The gentle slide from unconsciousness to consciousness carried unfamiliar weight. A comforting heaviness I couldn't place, not until finally opening my eyes and finding a large black cloak draped around shoulders, a makeshift blanket tucked in close while I slept.
Disgusted, I tossed it away, as though covered in spiders. Days without a bath resulted in me being painted in a thin layer of grime, but none of that left me feeling quite so dirty as being covered in Shade's infamous cloak. It was like being enveloped in the villain himself.
My huff of disdain and subsequent leap to my feet failed to awaken the villain in question, who sat rigidly against the same tree he leaned against hours prior. I took the odd quiet moment to examine him fully in a way I hadn't felt comfortable enough to do before. Free of his cloak that hid any details of his form, he still cut an intimidating figure. Fabric black as pitch hugged nearly every inch of skin, excluding one partially gloved hand and the area above the high points of his cheek bones where his mask ended to reveal closed eyes framed by long, dark eyelashes. His clothes, though well worn, seemed of relatively high quality and, if I wasn't mistaken, tailored to his lean, muscular frame by practiced hands.
My attention returned to his mostly concealed face.
A suicidal part of me wanted to rip that mask away once and for all, let his identity be a mystery no longer. Unfortunately, that would mean I, too, would be around no longer, since villains didn't make a habit of letting people who were aware of their identities live long enough to share the information, regardless of his desire to keep me alive for now. If I changed the status quo, he could change his mind about my living usefulness.
And yet...
I edged closer, keeping my footsteps light and quiet by deftly avoiding fallen leaves and twigs. After a steady exhale to steel my nerves, I knelt before him, one knee to the ground between this legs and wrapped my fingers around his throat the way he had done the same to me all those days before. I squeezed, exerting so much pressure all at once that my fingers began to cramp. A shot of electricity shot through me at the contact, a mix of exhilaration and searing fear that, while I might have been making a mistake, it was too late to go back now.
His dual-chrome gold and blue eyes flew open, and for a moment thick with tension, neither of us moved.
Then, I fell back — no, he pushed me! — and Shade came down on atop me, my grip around his neck lost as he straddled my middle, forcing my arms above my head with one hand, and pressing his free forearm down on my jugular with the other.
"Darling, I appreciate the effort, but I thought we already established that you can't kill me."
There was something there, something in his choice of words that hinted of a hidden meaning, but I failed to process anything beyond the obvious: how could I forget he could heal himself? How could I be so unbelievably stupid?
Hardly daring to breathe, I forced out the first thing that came to mind. "I thought I made my opinion on the word 'darling' quite clear."
A beat of silence elapsed where it occurred to me I should have kept that thought to myself, then the moment passed. The tension in his body lessened, taut muscles going lax, and he countered with, "We agreed to specific terms around that matter, you might recall. You try to kill me first, I get to call you darling back. I hope the useless attempt at ending my life made you feel better."
It didn't.
He rolled off me to his feet, dusting the dirt from the knees of his pants after doing so. Casual. Dismissive of my failed lethal intent.
I didn't try to get up, and, in fact, considered never getting up ever again, considered growing my own roots that stretched deep into the soil beneath me.
Maybe then I could actually find some water, I thought, chuckling to myself deliriously. My mind's eye landed on my father, and my smile faded. He'd be disappointed for me to never return home. Very disappointed.
"Ready to give up yet and be chained somewhere in my secret lair where you will never see the light of day again?"
I scowled at his mocking tone and the obvious jab at my 'dungeon' comment from yesterday. Peeling my eyes open, one after another, I dragged myself up after him. I long since stopped listening to my body, and had been reduced to giving it conscious commands in order to get anything done.
Lift arm. Move foot. Stand. Walk.
When I spared Shade a glance to let him in on the true extent of my ire, I thought I might collapse all over again. Floating, almost experimentally, above his open palm rotated a small sphere of ice that soon dropped to rest between the tips of his fingers. Not so much as looking my way to check if I was paying attention, he tossed it over.
I scrambled to catch before it dirtied itself on the ground and I stuffed the thing whole in my mouth, like the gum balls I used to strain my jaw on as a child.
He plopped one into his own mouth as well. "See? You might actually consider keeping me around."
"And why, might I ask, did you not consider doing this yesterday?" I demanded, though the words came out muffled from the large object impairing my speech.
Water slowly soaked onto my tongue, a soothing balm that promised the end of my many struggles. It couldn't deliver on that promise, not completely, yet I didn't care. Water was enough. It prolonged my life just long enough to allow my continued journey to the power lines.
"I wasn't thirsty."
I frowned at the lie. Like hell he wasn't. Super or not, human he remained, with all the normal human problems, including dehydration, starvation, and exhaustion, even if he managed to avoid the issue of death by injury. He clearly suffered everything else along with me, if not quite so severely, based on bags under his eyes and a slowed gait from days prior.
I sighed. "You're not going to tell me the truth, are you?"
"I'm a villain, remember?" he said, accompanied by a self-deprecating shift in his tone, a kind of loneliness I recognised in myself, in the girl who spent years making Mother's Day presents for no one. "All I know how to do is lie."
A better person would have cared, felt human to human compassion, even after everything we'd been through.
I never claimed to be a better person.
I refused to care.
"Let's go," I muttered, brushing past him to start back on my diagonal trek across the mountain range.
Too late, my brain caught up to my blasphemous mouth and I realized I stupidly came to presume we were a package deal, and that by saying "Let's go," I was, in fact, inviting him along.
Whatever. For now, I wouldn't fight the continued presence of my human ice machine. He finally made himself useful, after all.
"You're going the wrong way, you know," he commented after a lapsed period of blissful silence, interrupted at sporadic intervals only by him obliging my mute demands for more ice.
"You don't even know where I'm going."
"You're headed for the road," he said with a confidence that implied, See? I have you all figured out.
I learned two important things from that statement: one, there was a road! An actual road! Hallelujah! And two, I was apparently not heading towards it.
I whirled, ice cracking between my clenching teeth. "Why didn't you say so earlier?" I exclaimed.
"I didn't know where you were heading to earlier," he defended. "I only recently figured it out."
I cursed, whether at him or myself, I didn't know. "Which way is it? Tell me!"
He appeared to consider the question, and me along with it. "How much is the answer worth to you?"
So much. "Not enough to teleport to places unknown with you, if that's what you mean."
I had half a mind to scale another tree instead, except I'd grown weaker since the last time. I doubted I would make it past the first bough.
The silence stretched as he waited for me to actually make an offer.
Finally, shifting from foot to foot and looking anywhere else, I said, "I don't have anything worthwhile." I motioned to my torn up dress and nonexistent shoes to illustrate my point. "Nothing."
"I know. I just wanted to see if you'd admit it. I have no use for physical things. They're worthless to me." Abruptly, he pointed off in a direction only a couple degrees different from the way we'd been headed. "You were close," he admitted, "but that way should save you a few hours."
I stared after his hand. "I don't know if I believe you."
"What an untrusting thing you are," he mused, and shrugged. "Believe me or not. It makes no difference to me."
A crossroads, then. I wished I had a coin to flip, heads or tails, left or right, my way or his. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of listening to his recommendations, but I also never felt that confident in my chosen path in the first place. What harm could a slight shift in my trajectory do, really?
With great trepidation, I followed his advice and started down his route, searching what little I could see of his face for signs of deceit. "You're not going to demand payment?"
He made a sound that might have been a soft laugh - or a derisive snort. "I think you have already quite paid the price of my acquaintance, don't you?"
I couldn't disagree with that.
"How did you find me again, after I pushed you down the ravine?" I asked, unmoving. It had been bugging me for awhile. "I thought for sure I got far enough away to lose you."
Truthfully, I feared the worst, that he had the blood hound-esque tracking ability I so readily dismissed previously.
"I heard you scream. Twice. It gave me a general direction," he explained sagely, burying his mockery beneath an earnest tone. "I don't recommend doing that the next time you're trying to hide from someone. It's a dead give away."
"I'll keep that in mind," I snapped, hastening my steps to lose pace with him in hopes that I would not have to walk next to him for awhile.
Detestable man. He couldn't even try to be pleasant.