Work Text:
The moment she saw them, it was indescribable rage.
It was morning sunrise—the rays pierced through the trees. She took a path across the grass rather than the paths between the bushes marked in stone tiles, onto the front school plaza entrance, where the blue-and-orange Inkadian bicolor, the flag of the county and the flag of the school emblem always limped in the absence of wind.
Her keypad phone read 7:55 the last she checked. She estimated it was 7:57 now.
Her mind was too boiling to register the exact words of their speech, only catch the meaning. Taunts, saying her name mockingly, pretending to be her best friends when it was all psychological warfare. Her whole life was warfare, most people were her enemies.
The moment she placed her arm around her shoulders—as if they were friends,—that was it.
Her scarred fist went flying as if it were possessed.
The two were sat in front of the desk in the counselor's office. Akvilina’s hands were hanged in a steeple, with the tight, tiled metal limiter around her left wrist as always.
The reptile girl beside Akvilina—which she all but erased from her vision—stared down at it from a side-eye, then dared to break the silence.
“What's the point of wearing that thing if you're still going to be a rabid freak?”
It took all the restraint Akvilina had left to not lunge at her in that moment and start again. She only twitched.
She recognized the room so well she could reconstruct it from her imagination alone—it was still small and still stenched of paper. The view of the school plaza to her right from the third floor now seemed so free… She thought: if they just opened it up and jumped right now, she could finally get everyone off her back so easily, if she weren't chained to the stupid fucking school spawner.
The counselor finally arrived into the room and sat down. He pulled out two wet wipes and handed them to the two in one fin.
“Clean up.”
The reptile girl took it easily.
Dark, wet scratches intertwined with burning orange ink ran across Akvilina’s mouth. The stains fell down past her lips, coloring her beak. The ink, specifically, was stinging her skin in the same sensation of a disinfected cut. Her irises were tinted a vessel pink.
She was blinking, but not moving an inch.
“Fuck, are you deaf? Take it, for fuck’s sake!”
She felt hungry, thirsty and exhausted already. She always skipped breakfast.
“…Fine. Be that way, it just won't help you.”
FUCK you.
I'll kill you, she wanted so desperately to jump out and say, but she kept it in her thoughts.
He started to speak again, “I don't even know what to say. Akvilina, how many times have you been here, because I lost count. As far as I'm concerned, you're a lost cause. Attacking a girl out of nowhere.” He scoffed.
It wasn't out of nowhere.
“Akvilina—fuck—do you even UNDERSTAND you could have KILLED her by slamming her into the stone?! She could’ve been dead bleeding right now!!”
All she could think and all she wanted to say was ‘Good.’
She said nothing.
He took a deep sigh. “Emilie, you can return to class. Take it easy and go to the nurse if you feel bad, okay? Go.”
“Okay,” she said as she stood up and gently closed the door behind her without a gesture to Akvilina’s presence.
Akvilina felt what was coming next but she just didn't care. Give her a war to fight and she'll die for it.
“You're a danger to this school, and you've shown no attempt at getting well. I’m going to call your parents, and I'm calling the police, and that'll be the end of it.”
When he picked up his phone and started dialing the numbers, it was then that like a wire snapped in her head, and words that could've never been spoken flew out of her mouth.
Uneven yellowish creamish paint across a brick wall. Thin and brittle, with cracks and holes all across it. She stared at it blankly with nothing but lava in her eyes—there was nothing left for them to do.
The sky was too bright. The clouds were too many. Everywhere on her body itched. She slammed and kicked her backpack on the ground until her legs were exhausted. It still wasn't enough.
…
She slammed the chitin of her forehead into the wall as hard as she possibly could.
It hurt. Too much.
She didn't get the mercy of knocked unconscious. She only fell on the ground side-up and caressed her bleeding head on the dirty stone path, bawling.
The sun would still soar tethered in the sky for long.