Author's Note: VERY mild mentions of suicide at the end of this chapter.
…
Hermes's POV
As I run, I can't stop thinking about what Madeline said. The worst thing she said to me was "I'm just saying aloud what everyone is thinking." It scares me to death, mostly because I know she's right. Almost everyone believes what Madeline said: one day, I'll kill someone I care about. My worst fear is killing a member of my family with my powers. Mom or Dad or Teddy or Hazel or Quinn or Anke, or any of the others. I don't know how I could live with myself if something entirely preventable happens because of my powers and my lack of control over them. Just a few days ago I nearly hit Anke with a wooden crate. Even though she shrugged it off, I could have seriously hurt her. And that was in training.
"Hermes?"
It's Mom's voice. I don't see her as I run past but I hear her voice. I stop and look back round at her. She's holding a folder in her hands, and her face looks worried.
"Is everything okay?"
Before I can answer, I feel excruciating pain hit my stomach and head. It's extra pain, not the kind incurred from Madeline's taunting. I feel on the edge of a breakdown.
Unable to speak, I simply nod hurriedly. Then I turn and continue running, ignoring my mom's call of, "Hermes!"
I push open the doors to the outside of OWCA and keep running towards the field at the back of the building. I can't have my inevitable breakdown anywhere near anyone else or more rumours about my unstableness will spread. When I can barely see OWCA in the distance, I stop.
The pain in my stomach finally becomes so great that I throw up, twice. After I'm done, I collapse on my side, twitching in pain, feeling the scratchy grass beneath my fur. I convulse over and over again, my whole body wracked with pain. I feel like my nerves are on fire. I don't know what's causing such horrible pain but all I can do is endure it.
The pain lasts for what seems like hours, but is really only about ten minutes. During that time, I am sobbing uncontrollably, and not just from my physical pain.
When it finally stops, I don't get up. I simply lie in the field, in the scratchy grass, and wish things were different.
I wish I was dead.
I could do it. I could lift myself two hundred feet in the air and let myself fall. I could levitate something heavy over myself and drop it on my head. I have almost endless possibilities, almost endless ways of ending the pain. Both the physical pain and the psychological pain.
But I don't. I can't. It would absolutely destroy my family and Anke, and I can't do that to them.
So I simply lie in the cold field and wait for somebody to realise I'm missing and come for me.
But nobody does.
…
*cries* man, I'm good at writing the depressing stuff. Don't worry, I will always give you guys some warning if I'm going to include more stuff about suicide, though there will be NO self-harm at all. No mentions, no appearances. That's a promise.
Also: what is this mysterious pain that Hermes experienced? It does have a purpose; I didn't just decided to torture Hermes (though it is fun writing about pain. Man, that's even more depressing. And harsh).
