Chapter Text
What stuck out in his head the most afterwards was, surprisingly enough, her scarlet evening tunic – not the screaming, not the tears, not even the nauseating smell of burning flesh. He could close his tired bloodshot eyes at any moment and see every detail: the waves of blood-red fabric cascading down her shoulders and over the burgundy thread tying the tunic up right above her hips; the small diamond-shaped openings in the loose sleeves showing fractions of tanned skin; the length of the tunic just barely not covering her knees. On a different girl, this tunic, paired up with gold and ruby tree branch-shaped pins in her unruly hair, could have looked positively stunning, this much he was ready to admit – he even felt a little bit sad for such a daring ensemble to be wasted on somebody as obnoxious and unable to behave as Isla, the bane of his high school existence. It’s not like they weren’t friends, or he hated her, or anything like that – tolerating Isla in extremely small dosages was perfectly fine for Cassio, and sometimes he almost liked her company, but then she would scream vows of undying love into his ear, or start counting their future offspring, or do something equally embarrassing, drawing in the attention of the entire school – and Cassio, who wished for nothing but to stay in the shadows and be left alone, would immediately lose all sympathy he’s ever had for her.
Truly, Isla had an uncanny talent for making things worse, as if they weren’t bad enough already.
He didn’t want to go to that school party, or any party for that matter, but Hera practically dragged him by his sleeves – it was supposedly in honor of her mother, and it was the “high-brow event” of the year, and the entire school would be there, all dressed fancily and drinking presumably non-alcoholic cocktails. Truth to be told, he went mostly for the cocktails, and in hopes that Isla wouldn’t be there. Alas, there were no cocktails, and Isla’s presence was as loud and flashy as it could be. Just his luck.
He didn’t plan for the evening to go to waste, though. After their first (and, hopefully, last) conversation of the day, filled with Isla being an ecstatic little puppy over Cassio’s non-effort party look and Hera trying politely to get away to mingle with the crowd, the three friends went their separate ways, caught in the flow of the celebration. This part of the event, between the beginning and the incident, was now a blur in his head – he met some people, talked to them through the music, they got him something to drink – not a fancy cocktail he’d hoped for, but a drink nonetheless. He might have had a bit too much, but it didn’t make him sick at all – instead, it made him confident. It made him brave. The emotions and desires – yes, desires – he’d kept behind his sardonic exterior and never really knew how to express were dying to get out. After dancing alone for a bit, in a manner much uncharacteristic of him, he laid his eyes on a girl he vaguely knew – a girl his normal self kind of liked, but his drunk self found to be godlike - and he almost felt like coming to this party was not such a bad idea.
That is, until he approached the girl, putting on his best friendly face, and struck up a conversation. He felt like he was doing just fine – he was charming, he smiled at her, he offered her a drink – yet her face grew more and more disgusted with every new line he uttered. In his usual state, he would have given up immediately and never spoken to her, or anyone else, ever again, but his newfound confidence needed an answer first. He got his answer all right.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?! Your girlfriend is standing right there looking at us, and yet you are being all flirty with me, you animal! Go sober up, you need it.”
“My what…?”
He spun his head around, confused and doubting himself for a bit (when, for Gods’ sake, did he get a girlfriend?!), and there she was, rushing towards them through the crowd in her burning red tunic. She run into him with her entire frame, throwing her arms around his shoulders, a slight push away from forcing him into the ground. Her cheeks glowed pink; she was just as drunk as him, if not more so.
“Oh, I see you’ve already met Cassie,” – she spoke to the girl in front of them, seemingly tone-deaf to the conversation which had just transpired – “Was my Cassie-Sassie talking about me again? He is so gloomy-doomy most of the time, but when he speaks of us, his eyes just light up, don’t you think? I couldn’t wish for a better boyf…”
Cassio had heard enough.
Grabbing Isla by the hand, he hurried to the nearest door – away from the girl he was just talking to, from the crowd silently judging him, from his own thoughts tied in a messy knot. He pushes Isla inside (she didn’t protest, giggling all the way) and entered after her, closing the door behind them. The room they’ve escaped into was cool and semi-dark, a storage room of sorts, crammed with some left-over party decorations yet spacious enough for the two teens to not touch each other unnecessarily. Cassio didn’t want to touch anyone right now – he was trying desperately to calm down, yet his heart was ripping his chest cavity apart, he face was fiery hot and his eyes kept showing him a slideshow of evening gowns and disgruntled faces, all disgusted with him over something he had no part in. In that moment, he hated each and every one of those faces - but mostly the one he could still make out in the darkness of the room.
“Why did you tell her that I’m your boyfriend?!” – the words came out in a tone that was a bit harsher than his usual flavor, but he didn’t care. He didn’t really care about anything but his burning anger anymore.
“Why wouldn’t I,” – Isla smiled at him innocently, looking a bit surprised, almost as if she really didn’t understand, “I know it’s complicated between us, Cassie, sweetheart, but we shouldn’t hide our love from others! Look how happy people are for us! They even…”
“What kind of “love” are you talking about?! I’ve told you there is none, and I stand by my words!” – Cassio felt an explosion about to happen, and he was not going to hold back, not today, - “You do realize that you are delusional, right?! I was never your boyfriend, and there is not a chance in Netherworld that I will ever be. We went over it a thousand times already, yet you…” – Cassio bit his lip, but the pain only made him angrier, - “You are still the same obnoxious creep! I swear, if you weren’t Hera’s friend, I would have reported you to the school staff for harassment a long time ago, as I should. I keep giving you second chances, yet you still only make my life worse. Why am I even trying with you anymore?! If you weren’t there, I would have… My life would have been…” – something inside of Cassio screamed at him to stop; he saw Isla’s smile disappear, her lower lip trembling slightly, eyes watering, but he had to get it out, all these years of biting his tongue, of tolerating her grip upon his life, of forgiving and forgetting… He couldn’t take it anymore, and he wouldn’t.
“My life would have been perfect if you just disappeared!”
Truth to be told, he expected her to cry. To become hysterical, to faint dramatically, to call him a monster or even to hit him – he was ready for that, and, in a way, he would have understood – he did go too far, and was already regretting half of what he said. However, she did not cry, at least not audibly so – he could see a single tear run down her cheek, and that was it. Instead, she looked him straight in the eyes, as if in disbelief. Her face became vacant for a moment, all feelings drained – then she doubled over in an instant, covering her face with both her palms.
Then she screamed.
Cassio had never heard anyone scream like this before – it was a blood-curling, soul-shattering scream, and it did not stop, as if the girl’s lung capacity had suddenly doubled. At first it angered him once again – she was way overdoing it, and the entire party could hear them now; but, once he came closer to her to try and console her (and talk some sense into her, if possible), he felt the smell of something burning, and his eyes caught a glimpse of flashy redness in between her fingers, and he knew that something was wrong. Without thinking straight, he grabbed her hands with his and forced them away from her face – and then he almost screamed himself.
Her face was covered in blisters and spots, ranging from huge dark splotches to small blood-red dots. The redness was spreading fast, already covering her face from forehead up to chin, and continuing onto her neck, with pinkish-white bubbling and scarring making her features almost unrecognizable. The last thing on her face that seemed untouched by the burning were her eyes – and yet the right one, the red one, was bloodshot, with a thin white film covering the pupil. The left, black one, however, was perfectly fine – and it was looking straight at him with indescribable fear, as if begging for help. Meanwhile, her mouth was still wide open – even after she became unable to scream anymore.
“It hurts… It… So much… Cassio…” – she whispered, her voice hoarse with pain and exhaustion. He could see that, but he had no damn idea what to do, what was going on and whether or not he could help. He knew he had to do something, yet his body refused to move – he was stuck holding her hands as her body was shivering, tears running down her disfigured face, throat making pathetic sobbing noises in an attempt to scream again. Cassio heard the door open behind him, myriads of voices filling the room, but he couldn’t make out a single word – it was as if a vacuum sealed him and Isla in a space separate from the world at large. There was no time, no help coming or answers found – only him, her and the pain which was melting her skin off her face. In a last-ditch attempt to do something, to move the story forward, to make himself useful, he tried to hug her – but the second he touched her shoulders, he got pushed away with the force he would never expect such a frail girl to have. The pain, it seemed, had removed some precaution switches inside of her, and now she was not holding back – and a single glance upon the greyish-red skin in diamond-shaped openings of her sleeves told him the reason why. It wasn’t just her face, oh Gods, her entire body was burning.
“Let me through, let me through,” – a single voice boomed over the others right near his ear as a strong arm pushed him aside, and Daedala, clad in blue evening tunic, her elaborate hairdo now messy and almost undone, ran to her daughter’s side. The woman grabbed Isla’s hands the way Cassio did a moment before, took one look at her face and let out a horrified gasp – then the room burst with motion, and Cassio felt himself unable to concentrate on anything anymore. Somebody was screaming, but not Isla; somebody ran out to vomit, or to call for the doctor, who knows. The last he saw of Isla, she seemed to have passed out in her mother’s arms; then people swarmed around the two, and Cassio got pushed further away; then, Hera’s face appeared in front of him, frantic, wide-eyed, pale.
“Cassio, what… What happened?!”
“I don’t know… I don’t…” – he felt the words stick to his throat, refusing to come out and be told, - “I don’t know, but it’s bad. It’s very bad.”