Kya Carter
Ren left me more than a jacket. He left me millions of questions that pooled around me and seemed to drown my thoughts, dousing them to the point of over-saturation. For someone who is a descendant of the sun, Ren seems to be hot and cold. One moment, he's barreling at you with jugular questions and showing no mercy, and the next, he's leaving you in peace with his jacket.
I'm not scared of myself, but of what I can do. There's a distinct difference that I don't think Ren understands. He might have his own struggles, and if that's true then they must differ very much from mine.
Sitting in my watchtower, I stare at the all-knowing moon. It's icy chill paints over my body and I pull the jacket over my shoulders. It's a half-moon. How fitting.
"Kya, your shift is terminated," Leo says in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.
"Yeah, thanks," I respond, feeling odd with knowing Leo's plans.
"Ren talk to you?"
"How can you tell?" I inquire, wondering if I look that distraught.
"His jacket, for one. For two, you look upset, so..."
Deeply, I sigh. "You're right. Take it easy, Leo. And..." As I climb down the ladder, I pause. "...be smart, okay?"
Understandingly, he nods his curly headed hair, picking up on my underlying message. "I will. Thanks, Kya."
Once I get to the bottom, I look up at the moon again. It's completely split down the middle, a limbo between light and dark. I remember what I said earlier about losing my top and spiraling out of control with my power. Perhaps if I practiced the light side, I can silence the call to the dark. I haven't done it intentionally for a couple of years, and stopping the spit-water was the first time I'd tapped into my power.
On a whim, I decide to head down to the pool. It's in its own building and it doesn't have a heater. Considering the temperatures have been dropping, I doubt anyone will be there, which is exactly what I want. I navigate my way through a web of hallways and corridors and large rooms for REC activities until I find the pool. The ceiling is made of glass and when I look up, I see the gathering of clouds: a storm is on its way.
The pool itself is a crystalized blue and around the same size as the one they use for the Olympics. The lifeguard chair is empty and there's a sign that tells us not to swim past midnight. It's around three in the morning, but I won't be doing any swimming...not on purpose, at least.
I slide my shoes off and stand at the edge of the pool, toes curling over the edge of the cement wall. I take of my kicks because I learned that I can bend the water to my will using even my feet. The connection between water and my energy greatens without any coverage. For a second, I remember Ren's gloves and how powerful he was even with them on. I wonder what kind of damage he could cause with them off.
Taking a deep breath, I push my thoughts to the side and focus on the pool. Because the water if flat and unmoving, I put my palms over it to grasp onto its chi. If it was a raging sea, I would have to do a lot more than just this.
I should start small; make a water whip, a strand of liquid that is extremely bendable and oddly useful. Keeping my left hand frozen, I use my right to effortlessly pull up the water. I create the banner and move it around. I guide its energy like a rail road; it's its own vehicle, but I have to give it a path. The action is silent and the pool remains still with my extraction.
Now that I know I can take and move water, it's time to try something else. I push my hands out in front of me and send the whip flying across the pool, it's circumference thin. My fingers splay open, but when I link them side by side and bring my arms away from each other, I split the whip into two and turn them into ice as if they were freezing daggers. They shatter against the wall opposite of me.
Okay, so let's do the water whip on a greater scale.
Again, I hold my hands over the water. But because I'm going to try to move the entire pool, I move my right hand outward in a circle and my left hand backwards in a circle to cover the entire chi of the water. Bending my knees, I crouch low to the ground before jackknifing up and raising my hands over my head. With my actions, the entirety of the pool follows. Deep inside me, I feel as if a door is opening, and on the other side there's potential.
Pulling my hands close to me, I keep open hands and fingers and move them in spherical motions. The pool water closes into a ball rather than a rectangle. Using more of my energy, I move the water around me in a circle; I navigate it across the whole room; I split it into multiple banners and practice freezing and unfreezing it.
Gently, I lay the water back into the pool casing and take a deep breath. Time to try one more thing. Palms to the water, I move my hands in a motion that resembles smoothing out the end of a linen sheet. At the end of the imaginary sheet, I turn my hands so my palms are towards the glass ceiling now, and lift my arms. The water in the pool gathers in the center and creates a wall that segments this room into two. I hold this position until I feel ready to freeze it entirely, moving as if I'm pushing the air towards my manmade barrier. The room's temperature drops several degrees when a blast of coolness solidifies my wall.
I walk around the pool and put my hand on the wall: ice cold. I feel a smile creep on my face. I did all these incredible feats without losing my control or hurting anybody. In the ice, I see my reflection. But in my reflection, I'm not smiling. In my reflection, I'm crying over two lifeless bodies.
Blinking and rubbing my eyes, I look again. This time, it's just me standing in front of ice.
My pride diminishes when I recall three years ago, hunched over my parents' bodies. I gripped their hands with deadly force as if I could hold their souls and keep them on earth. That's what I was seeing in the ice.
I'm so enveloped in my thoughts that I don't hear the door to the pool open and close. "Neat trick," a silky voice purrs behind me. "I give you my jacket to keep you warm and you go and make an ice wall? Seems a little spiteful for your pure little heart."
Grunting, I hold my left hand to the wall with openness and it melts in an instant. With a little guidance, I meld my chi with the water's chi and put it back in the pool as if nothing ever happened. "Well if it bothers you so much, here." I toss him his jacket and he puts it on shamelessly. "What do you want this time?"
"I wanted to see what you can do."
"You knew I'd be here?" I ask, perking an eyebrow up. "Or did Leo read my mind and report to you, Captain Ren?"
Ren laughs, the sound echoing in the room. "No, I figured you'd be here. My words were going to get to you at one point or another." Leaning against the wall with a leg propped against it, Ren creates a flame to keep himself warm. "Look, I think that as long as we're going to hate each other –"
"- you're the one that hates me," I correct, trying to not sound as annoyed as I feel.
"Yeah, whatever," he dismisses, waving his flame hand. "But I just want to let you know you have an unfair advantage. You see, I'm a people person. You'd think I was Leo with how I read your mind without needing the power. This was just a simple head's up."
Ren turns to leave when I piece something together. A hot-and-cold attitude isn't something that you're just born with, it's formed. It's a tug o' war of the mind; a fight between someone's natural nature and their desire to overcome it. He's at the door when I speak. "I should repay the favor."
He stops in his tracks and looks back to me, amber eyes glowing in the shadows. "What could you possibly offer me? You don't have anything I want." As he says this, I can tell he's lying. I can't exactly tell you why or how I know. Maybe because we're in a close vicinity and our powers are tightly linked, our energies pick up our involuntary fluctuations. And in this case, my energy is reading Ren's lie. I wonder what he's reading about me.
"You said you could help me overcome my fear of my power – the darker side of it..."
Ren rolls his eyes. "Yep, I remember. I didn't spontaneously develop amnesia, Kya."
"Maybe I can help you overcome your self-hatred."
Ren's energy flexes and nosedives; I've hit a soft spot, which means I'm right. Maybe he can get a read on my smug satisfaction. "Even if I hated myself, which I don't, that would mean telling you all my mushy, gushy past stories. There's no way I'd willingly do that," he ends.
"Well now you know how I feel."
"No, I know you all too well," Ren corrects, making his way towards me. "I'll admit, I was surprised with the whole 'double murder' drama, but now I understand it. You carry around this guilt over killing two strangers who were probably sucky people anyways."
"On a scale of one to ten, how good would you rate your 'people reading?'" I challenge, looking up at him.
"The only time I've ever been wrong about someone is when I found out you were a murderer. So, ten out of ten," he answers, eyes glowering with ferocity. The golden flashlights just barely illuminate the blood red ends of his bangs, making it seem like he's just killed someone and had gotten too close to their corpse.
"Those two people I've never met? They were my parents," I growl. I don't know if we're so close that I feel the warmth radiating from his body, or if I'm so mad right now that I'm warming myself. "So next time you try to pin me down as one of your cliché's and call me out on it, check yourself, Ren." I jab an index finger into his chest. "Because you've already faltered twice. Do it again and that's three strikes. Then, you're out."
Calculating, Ren looks down at me. He conceals his emotion of surprise that it was my own blood that I had slain. I also concealed my emotion of shock when I told Ren exactly who I murdered...there was a registration of familiarity in his energy as if he had related to something I said.
Calmly, Ren grabs my hand and pushes it aside. "That almost sounded like a threat, moon girl."
"Take it however you want, hothead."
As if possible, Ren takes a step closer, our noses an inch apart. "I'd watch who you may or may not be threatening. Because you may or may not get burned." For a full minute, we have a stare-off; my pale grays into his feisty golds. Finally, he lets out a hmph noise before smirking and turning away. "Watch yourself. You're treading in dangerous waters."
Before I can stop myself, I form an ice dagger and launch it an inch away from his hand on the door handle. It shatters with an earsplitting crack. I hear Ren gasp. "In case you spontaneously developed amnesia," I reflect what he said. "I rule the dangerous waters."
"I knew there was a killer in you," Ren says without turning around. "I'm glad you came to terms with your other side." Finally, he leaves, the door shutting behind him.
Even though it felt good to throw the ice, I fill with regret right after. I wonder if this is how Ren feels when IED takes over him. I was hot when I threw the ice and cold when I felt guilty, which is exactly how I predicted Ren functioned. If so, it's understandable why he hates himself. It's hard to convey an apology when all the victim sees is a monster.
And when all I am is a monster.
I turn around for a last glance at the pool; it's solid ice.