HEART FLAYER | b. hargrove

CHAPTER 010.

January 8th, 1985

Arwen sat on the hood of her car the next morning after she'd parked at school. She'd been fighting her heavy eyelids as she wrote down the pronunciations for certain words in Billy's lines for their project. He'd done pretty well learning them yesterday, but she figured it wouldn't hurt to make him a cheat sheet. She finished it up and yawned, stretching her arms above her head as she saw the Camaro pull in. El - who'd been sitting next to her and reading - waved bye to her sister and jogged off to meet up with Max to walk to the school like they always did.

She watched Billy as he stepped out of his car, but it appeared as if he was doing everything in his power to avoid looking in her direction. He stared off at nothing as he lit a cigarette and took a drag, blowing the smoke into the chilly air. When he turned to walk towards the school, she noticed it; a smattering of purple and yellow around his eye. Arwen's teeth gritted together and she felt a violent anger start pumping through her veins along with a sharp pang of guilt. Not only did she feel horrible for him, - and pissed at his shitty father - she couldn't help but feel as if him getting hurt last night was partially her fault. Maybe if she'd just backed down and tried to be polite towards his dad then he wouldn't have hit Billy. 

But the logical part of her knew that likely wasn't true. That man was a piece of shit and probably would've found any excuse under the sun to take his poor life choices out on his child. 

And Arwen refused to let that bullshit continue.

The entire rest of the school day, she quietly went through ideas in her head and tried to calculate the best course of action. Her friends would occasionally question her on if she was alright, but she'd just assured them that she was merely tired. Which wasn't a lie. She'd had quite the restless night between her regularly scheduled nightmares and her mixture of anger and worry for Billy. It felt odd to her to care in any way about that asshole to be honest. But no matter what, no kid deserved to be treated that way by a parent. And Hell, that had to be a pretty big factor as to why Billy was the way he was. 

Her heart and mind were set on helping him. Especially as she sat in English class at the end of the day and she observed as he still avoided looking anywhere near her. They didn't speak a word to each other even when Arwen passed him the paper with the pronunciations on it. They just used their class time to silently memorize their own lines. Well, she was actually doodling little flames and flowers on the corner of her page and zoning out about how to torture Billy's dad, but still. 

When class ended, Arwen was out of the door ahead of anyone else and speed walking to her car. Her eyes scanned the crowd of middle schoolers who'd also just gotten out until they landed on her target. Max and El were walking over, giggling like young teen girls do. 

"Hey, Max!" Arwen waved her over. "Can I ask you something real fast?"

"Hey, Arwen," Max approached with a smile. "What's up?"

"Where does your stepdad work?"

Max looked at her with confusion written all over her face and she shared a brief glance with El before finally responding. "Um, he's a security guard at the bank downtown. Why..?"

"Thanks! That's all I needed to know," Arwen interrupted her with an overly friendly grin and patted the red-haired girl on the head before turning towards her car. "Let's go, El!"

Eleven tried to further question her older sister about it on the car ride home, but she'd just played it off as she was simply curious. She dropped El off at home with the excuse that she had to go over to Robin's house to pick up something she'd left there. But in reality, she drove to downtown Hawkins and looked around for the bank. It was a small town so it wasn't too hard to find and she parked her car in the very back corner of the parking lot and out of sight. After that, it was just a matter of waiting. 

She held her lighter in one hand, flicking it open and closed and holding 'The Hobbit' in the other hand. She'd gotten pretty deep into her reread of the book and the sun was very nearly finished setting when finally the employees of the bank started to exit the building and leave in their cars. The last person to come out, of course, was the security guard. 

Her eyes landed on the man's back that was turned to her as he fiddled with the locks on the back door of the bank. She approached him slowly with silent footfalls. Before he could turn around or catch sight of her, she focused her powers on him to hold him in place. The man realized that he couldn't move at all. He couldn't even turn his head to look behind him at the threatening presence that he suddenly felt and goosebumps visibly raised on his neck. 

"What the -" he stammered, trying to fight against the strange outside force. "Who's there?!"

Suddenly, a circle of flames erupted from the ground and surrounded him. They weren't quite close enough to hurt him but definitely enough to strike fear into him. 

"Hello, asshole." Arwen said lowly. 

"What the fuck?!" He shouted, still struggling against her powers with confusion and fear in his voice as he saw the fire around him. He knew the voice was familiar, however couldn't exactly place where it was from. He'd only met Arwen once and very briefly, mind you, so he could only speculate. "What do you want?!" 

"I came to give a warning," she said from behind him. Her eyes practically glowed with rage and fire. "That if you ever... and I really do mean ever... lay a hand on either of your children again..."

With a slight tilt of her head, the flames began to inch closer to him. They licked at his legs, hands, and forearms as they grew higher. He wanted to flinch away from them, but he was locked in place. Paralyzed. Blood started to drip down from Arwen's nose and off her chin. She couldn't do this for too much longer... using both the telekinesis and pyrokinesis on him was draining her rapidly. 

"I will find you. And I will melt you slowly until you are begging for death. I'll watch your flesh slide off of you." The flames grew. Very small holes burned into his clothes. "And the last thing you will ever experience is the smell of your own cooking body and the feeling of your organs burning up."

The man's breathing was rapid and heavy. Arwen felt a flicker of satisfaction at that.

"Are you the Devil?!" 

"You will fucking wish you were dealing with the Devil instead of me if I ever so much as see a scratch on Billy or Max. Am I clear?"

"Why -"

"AM I FUCKING CLEAR?"

Her voice echoed off of the empty and quiet parking lot and the fire moved even closer to him, growing even taller now to where they could reach the man's shoulders. She had to get through to him right now... she didn't know how much longer she could maintain this and not accidentally kill him. 

"Yes! Yes! I understand!"

"Good. I'll be watching."

The flames disappeared in the blink of an eye. Arwen continued to hold him in place, however, until she had gotten into her car and out of his sight. Once she released him, she could see him glance around frantically with wide eyes. His stupid mustache trembled and she laughed lightly to herself. She pulled her car out of the back exit of the bank's lot and made her way home. 

After arriving at her house's driveway, she pulled down her car mirror to carefully wipe off any trace of blood from her nose, lips, and chin. Nobody could know about this. If they did and it got out, who knows what would happen to her. She took a quick glance at herself to make sure she appeared as normal as possible before getting out and going inside.

"Where the Hell have you been?" Hopper asked from the small kitchen table as he and El peered at her. "And why do you smell like smoke?"

Fuck.

"I was smoking crack under a bridge." Arwen answered with a sarcastic grin. 

Her dad just sighed heavily at the answer, but he evidently decided that it would be easier to just let it go. So he pulled out her chair for her and gestured to her food waiting on the table. Arwen happily sat down with her dad and sister, casually making conversation about their day as if she hadn't just instilled the fear of God into a man just thirty minutes prior.