Surprise! Double chapter supreme! Thought I'd give you guys a treat since you've all been so amazing, and have had to wait a full week for each chapter - which I know from experience can be torture. But, please remember that I update 'Volatile' every Wednesday, and if I miss a week, you guys have full-frontal permission to throw tomatoes at me, or jump in my inbox and give me a friendly nudge.
Also, if you guys are really into this story, I've noticed some of you have talked about it together and have approached me with the subject of making a group or something to commemorate this story and Tempest - which I cannot even believe! That's so cool!
I'm glad you guys enjoy this so much, and someone gave me the term 'wind-bearer' for the name, so that's what I'm gonna call you guys! I hope that's alright. But again, thank you and I'm glad some of you really enjoy this story!
Enjoy this chapter guys, you deserve it!
Chapter Ten
Nothing makes us so
lonely as our secrets.
- Paul Tournier
"I want to go talk to him."
"Tempest," the word is dragged out in annoyance, which snaps at his heels as he walks beside her, arms crossing across a star-wreathed chest. Nova tilts his head, and she can feel the blade of his glare cut across her skin. "You can't and you know it."
Her shoulders shudder as agitation shakes a breath across her cheek, rips and tears at her chest as she shakes her hands free of the fear that plants itself like a sapling in her ribs, coiling and bending to it's hearts content. Her fear bends her emotions on puppeteer strings, dancing her hands as she speaks. "Nova, he knows something about me, something I don't know. I should know everything about me."
His mouth pulls into a thin line and he twists on a shredded heel, and he doesn't realize their closeness - how she bends towards him with a silent challenge slipping tenderly from her bow-string lips, hands on hips as he regards her. He almost smiles - a few weeks ago, a month ago - she'd never be so intruding and he's glad of it, but agitation hums across his skin as he see's the determination flicker across her eyes. "Tempest, no. A couple of weeks ago, you'd never want to even look at that guy again after something like that. I'm proud of you, I really am, but you're not allowed."
As if finality stutters on his mouth into the open air, he clicks his heels and carries on down the hallway. But he only gathers a small distance when sorrowed playfulness bites the inside of her cheek, along with desperation pricking itself into the crease of her elbow. "I'd do it for you if you asked."
"That's not fair."
"And neither is this," she murmurs, marble frosting itself on her face as she watches him, and destruction curls at her feet when he see's the pain that flicks over her, the waves of hurt that threaten to swallow him into an oceanic gullet and drown him. Piano string fingers play a tune on his shoulder when she tugs, forcing him to turn to her and she keeps them there. "Please, Sam. Let me have this."
His teeth sink into his lower lip, supernovas colliding in the space of his chest when he sighs in defeat. He presses a hand into her hair, running his fingers through the knots and curls that splay across her tight, shoe-laced shoulders. Her smile blinds him, white teeth (a crooked one making his own lips twitch upwards) thrown wide and suddenly, a weight presses against his chest.
The air is knocked out of him and the giggle that hits his ears makes his breath turn slightly uneven. Weeks ago, she'd have never initiated contact, would have never pressed herself willingly into someone's arms and let theirs encircle her. But now, with happiness and determination creating a toxic brew on her tongue, she hardly seems to care as she lets Nova press her close for a brief second before pulling back. "Thanks, Sparky."
She can see the roll of his leaf-green eyes as he ruffles her hair once more, his smile unusually soft and it warms the cracks in her skeleton, the glass of her heart. "Whatever, brown eyes. If I get in trouble for this, you owe me."
Her nose wrinkles like paper at the nickname. "Brown eyes?"
"What, too obvious?"
Her laugh is loud and they turn, snaking along the walls and eyes downcast as not to grasp attention to themselves, and they collect silence like stars in their lungs, until thick double doors, as much of a mechanical monster like the rest of the Tricarrier and the softness that had breathed life into a youthful face dissipates at the sight, the scowl pressing at the corner of doe eyes is sure to garner a wrinkle or two with times weight as the world presses on her chest.
Nova, with tentative movements, ghosts his wrists across the identification pad before scrambling to work to erase his DNA alignment inside to create him as a ghost on the system for this particular hallway of horror. Tempest, however, glides with the fragility of glass and the essence of a dancer on quivering toes.
She commands attention as she falls like a shadow between glass and metal, ignoring the leers of the convicts that sit a world away behind reinforced structure. Nova joins her moments later, sending a nasty look to the cruel words that spill from villain mouths. Stagnant silence falls behind them as they leave them behind to rot in their metal boxes, away from a city that has never known their destructive fingers.
"You should not be here, wind thief," a familiar voice presses on her ears and the girl turns, Nova following suit, to find the strong form of Triton, who slides towards them with regality playing across his collarbones, humming a tune that only attalantean could possibly decipher. "And you, silver tongue. You should remember to lock your doors."
Nova's nose wrinkles like Tempest's had, a mirror image on tanned skin. "Silver tongue?"
Triton nods, hands clasped at the base of his back. "Yes. it is a term in Attilan that, if I can decipher it in common, means 'demented idiot' perhaps?" Tempest snorts into curled fingers and Nova growls low, whilst innocence presses against Triton's eyes. His cheeks lift slightly with a smile as he notices the shuddering, laughing form of the hurricane girl beside him. "Perhaps not."
"No, you're quite right with the translation."
"Hey! Temp, I'm helping you here," persecution fizzles on his pointed finger towards her, and he flinches when Triton lifts an aquatic brow, the only change in his posture besides from the head-tilt towards the dark haired girl. She sucks in a harsh breath, but nevertheless, stays as still as the statue that curls across her lungs.
"And what, pray tell, may you be helping her with?" When Nova gives him a sharp look - don't ask, go away, this is none of your business - an almost child-like smile twitches his mouth into a smile, and he splays his hands out in offering. "I only inquire because I wish to help; you intrigue me."
Eyes widen to round saucers, and Tempest feels relief wash over her skin before tilting an angled chin down the rest of the hallway. They scurry past the other criminals that litter the darkened halls, and the fragility that had once smoothed the curls of her hair disappears in the movement of her tongue over chapped lips, in the crack of her knuckles as she pauses in front of the window that holds a boy wrapped in black and purple.
A live wire runs electricity across her skin, a current of fear at the malice and mischief that decorates the boy's eyes like bells that have yet to be rung. She swallows her anger and replaces the foul taste with confusion, determining that Iron Fist would be proud of the river of tranquility that has replaced the blood in her veins. "Who are you?"
The boy - and still, just a boy - chuckles as he slumps like a wishbone against the glass of the window, hands laid low in his open lap and haphazardly crossed. His body language is an imagery of brokenness already, but his strong and steel-like features say otherwise. He shakes his head, raven hair shaking with as much force as his head and his laugh is as humorless as his eyes, blind and unseeing.
"This isn't a legal interrogation, wind thief, so I don't need to answer a thing."
His hiss makes her flinch, the body of a soldier crumbling around her and revealing the muddied face of a frightened little girl - but the little girl has knives for teeth. "You will answer when asked. Who are you, and what do you know about me?"
The chocolate-skinned boy, with his long legs and long arms and long body, rises and stands, pressing his forearm against the cool glass and leaning down, so close she can see the image of freckles through the glass. "We've been looking for you for a long time, Tempest, surely you're smart enough to know who we are."
She gulps back her scream, and feels the radiating warmth that curls around Nova's being across her own skin from his closeness. She can feel the dampness on Triton's, knowing he has been floundering in the water around the Triskellion once again and her strength returns in spades. "Elaborate for me, Blind Spot."
He snorts a laugh, shoulders shaking and she can practically feel the sting of his thoughts across her shoulder blades, weighing her down until she falls through the hull of the Tricarrier - stupid girl, you should know better than to ask a wolf if he's a cat. His gaze flickers up and shrouds all three teenagers in the room as best he can.
"Have any of you heard of HAL?" when his answer is met with a long, pregnant silence, his smile twitches and he turns back to Tempest, almost at glee. "Human Alterations Laboratories. You were a very sick little girl, weren't you, once upon a time?"
Her head turns away from him, and it's as if he can feel the vibration of it in the air like she can, when he starts to laugh, deep from his stomach and out into the air. The sound attacks her ears and she can feel herself, all the progress she's made over the years and the past few weeks, crumbling like stone columns around her, the debris flattening her into the wasteland-ground.
But a hand on her shoulder pulls her back and places her in Nova's careful hands, gently but the knuckles are tight and the large form of Triton stands over her. The boy's laugh is cut short when he slams his own forearm and fist into the glass, shaking it and sending the boy stumbling back, falling down in shock. Triton's words are no more than a growl, "you shall answer her questions without this pathetic display of strength that you put up. You are a child, and we shall beat you into the dust if you do not cooperate."
Nova and Tempest stare in slight horror and pride at the shackled form of the Attilan boy, and when Blind Spot sighs and nods, defeated, Triton turns back and smiles at her, something soft that she's never seen before and he spreads his arms, as if guiding her onto her stage. She nods at him, mouthing the word 'thank you' and returns to her place.
"How far away are they?"
Blind Spot hums, dragging the session on and he flicks up his hood, showing he likes the darkness better. "Hmm, not far. Though, when I get out of here, you won't even see them coming."
"Who says you're leaving?"
"Who says I'm not?"
Savage flames curl and bind her lungs together, destruction peeling itself over her snake-skin heart and breathing in her anger at the boy, who seems to only want to tease her and dance around her questions. Her nerves fray as her savageness, as the wind turns into a hurricane in her chest, lashes out. "You only have your words as your weapon, Blind Spot. You have no gadgets, no allies. You're alone and it would be better if you made this easier."
"But where would be the fun in that," it's as if he can feel the ruin in her bones, can feel the cities crumble across her shoulders as the earthquake shatters her skin in two, "uh uh, wind thief, don't take my breath away now. Remember the spider's motto."
Nova stands beside her, juxtapositioned to her crumbling form. "The spider isn't here or of your concern."
"Tell your bodyguards to stay out of this, this is between me and you," he murmurs, tilting his head at her. He sighs when he doesn't hear the descending feet and shakes her head, mocking her.
"How many are there?"
"About two hundred."
"How far away?"
"Don't know," he slithers, standing again and something seems to come loose in his coil like form, seems to splinter across his knees like a broken stick and wildness becomes rooted in the vessel of his spine. "They're-They're gonna find you, Tempest. They will, I'll make sure of it when I get out of here and tell them. You're their hope, their shining beacon of victory against everything else that failed. They'll find you and take you home and I'll make sure of it!"
Blind Spot's voice curls into dizzying decibels, becoming louder and louder and the only word that can possibly mock his sudden change in demeanor could be 'crazy'. The three teenagers step back as he bangs against the window, trying to alert whoever is out there of the intruder's in the cell block. Tempest's eyes fills with tears as the words grate on her and she clutches the fear she knows so intimately, as it rests like wildflowers in the scutes of her spine.
Nova gathers her into his arms, pulling her away from the crazed sight with Triton on his heels and he wants to forget the flinch when she's touched, how she reverts back to shying away from him as they push through the cell block and out into the open space of the Tricarrier. She rakes fingers through her hair, a nervous habit he's deemed, and when he reaches for her, she stumbles back from his touch.
In the cell block, when silence rings clear, Blind Spot purses his lips and presses a thin digit against the glass. The glass splinters with lightning cracks, small and dilute, from where Triton had slammed his fist into the glass window. It cracks and slithers, small enough that only the clearest of eyes could see it. "I'll make sure of it."