Chapter 12: Breaking Point
The sun was starting to set as Lash and Layla walked through the picturesque suburbs of Maxville. Large houses with picket fences and neatly trimmed lawns stretched out ad infinitum. It was the domain of white-collar professionals, very much like where Lash himself lived. Layla waved enthusiastically at an elderly lady who was watering her garden and Lash nudged her sharply in the ribs. The old lady gave them both a dubious look before turning back into her house.
"Ouch! What was that for?" Layla complained.
Lash glowered at her. "This may have escaped your notice, hippie, but I don't think your neighbours are going to recognise you right now."
"Jeez, I was only being friendly…" Layla said huffily as she rubbed her side.
A creature resembling a moth-eaten ginger rug on four spindly legs emerged from a carefully clipped privet hedge and began to sinuously wind itself around Layla's ankles.
"Ugh!" Lash cried out in disgust. "What the hell is that thing?"
Layla gave a squeal of joy. "Horace! Do you recognise me?"
She lifted up the ginger tom, which was either purring or dying of emphysema. Lash found it difficult to tell.
"Oh, Horace!" Layla said, cuddling the cat close. "I've missed you too!"
"Don't put it near my face!" Lash warned. "Don't kiss it!"
Layla ignored Lash's pleas and planted a kiss on the tomcat's patchy head.
"Oh great, well thanks a lot," he grumbled. "I've probably contracted some hideous cat-related illness now."
Layla stroked Horace's ears and the horrible noise he was making increased in volume.
"I guess you're more of a dog fan, eh?"
"What's not to love about cats? They cough up rank hairballs and ignore you unless they want feeding. And that one just looks diseased."
Layla tutted and Lash rolled his eyes. Why do I get the feeling that she's gonna say something about how she likes all animals?
"All animals deserve equal respect. And just because Horace isn't the prettiest kitty in the world doesn't make him any less special."
"Oh, wouldn't it just be so nice if everyone was just nice to one another?" Lash said in a singsong voice.
"Well, yeah. It would be," she said seriously. She put Horace down on the sidewalk, patting him before he ambled off happily down the street.
"Has anyone ever told you that you're retch-makingly sweet?" asked Lash nastily as they continued to walk. "I mean, I can actually feel my teeth dissolving as we speak. It's just sickening."
Layla simply smiled an infuriating smile. "Oh yeah, Maj tells me that all the time."
The girl was surprisingly thicker-skinned than Peace when it came to taking insults, Lash thought. Man, she was really irritating. Perpetually cheerful and ever so nice. She was probably even more annoying than Stronghold, if such a thing could be possible.
As they turned a corner, they bumped into a figure who was familiar to both of them - a short boy whose posture was being hampered by the voluminous books he was carrying under his left arm.
"Ethan!" Layla beamed brightly. "You're out of hospital! How are you?"
Ethan looked at Layla warily, but seemed to relax a little when he saw Lash standing next to her. He still didn't seem quite himself, Layla thought, but at least he was up and about, even if he was a little on the jittery side. Then she appreciated how weird this must have seemed to him, seeing Warren and Lash together with the latter enquiring about his health.
Ethan narrowed his eyes from behind his thick glasses. "Fine. No thanks to you and Speed that is." He turned to Lash and added in a friendlier manner, "How's things, Warren?
"Um, you know. Same old stuff… um…" Lash scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. This unexpected encounter was making him feel strangely guilty. "So… when are you coming back to school?"
Ethan sighed. "The doctors say I should be OK next week. Man, I am going up the wall without schoolwork! I asked Maj to bring me her notes on all the things I've been missing, but she refused. Said it was one of the perks of having a sicknote. I didn't even bother asking Zach."
Layla laughed. "Yeah, when he concentrates long enough to stop doodling in the margins, his writing's like a conga-line of drunken spiders."
Ethan arched an eyebrow at this remark.
"Uh… so I've heard."
It took an immense amount of willpower to stop Lash hitting his face with the palm of his hand. The girl was a dreadful liar.
"What's going on," Ethan said, scrutinizing Layla and Lash sceptically. "Since when did you two start hanging out?"
"We're working on a Hero Studies project together," Lash replied smoothly.
"Rrright…"
Layla frowned. Ethan was smart. The only other person at Sky High with a higher IQ was Joey Mazzitelli, the creepy psychic kid who was rumoured to have two brains. But it didn't need a Mad Genius to figure out that there was something seriously wrong with this picture. Layla quickly thought up a diversion to throw Ethan off the scent.
"Er… Ethan, I want to apologise for what happened to you."
"What?" Ethan and Lash said in unison. Too late, Layla realised that Lash apologising may not quite have the desired effect of diminishing Ethan's suspicions, but decided that now she had set this ball in motion, it was probably best to plough ahead regardless.
"Yeah… I didn't mean for it to get so out of hand. You could have been seriously injured. I'm sorry." Layla held out her hand to Ethan.
Lash inwardly fumed. That interfering… How dare she apologise on his behalf? OK, so maybe she was right. He was sorry. He didn't mean for Ethan to get really hurt. But he would never say it!
Ethan stared at Layla's proffered hand, clearly wondering if it was some sort of trick. After a minute or so, he tentatively shook it.
"OK, apology accepted."
When Ethan had said goodbye to Warren and disappeared out of sight, Lash made a noise that sounded like a cross between a groan and a growl.
"I cannot believe you just did that!"
"What?" Layla smiled innocently.
"Apologise for me!"
"Oh, do you really expect me to believe that you wanted Ethan to die? You're a complete and utter dick, Lash, but you're not pure, unadulterated evil! So, my guess is that you do feel at least a degree of remorse for the incident."
Lash didn't respond. It was a peculiar feeling, wanting to smack the superior grin off his own face.
"Admit it, it felt good to apologise."
"Shut up."
"Ooh, witty comeback. Move away from the dark side, Lash. It's not too late, you know."
Layla was still smiling smugly and Lash was still sulking when they entered the bustling diner. Layla got an apple juice and a muffin, Lash ordered a steak burger with fries, partly because he liked steak and he was ravenous, but mostly to piss Layla off. With no small amount of satisfaction, he noted how she flinched when he requested it rare. As he tucked into the burger, he hoped that she would make a comment about animal cruelty so he could say something derogatory about vegetarianism. But she avoided that conversation topic.
"So, how are you finding it as Warren Peace?" Layla asked, looking Lash in the eye, resolutely ignoring the offending meat-based snack.
Lash decided not to tell her about how he was planning to amuse himself with Warren and Layla's ex.
"Unfortunately, it involves socialising regularly with Stronghold and Peace's mom is just plain odd."
"How do you mean?"
As Lash explained Mrs Peace's unusual behaviour, he found that Layla Williams was a good listener. This was a rarer talent than it may initially first sound. In general conversation, most people don't actually listen to what the other person is saying; they're too busy thinking about what they're going to say next. But Layla really listened. She made you feel like you were one of the most interesting people she had ever spoken to.
Layla rubbed her chin pensively. "Hm. It sounds like Mrs Peace is depressed."
"Well thanks for that insight, Captain Obvious."
"I don't mean depressed in the sense of 'being a little sad'," she hit back, a little impatiently. "I mean full-on clinical depression. It's a medical condition."
"I'm not surprised, though," Layla continued after taking a sip of apple juice. "She's been through a lot. It's got to be pretty tough bringing up a kid by yourself at the best of times. Wondering if you're making the right decisions, having no-one to support you when things get hard, trying to compensate for the missing parent…"
Lash sighed and stabbed his fries with a fork. Clearly she was trying to make a point about him and his dad. Why didn't she just come out and say it?
"…But when you throw in the stigma of being married to a villain into the mix…" Layla absent-mindedly bit a fingernail, then remembered it was Lash's nail she was nibbling and quickly stopped.
"I wonder if Warren's told her that she needs to see a doctor?" she said quietly, half to herself. "He doesn't talk about his mom. Maybe Will knows…"
"As interesting as this is," Lash interrupted. "You seem to forget that I don't actually care."
Layla shook her head disapprovingly at him. "We can only be there for people that need us, Lash. Sometimes it's enough that people know they're not alone."
Again, why did Lash sense that Layla wasn't just referring to Warren's mother?
"You know, if the hero thing doesn't work out for you, maybe you should go for a career in daytime chat shows. Or write cheesy self-help books."
"Whatever," Layla said with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "But you know deep down that I'm right."
A blonde girl wearing a tartan miniskirt that accentuated her long, lithe legs sauntered over to them. Layla thought she actually heard Lash's jaw thud onto the table.
"Sorry to butt in, boys, but me and my friend Elissa over there…" she said as she pointed to another blonde a couple of tables away, who was giggling uncontrollably "…think that you are, like, both so totally hott." Layla wondered how she managed to verbalise the superfluous 't' in 'hott'. "And Elissa was like, 'Ohmigod, Morgan, you should totally go over and get their numbers and stuff,' so here I, like, am."
She smiled and tossed her platinum locks coquettishly. Then tried to subtly remove the strands of hair that had got stuck to her heavily glossed lips.
"Well, I'm sorry," said Layla frostily. "But I'm afraid I don't know what my number, like, is."
The girl's eyes widened in surprise. Layla guessed that guys didn't turn down her obvious charms very often.
"Hmph," she snorted, haughtily throwing her head back. "Well, it's your loss."
"It sure is," muttered Lash longingly as the two blondes cast them disappointed glances before flouncing out of the diner.
"Bimbos," Layla said under her breath as she shook her head.
"You just didn't like them 'cause they're pretty."
"No, I didn't like them because, y'know, they're, like, so totally, like, moronic bimbos," said Layla, affecting an airhead tone. "I mean, do you have a problem with intelligent women or something?"
"No… if they're hot. It's just the ugly ones I have a problem with."
"How refreshingly superficial of you."
"You better get used to all this attention from the lay-deez," Lash said as he flashed a movie-star smile at a waitress clearing the table next to them, who promptly turned bright red and dropped her tray. "They just can't get enough of Lash Langford."
One of Warren's more endearing traits was that he had no idea how devastatingly gorgeous he was, Layla thought. Whereas Lash's over-inflated ego was the size of Alaska. It was deeply unattractive.
"Oh, really? Funny, because that's the first time I've been hit on while I've been in your body… Not that I'm complaining, mind you," she added hurriedly.
"How do you know those two were bimbos anyway?" asked Lash, raising an eyebrow.
Layla ignored him and bit into her muffin.
"Seems like Little Miss Perfect's making assumptions about people she doesn't even know."
Layla wasn't sure what was more annoying; Lash's full of himself attitude or the fact that he was right. She was being a hypocrite. But she was damned if she was going to tell him that.
"Shut up."
Lash laughed. "Who's dishing out the witty comebacks now?"
Warren's apartment was located in one of the less salubrious areas of the city. After a week of living in the neighbourhood, Lash had grown used to the night-time cacophony of sirens, barking dogs, alarms and raised voices, hardly noticing them as he made his way back to the apartment.
It was weird; today of all days was the first time he'd laughed properly since the mindswap. His mom's birthday was always a difficult time. He hated going to the hospital, seeing her lying there, not quite dead but not quite alive. And he hated himself for feeling that way.
Had it really been nine years ago when the Delta Division fought against Maximum Kaos? When his mother sustained the head injury that put her in what the doctors said was a persistent vegetative state? He'd never forget seeing her in the hospital for the first time. How he asked his dad when she was going to wake up. How his mom had gasped and opened her eyes, Mr Langford explaining to his eight-year-old son that this didn't mean she was really awake. That she would never really wake up again. How he, Stewart and his dad sat around his mom's bed silently, not crying, not speaking. Some things were beyond words, beyond tears.
Nine years, Lash thought as he went up the stairs in Warren's apartment block. He groaned as he accidentally trod on a cockroach, stopping briefly to scrape the sole of his boot on the side of a step. Nine years… That meant that he'd known his mom longer like this than when she was normal. He shook his head and tangled his fingers through Warren's long hair. It never helped to think like this. It was easier to dismiss it, to carry on. What else could he do? He couldn't change anything. But somehow it did make him feel a little better that someone else knew the truth. And as much as it pained him to concede it, maybe Layla was right, maybe he did give his dad too hard a time. After all, what had happened wasn't his fault.
He opened the front door to Warren's apartment and flicked on the light, nearly jumping out of his skin when he saw that Mrs Peace was sitting at the dining table. She had her back to Lash and didn't look up or make a sound. Had she been sitting there in the dark? Weird. Lash walked over to her. She was staring impassively at a small bottle in her hand. Her head shot up at Lash's approach, as if she had only just realised he had entered the room. The bottle fell from her fingers, rattling as it rolled across the tabletop and spun onto the frayed carpet.
"Warren…" she breathed, her eyes large and shining. "This isn't… I wasn't…"
Lash's brows knitted. What was she doing? No…
"What…" Lash couldn't finish the sentence. He was way out of his depth here. As much as he disliked Warren, he did not want to get involved in this.
"Oh God, I promise you I wouldn't have actually… I just… Sometimes, I just don't know what to do, Warren… I just don't know…" Mrs Peace's voice cracked. She hid her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. As she cried bitter, racking sobs, Lash stood there at a complete loss as to what to say and do next. With no other ideas forthcoming, he did the only thing he could think of. He put an arm around Mrs Peace's shoulders, surprised how small and fragile she felt under Warren's muscular frame.
She turned her face onto his chest as she continued to cry. This carried on for several minutes. Lash could feel Warren's t-shirt growing damp with Mrs Peace's tears.
"I don't think I can cope anymore, Warren. I really don't. When your father was put in prison, I managed because I had to. You were so young and so angry. I had to be strong for you, so I just buried all of that pain and got on with things. But the fact is… even now… even though no-one else can understand this… I still love your father."
Mrs Peace's hands trembled as she plucked a tissue from a box by her elbow. Lash sat down next to her on one of the well-worn dining chairs. He had never seen someone completely breakdown before, it was unnerving.
"That's why I never divorced him, even though that made everyone even more suspicious of me."
She paused as she pressed the tissue to her streaming eyes, plainly attempting to pull herself together.
"I feel like I've failed him, Warren. Was it something I had done or didn't do that pushed him over the edge? These thoughts plague me all the time… But it seems worse at night…"
In the several days he had lived with her, Lash never heard Mrs Peace say so much at once. It was as if some sort of dam had been broken and all these pent-up words were flooding out.
"He wasn't always a monster." Mrs Peace reached for the photograph album in cherry red leather that sat at the middle of the table and leafed through the pages. She showed Lash a photo of herself and Barron Battle, a small nose poking out from under a wad of blankets in Barron Battle's arms. Mrs Peace looked exhausted as she leaned into her husband, but her smile had the radiant serenity of a new mother. Barron Battle wasn't looking at the camera; he only had eyes for the bundle he was carrying.
"When you were born, he said he was so proud he thought he would burst. I remember the first time he held you… He kept telling the nurses there was something wrong, that you wouldn't stop shaking. But when the nurses held you, you were fine. Then we realised it was your dad who was shaking."
Mrs Peace laughed at the memory. For a brief moment, it was as if a shadow had fallen from her face. She almost looked young again.
"I can still see him now. Six foot five, one of the most powerful pyrokinetics on record, but a newborn baby had reduced him to a quivering wreck."
The shadow covered Mrs Peace's face once more.
"Knowing how loving he could be, I can't believe that the man I knew has completely gone…"
Mrs Peace closed the photo album and held onto Lash's hand with small, chilly fingers. He really didn't want to be drawn into this. It was none of his business. But he didn't have much choice. He couldn't leave Mrs Peace when she was like this. She looked so vulnerable, so scared…
She gripped his hand harder as she choked back the sobs. "I feel like I've fallen into a dark hole and I can't find my way out. But what scares me the most is that I think I'm dragging you down with me. You deserve so much better than this, Warren."
Before she was overwhelmed by tears again, she managed to gulp, "I'm so sorry…"
Up until this point, Lash hadn't needed to say anything. But it was clear he had to now. Layla seemed like the sort of person that would know the right thing to say at a time like this. But what was it?
"Mom, I really think you need to see a doctor. You can get help for this… for how you're feeling."
Lash thought that Mrs Peace's tears had abated a little at that, but it wasn't quite enough.
"We'll get through this together. Remember, you're not alone. You've got me."
Lash wasn't sure where that came from. He gritted his teeth and hoped that cheesy hippie philosophy wasn't contagious.
"Oh sweetheart, you're right…" Mrs Peace was still crying, but now she had managed to smile. "…I'm so lucky to have you…"
Seeing Horace earlier had made Layla desperately homesick. She decided to make a little detour past her house before returning to the Langfords' after she left the diner.
Layla pondered as she walked along the familiar streets. She had no idea about Lash's mom. That was the sort of detail they tended to skip over in the lessons at Sky High. It was all about the greater good and the glory, personal loss wasn't really examined. Typical. She had been right about that place all along, it was so fascist, a super-powered brainwashing facility. She was glad that she remained in the hero support track, much to Principal Powers' chagrin. It was all about choice. Her choice. Oh, she had plans about how she was going to bring the whole system down. She was going to prove that there was no difference between a hero and a sidekick and show them all…
Layla noticed that her mom's car was on the driveway. She was back from Mexico already? Layla wondered how the dolphin training went. How Bonnie and her dad were. She really missed all of them. Then a sight made her stop in her tracks.
Will and Warren. They were hugging on the Williams' front door step. Warren's head was nestled against Will's chest as Will idly stroked Warren's hair – her hair. It seemed to be a rather long hug. What was Warren doing?
Layla didn't get angry often, but as realisation dawned, she felt her face burning.
How could she have been so blind?
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A/N
Thanks for the reviews everyone!
So many questions… Will they ever get their bodies back? Who will end up with who? You'll have to read the next and final instalment to find out! As for the question re. Warren's feelings being influenced by the fact that he's in Layla's body, I will only say this – re-read the summary and the disclaimer… :)
Oh, and although Lash shows his sensitive side in this chapter, he's up to no good next time…
Stay tuned...
AzulTigress