Sparkle (KOTLC) {Completed}

7

Janessa woke up uneasy. Even though she knew she should leave, that she had to, she couldn't help but hesitate. She'd been a prisoner longer than she'd known her sister or friends before she was kidnapped, and somehow she'd started to care about Fintan, even after her new ability became less overwhelming. Once the thought crossed her mind, she realized she definitely had to leave. But, she still let herself have two more days before she decided she needed to ask to go home or she never would.

"Hey!" Janessa yelled at a figure in the Neverseen uniform with a cloak hiding her features.

"Yes?" The girl asked.

"Where's Fintan?" Janessa wondered.

"He already left, Sparkles."

"Left where?" She demanded, ignoring the nickname usually only used by Fintan.

The woman didn't answer.

Janessa pushed her up against the wall with her left arm, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, and summoned a ball of flames next to the girl's face.

"I won't ask again. Tell me where he is." Janessa gritted out, making the flames flare brighter suddenly. A burst of fear streaked through her. Horrified, Janessa realized that the girl was afraid of her; she glanced at her fireball and stumbled backwards putting it out, holding her sore shoulder.

"No wonder he speaks so highly of you, Sparkles." The girl said as Janessa could feel her smug confidence lifting and fear fading even without touching her. "I'm impressed."

Janessa straightened herself, the pain in her shoulder having subsided enough. "You never answered my question."

The girl's lips pursed, barely visible in the shadow of her hood. "Fine. He went to Lumenaria for the Peace Summit."

"There's a Peace Summit?" Janessa's eyebrows furrowed.

"Wow, you're really out of the loop. You don't know anything." The girl remarked.

"Oh, my bad, I was a little busy being kidnapped and then learning pyrokinesis. Mostly being kidnapped." Janessa snapped.

"Ooh, someone's touchy. Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" The girl teased.

Janessa glared in return. "When will Fintan be back?"

"Who knows? Whenever the Peace Summit ends. Why do you need him so badly?"

Janessa growled quietly. "It's none of your business. Who even are you?"

"I'm Glimmer." 

"Nice code name."

"Better than Sparkles."

"Sparkles isn't my codename."

"That's what Fintan always calls you."

"It's not a codename. Besides, Fintan's only called me that once." Janessa's eyebrows furrowed.

"Well, I've never heard him refer to you by anything else, and he talks about you quite often. It's like he's a proud father with how much he talks about you." Glimmer remarked.

Janessa's traitorous eyes lit up at her comment, before she glared at the wall next to Glimmer's head, angry at her happiness at Fintan's pride.

Glimmer's lips twitched. "You don't need to be ashamed. It's only natural to get attached when you're desperate for a father figure and the perfect mentor happens to kidnap you."

Janessa's lips thinned. "Thanks. Real helpful."

"Anytime."

Glimmer started to walk away, but Janessa called her back.

"Hey!"

"What?"

"Well... You're right. About me being out of the loop. Other stuff too, but this is more important right now."

"And?"

"Could you maybe get me up to date? I just... I've been ignoring all the problems in the world to focus on my training, which was just... naive and immature, and I wanna fix that now." Janessa mumbled, rubbing her still sore shoulder.

Glimmer was silent a few moments before nodding, a strand of black hair falling out of her hood. "Fine. Just because I pity you."

Janessa rolled her eyes. "Do you have any friends?"

"Do you?"

"Yes." Janessa immediately replied, before furrowing her brows as she realized they might care much about her anymore.

"You don't seem sure."

"I am sure. It's just been a while, since, you know, I was kidnapped."

"You can't use that as an excuse forever."

"Can we just start talking about the important stuff? As in, everything I've missed out on instead of my personal life?"

"Touchy. Sure. So, most important things that happened: the Council set up mandatory Exillium skill classes cuz they're scared, your friend Gisela's son blew up Foxfire, but he ran away like yesterday, your —" Glimmer made a point of putting bunny ears around the word friends. " — "friends" cracked the code to a bunch of our hideouts so we had to empty them, and now the Council is holding a Peace Summit with the world leaders at Lumenaria, which the Black Swan is attending and Fintan crashed it, so he's there too."

A few seconds passed. "That was very brief." Janessa commented.

"Well, that's all you're getting cuz the rest of the details are pretty irrelevant at this point, and I don't have much more information anyways. It's not like I'm that high in the ranks here."

A few more seconds. Curiously, as she started to leave again, Janessa grabbed Glimmer's hand and sifted through the emotions washing over her. Out of all of them, there a subtle but distinct feeling of loneliness that shocked Janessa. 

"Do you wanna be friends with me?" Janessa asked before she could stop herself.

More seconds. A minute.

"Why? We're on opposite sides of this. You're with the Black Swan, I'm with the Neverseen. Are you trying to get information out of me?" Glimmer asked sceptically.

"No. I just thought... Well, just because we're on opposite sides doesn't mean you're not a good person. I mean, the Black Swan and the Neverseen are fighting the same things, just in different ways. I can't fault you for choosing the ones that have had a bigger impact so far, even if I don't think they're right. Besides, I know that we can be friends despite all this. I only knew my friends few weeks before I was brought here, so why would I waste the chance to make another one?" Janessa shrugged, holding back a wince for her shoulder.

"That was really long and unnecessarily motivational. Do you always speak like this?" Glimmer snorted quietly.

"Sorry, I guess I do sometimes."

"It was actually kinda interesting." Glimmer responded, no hint of a lie in her voice.

"Thanks." Janessa mumbled embarrassedly. 

"I have to go now, I actually have training now." 

"Can I come? I don't really have anything to do." Janessa asked excitedly.

Glimmer shrugged. "Sure, I guess. It might be boring, but if you want."

As they began walking, Janessa's smile fell to a frown. She was supposed to break her connection here, not make another one. It used to be easy to pretend it was all black and white, even when she knew it wasn't, but now it was impossible. Everything was grey.