Supernova

Chapter Thirty - Smoke and Mirrors

Once my initial uneasiness had dissipated, King and Queen quickly became my favourite game, dethroning even Deathmatch. It always started with one of us, usually Elias, placing the diadem on my head. Lines were getting even blurrier. We were spending a lot of our time in front of the mirror, and I started watching the sapphires and the irises that mimicked them almost more than I watched my own face through my blurred vision. The matches ended when one of us, usually me, succumbed to the other and called them by God or Angel instead. We both understood that there was only one real ending to this game, and most of the fun came from dancing around who was going to be the one to end it for good.

He even started teaching me Swedish, his first language, as we held hands and ate our meals at the bar. I was as hungry to learn it as I had been about combat training or sign language. Like I needed it to survive. I was drunk on my daydreams of meeting his family, in the diadem, once it actually rested on my head outside of the game, speaking their native language to them with perfect mastery, and teaching it to our impressive indestructible paralytic children. I didn't voice any of those daydreams, but the way he looked at me when I returned to the real world from them, it was as if he knew.

That game existed solely in private, but that's not to say that our public relationship didn't change as well. His body had well adapted to house his quirk, so we didn't need to spend as much time in recalibration in our private gym. I was thrilled to finally be able to try skating, ballet, tennis, rhythmic gymnastics, horseback riding, and everything else that the extensive training gyms had to offer. We even ran around the acid pits and simulated bombings and rockslides. I liked trying new training activities with Elias, because he was clumsy and shaky without me, and although I always came to his rescue, I enjoyed feeling like I had the upper hand. Other pairs, who were becoming less wary of Elias, even started asking me if we'd like to play them in basketball or water polo, but out of my own selfishness, I always refused them.

Unless, of course, it was Demon and Needles. The four of us started spending a lot more time together. Elias tried his hand at target practice with Needles, which he was terrible at. Demon and I sparred one-on-one a lot, which many of the other pairs found very entertaining, given our size difference and the fact that he never stood a chance against me. Needles and I played our own private game, a game of a very twisted kindness, in which I would respond to Elias' and Demon's shared glances by grabbing at and praising Elias, which only served to make Demon scoff and pull Needles into him, entirely unaware of the crafty satisfaction in his sidekick's eyes. It made me feel like a hero again, the way I once felt about helping Esme, but better, because Needles wasn't actively screwing me over. Moreover, Demon knew the Angel title was a direct insult to him, and Elias was handing me everything I'd ever wanted without my even having to ask, let alone beg. Every bird, one stone.

We didn't spend as much time on recalibration, but that's not to say we didn't spend any time at all on it, and we still needed Demon for that. After getting back from that first tour, even with the games being played, things seemed very dicey and blurry between the three of us from where I stood. Elias' touch was continuing to intensify for me, but it was having the opposite effect on Demon, and I was seeing his eyes flare a lot more. It triggered a mixture of emotions in me, this oncoming trainwreck I could only watch but not prevent. Elias was gaining control and overall quality of life, and that was great and all, sure, but in that, both of them were suddenly and unknowingly holding a knife to Needles' back, and I was the one who was ultimately going to be responsible if it got pushed in.

In addition to still being stupidly and hopelessly in love with Demon, I was also still sleeping with him, hoping that between Needles and myself and the other random students I caught glimpses of him with, it was keeping him satisfied and distracted enough to leave Elias the hell alone. Even in the thick smoke of my denial, however, I knew better than that, and I eventually broke.