24AN: Hey! sorry I haven't updating for a longgg time. I had a lot of stuff to do for school and didn't get the chance to write. This chapter I am reintroducing Claire, who was part of the four in her group. I just never really brought her up again after introducing her and thought I should! There isn't a lot of dialogue in this one, but I hope you like it anyways. R & R!
Chapter 11
The next couple of days were unbearable. Jake wasn't talking to me still and whenever I would try to say hi to him he would just give me a sad smile and quicken his pace to get away. I never realized how much his presence was vital to me. I knew he somehow always seemed to keep me calm and relaxed, but without him there I felt like a part of me was ripped away leaving gaping wounds that no medicine could heal. All my thoughts would be centered on him, on all of the good times we had. Even more of my old memories of him would come back more quickly than usual leaving me with a horrible feeling of emptiness. I wanted to make him forgive me so we could be us again, but I knew I couldn't do that. It was my fault in the first place and I had to deal with the consequences. Only I wasn't the only one suffering. I could tell that Jake was hurting even more than I was and the tension between us caused all of us to do worse in training where we couldn't escape each other.
Sam and Claire were my saviors. Claire and I hadn't hung out outside of training before my fight with Jake, but as I suddenly didn't have him taking up a lot of my time I was able to get to know her all over again. They both tried to get my attention off of my sulking by taking me shopping and going to the movies. Claire seemed to fit in perfectly into Sam and mine's friendship. With her bubbly personality and general kindness she made a welcome addition into our group. But even being surrounded by my friends I was still miserable and unfortunately my training my suffering majorly from it.
"Audrey! Duck!"
I turned around quickly and dropped down right before an orb went sailing past where my head just was. As I looked up Claire was glaring at me, "Why weren't you paying attention? I could have killed you!"
With little enthusiasm I just got up dusted myself off and then shrugged apologetically at her. In the last couple training sessions we had started to combat each other in order to practice our defensive and offensive moves more. I haven't been to into it because my magic seemed like it didn't want to work properly. Actually more like it can't. I have so many emotions and thoughts constantly flowing through me that I haven't been able to focus, so now I basically suck even worse than I did before.
As Claire stomped up to me, looking like a child with her height of 5'2, she put her hands and her hips and opened her mouth to lecture me about the same thing I have heard a million times when apparently my expression stopped her. I must have looked really bad because her glare disappeared and her eyes softened into an expression of pity. I actually hate to be pitied almost to the point where I wish she were still yelling.
"How 'bout we take a break," she softly said while grabbing my hand and leading me to the couches in the corner of the training room. "How bad is it?" she asked searching my face for something to give my pain away.
I just grimaced and gave a very unwomanly grunt and she nodded sagely. "I'd rather not talk about it," I tried knowing that she most likely wouldn't drop it.
She pretended not to hear me and went on, "You guys need to talk. Scream at each other for all I care. This bottling of everything that happened isn't good and it's affecting both of your magic, which could be a problem. You need to figure it out because if this is stressful enough to tamper with your gifts, then a life and death scenario is going to kill you…literally."
I stared at her with wide eyes thinking that she was absolutely right. There is no way I would survive a fight right now. Going into a battle without figuring out a way to deal with my emotions is basically suicide. I shook my head a little to clear it and stood back up, avoiding the subject yet again because really there wasn't much I could do about it, and announced, "I ready for another round. You up for it?"
She just frowned slightly, which was a foreign look on her face, before she jumped up with her enthusiastic grin, but it didn't look quite normal, and said, "Be ready to have your butt handed to you." I really had no doubt that that was how our fight was going to end.
The next day at school I ran down the hall because I hit the snooze button too many times on my alarm clock and didn't want to be late for 1st period when I took a corner too fast and ran into something solid. I looked up expecting a locker or wall, but realized that the solid something was actually a very well defined chest. That chest happened to belong to Jake. I got up from the floor quickly and slowly glanced up into his eyes. Those blue eyes that always mesmerized me were filled with a sadness that made my heart clench. The rest of him looked the same as his eyes. Fatigue and grief were evident by the dark circles and the slight pallor of his skin. As I stared up at him I didn't know what to say, so I just stood there until he tore his gaze from mine and started to walk away.
Fear gripped me at the sight of his retreating back. "Jake," I managed to squeak out causing him to turn slightly. I paused not knowing where to go with this, "I miss you," I almost whispered. He gave a little nod of acknowledgement before turning and walking away again, unknowingly taking my heart with him.
The pain was almost crippling and I don't know how I managed to ever get to my first period. Once in my seat my thoughts drew my attention away from the lecture. How I was ever unsure about my feelings for him I don't know, but I do know that I was incredibly stupid. I let the best thing in my life get away and I don't know when he is coming back, if ever. That was a train of thought that I desperately didn't want to consider, so I forced myself out of my thoughts and tried to take detailed notes on what Sid had to say on the novel that we were supposed to read; the one that I didn't even glance at. I would think that knowing Mr. Black personally and basically entrusting my life to him that he would make life easy for me in his class. Yeah I obviously wasn't taking into account what Sid was like. Sure he lets me off somewhat easy in class if I miss an assignment or didn't read the book, but when I meet him for training, he usually grills me on Steinbeck's works and the themes involved while making me concentrate on forming orbs or blocking punches. Lately however, with my gloomy attitude that allows me to focus on nothing at all, he has been giving me a little leeway in both areas of my life.
That thought made me consider how pathetic I have become. Yes, I was miserable. That did not mean, however, that I needed to destroy all the other aspects of my life along with my love life. I always wanted to be this strong female character that people look up to, but I have never even attempted to be. I always let others take the lead and I reduced myself to staying in the shadows. That is what my life consisted of before all of this witch stuff blew my normal life to pieces. I would hide behind Sam and the differences I had from the others in our school and just tried to melt into the background. Even after I got my amulet, I didn't care about being the best or working as hard as I could to catch up to the others because I was fine with them being better than me. I let others take the lead role even in my own life and I couldn't do that anymore. If I continued being the weak person that I am, all of the stress and the dangers that will enter my life will end up killing me.
At that moment I made a decision. I decided to try everything I could to become the best at what I could control. I couldn't make Jake forgive me. I couldn't make the past occurrences go away. I couldn't make the threat on our lives disappear, but I could try to strengthen myself to stand up to those threats. I could step off of the sidelines and play the game. I may not succeed in everything I want to do and things may not go my way, but I could try to do everything within me to ensure that at least I have a fair shot.
With this new outlook, I walked up to Sid's desk after the bell rang. "Do you have time to train after school?" I asked with determination shown through my eyes.
Sid glanced up at me and studied me for a second recognizing my new resolve. He set his pen down and stared straight into my eyes, "Are you sure you are ready for this?"
"Yes."
Sid blew out a small breath of air before a smug smile appeared on his face. "Good. Meet right after school and expect to stay late," he answered while going back to the papers on his desk which signaled his dismissal of me.
I turned and walked out the door. My heart still hurt like nothing I have ever felt, but I used that hurt to fuel my determination and walked down the halls with my held high, no longer standing in the shadows.
That afternoon I went straight to the training room. I was there before Sid so I started stretching and warming up. In the middle of a stretch I felt the tell tale tingle of magic and threw myself into a back handspring causing the orb to miss me. I landed in a crouch and looked up to see Sid rolling up his sleeves. "Get up," he grunted while readying his magic for another attack. I stood slowly unconsciously taking into account all of the movements he was making in order to determine when another attack would come. For the first time in a long time I was able to clear my head of all things other than the fight at hand. I felt my own power streaming through me that I unconsciously called forth.
We circled each other watching with calculating gazes where the other person's weight was put and the steps they were taking. I knew I wouldn't catch Sid off-guard right now, so I was on the defensive. He faked to the left and threw a bolt of energy right at my chest, but I expected it and rolled to the side. What I didn't expect was his follow up attack that managed to nick me in the arm. The bolt was weak considering he wasn't using a lot of his power, but the pain actually made me concentrate more. It fueled my body into hyper-awareness in order to prevent another hit. Sid threw another shot which I rolled to the side to avoid and quickly threw an orb of my own that quickly dissipated when he instantaneously brought up a shield. The training fight continued that way with shots fired and returned, blocked and dodged. An hour later saw us both with a number of burns and scratches marring our skin. My breathing was heavy and exhaustion was starting to seep into my muscles causing my movements to slow. Sid, having trained longer, was in considerably better shape than me and there was only sweat to reveal his exertion. He knew I was weakening and took advantage of that. When I rolled to dodge another hit, he quickly sent another directly after. I managed to shield in time, but the shield was weak and only managed to weaken the hit and not stop it. The orb hit me in my chest causing me to fall onto my back. My chest was heaving with trying to fill my lungs and send oxygen to my muscles that refused to move. The hit didn't hurt too much since it was weakened, but it seemed to be the last bit needed to ensure that my body was spent.
Sid's head showed up in my view from the floor reminding me of my first day of training. "You did a lot better than I've seen you do in a long time," he said with a smile on his face, a smile that soon got an evil taint to it. "Now you can rest for 15 minutes and then we will set you up on the machines some more to work on that endurance of yours."
I groaned a response and managed to heave my tired body over to the mini-fridge to grab a water knowing that today may become one of the longest days of my life.
At 9 that evening, Sid finally let me out of the torture I was in after making me promise to be there promptly after school tomorrow. I managed to drag my weary body to my car and got home in a daze. Once I was in my house, all I wanted to do was fall to sleep for a week, but the layers of sweat that glued my clothes to my body and matted my hair to my face made me take a detour to the bathroom. I made an extremely hot bath in order to soothe my screaming muscles and relaxed in relief until the water started to get cold. I dragged my weary body from the bathroom and fell face first into my bed wanting nothing more than to succumb to unconsciousness. I almost escaped into the bliss that was sleep when my cell phone decided to go off. After debating to ignore it, I muttered a string of curse words and looked at the name on the screen which caused to me freeze all movements and thoughts.
After not hearing from him since that night in the alley that caused so much stress in my life he returned at the most inopportune time. The name "LUCIAN" was lit up in bright green and I had no idea what to do.