The air felt stale in the house, like they had stumbled into a madman’s elaborate mausoleum. It felt muted and gray in the halls of Daphne’s home. Rafael felt comforted by the silence, the darkness that swathed over him like a familiar cloak. He was familiar with mourning, and as terrible as it was, it felt like a second skin to him.
He should not be finding comfort in tragedy. He lifted his eyes uncomfortably, staring at the back of Daphne’s head and tried to parse the pressure that steadily built in his mind. He took in a breath, a shallow one that tickled at his lungs, and dove.
Rafael wasn’t a mindreader, he exceled in the art of picking at strings of power until he could find the right one to cut. No, he was a mindrender. The world slowed down around him, freezing in place the torrential outpour of intense power that roiled in Daphne’s body.
Ah. Just as he suspected.
He pulled himself back to his body and adopted a feigned smile as he followed the young woman, forcing his expression into one of dopey compliance versus one of concern. “Simon and I are practically the same person sometimes.”
The house seemed to bend with the unconscious pulse of her power- did she know that she did that? That she was a bomb? He could see the fine lines of her powers in every corner of the home, like veins in the very walls. She could eat through everything, tear through the sky and its stars with her anger.
‘She has the potential to devour everything,’ a honeyed voice in his head whispered, chewing at his mind with an air of decay and ozone. ‘A star who will consume all things, a god, a black hole.’
Rafael stumbled, slamming his hand into the wall to catch himself. “Shoot, sorry, I tripped.” He pushed away, leaving long, sharp gouges in his wake. “Don’t worry about it, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. If you need I can leave but- well, I’d prefer not to leave you alone.”
These walls used to be bright and shiny and full of life. There were memories that chased visitors with happy nostalgia once upon a time. Her mother liked to keep pictures along most walls of the house creating a living scrapbook one that told the story of the Torres family throughout the decades as you stepped through the house. It used to be a lovely fixture, a talking point among friends. Now they were just reminders of the past. And every empty space in the wall a reminder that the future was hollow and empty as picture frames.
“I find that both hard to believe and entirely possible at the same time.” She quips back at him. She hadn’t meant for it to come out so mean. This man was only here to help wasn’t he? She shouldn’t be treating him like he came bearing the bad news of her mother’s death.
No she had to get her anger under control. But what was the point? What did it matter? So what she was angry? She had every right to be angry. She was angry with the universe. The universe that would talk to her as if they were old friends, and maybe they were. But that friendship had turned sour the day it decided to take her mother into it’s embrace and leave her and her father to be shells of who they used to be. The Universe had known how much her mother meant to her, an no friend would do that to someone.
But the universe was such an abstract concept to be angry with, even if it was more tangible to some people. So Daphne turned that anger on anyone she could, the HRL, Rafael, even Simon and her father she had the same white hot rage building beneath her skin whenever she talked to them.
Maybe people were right to look at her like she was going to snap at any moment.
Then Rafael tripped and she heard the sounds of his nails scraping the drywall and the paint. And she almost did. She drew in a sharp breath and nearly kicked him out of her house that moment.
What right did he have to be here? In her home. After all these years. After all these years of refusing invitations from her family. From her mother? Who did he think he was turning her down like that? Why would anyone give up any time they could have had with Tatiana Torres?
The irrational molten thoughts raced through her head, ready for her to turn on her heal and start yelling, start something.
She drew in a deep breath, and then let it out slowly.
“Don’t worry about it....” She let out in as calm of a tone as she could manage. Which would have been surprisingly convincing given how tired often reads as calm. “Stay if you want to. I’m not the best company right now. Neither is Dad. But I’m not going to kick you out.”
