Burn Brighter Than The Sun - Self Para
It was in the process of being put out by three firetrucks surrounding the home she shared with her father, though the flames still licked hungrily at the sky. A chocked cry escaped her throat as memories from her childhood flooded through her. Her mother trapped within while her father carried her out to safety. The pain and betrayal she'd felt when she realized it had been her own friend, invited into her home by none other than Valkyrie herself, that had set the house on fire. Accident or not, it had changed her. And now here she was, living it all over again, losing the only family she had left.
Running on natural instinct she bolted forward, a strangled cry of 'father' falling from her lips. Arms wrapped around her pulling her away, she fought the pull at first. Trying to reach out to the fire as if she could put it out by will alone. She was not special, she was purely human, and for the first time in her life she wished she weren't. She wanted to put out the fire, go back in time and come home early, anything to save her father. It didn't matter that he was a drunk, that he sometimes called her by her mother's name, and cried or screamed in his sleep. They were the flaws in him that showed he cared about what happened to them, that he was still there. She wanted it all back.
“Please,” she cried, hands grasping at the loose fabric of the policeman's uniform. “Please, is my father out? Is he okay?” She knew it was impossible, her father never went out of the house. He was terrified of the world out there, agoraphobia ripping through him since her mother's death. Valkyrie did all of the shopping, her father got a check in the mail, since his phobia was so severe he was out of work and received a check from the government to keep them floating since her part-time job barely got them though groceries.
The cop's grip on her tightened, “No one came out of that house.”
Just because Valkyrie knew the answer herself, hearing it come from another broke her. Collapsing in on herself as she sobbed into her hands, for the first time in her life feeling truly alone. The cop just held her, speaking into the radio in his hands. She knew he was talking about her, hearing her name spoken at least twice.
Strong hands gripped her shoulders, forcing her into a standing position as he attempted to calm her down. “My name's officer Lanning,” he informed her, slipping his badge and card out to show her. Through hazy eyes she saw the name, Edward M. Lanning, eyes skating briefly over the picture seeing the resemblance. She may have been in distress but that didn't mean she was careless, she grew up as a Pure after all. “Do you have a place to stay, Miss Demeke?”
She shook her head, still not trusting her voice to keep steady. The sobbing has stopped, but her body still shook like crazy, eyes wide in disbelief as she tried to figure out what happened. As far as she knew she hadn't made any enemies recently, after the ballroom incident she'd kept a pretty low profile. Staying in the darkness filled with doubts about what was right and what was wrong.
“You'll stay with me then,” she heard Officer Lanning tell her, leading her back towards his patrol car. “I have a spare room, my wife will be happy to have the company.”
This time she offered a weak nod, following him with her feet dragging along lazily. She vaguely felt the officer push her into the passenger's seat, for a brief moment her nostrils filled with a familiar scent, but it was gone when the driver's door was opened and the smell of fire and smoke filled the cruiser instead.
The ride was silent, Valkyrie stared out the window, tears sill silently falling from her eyes. Officer Lanning was just as quiet, as if knowing she needed the peace, her mind racing as to how this happened. Eventually she turned her head towards the officer, her voice just as shaky as she thought it would be when she asked him; “How did it happen?”
He let out a light shrug, “They don't know for certain,” he admitted, “They think the stove was left on, something caught on fire, and the alcohol in the house helped it spread.” He turned towards Val, eyes flickering between the road and Val. “Was your father an alcoholic by chance?”
She ignored the question, turning her gaze back towards the road. The last thing she wanted to think of was her father's flaws, he was gone now, for good. She never even gave him a proper goodbye before school, simply walking out when she'd seen him drunk on the couch watching the TV. Her heart spasmed, bringing a pain to her chest that she had to fight not to grip at.
The feeling of the vehicle stopping brought her attention back to the real world, looking out the front window to see that Officer Lanning had parked in front of a decent sized house. She stepped out on shaking legs, Officer Lanning coming around the car to lead her into the house. She looked around, watching as Officer Lanning stripped off his uniform jacket, pointing to the couch and offering her a seat. She took it greatfully, happy to get off her seat. The shock and anguish of her father's death had momentarily disappeared, instead replaced with disbelief and denial.
Valkyrie swallowed the lump in her throat, watching as Lanning went into the kitchen, pouring himself a drink, slightly wishing he'd offered her one. “So where's your wife, Officer Lanning?” She asked instead, noticing that they were alone in the house. She needed a distraction, anything to get the vivid image of fire from her mind.
There was a chuckle from the kitchen, one that sent shivers up Val's spine and brought her blue eyes up towards where Officer Lanning stood, leaning against the wall with the glass pressed to his lips. “Please,” he told her, voice completely different than it had been previously. “Now that we're here, call me Trevor.”
Valkyrie had never stood so fast in her life, head spinning from the speed and the nausea that had gathered in her stomach since she'd seen the fire. She immediately knew how this man was, she immediately knew who set the fire, and she immediately recognized the previous smell in the cop car. “You.”
Trevor just laughed, clapping his hands together lightly so that the liquid in his glass didn't spill. “A little slow but well done.”
“You started-”
“The fire? Yes.”
She took a step backwards, carefully maneuvering herself around the couch and giving herself a straight shot to the door. Trevor didn't even try and stop her. “The policeman...”
“Dead, he was in the back of the cruiser. I was amused, I had figured that even in your distress, someone as trained as yourself should have been able to recognize the scent of blood. It just goes to show how far the Pure have fallen.”
She growled out at him, she was still hurt about her father's death, but anger soon replaced the emotion. She had done nothing against this man, she had simply tried to help Ian get his bird back, why was he targeting her? There was no reason for him to attack her father. “The only way the Pure have fallen would be allowing you to get anywhere close to us.” Valkyrie turned quickly on her heels, throwing the door open and almost stepping out into the blackness but catching herself on the door frame with a gasp. That's all there was, darkness. A black empty space. A never ending fall. Nothing.
She turned back around to stare at where Trevor had yet to move from against the wall, though a steady trickle of blood now leaked from his nose. “What did you do?”
“Reality warper,” he said with a simple shrug, sipping at the drink in his hand. “Also happens to give me the ability to hop through realities. I simply brought the house and you with me.” Valkyrie fought back a noise of distress, she'd been warned of his capabilities, but had never expected anything like this. Students creating Earthquakes had surprised her enough, tossing an entire house and all of its occupants into some alternate reality where they were floating in some never ending darkness was something else entirely. Trevor gave a little shiver, “Shut the door, sweetheart, you're letting in the cold.”
Seeing no other choice in that matter, Valkyrie shut the door, not bothering to turn around and face the giant threat behind her. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear, seeing her eyes fill up with tears as she realized that she really had no other fate but death. It didn't matter anyway, her mother and father were both dead, she had a few friends but that's all they were. No family, no lovers, no children. She had nothing truly tying her to this life, and with a swallow of acceptance she squeezed her eyes shut, pushing away the tears before turning back towards Trevor.
"Go ahead and do your worst," she dared, if she was going to die or be tortured or whatever else this man's sick mind could come up with, she would do so with pride.
"Thank you for the invitation." Trevor gave her a wink, and seconds later Valkyrie was on the ground, clutching her stomach in pain. "Stomach cancer," he told her, setting the glace down on the coffee table, walking towards her. He bent down so they were eye level, lifting her head to meet her eye to eye. "How's that feel?"
Valkyrie bit back a low grown, feeling blood start to leak from the corner of her mouth. "Creative," she growled out, "Have you been watching too much House or something?"
Trevor seemed ill impressed with her cockiness. He was used to people being terrified of him at this point, begging for mercy. His face turned into one of anger, any and all traces of amusement gone, and with one well aimed kick to the head, darkness consumed Valkyrie's vision.
--
When Valkyrie returned to the land of the living, the first thing she realized was that the pain in her abdomen was gone, the second was that she couldn't move. Her legs were folded under her and her head was bowed down slightly, a collar coming up from the ground preventing any movement from her head, and her hands were chained behind her. It was unmistakable the Trevor had chained her in a bowing position, and if anything the demeaning position is what hurt Valkyrie the most.
The shifting of her chains brought Trevor's attention, and he grinned, crouching down into her line of sight. "Welcome back to the land of the living." She groaned, feeling the chaffed skin under the collar and wondered briefly how long she'd been out. As if reading her mind, and who knows, perhaps he was, Trevor lifted an empty syringe. "You've been unconscious for three days thanks to this little puppy, quite the sedative." He stood, disappearing from her line of sight again.
"You're an asshole."
A scoff from above her, "Nothing I haven't heard before, sweetheart."
She returned the scoff, "Speaking of creativity, you should probably come up with a new nickname. Afraid it's getting old." The air around them turned sour again as Trevor went deathly silent. After a moment Valkyrie was finally curious and bold enough to ask; "Why me?"
Trevor appeared in her vision again, though instead of kneeling don he just bent forward enough to be seen. "Why? Because you're a failure as a Pure. You think I didn't know about you 'switching sides'? You may have hidden it from Ian or the other Pures but not me."
Valkyrie's heart sank, she'd been so careful. "What do you mean?"
Trevor rolled his eyes with a laugh, "Where shall I start?" He moved to sit in front of Valkyrie, his feet within kicking distance of her face, and she took it as the warning it was. "Of course there's Derek, your 'best friend forever'. Then there's Echo, you became quite close to her, did you not?" He continued, not letting her answer. "Then there's Damien, seems you had a good flirt with him. Also, don't let me forget that you told that mutant Avery of a way to get Rune back. You can't pretend with me, I know you've teamed up with the mutants. Your opinions have been swayed and so you're a liability to the cause."
"What cause?!" Valkyrie shouted, tugging at her restraints. "You're a freak yourself! Your opinion of me means shit when you're the one murdering your own kind!"
She received a swift kick to the side of the face for that one.
Spitting out the blood that gathered from her split lip, she glared at him the best she could in her bowing position. "You're nothing but a child with a God complex."
Pure anger came across Trevor's face and he stood swiftly, moving out of her sight again. She could hear him rummaging through a closet of some kind, searching for who knows what. Her anger didn't lessen though, and she continued with her rant. If she was going to die, she'd be sure to get her point across before it did.
"You're wrong, the whole Pure system is one giant fuck up! They're murdering innocent children just because they're different. They aren't threatening anyone so that's the big deal?! They go to this school to learn to control their powers, they want to live normal lives but they can't because they're in constant threat of people like you!" Trevor walked over, she heard sloshing in a metal container and it wasn't long before the smell of gasoline hit her nose. Immediately her stomach churned in fear and she had to bite back vomit.
She jumped a little when the cool liquid was poured over her, the smell and taste choking her, but she fought back a gag, not giving Trevor the satisfaction. The bastard knew where her fears lie, within the flames, and he was using it to his full advantage. The coward.
Valkyrie turned her head up towards him, fear hidden behind the anger. "You think you're showing the Pure's how it's done. You're only bringing the Pure's and the mutants closer together." She informed him, ignoring the taste of gasoline on her tongue as it dripped into her mouth and stung at her eyes. They watered but she ignored that too, her anger was the only thing that she cared about right now, and she needed to point it all at this man before it was too late. "They're teaming up to take you down, and they will succeed. You're no God, you've got weaknesses, and they'll find them. The Pures and the mutants will kill you. I promise you."
Trevor let out a laugh, lighting a match and enjoying the slight widening of Valkyrie's eyes as she realized this truly was the end. "A dying woman's promise? Seems petty."
A shaking laugh fell from her own lips. "A dying woman's promise is a curse. I'll see you in hell."
Trevor dropped the match.
