Supernova

Chapter Thirty One - Exceptions Do Exist

Everything was red. The splashes, my hands, the forest floor beneath my face, and the seething rage filling my veins at my own immobility. I heard explosions continue, less frantically and more deliberate, thank God, as Demon must have released Bakugo to rush heavily to my side. As I saw the ground start to be lifted away from me, I closed my eyes in yet even more shame. More splashing came, and I tried to focus on the sound of that fragility laced liquid so that I didn't have to hear the worried protests, the uncertainty, the shoving, the movement, and the shifting of bodies, both theirs, and mine in the grip it found itself in.

"Leave her be," Elias instructed, his voice having to travel some distance to reach me. Given the blood, I supposed this should have come as no surprise.

"Fuck you, you lying piece of shit!" Demon's rageful roaring I heard close to my ear was a strange type of comforting I'd long since forgotten. "You said you checked her! You said she was fine!"

"I didn't say she was well," Elias told him back.

"Look at her!" Demon fought back.

This was fucking humiliating beyond belief. I opened my eyes, splashes still coming, falling onto the ground from where I sat in Demon's lap. Even so, I shoved density into my arms and thrashed, making my elbows and fists make contact with his skin hard enough to throw him back so I could crawl away. Which I did, continuing to spew blood the few feet I travelled, until I heard stirring, and decided the best move was to collapse and make myself so dense that not even Demon would be able to lift me. It didn't stop him from trying, hand fingers snapping and breath straining from the effort.

"You stupid bitch!" He yelled down at me. I could hear his feet hitting my sides, his frustration having taken over. "Stop being such a fucking toddler!"

"Get the fuck away from her," I heard coldly, close by. Good God, who the fuck did that voice belong to?

"What are you, some kind of idiot?" Demon yelled back. Okay, if not him then... "Look at the state she's in! I'm not fucking handing her over to you."

All I could see was the forest floor, reddening, stretching out in front of me. I closed my eyes, keeping that image of blankness in my mind, not caring to see anything more. The air filled with more screaming, suddenly incoherent in the violent symphony of explosions and hardened flesh and cracking that I desperately hoped were fallen branches and not bones. The noises were close, very close, and even through my eyelids, I could tell that the entire world around me had gone dark. When I opened my eyes, mostly to prove to myself that I could see, all that lay in my field of vision, still functional, thank God, was black and red flesh, sheltering me from everything else.

"Get the fuck away from her!" That came through clear, in Demon's voice for sure. "You're going to kill her!"

"You're going to crush her!" Bakugo yelled back.

"We're not the same!" Demon repeated himself, desperate and angry.

"Oh my," I then heard, and it was a casual conversational volume, all the way across the clearing, but even so, it came through clear as glass. "He doesn't know."

Outside of the shelter, Kiri's skin softened and he pulled himself from the fight, his voice coming from somewhere nearer to Elias than to us. "Doesn't know what?"

"Much, it seems," Elias said, his voice heavy with disappointment. Directed at me. It shouldn't of, but it ignited shame in me, just like it always did. "We ought to have a conversation. How do we calm him?"

The blood had stopped coming, but the explosions and Demon's winces in response to the sound of his flesh burning and becoming raw did not. I thought about throwing him off me, intervening, but as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I was in rough shape and one lucky hit very well might kill me. Kiri jumped in, and in Bakugo's rageful response, Shitty Hair, what the fuck? You're on their side now? I found the opening I needed to toss Demon back with my dense elbows, sending him a few feet back, placing myself in that protective spot between them, holding my hands out. Stop, I told them. Don't touch him, I would have said next, but as I looked into those red pools of confusion, all four of them, the splashing continued.