Burning Ice & Freezing Fire

Lines?!

"...I-I...didn't do...a-anything... I j-just...w-wanted t-to...check w-whether I...could fix i-it..." stammers Robbie barely audible.

He's huddled up in a corner of the airship on the ground, his legs hugged to his chest, trembling violently, and his eyes wide with some sort of shock.

A few meters away from him, Sportacus' waistcoat and next to it the crystal which is flashing in a dark shade of blue...

"Robbie!" once he has recovered from the first shock, Sportacus is kneeling next to the villain within a blink, regarding the flashing stone with nothing more than a short glance "Robbie, are you all right???"

"I s-swear, I-I...didn't mean to..."

"Shush. Hush," the hero carefully grabs the felf's shoulders and notices that his eyes are still fixed on the crystal "Robbie. Hey. Look at me," he cups his cheek, gently forcing the other to face him "Are you hurt?"

Robbie blinks slowly and a few tears roll down his cheeks, his voice a broken whisper "...I touched it before... And this time I didn't even mean...any harm... But...this never happened...before..."

"What, Robbie? What happened?" Sportacus' voice becomes more pressing out of concern for his friend, but when the felf now lets go of his own legs and shaking turns his hands around with his palms showing up, the hero can't help but wince a little "Robbie! What..."

"...It...stung..." whispers the villain weakly and sniffs "...It stung...badly..."

Shaking a little now himself, Sportacus very carefully takes one of his hands in his own, one of them steadying Robbie's trembling hand while the fingers of his other very carefully trace the five blue lines, reaching from the felf's fingertips all the way up to his shirt, disappearing under the sleeve of it. They're gleaming weakly beneath Robbie's pale, thin, easy to break appearing skin...

"...Does it...hurt?..." the hero unconsciously starts to whisper now as well and looks up to meet the felf's teary eyes. A weak shrug and even more tears "I-I...really didn't do anything! I just...t-took it out of its box, but...then I already got this...electric shock..." Robbie swallows hard and sniffs "I... I'm so sorry, Sportacus! I shouldn't have..."

"No!" the hero shakes his head "Stop apologizing, Robbie. You did nothing wrong! All I care about is whether you got severely injured! And...this... I..." he watches the blue lines and feels fear crawling into his heart, although he doesn't really know why "...Can you get up?..."

"...I... I dropped it... I'm so sorry! I shouldn't have dropped it!" the felf fixes his eyes on the crystal again and starts to shake even worse "...It... It's angry at me..."

"Robbie..." Sportacus gives up in the conversation for now, instead he jumps onto his feet, bows down again and very carefully picks the quivering picture of misery up in his arms, murmuring soothingly "It's okay, Robbie. Let me take you back to bed and then I'm gonna check what these blue lines are, okay? You'll be fine."

"...It's...my fault..." the felf buries his face into the crook of the hero's neck "...All this trouble you're going through..."

"Hush. It's not your fault, Robbie. You did absolutely nothing wrong," the elf places a soft kiss on his hair and hurries up to place the villain on the bed, seating him against the pile of pillows.

"B-But your crystal... First you got angry at it because of me and it stopped working and now I ruined it completely! I'm..." he pulls his knees up to his chest again and buries his face in his hands, sobbing lowly "...All I'm good at is destroying..."

"Stop it. That's not true, Robbie!" contradicts Sportacus firmly and gently pulls the shaking hands away from the felf's face, looking at the palms with care once more "...I've never heard about anything like this... Does it still hurt in any way?"

"...No... I don't...think so..." Robbie stares at his own palms and arms and slowly snaps back into reality again, starting to shiver even worse and feeling ice cold out of a sudden, then he whispers audibly scared "...What... What is this?..."

"I don't know... Wait, let me help you take off your shirt so we can check how far up they go..." carefully Sportacus lifts the pajama top over the other's head and puts it aside. Then he looks back at Robbie and takes a sharp breath in, not able to suppress a weak whisper "...Oh no..."