Golden Thorns: Chapter Ten
He punched the wall. Again and again. He no longer felt any pain, nor the blood running down his arm. He continued punching.
Coran had found a small room and shut himself in. he had then proceeded to let rip with all of the feelings that had been building up inside of him for four years. He had destroyed anything within arm's reach, broken the chair, smashed the lamp, plunging the room into darknees and once there was nothing left he had started punching the wall. He did not know how long he had been in here but he had kept going until now. He was weak, had no energy left. Slowly he fell sideways, hit the ground and let the tears fall. He could not remember the last time he had cried but he no longer cared.
What felt like long hours and short seconds later, the door opened. A beam of bright light shone into the dark room across Coran's face, blinding him. He closed his eyes. What happened next didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
The silhouette was too short to be any of the teachers. A student then. Some moron had heard the violence coming from the room and thought it would be funny to watch. "Hey, Coran." Said a husky, sibilant voice. "May I come in?" Coran didn't answer. He could no longer muster the will to speak. The figure entered and crouched in the corner opposite where he was lying. Closing the door behind them. They stayed very still and quiet.
"You know, I was really glad when they made you the leader of our team." What? This was one of his team mates? The voice was male so it had to be the lizard Faunus. He didn't remember his name. He didn't remember very much right then.
"You were so assertive, so in control that I thought that there was no way we could lose with you at our head. Man, was I wrong. You're just as messed up as the rest of us." He gave a little chuckle. "I remember when we first met, on the boat when you tripped me up. I thought you were just another bully waiting to make my life miserable. But when I saw the surprise in your face when you looked at me I knew you didn't mean me any harm because of my skin." Coran opened his eyes. He remembered a name. Sure enough there was Devlyn Lazarus crouching, using his tail to balance. "As a younger kid I didn't look like this. Not scaly at least. I did have very rough skin though. I didn't start going all scaly till I was about five. My family home caught fire and I was badly burned. As the firefighters carried me to safety one of the gas mains blew and my leg was all mangled." He went quiet for a moment. "When I woke up it was three days later. The doctors had said that they were about to give me a skin graft when one of the nurses noticed that the burns were already scabbed over and healing. Another week and they were gone and in their place were scales. Within two weeks of the fire my leg had grown back and I had the worst case of dandruff in history. Another week passed and I was even starting to grow the tail. This is when the bullying started. My life after that was pretty boring. Until I was tripped up and sent flat on my face. And again in the barn when Cardin was kicking me and it suddenly stopped." At this point he stood. "Come back, Coran, your friends are worried about you." He turned and started walking. "Or if not at least get those hands looked at. You've made a right mess of yourself. You look worse than me." He opened the door with a chuckle. "What, you waiting for a fanfare? Get up! You have classes to catch up on."
He stepped over to Coran and tried to lift him. "Geez dude, you're really not making this easy for me. Come on cut a guy a break." Coran slowly got his feet under him and pushed up. He stood, leaning on Dev for balance. "There we go. Now let's go hide from Ozpin before he finds out that you wrecked one of his rooms." Even in his physically and emotionally shattered state, Coran felt the corners of his mouth twitch.