47. Recovery – Funeral for a Friend

Mai had always thought rape victims who turned the shower so hot they scalded themselves were the fabrication of books and media. No way would anyone do something so symbolically cliché in real life.

I guess I really am just one big cliché, she thought the night after Battle City, squashed up at one end of the tub with blistering water pelting her hair flat to her head. Her skin was red and her scalp hurt, but she didn't get up or turn the temperature down.

She couldn't go out for days because her skin stayed raw. Eventually she had to visit a doctor, who gave her a salve and looked at her askance when she said she'd had an electrical fault with the hot water gauge.

And she had. Multiple times. The only difference between reality and her story was that the electrical fault was between the neurons in her brain, that kept firing off and making her reach to burn away another layer of skin whenever she bathed.

She tried baths, but that was no use. She couldn't walk for a week on her blistered feet, and when she finally did go out she limped along in sneakers instead of her preferred heels. Heels made her feel elegant but strong – a woman in control of her own destiny. She wondered whether she could've brought herself to wear them even if she hadn't damaged her feet. When her soles were healed enough she spent an entire hour staring at her favourite pair of purple boots, and another hour easing her feet into them. Sitting on the bed in unzipped boots, she felt anything but strong.

By the time she entered her next tournament she was settling for an all-over body wash out of a bowl of lukewarm water to make sure she didn't hurt herself. Her resolve always lasted until she actually got near a dial or faucet she could keep twisting until it couldn't go any further. She felt like a freak in her lavish apartment, washing like she couldn't afford modern luxuries, but it was safer that way.

It didn't make her feel any more in control, though. If anything, it made her feel like her grip on her own life was slipping away from her with each passing day. She couldn't face other people, or at least not those she knew – not even when the swellings and redness went down and she started wearing heels and short skirts regularly again. She felt like her failure to be true to herself would be smeared across her face in thick black marker pen, easily readable and impossible to wash off with just a bowl of lukewarm water. Strangers mocking her behind her back at the tournament just made her feel worse, and when she looked at her glass trophy her mind leaped to the next stage of that dangerous spiral. She threw it away from her, smashing it on the ground and leaving the horribly tempting shards behind.

Valon and Dartz offered a release from her demons, and not just the ones with spiky hair and multiple personalities. When Dartz touched her forehead and the power of the Oricalchos infused her, Mai's mind was clear for the first time in months. She strode away from him, focussed and grateful and in control.

That night she had a shower and didn't touch the temperature dial once. The next morning she dressed in heels without hesitation and strode down to the waiting set of motorcycles. There was one without a rider, with a purple crash helmet hanging off the handle. She threw her leg over the saddle and slipped on the helmet, feeling every inch the elegant, strong woman she was always supposed to be.

"You feeling better?" Valon asked.

"She got the juice, didn't she?" Amelda said irritably, obviously eager to be off and not sitting around playing chitchat.

"The Oricalchos purifies us," Raphael said in that serious gravelly voice of his. "It cleanses us of the sins that tarnish the rest of humanity."

"Melodramatic idiot," Valon muttered, shooting Mai a grin and roll of his eyes as he gunned his motorcycle's engine.

But Mai shook her head. Raphael was right. The Oricalchos had crystallised her thoughts, un-muddying the waters of her mind and letting her see what was really going on in ways she'd never been able to before. But it had done more than that, even though just thinking it made her feel like a giant cliché all over again.

It'd made her feel clean