Super

17 - pt 1 - I'm A Teenager, Not A Therapist

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."

– William Blake

Lila jerked awake, screaming and shrieking and scaring the hell out of me as I desperately tried to calm her down. It didn't seem like she could hear me as she pressed her palms into her squinted-shut eyelids and rocked backwards and forwards yelling and cursing and screaming and shouting and sobbing.

Apparently Obsidian had finally unfroze her. It damn well took him long enough. Four, lonely hours I had stayed up, staring at Lila's frozen body with the terrible fear that she might never come unfrozen. Eventually, it got to the point where I was so tired that I was falling asleep standing up, all of my adrenaline having been drained as soon as IH had disappeared with the last of the supers and the last of some small hope that he was just faking it all and that he was really good after all.

"Lila, Lila what's wrong?" My eyes were wide as I frantically examined her, looking for any cause of pain. When her ear-splitting cries didn't let up, I scrambled to the bathroom, rummaging in a drawer for painkillers. Lila was still sobbing when I got back to my room, but the screaming had stopped. Now, she was crying, sounding small and vulnerable. "Lila?" I frowned, really scared now. Something was drastically wrong and it was freaking me the hell out.

Mom burst in with a baseball bat, her eyes darting back and forth as she dared danger to challenge her. Noticing Lila's snivelling, shuddering form, she relaxed her shoulders a little.

"Mommy, something's wrong," I stammered, trying to convey every worry I had to my mother. Lila was scaring me as I tried fiddling with my hair for something to do. I kept twirling it around and around my finger and yanking it tighter and tighter. If I didn't stop soon, I'd be bald by the end of the night.

Something was hurting Lila and I didn't know what it was; frankly that terrified me. I was scared my mom wouldn't understand either, but being a mother, of course she did. She tensed back up and crossed the room to Lila who was curled up on my bed, arms hugging her shins and head buried in her knees. Her brown hair fanned around her hunched shoulders as my mom tried rubbing her back.

"Lila, sweetie, what's wrong?"

"It-it's a s-super," Lila stammered, hiccupping a little from all her crying. As for me, I froze. Supers couldn't feel each other's pain. That would suck considering they probably got injured in nearly every fight. Instead, they could feel when another super was in serious danger. I'm not talking about nearly getting hit by a train or falling off a ten-storey building. That kind of thing would just trigger the nausea that every super got no matter who was in trouble. No, I'm talking about something so dark, so low, and so inhumane that supers barely ever felt the pain inflicted by it solely because it was barely ever inflicted. 

I'm talking about torture.

"Lila, who is it? Can you tell?" I was shaking now. Who was at Obsidian's – I assumed it was Obsidian's – mercy? Who was he torturing?

"L-Lo-Lodestone," she choked, weeping.

"Oh God," tears pricked in my eyes and soon they were spilling over my cheeks as I started crying too, "no no no no no."

My mom was frowning, thoroughly confused. Unlike me, all she knew about was the nausea. What she didn't know about were the migraines supers got if a family member was in pain. Fellow supers were like family. If they were in serious danger, every super felt it. Every super in the vicinity would be crying these body-wracking sobs that Lila was subject to now. Every super would be shaking and sweating, even the Invisible Hand.