In My True Element

Chapter 30

"Where's Earth?" I'm lying in the hospital bed. My shoulder is healing up nicely and most of the time it doesn't even hurt. Too bad I can't say the same for my heart.

Back in Brackwick's house I was numb to Ilana's betrayal. I was taken to the place where nothing mattered anymore. I was convinced that I had suffered for so long that my emotions just got paralyzed and I would never feel anything ever again.

Unfortunately, once some time had passed and my body wasn't hurting as bad anymore, an agony took over my heart.

She had betrayed me...again.

She promised to be by my side and she took me to her father to be stripped of all our powers. She chose him over me.

"Earth?" Water echoes my question bringing me back to the hospital room. "He's locked himself in his wooden cabin and refuses to see anyone."

Water and Fire practically live in the hospital with me. They are here when I wake up, they are here when I go back to sleep. They are the only reasons I still haven't lost my sanity. Earth, however, hasn't been here only once. When he was practically dragged here for the power transference ritual.

I look at my siblings' faces that carry no traces of recent events and shake my head.

"Why is he doing it?"

"It's obvious why. He's devastated with himself. He thought he was protecting us by working with Brackwick, and he almost got all of us killed. He says he doesn't want his power and is begging one of us to take it away from him." We'd performed the power transference ritual my second night in hospital. After the surgery, doctors said there was no danger to my health and I would heal up nicely. I forced my family to get here in the middle of the night so I could give them their powers back. They were exhausting my body and I constantly felt tired. But truth be told, without the free riders I feel just as bad as before. Maybe they weren't the reason...

"You're thinking about her?" Fire avoids saying her name out loud, something I'm grateful for.

"What?"

My pathetic attempt to pretend I don't understand her fools no one. Fire sits beside me, taking my hand in hers. "I saw her outside the hospital today."

"So what?"

"I saw her there yesterday." Water interjects touching his chiseled chin with his long fingers. "She actually approached me to ask how you were doing."

"Hmph," I grumble.

"I invited her to come upstairs, but she only shook her head and left."

"Why are you telling me this?" I snap not wishing to hear about Ilana anymore. She can do with her time whatever she pleases.

"We just thought you might want to know."

"Well I don't, okay?" I almost scream at Fire as my chest squeezes and it becomes painful to breathe. "I don't want to hear anything about her, I don't want to see her, talk to her, think of her." I fall back to my pillows counting to ten, but it does nothing, it only makes my eyes burn.

"I'm sorry, Air, I won't mention her ever again, I promise." Fire's beautiful face is contorted with pain.

"I'm sorry, I just really want to be alone right now. For just a little bit, okay?"

As they quietly leave my room, the loneliness, mixed with the physical pain, envelopes every single one of my bones.

"Why did you do it?" I ask the emptiness. But of course, it doesn't offer an answer.