20. kuebiko.

                                    

                                          
b r e a t h e again beneath the
f l a m e s
                          
When she wakes, its with a gasp, the air feeling like fire clawing its way into her lungs, and she’s alone. She hasn’t been out for long, that much she could tell; the air was thick with the scent of smoke and death, the ground was littered with nothing but ash and debris. Right now, Aoibheal felt as though death would be quite becoming, but the others were out there somewhere, and they had to know she was okay. Relatively speaking. On shaking legs she stood, Earth crunching beneath her boots as every part of her body screamed in protest. Though she could tell something was wrong – probably cracked ribs and internal bleeding – she couldn’t stop, knowing her family was still out there.

                          
But then... there he was; the Beginning, the End, the Apocalypse, En Sabah Nur, whatever you wanted to call him, standing over Peter who was slumped on the ground and trapped by his foot, which had lead to a broken leg, while also cradling his broken arm. It’s as if her mind short-circuited, everything going blank apart from the white-hot rage within her. He hurt Peter. He hurt Charles. And now, she was going to hurt him.

                          
Aoibheal, alone, stumbles forward with what power she has, drawing his attention from Peter who was crying out in pain. With slow, deliberate steps, he approaches her, watches her with caution, but she doesn’t seem like a threat, she seems tired and beaten down, yet she refuses to bow to him as he had expected her to.

                          
It’s in the way she walks, the way she holds herself, the silent, unspoken demand that he will focus on her and her alone, leave her friends be, and her demand leaves little room for argument. En Sabah Nur’s face splits into an unsettling grin instead, his hand reaching up to caress her cheek. It’s meant to intimidate her, but it doesn’t seem to work; she doesn’t flinch, her eye contact doesn’t even waiver, even as his thumb ghosts over her lips and the stitches holding her mouth closed turn to sand under his command. The girl made of fire has turned to ice, has died too many times to back down now, has little left as the sand beneath her familys’ feet crumbles away. Like lightning, the hand on her cheek moves to grip her neck, her larynx in his iron grip, nails digging into her flesh and stifling any noise of protest she might have uttered.

                          
"You, dear child, have no idea who you’re trifling with.” It’s a low snarl, with his grip on Aoibheal’s throat just tight enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to actually be painful, or perhaps she was simply too desensitised after years of blowing herself apart. Slowly, his grip gets tighter until the world around the ginger grows dark, black spots appearing in her vision; she can’t see the way the false god’s expression shifts, can barely hear Charles calling her name in her head, doesn’t even register when Peter cries out to her.
                          
“What’s so special about you?” The false god asks. He keeps her here, or perhaps it’s Charles, pulling her back from the abyss of unconsciousness, her nails feebly scraping at the hand around her throat. “Nothing.” En Sabah Nur spits the word at her, mind so full of the memories Charles can’t help but project of the child in his grip. This girl is nothing, except to those to whom she is everything. The problem is, she didn’t know this, and in her self-sacrifice, she became their weakest link.

                          
“Will you not save your own daughter?!” En Sabah Nur’s voice rings throughout the ruins, his voice echoing as he calls, time and again, trying and succeeding to pull on Charles’s heartstrings. Still suspended by her throat, Aoibheal has stopped struggling. Her heartbeat, slow and uneven, pulses beneath his fingertips, and he wonders if she had even thought her plan through, if she seriously thought giving herself up would be enough to spare the world’s most powerful telepath; she is a child and a fool, and once she has outlived her use, she will be dead. He wonders if, perhaps, after a lifetime of expendability, she has grown too used to death; no matter, soon he will give the word fitting gravitas.