cascade | kotlc

11. Breaking Faye

tw: injury

Biana sat in the locked room wearily, leaning her back against the metal door. The huge built-in padlock spun and she held her hand up, stopping the mechanism to no avail.

Faye buried her head in her hands.

"Fuck."

Biana huffed, holding in her desperation and draining energy from Calla's ring, trying to keep her hopes up, but she just really couldn't. They were trapped a couple thousand feet within a fucking mountain, trapped behind solid metal walls at least several meters thick.

"Why'd you do that? You should've known not to press the giant red button with strange runes atop."

Faye stood up shakily, a hand pressed to the wall. Lightning flickered, losing its prideful glow, merely flashing some bare white.

"I didn't fucking know it would be this bad. I don't know everything about this room. I don't know that much about runes," Faye screamed, shaking her head furiously and slamming it against the wall. "It's not my fucking fault. I've been leading you through this FUCKING PLACE for HOURS ON END, I can't do everything right, it's practically impossible, half of what I've done is just guesswork! You try going through the fucking place yourself—"

"That's the stupidest mistake you could've ever made," Biana groaned. "You could've messed up on so many other points, but nooo, you had to press the button that got us all trapped."

"It's not my fucking fault!" Faye sobbed. "It's not my fucking fault. No, it's not MY FUCKING FAULT! I tried, okay? I tried to do it. Because I thought I could, and I would have been able to."

"You could've let me help," Biana whispered, brushing her hair out of her face and feeling traitorous tears. "You could've let June help. You could've let literally everyone else help. But you didn't. You let your fucking vanity get in the way of our mission."

"But then you'd get all the fucking credit! June would have gotten all the fucking credit, everyone else would've gotten the credit, and I would've been forgotten. Again. You think life is so simple because you don't have to earn your credit. You're a fucking Vacker. Tell me, have you ever heard of the last name Kiara before? That's right. I'm a nobody. I'm the first in our family to have ever manifested, EVER. I have to carve out my own fucking path. I don't get everything handed to me on a silver platter. Nobody remembers me."

Thunder roared, shaking the room as if an earthquake passed through. Biana shook, her hands spasming against the wall and slumping down. Blood trickled down her wrist and she stared at it. Another flash of violent light, lighting up the projected screen on the other corner. They'd gotten the information. They'd been so close, and Faye...

"I'm... what... what do you want me to do about that?"

"I don't know. I really don't know anymore."

Biana looked up.

A single tear trickled down Faye's face.

Out of ALL the people she knew... Faye was the least likely to cry. Or so she thought. Biana had nearly KILLED Faye, and she didn't bat an eyelash. She'd been ALONE when they'd seen her, she'd done EVERYTHING alone, but she still maintained that gigglish personality that was never really her.

"You bitch," muttered Biana. "You actual fucking bitch. You could've told us, we could've helped. You've just been lying to us this entire time."