Disclaim Her: Sky High is not mine. Obviously.
A/N: Well, this is something different. My first Sky High fic. It's not quite a drabble, not quite a short story, but I digress. I really like the idea behind this fic, though I'm not sure about how it actually turned out. I got a bit stuck. Whatver, I'm still pleased with it, so give it a go.
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Inferno
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When she was little, still wide-eyed and innocent and not yet tall enough to see over the top of the kitchen counter, her mother had coddled her and cautioned her about the supposed dangers of the world. Don't talk to strangers, Layla. Look both ways before you cross the street. Never wander off alone.
Don't play with fire. You'll get burned.
And being, of course, the inquisitive little child that she was, Layla had bravely walked up to complete strangers on the street and introduced herself. She had chased soccer balls and Frisbees blindly into the road. She had even snuck away from her mother in the toy store because she had wanted to play with the fluffy stuffed animals instead of the boring puzzles. None of these actions, though forbidden as they were, had caused any sort of grave consequences to befall her, except maybe a semi-stern reprimanding from her mother.
Layla had even touched the hot stove once too, because she wanted to know what the mesmerizing blue-orange flames felt like. And she did get hurt that time, and she had cried for hours, but she never touched fire again. Lesson learned.
Now, at almost fifteen years of age, Layla was all grown up (at least in her opinion), and had much bigger problems than strangers and rogue toys in the street. Because even though she told her herself that she was in love with her best friend of several years, she couldn't shake the image of a certain pyrokinetic out of her head. Those dark eyes followed her everywhere, even when Warren was nowhere nearby.
Warren Peace was, seemingly, the battle between good and evil personified. He was a dichotomy, a mystery. And it was obvious to Layla that he was in pain. Oh, not a physical pain of any sort, but the kind of deep reaching, mind consuming pain that breeds when a family is broken apart by the selfishness of one parent; the kind of pain that is caused when no one has the courage to look you in the eye, though they seem quite content to whisper and pass judgment when your back is turned. Warren's wounds weren't superficial and couldn't be healed with a band-aid.
She longed to make the pain go away, because Warren was beautiful, inside and out. Too few people noticed that. And yet, perhaps the saddest part was that she was convinced he would never let her in, and that hurt more than she wanted it to. So, Layla stopped going to the Paper Lantern everyday and didn't sit with Warren at lunch anymore. She told herself that their homecoming date was just a hoax to make Will jealous. And at that same homecoming dance, when Will kissed her for the first time, she let him and even kissed him back because he was the safe one, the one who would never hurt her. Messing with fire was never a good idea, after all. Hadn't she learned that lesson a long time ago?
And so Layla ended up with Will, and she never noticed the hurt in the dark eyes of the boy who loved her and longed to hold her, even though he knew she would, obviously, never love him back.
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Well, that's it. Let me know what you think, even if you hated it. How cliche, everyone says that, but it's true. Sooo...that little purple button looks preeetty enticing, doesn't it?