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“What are you doing!?” Able staggered backwards until he thumped into a wall. A warm ache blossomed in his hand where he grasped the growing red stain at his side. Tears burned his eyes.
“What I have to.” Celeste looked at him with far too much pity to be the one holding a knife. Especially since the blade held a thick coat of his freshly drawn blood.
“You’re going to kill me? Really?” His voice wavered on the verge of a sob. Like a gentle static from a broken television, his magic buzzed quietly itching to be used. The quiet crickets outside carried on like nothing mattered. The dull heat of anger simmered just beneath his skin.
“You don’t understand how dangerous you are!” Not the petite, blonde Celeste, but now a roaring, grizzled man right at Able’s eye level. He held a cleaver, wedged into the wood beside his head, the blade tilted towards his cheek. From the cut, that heat flared quietly and bubbled into his chest like his heart might just burst.
“Please.” Able muttered – far too softly, no, this wasn’t Able. What was his name? Who was he now?
“Are you going to BEG?” The menacing cur pushed into his personal space further, their noses practically touching. A storm whipped sails viciously in the distance. He could taste the salt water over his blood.
“No.” Between one blink to another, his perspective skewed as she lost about a foot of height. Tears brimmed and flowed freely as she looked up into the gentle green eyes of a doctor. Sudden silence deafened her as she fell from one reality to the next. The doctor caressed her face clinically as they tilted her head this way and that. Cuts and wounds of the past no more than ghosts on unmarred skin, but burned all the same.
“You know, I’m not trying to hurt you. You are making this far more difficult than it has to be.” Their cold hand left her face as they sat back and jotted notes on a chart.
“We were friends.” She whispered brokenly.
“Oh, Chi,” they looked at her with a sickeningly empty smile. As if flipping through channels far too quickly, their visage shifted and twisted through decades upon decades of shapes and sizes and all the faces to ever stain her vision, voices meshing together in an searing loud static, “We are friends.”
A particularly jarring twitch jolted Chi’s eyes open. Her breath came fast and short. The ceiling of her storage unit slowly registered to her dream-fogged brain. Right. She went to bed here. She sighed emphatically then breathed deep, forcing her breath to slow. Then she rolled onto her side and snagged her cellphone from the floor beside where the mattress laid.
A text from Bo read: “Hey, there’s a festival this weekend. Want to go?”
“Hm.” She sounded strange in the unsettling quiet of the storage unit, “Ick. This sucks. Gotta get home.” She rolled off the mattress and stood, stretching to crack her stiff back. The phone said noon-thirty on a Wednesday. Bo would be at the bakery. Decker, though. It was hard to tell since he switched up his schedule so much.
Fuck it. She just wanted to be home.
With a step she poofed into a soft glow of magic and emerged in the kitchen. The light was on, the radio off. Decker was home alone. Great. She rolled her eyes and made for her room.
“Hey! Thought I heard you get in.” Decker poked his head out of his door as he shrugged into a jacket. She almost froze up,
“Hey, yup. You heading out?” It only slightly made her skin crawl that he had grown familiar with the subtle signs of her teleportation.
“Yeah, I’m going to meet Bo for lunch. Want to join us?” He smiled, and for a moment Chi recognized the charm.
She shook her head forcing a grin to hide the wince that pulled at her face, “Nah, you two have a good time. I wouldn’t want to intrude on your date.”
“Oh, I-,” Decker started before it hit him, “It’s not a date! It’s just lunch!”
Chi slipped into the far more comfortable shit-eatting grin, “Su-u-ure it is.”
Decker’s face fell flat, unimpressed, “Why would I invite you on a date?”
“Beats me, I'm not into you, but I am pretty cute.” Chi shrugged easily. Familiar banter eased the jitters left over from uneasy dreams.
“That is not at all what I meant.” Decker gave her an eye roll before moving to edge past her. She flinched into the wall a bit too quickly. He gave her a concerned look, “Whoa, you okay?”
“Yup, just tripping over air, I’ve got shit to do, so have fun you crazy kids!” She ducked out of close proximity like a skittish cat before breezing down the short hallway and into her room. The door almost slammed.
Decker stood there, staring at the shut door for a moment. He only debated with himself a moment whether to pursue her or let it lie. He knew by now nothing would come of pestering.
So, he went to have lunch with Bo.