Love-Love || OLD DRAFT

thirteen - twelve

A/n

I'm too excited oof, so I'm on an update spree!! Eeeeeeek. *facepalm*

A decent enough chapter after a long time. Lemme know what you think lol.

....

“GRAVEL,” Roux shouted as the bomb went off and enveloped us in thick black smoke.

“Don’t breathe,” I cried, breathing in a puff of the smoke myself. On reflex, the ground rose up to create a shield around us and just in time too, as gunfire rang out from all sides.

“Fuck,” I heard Roux curse and the next moment I felt her fingers curl around my hand. “This way.”

The smoke was incredibly dense and I could only see Garnet’s faint blue silhouette as she tugged me along. I crouched on the floor and followed her blindly.

“Where are you?” Aspen’s voice cut in through the comm.

“Inside,” I muttered. The smoke was burning my eyes and it was getting suffocating underneath the mask.

Aspen said something in return but I didn’t hear him because I was too distracted by how my control was slipping from the earth that I had pulled up to shield us. The firing was carrying on relentlessly.

Roux and I reached the bottom of a stairwell and took cover behind a thick concrete wall just as I lost control over the slab of earth altogether.

“Guess the Horwitz didn’t tell you about this part of the plan, huh?” I told Roux.

“It’s the cops!” she coughed.

“No, can’t be. They won’t endanger the hostages. Plus Storm is in their good books, they won’t disobey his –”

“Ridge!” Roux interrupted in a panicked voice. “I can’t feel the water.”

The panic slowly grew into fear as I realized the extent of the danger we were in. “It’s the smoke. We need to get out of here.” Any moment now our attackers would start approaching our hiding spot and we’d be dead.

I tried creating a tunnel at our feet but no matter how hard I tried to concentrate, the earth did not respond.

Only the fire did.

“Roux, you have to leave,” I muttered.

She probably felt the heat coursing through my hands because she did not question me. “No,” she said instead.

“I can burn them,” I said, “but you know I can’t control it. You need to get to a safe distance away. Do you know a way out?” The more we stayed there, the more of the wretched gas we were inhaling. Soon enough I feared the fire would be gone too.

“But –”

“Go, I’ll hold them off. Go!”

She squeezed my hand. “Don’t die,” she huffed, then let go of me and vanished into the dark.

I braced myself for a few moments, giving Roux the head start. I then raised my hands, sparks dancing at my fingertips, and closed my eyes, focusing on the sound of the guns being fired. I could almost see the trigger being pulled, the movement of the hammer, the propellant gas and the cartridge igniting.