#TheMidnightFights - 1

All Misha can taste is rain.

His legs are moving, but he’s not going anywhere.

The uneven pavement stays stationary beneath his feet.

He continues to run.

Someone is telling him to run.

He’s carrying Elias.

A lifeless, unconscious, barely breathing Elias.

Whose legs are covered in blood.

And there’s blood on Misha’s shirt, on his pants and shoes, all over his hands making it hard to keep holding onto Elias with how much he wants to wash it off.

He has to get to a hospital.

He has to not look back.

He has to keep running.

Two gunshots ring out behind him.

He keeps running.

--

Misha jolts awake.

He’s at his desk. At home. Gray’s tucked into bed across the room, buried somewhere in a mountain of stuffed animals. The pen Misha had been writing with had gotten stuck to his face and fell off at the abrupt movement. It clatters noisily back on the desktop.

He stares at his crinkled notes.

Misha puts his face in his hands.

This again.

Maybe it was the anxiety of bringing The Midnight Fights back into his life again.

Dammit Honey.

This is now the third time he’s had this same memory circulate in his dreams. He feels like he’s been running tirelessly for the past couple nights.

He’s gotten over it, he tells himself, it’s behind him now.

Swiping roughly at his eyes, Misha takes a drink of water to hydrate the dryness prickling in the back of his throat

Only 10:45 PM, it was still a while before he had to head out. The Midnight Fights only congregated at midnight after all.

But he feels awful sitting there illuminated by a flickering lamp and a handful of books with labeled tabs sticking out of them. Nausea sours his stomach and makes his head start to spin in circles.

He realizes he’s also drenched in a cold sweat.

He needs a walk.

Quietly as to not wake Gray, he throws on one of his mother’s old sweatshirts and pulls a cap down over his eyes before he retreats to the living room. Gray stirs once but doesn’t wake.

The rest of the apartment is rather dark, the only other light comes from the half-moon outside and some of the street lights flickering through the window. He tries not to trip over the mess on the floor, but it’s futile.

Misha winces when the house keys jingle in his grasp.

“Where are you going at this hour?”

He sighs, “Mom, I-”

She pats the seat at the kitchen table, inviting him to sit. There’s also a textbook keeping her company, she claims she likes reading in the dark, but Misha doesn’t know how she even sees the words. Especially when they’re so small.

He can barely see the expression on her face in the moonlight.

From her tone, he already knows what it looks like.

“Misha, where are you going?” She reiterates. The sharp edge in her voice cuts into him as he takes the old chair she offers.

She’s probably frowning. He knows her jaw is set and her eyes are narrowed. He tries not to picture it so vividly on her shadowed face, but it’s already burning into his vision as his eyes slowly adjust to the lighting.

He doesn’t know what to say to her.

Yes, he thought this would be a terrible idea, which was why he turned Honey down again and again although it would’ve been easy to give her a lead and let her solve it on her own.

He didn’t want to go back to The Midnight Fights, he didn’t want to see it, hear about it, or even think about it.

But it was like she ripped open the stitches of a healing wound and when those jerks attacked them at lunch, the wound just kept bleeding and bleeding.

The more he tries to tighten the strings, the more it refuses to close.

“You can’t go back there. We talked about this. Many, many times and you agreed you would stay away from it.”

“Mom,” He starts, hands on the table, fiddling with his sleeves, “I can’t keep pretending it doesn’t exist.”

And he really can’t, because it refuses to go away or subconsciously he refuses to let go.

She exhales slowly. Something she only does when her mind is set and the sound terrifies Misha. Not because she’s disagreeing with him, but because he knows he’ll have to disappoint her.

“I know you can’t. Neither can I, but what can we do about it other than avoiding and ignore it? Report it? We know how well that went last time.”

Misha feels a burning sensation trace down his neck and through each and every one of his nerves. It stings behind his eyes and makes his limbs feel heavy. Suddenly everything feels heavy and he’s grounded to the kitchen chair.

He doesn’t know what to say again.

“Misha,” She says, quieter this time. He knows she’s no longer frowning, but there’s tiredness clinging to the back of her voice and the look she’ll have is one he’s happy he doesn’t have to see.

He’d probably cry.

“Don’t do this again, not for our sake, but for yours.”

Misha knows what kind of tragedy The Midnight Fights can bring, he knows all too intimately. To think it’s still alive and kicking without facing a single consequence, makes a mockery of his passive two years.

He just wants closure.

“You and dad always taught Gray and me to be benevolent. To do good, help others, and have a good judgment of character.”

“This is-”

“I know it’s not the way you want, but I have to get rid of The Midnight Fights. I can’t let them continue after what happened.”

Misha feels his throat close up and he rubs his clammy palms on his pants.

“It’s my fault that dad-”

“No,” She says firmly, “No it’s not your fault.”

She’s out of her seat and wrapping her arms around her son’s shoulders. Tightly. Giving him barely enough room to breathe, holding him like he’d disappear the moment she lets go.

Misha buries his head into his mother’s embrace.

He’s tired of denying that if he didn’t join The Midnight Fights, that if he just kept to himself two years ago, things would be different and he wouldn’t be so haunted by it.

She pulls away just enough to brush her son’s hair from his eyes.

“We have different ways of dealing with things. If you want to do things this way, I understand it, but I don’t want you fighting out there again.”

Misha readjusts his cap, hanging onto his mom’s shirt like a child, and sniffles out a half-hearted laugh.

“I won’t be fighting this time.”

--

Misha wipes his eyes raw until they’re uncomfortably dry so that he doesn’t have to worry about bursting into tears when they get to The Midnight Fight arena. Not that he will, but he just wants to minimize the chances.

His hands still tremble slightly and he stuffs them into his pockets.

He really wished he didn’t have that nightmare tonight of all nights, the one night where he’ll have to revisit everything that happened back then.

Jogging down the apartment building’s stairs, he passes the decomposing poster of an old band from the nineties and a couple of beer bottles that have been there for just as long. There’s trash piled up in just about every corner of the establishment.

Elias looks out of place amongst the stained grout of the ground floor’s tiles.

“Oh, I was just on my way up.” Elias chuckles.

Misha didn’t have a good reason to be this relieved, but when he sees Elias waiting for the rickety elevator to pick him up, his hands have seemed to stop shaking.

The elevator opens for Elias, but he turns on his heel and begins walking into the dully-lit street.

Light-hearted as ever.

It’s still a bit too early and Misha never asked Elias to meet him at his house. Elias just does this.

They live rather far apart and with the limp, it takes nearly half an hour to walk all the way from one house to the other. Elias didn’t even bring a cane.

Misha feels guilty.

But he’s glad he won’t have to revisit ‘that’ place again alone.

Honey doesn’t count. She’d probably ditch him the first chance she got.

“Honey’s going to be late.” Elias waves his phone as proof.

“After bothering me so much for the past few weeks, you’d think she’d be more punctual.”

Elias laughs, “I think she likes making people angry.”

Misha snorts, falling next to Elias although every step he takes is meticulously careful. It’s slow, but Misha doesn’t mind matching his pace.

It’s also his fault for letting it happen. It’s the least he can do for Elias.

“Let’s pick up some coffee, ask Honey what type she likes.”

Quicker than he realizes, Misha forgets his worries as Elias complains about his upcoming college entrance exam, the two girls that tried to confess to him earlier that day, the fact that his seat is in direct sunlight after lunch, his knee doctor almost falling asleep standing up during his examination.

Elias knocking over a shelf of chip bags at the convenience store, his face when he gets reprimanded by the lady behind the cash register, the smile he makes when he takes a sip of 100% black coffee.

Just small things Misha makes sure to remember.

“Did you bring disguises?” Misha drinks some of his iced tea, pointing at Elias’ bag.

Misha and Elias hadn’t been relevant in recent Midnight Fights, but there were sure to be some people that would remember them. They left quite a history behind them. Not a good one.

Elias brightens.

He pulls out two wigs and two fake glasses.

“My parent’s stylist got these from his wardrobe. Originally he ordered these wigs for his drag show tour, but never got to use them.”

Elias hands him a straight black wig that extends all the way to the small of his back. It’s a bit tangled from Elias’ backpack and Misha combs out the knots with his fingers.

He’s never worn a wig before. He always wondered what long hair was like.

“What the hell are those?” Honey scoffs, skating towards them.

She’s not wearing her usual pretty pink skates with the charms hanging off them. These skates are old, worn out and the color is nothing but a faded black.

Not only that, she’s missing bracelets and hair clips and the nonuniform cardigan she always wears, replaced with a baggy sweatshirt, gym attire, and knee pads. Her hair is tied with a simple rubber band, not a floral print scrunchie.

The only thing Honey isn’t lacking is her intimidating arrogance, nose upturned like she has to look down on everyone she passes.

Really she looks no different.

Ready to fight. Possibly to the death.

“Wait, we agreed you wouldn’t fight today.” Misha tries to reason, tossing her iced coffee.

She catches it with a glare.

“You guys are here to get me in,” She detaches her skates with a strap and they become normal shoes, “whatever I do after that, is my business.”

Misha pinches the bridge of his nose. He really should have expected that.

“Again, what the hell are those?”

Elias had put on his wig backward, his red hair becoming a wavy brown mess that looked like something from a horror movie.

“We’re not exactly welcome at The Midnight Fights,” He says through the extra hair.

“Well, you’re not going to be any more welcome looking like a rats’ nest.”

As if prepared, she pulls out a hair comb from her duffle bag and helps Elias adjust the wig to look somewhat more presentable. Misha had already smoothed out all the knots in his and when he puts it on, he braids the back effortlessly.

He also takes the hat he’d been wearing and slides it over his new unfamiliar hair.

Elias looks slightly better now that Honey had combed it into a neatly tied bun. The frizziness was too overwhelming.

Then, with these half-assed disguises, they head out.

Their next destination, The Midnight Fights.