✓ Chaos Theory | Diego Hargreeves [1]

【CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE】

—chapter twenty-nine.

 ❛ a (couple or so) wrinkle(s) in time. ❜  

FEBRUARY 7th, 2013.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE?!"

The voice didn't deter her. Nor did it make her flinch like maybe it was expected to. Truth be told, she could hardly hear him, floating oh so far away as she roasted from the inside out. The snow was puddles around her burning toes, bare and gripping tight to the frozen concrete even as it poured around her and it was hopeless, but it was all she had, all that was there too--

"--go back home." The voice didn't really come from her. It was a different deity that spoke in hollow, sorrowful tones that didn't quite work with her destruction. She couldn't figure out how her mind and body had separated so, but she let it be, swarmed in an ungodly heat that wouldn't let go of her limbs. "Leave me alone."

"Are you kidding?! You're gonna freeze to death, out here."

Elodie shook her head. Strands of hair whipped around with the motion and for a moment it was like they, too, were a part of the flame, scattering ash in violent circles around her. But she blinked and the moment passed, and she could see through the fire to him again.

She had had panic like that before. But it used to be easier to control -- and she used to be able to subdue her emotions and just not let them bubble to the surface. With Diego, though, she couldn't. She was supposed to communicate and she was supposed to fight to find a solution -- but that particular fight had started to eat her alive, and suddenly her blood was pounding in her ears and she knew she was going to explode if she stayed another second inside of her apartment. 

So she ran.

"I'm fine," she murmured, pressing her hands against the fleeing patches of snow. One by one the white turned into grey-green slush and she moaned, trying to find that delectable cold sensation again. "M'just...hell. This used to work!"

"Elodie, for fuck's--"

"--you need to go. I'll figure this out."

She pulled away from his reaching arms even as he pushed forward. There was no way he could even get near her -- not in the state of supernova she had found herself in. She could blow at any second and didn't he see that? Couldn't he see the way her skin pulsed and glowed, threatening an explosion that would rival any man-made event seen before? Just one wrong step, one shaky inhale for breath and he would be nothing.