Heroes (On Hold)

Chapter 5: A Walk on the Dark Side

The hallways which had been desolate before were now sprinkled with students. Some stood with friends and chatted, some stopped to admire posters. Most however, just stared at me like dead fish as I passed. I grit my teeth and ignored them- I knew it would be something like this. It was the median of two extreme reactions: cheering me on for defeating a super villain, or hating and fearing me for causing four deaths. My guess was that my peers couldn't decide which was appropriate, so they chose the in between of silent gaping.

Understanding why it was happening didn't make it any less irritating though.

Unlike the others, I didn't stop, and nor did I chat. I kept my eyes fixed on the space in front of me, only looking away to meet the gaze of someone being particularly bold in their staring. As soon as my eyes met theirs, they turned away. I knew what they saw in them: deep green chips of ice where my irises should have been, set with obsidian pupils that were equally detached and threatening. I had picked up that look some time over the summer. One day I had looked in the mirror and realized all the warmth that I had had in me was gone, replaced with numbness, ice, and stone. It was a bit terrifying sometimes- but terrifying kept the questions at bay.

In all honesty, I didn't have a clue where I was going. I just needed to move. I knew Addison meant what she had said- she made that much obvious. But for some reason, it was suffocating. And May... if Addy was suffocating, May was a vacuum. The idea of having them in my life repelled me.

I didn't realize that I was even outside until I felt a raindrop. I found myself on the field, still moving, as the rain began to pour: sprinkling at first, then becoming a downpour. Eventually, I thought to use my powers to keep the water off of me, but not before I was soaked to the bone.

When my feet stopped moving at last, I internally slapped myself for going here. I knew I wasn't the happiest person on earth these days, but this was downright masochistic of me. I was standing underneath the tree that Ben had kissed me under on New Years. My frustration, the feeling of suffocating... it all slipped away, replaced by the hollowness and dull ache that I had become all too familiar with while I was gone. Last year, I probably would have cried. Now, however, there were no tears left in me to cry. I was built from ice and stone- there was no give inside of me, nothing to bring those frozen tears to the surface.

I hadn't cried since the day I left. I would never cry again.

I went back inside when the lightning started, but again my feet decided to be gluttons for suffering. Instead of circling back around through the quad, I found myself taking a shortcut through the gym. Unlike the courtyard, there was no record of what had happened here. The hole that my father's minion had sprung from was sealed, the bodies and bloodstains had been removed. I had expected as much, but in my mind, it was all still there. I stepped carefully around where the hole had been, religiously avoided the spot where the bodies had fallen. The gym wasn't a place of practice- it was a minefield. There was hardly a single safe place to step, to look.

I had almost made it to the doors when behind me, a voice called out my name.

"Ella," it said, resigned instead of snarky, apologetic instead of cruel. I hated that voice. I hated it's speaker, hated every lie it had ever told or accepted, hated the insults it had flung at me while it figured out my secrets and spilled them to my enemy. But above all, I hated its owner.

"Listen, I need to-" the voice cut off suddenly, the air cut off by burly roots that now encircled her neck.

"What you need to do, May, is give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."

I spun around slowly and faced her. She was being suspended in the air by her wrists and ankles, and a slim root had a loose grip around her neck. The green streak that had been in her hair was gone, replaced by a dusting of blonde highlights that stood out in stark contrast with her dark brown hair. Her face, oddly enough, wasn't set in its usual sneer. Rather, it looked sad and resigned. She didn't struggle against her sudden bonds, didn't beg me to stop. I loosened the root around her neck so she could speak.