to help said stress.

Everyone else had been kind to me during my down stretch. I didn’t see them as much as I should have since they all had their own things going on. Alex was training and getting stronger. Lizzy was doing teambuilding work with her crew, but she still found time to text and check in on me when she could. Megan was temporarily staying with Mrs. Carmichael while they tried to find her a permanent home. Lori was meeting a lot with Mrs. Carmichael to iron out some leadership duties. I knew that she was also getting therapy sessions to help her work through killing Arthur. Mrs. Carmichael offered me the same deal. The idea of talking to someone about it all just seemed too far out of my reach, so I politely declined.

And that’s what my life had been for those four weeks. Some days were better than others. Some days I could smile and have that smile be mostly genuine. Other days I couldn’t even force a fake smile. We had been spared from Dii Consentes attacking any cities and there were no reports of the cave collapse being caused by us. In fact, there hadn’t been much made about the cave collapse at all. Fortunately, to the world, I was still a nobody. I was just an eighteen-year-old that could sit in his room, do his schoolwork online, and inch closer to graduation. I was spared being labeled a murderer by everyone except myself. To make up for being the only one putting that label on me, I did my best to make sure I wouldn’t forget it.