Chapter 14

Sky and I didn't speak as we boarded the hovercraft. Whether he didn't speak out of respect of my hatred for him or because he just didn't have anything to say, I didn't know. Either way, I was happy about it.

Unfortunately, since no one else was there to co-pilot, I was forced to take the seat next to him in case he needed me to help. I wasn't sure what help I would be since I had no previous experience in flying one of these things whatsoever. But, I didn't have much of a choice. It was either attempt to help fix a possible malfunction or crash and die. Neither sounded good; however, I did happen to value my life a little more.

Ironically, the more I thought about it, I came to realize that the last time I'd been on a hovercraft was when we were all headed to Sky's party all those months ago. The memory made me glance over him at the ring on his hand. So many things had changed since then.

I couldn't stop myself from rolling my eyes as I heard the familiar sound of Sky awkwardly clearing his throat to speak.

"So, I heard you've been on Pyros for the past few months." he said, stuttering. "That's the Island of Dragons, right?"

I continued my silence, unmoving from my slumped position.

"I remember Codatorta teaching us something about it in our Dragon Wrangling course at Red Fountain sophomore year." he persisted. "He said there's hundreds of thousands of dragons inhabiting –"

"Sky, we are on a no-talking basis since your party." I interrupted, crossing my arms. "Just because we are stuck on the same hovercraft together changes nothing."

He frowned. "Well, it's going to take a while to reach Omega so we might as well talk."

Shooting him a short glare, I switched my gaze to the expanse of blackness out the window. "There's nothing to talk about."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him give me a dark, knowing look. "I think we both know that's a lie."

I refused to respond.

"We never talked about what happened that night. We never talked about what happened between us, Bloom."

"What's left for us to talk about?" I snapped, feeling a spark of anger while I kicked my feet up onto the dashboard. "You said enough for both of us."

A green light suddenly appeared on the dashboard next to my propped up feet. I internally cursed as I read the small white letters within the light: AUTO-PILOT.

Spinning his chair to face me, I could almost feel the frustration radiating off of Sky. "I understand that you're angry, Bloom. I think we all understand that. But whether or not you want to admit it, you never gave me the chance to explain myself."

Meeting his gaze, I glowered at him. "I think announcing to the world that you're madly in love with your ex-fianceé and then marrying her is pretty self-explanatory."

He clenched and unclenched his left hand. The ring on it immediately became more prominent. I wondered if he actually thought I wouldn't notice it.

"But, no, please do enlighten me."

"I love you, Bloom."

I froze, a stunned expression breaking my face.

Oh no, not this again.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"I said, I love you, Bloom." Sky repeated, firmly. "I always have, and I always will."

I didn't know what to say. Ws there something specific you were supposed to say when your ex-boyfriend who's married tells you he loves you still? How many times can one man change his mind?

A sudden fear washed over me at the thought of him loving me again. If he was going to start pining over me again, the whatever-it-was I had with Baltor would be in total jeopardy. If he started snooping, we could be discovered and a whole new world of fresh hell would be revealed.

"But I love Diaspro more."

An air of awkward silence appeared. An odd sense of tension and relief intermingled with it, leaving us at what could be described as a standstill.

"Oh," I simply said, unable to deny the slight sting of jealousy I felt.

"Believe me, Bloom, I will love you every day and every night till the Magic Dimension explodes and we all burn to ash. Maybe even after that." He paused. "But, I'm in love with Diaspro. I've always been in love with her, and that's why I did what I did. Hiding my true feelings was unfair to you."

I shifted, not particularly thrilled. "You still could've let me down in a better way."

He nodded, laughing a bit. "Yes, I definitely could have. I'll try to remember that the next time Diaspro slips me a potion."

My feet slid off the dashboard. The stare I gave him was blank, my mind racing to process his words. "She slipped you a potion?" An image of the two of them drinking at the Millennium Party came to mind. "You're under a spell right now?" My voice grew louder the more I blamed myself for not realizing it earlier.

"Calm down! It's not what you're thinking!" Sky said, catching my angry tone. "Yes, she gave me a potion, but it only made me reveal who I was truly in love with. That's it. To be honest, I'm kind of relieved she did. I finally felt free after it."

I frowned my brow. "How did she even get something like that?" Truth potions were some of the strongest in the dimension, and completely off-limits to anyone who didn't work for the Magic Council. It would be impossible for her to get it, no matter her royal status.

An uncomfortable expression crossed his face. "Uh, I don't know."

Honing in on my Dragon Fire, I shifted my eyes up to see a dark blue aura appear from Sky, looking almost more uncomfortable than him. "You know I can tell you're lying, right?" I reminded him.

"I'm just not sure I should say anything."

"Come on, Sky, it can't be that bad. Who gave it to her? Your mom? Did she really hate me that much?"

Taking a quiet breath, he looked steadily in my eyes. "Baltor." he said. "Baltor gave her the potion."

Unintentionally, my jaw dropped. A furious fire kindled in my chest. Baltor had been the reason my relationship with Sky ended. There's no rush in making a decision right now, precious. Besides, certain future events may help decide for you. That's what he'd meant. He'd been planning this since that day we met in his hideout on Tides. Maybe even earlier than that. Had he been planning this since he met me?

"Don't be mad!" Sky said, seeing me start to shake. "Actually, I'm glad he did it."

My eyes widened in disbelief.

"I know he's done really shitty things to you in the past, Bloom. And I know you despise every inch of his soul. But, if we weren't at war with him, I'd thank him."

Well, you're just full of surprises today, aren't you?

"You'd thank him?" I inquired, curiously.

"Yeah, I mean, what he did forced me to come to terms with my feelings. I could finally stop hurting everyone with my indecision. And, now, look at us. I'm happy, and you seemed happy before you saw me earlier. I think it was for the best."

I shrugged, still unsettled that Baltor had meddled in my previous relationship.

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Happy," Sky replied.

With a small smile, I thought back to the one-on-one conversation I'd had with Baltor. It hadn't truly dawned on me how I felt around him. It was a feeling I hadn't experienced since before the Shadow Haunt incident. "Yeah," I quietly told him. "I think I am."

He nodded. "Good." Sky relaxed back in his chair some with a sigh. "And you already know about me and Diaspro. So how about you? Have you met someone else?"

My heart lurched in my chest. What was I supposed to say? Was there a correct answer to a question like that in my predicament? Should I even say anything?

Then again, the more I thought about it, the more Sky seemed to be the perfect candidate. Sure, we were exes, but in this situation, that was ideal. He knew me better than most of my friends, and would honestly call me out on things. He could give me an outsider's perspective on whatever I had with Baltor.

"Yeah, I have." I confirmed, purposely leaving out his name.

Sky smirked, giving me a look. "Oh, you have?"

"Yes, I have, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't say anything to any of the girls. If Stella found out that I was sorta-kinda dating a guy out of her jurisdiction, she would freak."

He raised his right hand up in a silent swear. "Trust me, I know. So you met him on your own? Stella didn't force you into one of her infamous blind dates?"

I laughed, remembering how she'd set Musa up on a blind date during our second year. I don't think there was any other moment in our friendship that was tenser than the week after that date. "No, it was definitely not one of those."

"Tell me about him."

My brow shot up to my hairline. "You, my ex-boyfriend, want to hear about my now sorta-kinda boyfriend? Doesn't that go against every rule in the book?"

"If you're hiding it from the other girls then you've got to be dying to tell someone about him." Sky said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "I'm not bitter about it, Bloom. I was hoping you would move on. I just want you to be happy. I want us to get back to how we were when we first met and we were friends. I still want to be able to talk to you, and be able to hang out with the others without feeling awkward."

I was hesitant, my thoughts trailing back to before we started dating, when I'd first seen him in my backyard on Gardenia. It felt like it'd happened only a week ago.

"He's . . . a guy."

He whistled. "Wow, that's very descriptive."

I punched him in the arm.

"Come on, that's all you're going to tell me? Surely there's more to this guy than him being 'a guy'."

I shifted in my seat, trying to quickly determine what all I should divulge. "He's a wizard."

Sky nodded. "Alright, that's a start. It's a small one, but it's a start. What do you two do?"

"We just hang out, I guess. I go to his place and we just talk. It's nice."

"You've been dating this guy for a few months and you're already staying at his place?" he asked, surprised. "Damn, you two have got it bad."

"Not like that!" I yelled. "We've only kissed one time."

He froze. "You two have only kissed once?"

I shook my head. "It's complicated."

"Sounds like it. But, I mean, if you're cool with it."

I bit my lip, and averted my gaze back down to my bracelet. "Not really."

Sky caught the bitter lilt in my voice and his brow furrowed in concern. "If you're not happy with it then you need to tell him so you two can work it out."

"It's not that easy."

"Why not?"

I shifted, rushing to think of some kind of excuse. "It's really not worth going into." I said. "He was cursed a few years ago by some witches, it's affecting whatever-it-is-we-have now, and that's all there really is to say about it."

He paused, trying to figure out what I was saying.

"But now, since it's affecting that, we've been trying to break it and we're coming up with nothing."

Beginning to comprehend, he solemnly nodded. "Is that one of the reasons why you went to Pyros? To become powerful enough to try and break the curse?"

I had multiple reasons for wanting to go to Pyros. To gain more power to find my birth parents, to become stronger, to get a distraction. However, breaking the curse on Baltor had surprisingly become the most prominent aspect. With the Fairy Dust that seemed to come with the transformation, I could have enough power to break it. To my dismay, that probably wasn't going to get me out of having to dabble in some dark magic like Baltor had suggested to make it work. But, hey, a girl can dream.

I nodded, a blush rising to my cheeks. "Is that selfish of me?"

"Bloom, you're trying to save this guy from a hellish curse." Sky said, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. "That's probably one of the most selfless things you could do; and he should be lucky that he has you."

"Do you mean that?"

"Every word."

To say that I was surprised was an understatement. I wasn't expecting Sky to be this easy to talk to. I figured that could've been partially due to him being so easy to talk to back when we were dating, and even before that. However, he knew I was still bitter about the whole Diaspro thing, and he continued to be this open to talking to me about my own problems. Of course, he probably wouldn't be if he knew just who I was talking about, but he was still that open to talking about it. It was . . . nice.

He waved his hand in a beckoning fashion. "Come on."

"Come on?"

He gave me a look. "Bloom, I dated you for nearly three years. I know that when you like a guy, there's a lot more that you have to say about him than that."

I blushed harder, thinking about Baltor more.

There was a ton of things I wanted to talk about. To be frank, I could talk about the conversations he and I had for hours. However, that was pushing into territory that couldn't be crossed around Sky.

Relaxing back in my seat, I contemplated telling Sky more. Letting him into that part of my life made me reluctant. It was going to test just how much I could say and not say. And there was no option of slipping up. One slip up could ruin everything.

"Have you two said the infamous phrase?"

"There's an infamous phrase?" I asked, curiously.

"The one that includes the l-word."

Butterflies fluttered around in my chest. Baltor and I had never even approached that word. I'd barely even thought about it. I knew I felt something towards him, but would I go as far as to say that I . . . l-word him? "No, we haven't."

"Do you want to?"

I was hit with confliction. "I don't know."

To be frank, the thought that I might actually be in . . . l-word with Baltor terrified me. That was a very serious thing, and I'd only felt emotions like that around Sky a long time ago. But, what was worse was that I felt those kinds of emotions around Baltor except more intensely. Whatever it was I had with Baltor was on a whole other level than what I'd had with Sky.

And it definitely shouldn't be.

The possibility of us being in l-word could not happen. We could never actually be together. In order for that idea to even be tangible, the curse would have to be broken, we couldn't be mortal enemies to the public, and all of his charges would have to be wiped from the ledger. There were too many complications for us to be . . . real.

Seeing that he'd hit a rather sensitive issue, he moved on. Unfortunately, he moved on to an even more sensitive topic. "Does he know about the Shadow Haunt thing yet?"

I shook my head, darkly laughing. "Hell no."

"Are you going to tell him?"

Shrugging, I picked at a string on my skirt. "I don't know. Maybe." I doubted it.

"You feel like this relationship is serious enough for a maybe?"

I shot him a look he knew all too well. "Maybe."

"Okay, Miss Smartass," he chuckled. "But I'm serious. Finally talking about the Shadow Haunt and opening up to someone might make you feel better."

It peeved me off a bit that he was suddenly okay with me having issues about the Shadow Haunt ordeal. "Can we move on, please? And it's not a relationship. It's just something."

"Alright, alright," he obliged, rolling his eyes. "You said you two have kissed once. Surely that's something to discuss. Did you like it? Is he a bad kisser?"

"No, he is not a bad kisser." I said, kicking my feet up again onto one of the dead monitors. I wasn't sure just how to avoid delving into the subject. The last thing I needed was a slip up of me mentioning what happened when we kissed, and Sky would be turning the ship around faster than lightning. "In fact, that was the best kiss I've ever had in my entire life."

"Even with me?"

"Especially with you."

"Ouch. Stone cold." he laughed, shaking his head. "Have you two done anything else?"

Confused, I peeked over at him.

"You know, since you two can't kiss, have you all . . . ?"

"Are you asking what I think you're asking?"

"It's a perfectly reasonable question."

"You're disgusting!"

"I just know that you don't have a lot of experience with guys." he elaborated, carefully. "If he's trying to pressure you into doing other things that you're not comfortable with, you don't have to do them."

Against my will, I could feel my cheeks begin to burn. "I'm not an idiot, Sky."

"I know you're not. You're one of the smartest girls I know. And I'd like to consider myself a smart guy, because I know you're avoiding answering my question."

I glared at him. "No, Sky, we haven't done anything like that. Any type of passionate act is off-limits due to the curse. And even if we had, I wouldn't tell you about it."

He smirked. "Do you want to do stuff with him?"

"I will kill you."

He opened his mouth to speak when a light flashed on the dashboard, followed by a beeping sound. Pressing a few things on the screen, I saw his face become serious and he sighed. "Well, it seems you get out of my interrogation early."

"Why?" I asked, trying to figure out what he was doing. "What's going on?"

He motioned to the window. My gaze switched to the direction he was pointing in, and my jaw dropped.

The realm of Omega was just as huge and ominous as Baltor had told me. I'd seen plenty of large planets before, but this put all of the others to shame. The sight of the icy realm ironically sent chills through my body.

"So, Stella and the others are in there?" I asked, swallowing the fear in my throat.

Sky nodded. "Yeah."

I contemplated my next question before asking it. "Do you think they're okay?"

He didn't speak for a moment, worrying me. "Honestly, Bloom," he said, "I have no idea."

Entering the atmosphere of Omega, you could feel the temperature drop several degrees instantly. I threw up a heat shield around us to try and block it out, but even that barely did anything. If it could chill Dragon Fire, I didn't want to think about its potential.

My stomach dropped as we landed next to what looked like Timmy's hovercraft. It was open, like they didn't have time to close anything.

"Maybe they were just in a hurry to reach Tecna," Sky suggested, always the optimist.

"Or they were ambushed."

He didn't deny it.

Bringing the hovercraft to a completely halt, we both sat there in silence. We both knew what we were thinking. We were either going to go out there and come back with our friends, or we were going to go out there and not come back with anyone. And with how many bloodthirsty criminals had been locked up here, the second option was dangerously likely.

"Are you ready to go out there?" Sky asked. I was able to see his breath in the cold air.

I shook my head, my expression hopefully steady. "No," I told him. I wasn't ready for all the horrible possibilities that loomed before us. I wasn't ready to possibly see my friends massacred across the ice and snow. I wasn't ready to possibly join them if things went extremely unexpected. I wasn't ready for any of it. "But I don't really have much a choice."

I'm back much sooner than I was expecting to be. Like damn. This is like within two weeks. I'm pretty sure that's a record for me. Don't expect this all the time. Don't get used to this.

So, yes, here we are! This is a shorter chapter, but essential for relationship-building. I didn't want to just toss Sky to the wolves and be like, "Bye, bitch, see ya later!" since he and Bloom broke up, which unfortunately tends to happen a lot in Sparxshipping stories (which I'm guilty of doing in the past). But, I wanted to remedy that, so here we are! Sky won't be showing up much more in future chapters, sadly, but we will get a little more of him in the sequel, so for all of you Sky-lovers, I promise you he will be back. In this chapter, I also really wanted to focus on Bloom and Sky's relationship in season one. Everyone seems to forget how chill of friends they were back then before they were dating, and now in future seasons, that chill-ness seems to be completely dead and has been replaced with strict lovey-dovey bullshit. And I'm not here for that. I'm here for them being real people and not just a couple in a relationship used for a dramatic love triangle.

Alright, now in the next chapter, we are only one chapter away from the huge reveal of the Shadow Haunt incident! I'M SO EXCITED. I've been waiting for this time since this story started in September. I am freaking psyched. Like I've said before, the Shadow Haunt thing is a key point in this for Bloom, and what you think you know from the series is not exactly what happens here. In Chapter 16, it gives a reason for almost everything that happens in the episode that Bloom turns dark, such as why she's gagged at one point, and why the witches are in Magix and not in Shadow Haunt with Darkar. So, just a pre-warning, it will get dark, and there will be trigger warnings at the beginning of the chapter for those of you who are not comfortable reading things like that. It doesn't go too in-depth, but I will still put them there just in case.

Anyway, I am going to get to work on finishing up the next two chapters for you guys, and a few drabbles for Staring Endlessly at That Bloom Loser, along with going back through the last few chapters and finally getting to editing some errors I missed before posting! As always, please leave a review if you liked this chapter and I will see you all in the next chapter!

~Bloom