Hope

“We’ve been waiting for you,” Niall says with a sadistic grin as he and his entourage step out of the underbrush and onto the little clearing Ezra and I have just entered.

I roll my eyes. “Fuck off, Niall,” I tell him. “Neither of us has the energy to deal with you today.”

He shrugs. “I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible today. Nothing personal.”

I frown at him. “Seems very personal to me, you and your little butt-hurt ego.”

But he only chuckles. “See, I don’t like you. But I hate Emily, and the two of you are unfortunate to be her friends.”

Right, I remember now. This morning, when they’d come into the cafeteria, their clothes had looked a little oddly coloured. And now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I remember Emily’s mother having brought her a few cans of spray paint.

So that’s what she did. It doesn’t take much to imagine her teleporting into Niall’s room to spray ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ all over his walls and then give his clothes a little colour upgrade. There’s no way for him to prove that it wasn’t him or anybody in particular.

The thought makes me laugh out loud.

“What, so you’re pissed at her but too scared to actually fight her so instead you have a go at us?” I raise an eyebrow and give him a hard look.

He doesn’t look particularly bothered. “Well, I’d probably call it ‘setting an example’, but I guess it boils down to roughly the same,” he says with a smooth grin.

“You’re an absolute dick weevil, you know that?” I tell him, but he only laughs.

Then he turns to Ezra. “You’re of no use here,” he tells him. “Run and we’ll let you go.” When Ezra only glares at him without moving, he shrugs. “Or watch, if that’s what you like. I’m not one to kink shame.”

Directing his attention back at me, he says, “I’ve heard some healers have trouble healing themselves? Something about the pain makes it difficult to concentrate, I think is what they said.” His grin turns evil. “I hope that’s true.” Finally, he waves at his thugs. “Break her arms and legs. Make it hurt.”

That’s the moment I realise that I probably should’ve run. Even if I might not have gotten away… shouldn’t I at least have tried?

Instead, I stood and listened to his little speech, even gave him the satisfaction of insulting him. I’ve forgotten everything I learned about situations like these.

Slowly, the three boys approach me. They’re still a little away, but they’re taller and stronger than me. They’re much faster.

I turn to Ezra. “Go, get help. There’s no use in watching this.”

Yes, it’s going to hurt like a bitch. But if it doesn’t kill me, I’ll be fine. I’ve suffered worse.

But Ezra shakes his head. His jaw is set and he doesn’t take his eyes off our attackers.

Then I realise what he’s planning. “You want to fight them? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

But then the boys are within striking distance and the first raises his hand and I reflexively close my eyes and brace myself for an impact that… doesn’t come.

Instead, there’s a scream. Not one, several. Screams of pain and agony and I feel the vibration in my feet as heavy bodies hit the ground like trees cut down.

I open my eyes and my stomach turns. Ezra is still standing where I last saw him, everybody else is on the ground, twitching in the mud, gasping for air. But that’s not what makes me sick. It’s the way Ezra looks at them. This grim intensity as he stares down the boys at his feet. I’ve never seen him this way before. It’s like he’s turned into a new person all over.

And then it gets even worse because I realise that he’s not only watching them suffer with grim satisfaction, he's doing it to them. I can tell, not only by his expression, but also by the pain that is no longer in his body, but in theirs. It’s the exact same.

And then I feel that they’re dying, slowly and painfully, and adrenaline finally makes me thaw from my stupor.

“Ezra!” I shout. “Stop! You’re killing them!”

But he doesn’t react. With two quick steps, I’m in between him and our attackers. I take him by his shoulders and give him a good shake. “You fucking dickhead! This isn’t you!”

That finally seems to do the trick. He blinks, his concentration breaks and I feel the pain snap back into him. The radiation hits my face like a brick wall.

He gasps and his knees buckle, but I’m there to catch him, hold him against my body as he heaves ragged breaths.

“Hope?” a voice says from the corner of the clearing. “What was that?”

It’s Maria, standing mostly behind a tree, her eyes wide. She’s wearing her running outfit, she must’ve been jogging when she happened across us.

At the worst of times.

My stomach lurches as I realise what this must look like. As I realise once more what this is.

She frowns, steps away from the tree, toward us. Hesitantly. Like she’s scared of me.

“Did he just-” she halts, swallows, stops by another tree. Still more than fifteen feet away. “Was that Ezra who just did that to them?”

“I-” It’s suddenly so hard to speak. My blood is packed with adrenaline and it makes my thoughts run into invisible walls, like flies desperately trying to get out! But they’re trapped – I’m trapped, I’m trapped, I’m-

“They attacked us!” I hear myself yell. “He was defending me!”

Her brow creases ever so slightly. Like she doesn’t understand. Like I’m frightening her.

“Hope,” she says, shaking her head slightly. “You can’t hurt people like that.”

And that’s why I stopped him! I want to yell, but then I realise that that would be lying. Because I didn’t stop him to save them. I stopped him to save him. And now those efforts are in jeopardy.

“I…” I stammer then my brain shifts gears. Priorities. What are our priorities? She has to keep silent. The others’ll be too scared to go to the teachers, especially after having attacked us, but she…. And what’ll happen then? Will Ezra have to go to prison? He didn’t mean it, for fuck’s sake.

Or did he?

I want to vomit, but instead, I close my eyes, take a deep breath and then refocus on Maria.

“You can’t tell anyone, okay? They’ll-”

“What do you mean I can’t tell? We have to tell the teachers about this.” She seems almost desperate. Desperate for me to understand. HA! Like I’m the one struggling here!

And suddenly there’s a thought. Is she doing this because I’m betraying her principles by protecting Ezra? I feel anger boil my intestines. Why can’t she understand? Why does she have to appear here in this moment and demand I justify myself like she has any say in this? This is about saving lives! They’ll-

“If he loses control over his powers-” she tries to go on, but I interrupt her.

“YOU CAN’T!” I shout it with all the authority I can muster and she even flinches back a little, but then she just shakes her head, tears in her eyes.

“Sorry,” she whispers and before I can say anything more, she has turned and broken into a sprint. It’s a full-on sprint. Like she’s scared we might want to silence her by force. It barely takes four seconds and she’s out of sight.

Finally, it’s my turn to fall, but he doesn’t catch me. Which is just as well because I spend the next two minutes heaving up dry chunks of my half-digested lunch. And all the time I can’t stop wondering what’s going to happen now. Should we run and become outlaws? They’d find us in no time, right?

Fuck. It took barely ten minutes for my life to go from messed-up to well and truly fucked. That must be a record.

At some point – probably early on – Ezra leans down to hold back my hair.

I don’t say anything for a whole while, even when I’m done. I just… wipe my mouth and sit back, stare at my lunch on the ground. Niall and his minions must’ve left, I realise. I don’t see them any longer.

Ha! At least they weren’t stupid enough to try and take revenge for what just happened.

“What do we do now?”

“You won’t do anything,” he says. “You should probably move back in with Emily. For your own safety.”

I frown at him. “My own safety? Why would I-?”

“I am the dark, don’t you get it?”

I’m not stupid. The possibility has crossed my mind, of course. Along with the opposite.

I wave it off. “Don’t be silly,” I say, trying hard to sound confident. “You don’t have the personality for it. You’re too… nice.”

He scoffs. “Do you know for how long I knew of my powers?”

I shrug. “You were scared to tell me. Or anybody. Very understandably so, considering what your powers do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use them for good.”

Something about his gaze is different. Or maybe it’s always been there and I’m only seeing it now. Hopelessness?

“They might be scared of you now, but they’ll realise soon enough that you’re going to save them all.” A little over the top, probably, but better safe than sorry.

“You don’t get it,” he yells almost. “When I hurt other people… It feels good. The pain leaves my body to hurt others and it makes me stronger.”

So what’s his point? That I’m supposed to resent him for something he never decided to be?

Usually I’d laugh at the obvious parallel. Didn’t I use to be exactly the same? Aren’t I still?

He seems to get more and more frustrated with my lack of open aggression toward him. “I’ve used them before today,” he says, despair in his eyes.

Well duh. How else would he have found out? “On whom?”

“It started with a guy in town that tried to rob me. Then I started looking for them. Muggers, rapists, dealers…”

He stops because I’ve gotten back to my feet and put my arms around him. He stiffens, but I don’t break contact. “I don’t care, okay?” Well, that’s a lie. Hurting people isn’t cool, but then again… Would I want him to suffer in the meantime? Don’t they deserve to suffer for what they did? More than him, surely. It’s not like he has much of a choice anyway. I’ve felt his pain. If I was going through that constantly and knew that I could let others take the burden for me, wouldn’t even have to ask them for consent….

What if those powers really were supposed to be mine?

“Taking out bad guys makes you a hero, okay, dummy?” I whisper. “You should know by now that I could never think badly of you. All of this… your powers are doing this to you. None of it is your fault. And if you ask me, as long as you don’t kill anybody, you’re one of the good guys.”

That finally gets a reaction from him. A short, dry laugh that sounds more like a single cough. I feel the vibration against my chest and finally let go of him to look at his face, but his eyes have already closed up.

“Remember the deal we made?” I ask and try to give him an optimistic smile. It feels weird, but I hold it anyway. “Neither of us will ever be alone in this, okay?”

He nods slowly and I take his hand. “Alright, so, here’s what we’ll do.”

SeptemberMorgan

Sooooo... who's seen this coming? This chapter was soooo much fun to write XD (the next one even more, tho) Y'all can look forward to an absolute banger of a chapter next week :)))