Heightened Tensions- Chapter 23

Blossom… wake up…

There!

A voice, so close… if she could just reach it… pull all her strength together… swim past the blur and sleep that kept her in a state of delirious slumber. It was a struggle, wading through the sea of endless pain and confusion, hands outstretched to that beckoning voice, that pure sound… of fatherly kindness…

"Wake up Blossom…"

A hand on her face… she could feel the touch… the warmth… and it was becoming easier to move now. She could feel, and hear, and soon the light passed through the thin covering of her eye lids, the sounds of voices moving through her ears, and the touch of cool air against her flushed skin. Her senses flashed back on like the sudden booting up of a program, and finally a groan escaped her lips.

"Blossom… you can wake up now… it's all over…"

"What?" she mumbled incoherently, her eyes squinting open against the sudden light of the afternoon. How much time had passed since she'd lost consciousness was uncertain, but she suspected it had only been a few hours, just judging by the position of the sun now glimmering through the window.

"You just got winded is all… you're fine." said the voice, the one that Blossom finally registered as belonging to the professor, who was standing over her, smiling warmly.

"I feel like hell…" she mumbled, trying to push her body up from the hospital bed she was lying on. Blossom looked around. The room she was in was identical to Buttercup's, except that the only occupants now were her and the professor.

The professor frowned, and took a seat at the side of the bed, brushing the clumps of hair out of Blossom's eyes.

"Well, you had quite a fall there. You broke the chair…"

Blossom whimpered suddenly as her head split open with the most painful, pulsing headache she'd ever experienced. Instinctively she grabbed her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut as the pounding, acid pain stung at all the nerves in her body. Her head spun with the dizzying thunder, and it felt like someone had just cleaved an open gash through her skull with an axe.

"Are you okay?" the professor asked suddenly, running a hand along the side of her head. His touch only made the pain worse, and she flung her head away in protest with a moan, only to make the pain doubly worse by jostling the brain inside her head. This only made the professor even more alarmed with her.

"I… I'm fine. I just have an amazing headache…" she whispered, the sound and feel of her voice like nails on a chalkboard to her already shrieking ears.

"I thought you would…" the professor said calmly, leaning over to a table beside the bed, and Blossom heard the unmistakable jangle of pills spilling around inside a bottle. She scowled, but instantly regretted making the change in the muscles of her face, for the pain only worsened.

"You know that stuff never works for me…" she said harshly, opening her eyes to see the professor unscrew the cap, and watched as two tiny brown capsules fell into his palm.

"Well, this isn't exactly your average headache. Maybe it'll work this time…" he said matter-of-factly, grabbing the small paper cup of water next to him. His tone was that of someone who was very certain of their intuition. Yet Blossom still doubted she would find any relief from medication, for those kinds of things had never had any effect whatsoever on her and her sisters.

"What do you mean… and how did you know I would have a headache?"

The professor shrugged, and handed her the paper cup and the two pills. Blossom took them uncertainly, knowing it was useless, but not wanting to seem ungrateful either.

"Just a small hunch I guess. Considering what happened."

"Well, what about what happened?" Blossom asked, throwing the two capsules into her mouth, cringing at the creamy taste of the capsule's shells. She took a swig of the water and downed them both at the same time, blinking her eyes towards the ceiling to let gravity help them down.

"I think I know what happened… with your sister…"

The professor started, turning his face to the window while his expression became pure with concentration. It was clearly something he'd been dwelling on for a long time, Blossom could tell by the scrutinizing slant of his brow.

"What about her?" Blossom asked, carefully taking the last bits of water from the cup, suddenly realizing that she was incredibly thirsty.

"She's telekinetic."

But Blossom nearly lost all the water as she choked, her ears and still throbbing head not able to comprehend what she'd just heard. She coughed, her throat now scratchy as a result of the undesired reflex, and the professor slapped her hard in the back to aid her recovery. Her eyes turned to him in disbelief.

"W-What?!" she spluttered, running her arm across her mouth to wipe her face. The professor returned her crazed stare with one of utter confidence.

"You may not realize it," and he stood from his seat on the bed, and walked over to the window, the drapes billowing softly in the light breeze that escaped into the room. "But I've been watching her for a while. I ran through all of the old files, looking for some sort of evidence that would lead to my hypothesis… that would prove my theory was correct…" he continued, leaning against the window frame as he watched the world below go by.

"And what did you find?"

The professor chuckled, and turned around to face Blossom, who was sitting more comfortably on the bed, her headache seemingly forgotten.

"Well, I wasn't finding anything for the longest time… and I almost lost hope, until I ran across a certain blood-stained lab sheet… one from when you three were about eight years old…"

Blossom stared at him for a while, expecting him to explain further as to what he was talking about, but for some reason she was drawing a complete blank. The professor looked at her expectantly as if she was supposed to know something he was getting at… but she just couldn't remember anything…

"Wait… What?" she asked half-heartedly, tensing as her head gave a particularly nasty throb.

The professor walked back to the bed and sat again, where he looked Blossom straight in the eye.

"I'm surprised you don't remember, since you were there… why exactly Buttercup is afraid of hospital needles."

Blossom gasped, covering her mouth as the memory suddenly resurfaced like a submarine reemerging from the bottom of the sea. She had forgotten, for the event had been so surreal and traumatizing, her brain had instinctively tucked it away.

"I… I do remember that now… but what does that have to do with it?" she said shakily, her awareness slowly returning to the pain of her forehead, making her weak and sleepy.

"Don't you remember always wondering why the containers of your blood exploded?"

"I… I suppose, but I never really gave it a second thought… I was just too shook up to really care…"

The professor lifted his finger up to make a point, and he smiled calmly to emphasize the fact that he knew full well what he was talking about. It was a face Blossom had come to hate, because it was a parental, condescending face he always made to tell them how things were.

"I didn't think too much of it either, but after everything that has been going on, I'm now thinking that we should have paid more attention to what really happened at the time."

Blossom thought hard, trying to recall the event as clearly as possible. It was difficult, to think through her pain and logged memory, but she struggled to let every detail that she could remember shine through the murky blackness of her muddled thoughts.

They had been eight years old, Blossom remembered that much. She also remembered that it had been a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon, the sound of thunder creating a deep thrum as it soaked through the thick walls of the professor's laboratory. They'd all been down there, huddled together against the booming growls of the weather outside, but mostly because it was the day that the professor did his monthly checkup for them, just to make sure that they were growing up healthy and perfectly normal.

He always took blood tests, Blossom remembered that, and he always checked their reflexes, and most importantly their eyes and throats. Blossom never had a problem with the tests, and for the most part, neither did Buttercup or Bubbles. But on that one day in particular, Buttercup decided to make a huge fuss.

It had to have been some sort of stage she was going through at the time. She was always moody, grouchy and defiant, more so than her usual behavior. It was like she was going through the emotional stages of teenage development much too early, because she had the tendency to swing her moods as easily as swinging a baseball bat. On this day in particular, Buttercup had absolutely no interest in letting the professor poke her with needles, but Blossom suspected there was reason for that more deep than just the fact that she was being a royal bitch.

Her screams had been unbelievable. She kicked and punched and fought hard with all her might, and did a good job at keeping the professor at bay. Blossom and Bubbles had ended up having to hold her down against the lab table, and she'd put up an amazing fight. Blossom suspected that Buttercup was hurt, for her arm was just slightly bruised, but why that had been cause for Buttercup to act so irrationally was anyone's guess. There was hardly a time when all the three of them had less than three bruises somewhere on their bodies, so they were used to it.

She'd kicked, and screamed, and had even resorted to biting Blossom on the arm, but the professor had managed to get close enough to stick the needle into her elbow, his patience quickly wearing thin as his brow furrowed with anxiety. Buttercup had gotten so mad, she'd started screaming like never before. Not Sonic Scream powerful, but powerful enough.

And that was when it happened. Something strange. There'd been a quick rumble, and the rest of the family had just dismissed it as thunder, powerful enough to shake the very walls and floor of the lab. But they all knew that thunder wasn't powerful enough to make the blood-filled bags on the counter explode, and that's when Buttercup had stopped screaming.

Needless to say, blood had been everywhere. On the walls, the floor, and it was covering all of them in a thick, dripping mess. They'd all frozen for a good few moments, not exactly sure how to react to what had just happened, thunder rumbling away above them. It was after this that they all realized, in a stupor, that they were covered in blood. Blossom had started trembling, Bubbles had started sobbing, and the professor had moved about the room like a ghost, looking desperately for the one clean towel in the room. They were all covered in blood, and they could taste it, and they could feel the heat going cold against their skin. It was a substance nobody ever wanted to be covered in, especially to have it dumped like a shower hose.

And Buttercup had just sat at that lab table, the crimson substance dripping from strands of her hair, sliding down her face and oozing into the corner's of her mouth. Her eyes had been open, and she'd stared blankly at the wall, her arm raised up, the broken end of a needle lodged deeply into her skin. Blossom saw it first, and grabbed her sister's shaking arm to steady it, her slick fingers sliding against the surface of the needle, fumbling for a grip, but only succeeding in making it worse. The needle went deeper, and Buttercup started flipping out again, this time shrieking with horror as she'd tried to push Blossom away from her, her own hands desperate to get the foreign piece of metal out of her body, the piece of metal that seemed to slowly be sinking deeper and deeper beneath her flesh. Her scrabbling hands, wet with blood, had been trying pointlessly to pull the needle free when the professor had finally come back to his senses and rushed to help with a pair of tweezers.

And that was the story of why Buttercup had created this deep fear of needles. At the time, that was all Blossom had ever labeled the memory as, but thinking about it now, she couldn't help but wonder about how it had all happened. It was just like the incident with the glass jar. She'd been angry, and things around her had exploded… something was starting to make sense, to make what little sense it could. Perhaps way back then, when they'd been so young, that heightened state of alarm had caused a reaction in Buttercup, just as her anger had in the professor's classroom.

But Blossom couldn't remember any other time where a similar event had happened. Nothing between those two key events fit into the puzzle to give any sort of evidence to the professor's guess. So then, why now, was everything suddenly falling apart?

"Professor… if that's true… why now? Why did it wait so long to happen?" Blossom asked softly, trying hard to remember anything in the past, anything at all that seemed remotely like the power the professor suspected she now had. Nothing at all was coming to mind… except… things that had been happening since her downward spiral into depression… leading to…

"The trauma Blossom… it was all building in her state of intense emotion. To her, she just thought that her energy was leaving her… when really it was the opposite. It was all building, her anger and sadness fueling the power… and I think what we saw this morning was just the culmination of her release. Her attempt at hurting herself had been irrational, and she knew it at the time. I don't think she expected to do it, and I don't even think she wanted to do it, and that trauma, that intense fear and guilt just gave this ability more leeway to explode."

"And Bubbles too… her fear for Bubbles. She was freaking out about her being gone-"

"I think that mixed with everything that has been happening to her, and the fact that she didn't know any way to release this building energy, just made it that more painful and shocking… when she transferred it to you."

Blossom looked down and breathed deeply, her eyes closed against the still throbbing pain at her temples. Telekinesis… that was such a strong word. Who knew what sort of repercussions it could have on their family? And what about when Buttercup had grabbed her. It had felt so, strangely real, but agonizing at the same time, like someone had crammed her head into a vice with only the intent of sucking her dry.

Blossom couldn't think just then. She was just too tired, she was too tired to put the pieces together at what had really happened between her and her sister just hours before. She was too tired and drained to really notice that Buttercup had probably done a lot more than just zap her with about a million bolts of telekinetic energy. And for some reason the mere presence of the professor at that moment was just plain getting on her nerves.

"You look tired, honey," the professor said calmly, his brilliant perception miraculously on cue with Blossom's reality. It was almost like he was reading her mind-

Reading my mind…

Blossom froze for a second, her hand in mid air where it hovered just over her forehead. She'd just had a revelation… a realization as to what exactly had happened to her, and it brought her no sort of comfort.

She knows…

Blossom had dreamed about it. Somehow she knew, she just knew that Buttercup had somehow found out about Him. Blossom couldn't explain to herself how exactly she knew this to be the truth…. But she could just feel the remnants of her sisters presence in her thoughts, in her brain, poking at every piece of memory and thought. It had to be the truth.

"Professor, I think that-" Blossom started to say, but she was instantly shut quiet by the professor shaking his head quickly.

"Not now honey… I think you need some rest… Try to… put your thoughts back in order."

And there was a flicker of movement from his eye… a brief spasm of the eyelids… a quick reflex… a… did he just wink at me?

Blossom said nothing, but only watched as the professor stood from his seat and walked to the doorway that led out into the hall. He gave Blossom one last fleeting glance and smiled.

"I'm going to check on Cup. With luck they'll release her tonight."

And that was the last thing he said before he walked from the room.

Blossom was left alone, with only her own pathetic thoughts to linger on. Buttercup knew about Him. She knew about everything, about all the times he'd spent with her, about all the times Blossom had tried pointlessly to cover everything up. Buttercup knew, and she was going to kill her.

But maybe she doesn't know… maybe I'm just working myself up over nothing… maybe she didn't really just break into my secrets… but…

Who was she kidding? Blossom couldn't lie to herself, not when she was somehow so dead sure that Buttercup had just read her mind. Did the professor know too? Had his suggestion to her been a much deeper statement than it sounded on the surface?

You're not going to know until Buttercup flails you alive…

Blossom wouldn't know until Buttercup said anything, if she said anything at all. Blossom certainly wasn't going to bring it up, so it was pointless to worry about until she knew for sure… until Buttercup decided to confront her on it.

Sighing, Blossom laid back down against the pillow and closed her eyes, head still throbbing with uncomfortable strokes of pain.

Despite the distraction she fell quickly into slumber, and while she slept, Him's ethereal, opaque form hovered close to her, his face a mischievous glowing grin. For some reason, nobody outside the room ever noticed.