Tristan didn't even struggle against the invisible hold as his eyes faded back to their natural colour. His hands were clenched behind his back palms-together, meaning he had no direction over his powers and couldn't utilise them.
The rest of us froze, crouching defensively and staring at Tristan and Aldrich; the latter smirked sardonically, knowing he had the upper hand now. How had this happened? Had Tristan let his guard down? Never.
'If this is how it has to be, then so be it,' Aldrich rasped. 'If you'd handed her over when you had the chance it wouldn't have come to this. If I have to kill you off one by one until she's the only one left, more the pleasure for me.' His gaze landed on me, and even though I was gazing back at him with horrified intensity, I could see the others as if in slow motion out of the corners of my eyes; they all turned to me as well and started to throw themselves in my direction.
Their voices imploded in my mind as they all projected at me at once; he'll be reborn; don't let Aldrich get into your head; control yourself; STOP!
It was the last thing I remembered.
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I came to to the sound of sirens. There were car alarms screaming up and down the street again, but there was the unmistakable addition of ambulance and police sirens ripping through my consciousness and bringing me back to the present.
Slowly, I took in what was going on. I was crouched on the ground in a ball, my arms wrapped around my knees and my head buried between my chest and my thighs. Lifting my head slowly, I became aware that there were people around me; blinking and trying to shake the rushing in my ears I realised Kaley and Maya were crouched on either side of me, arms around me and murmuring, not that that I could hear them just yet.
Looking further around, I was shocked to see that the street was completely destroyed. For the small chaos Aldrich had caused with his arrival, whatever had happened in the interim of my black-out and black-in, it made Aldrich look like David rather than Goliath. Â Houses had collapsed and there was rubble everywhere, but this was nothing to the huge crater in the middle of the street, where Aldrich and Tristan had been standing.
'What happened?' I blurted; my mouth felt like it was full of cotton wool. I looked wildly between Maya and Kaley, my expression pleading. 'What happened?!' They glanced at each other warily.
'It's all going to be fine, Cody,' Kaley said softly, rubbing my back. 'You're disoriented, but-'
'Tell me what happened! Where's Tristan?! Is he okay? Where is he?!'
Neither of them said anything but both glances flickered towards the crater briefly before returning to me. I didn't hesitate, swinging my head back to face the crater and study it more carefully this time; a group of five people in medics' uniforms were lifting a stretcher out of the crater; strapped to it was a lump covered in a white blanket, and sticking out the top was the unmistakable honey-blonde mop of hair that belonged to Tristan Darlington.
'No,' I muttered, shocked, when I first saw him, then, 'NO!' I jumped to my feet and started towards the crater, but Maya caught me around the waist and pulled me back, holding tight no matter how violently I struggled.
'You have to let them take him,' she muttered directly into my ear. I don't know what sort of soothing balm she coated her words in but I stopped struggling and flopped against her, watching in silence as they loaded the stretcher into the ambulance and it took off, carefully avoiding the rubble at first before disappearing around the corner.
'Cody.' I looked up to see Gregory and Edwin had appeared at our side. 'Are you alright?'
I nodded numbly. 'I'm fine,' I said, shaking my head; my wellbeing seemed inconsequential considering Tristan had just been loaded into an ambulance. 'Where did they take him?'
'St Alban's,' Gregory said. 'We'll follow in the car.'
'Where's Annabelle?' I asked, suddenly panicked.
'She's fine, she's waiting in the car,' Edwin said gently. 'Come on, now.'
Too worried about Tristan to wonder why everyone was treating me so weirdly, I traipsed after them towards the car and sat in beside a tentative-looking Annabelle.
'Are you okay?' she asked, looking up at me with wide eyes.
'Yeah,' I said, again noting the undue amount of attention being placed on my well-being rather than the middle Darlington child.
We sped along the streets and arrived at St Alban's Hospital in a time not possible for regular cars, but then, our car wasn't being driven by a regular person. We tumbled out and headed for the Emergency Room waiting area, Gregory flagging down a nurse who took him to the nurses' station and checked on Tristan's status.
'He's in triage,' he told us quietly when he got back and we all leaned forward in our seats to hear what he had to say. 'They'll let us know when he's out and when we can see him. Does anybody want to go home?' we all stared obstinately back at him, and he nodded like he'd been expecting as much, dropping wearily into a chair beside Edwin.
'Triage?' I asked timidly. 'What happened?'
'You did,' Annabelle said bluntly, looking up at me as Kaley and Maya made tutting noises. 'What?' she asked them, clearly daring them to scold her. 'He's been kept in the dark long enough, don't you think?' Annabelle was the best example of the rebirth thing out of all the Darlingtons. She acted a lot more maturely than any other six year old I'd ever met.
'What do you mean?' I insisted. 'What did I do?'
'You blew up,' she said simply, waving her arms in a circle in the air to demonstrate.
'I... Blew up?'
'Curled up in a ball and rained doom down on Aldrich,' she clarified, not that it cleared much up for me.
'Can you please be more specific?' I pleaded. It was starting to sound like I might have been the reason Tristan was hurt.
Annabelle bit her lip, but then seemed to shrug and took a deep breath. 'You let Aldrich get in your head,' she murmured, then interrupted my interruption. 'I know you didn't mean to, I know you never opened the door. But he got Tristan because he knew that-... Well. Anyway, you reacted exactly like he knew you would, except it backfired on him.'
'Why, what did he think would happen?'
'He thought you'd lose control and explode â which you did. But I guess he didn't count on any residual innocence you might have had â he was counting on your breakdown killing all but the two most powerful people on the street: he and Kaley. Instead it was like there was some sort of focus... It didn't affect any of us, even though it hit us. It pulverised Aldrich, and Tristan was collateral damage.'
I stared at her in shock for a few moments before a weird, half-groan, half-keening sound came from my throat and I dropped my head into my hands. 'I can't believe this is my fault,' I groaned, wishing one of my abilities was turning back time.
I was snapped out of it by Annabelle smacking me on the back of the head.
'Stop that,' she said forcefully, her little six year old face peering up at me with much older eyes. 'You just permanently got rid of one of the most powerful villains of all time and you did it by accident. Tristan's only in hospital because it was too public a situation for him to heal himself. He's going to be fine and you need to snap out of whatever guilt trip you seem intent to taking because this is a good thing.'
I peered at her worriedly. Was she just trying to make me feel better? I guess she must have read the expression on my face because she just rolled her eyes and pulled a book from nowhere, opening it and falling into its pages so she wouldn't have to deal with me.
I guess I must have gone into some sort of trance after that because I was only snapped out of it by the arrival of a doctor calling out for the Darlingtons. We all jumped to our feet and rushed over to him; me because I was still genuinely worried, the others to keep up the pretence.
'He's in a stable condition,' the doctor assured us. 'He was remarkably lucky given the scale of the explosion; he only suffered a handful of fractures. He has a broken arm and three cracked ribs, but other than that he's fine. We've given him a painkiller but he's awake if you'd like to see him? One at a time,' he clarified quickly.
I glanced back at Gregory and Edwin to see which of them would go in first, but they just smiled sort of sceptically at me and Edwin jerked his head, indicating I should follow the doctor.
'Me?!' I demanded. 'Uh, no. I don't think so. I doubt he'll want to see me.'
You saved his life, Cody, Gregory projected, so the doctor wouldn't hear.
But I made such a huge mess of everything, I fretted, wringing my hands. And he would have been reborn anyway.
Not for another seventy-odd years, he wouldn't. Go.
This shocked me out of arguing and I numbly turned to follow the bemused looking doctor down the hallway and through several doors before we reached Tristan's private room. He left me at the door, warning me not to be too long as Tristan would need to rest.
As the doctor walked away, I knocked tentatively and opened the door just enough to stick my head around. 'Tristan?'
He was sitting propped up on a few of those hard, hospital pillows, bare-chested aside from several yards of bandaging that wrapped around his ribs, with leads and wires hooking him up to a couple of machines in the corner of the room. His left arm was already encased in a plaster cast, but he looked up and smiled when he heard my voice.
'Hey there Time Bomb,' he joked, as I walked further inside, still fidgeting and finding it hard to meet his gaze. 'Sit down.' He nodded towards a chair by the side of his bed.
I dropped into it and finally brought my eyes up to look at him, only to see he was looking back at me with raised eyebrows like What now?
'I'm really sorry,' I blurted. 'I don't really know what happened because I can't remember it but I know it was my fault and I'm so, so sorry that you got hurt and that I lost control-'
'Shut up Cody,' he interrupted in that authoritative voice he has sometimes. 'I'm fine and you more than took care of our Aldrich problem. You didn't do anything wrong.'
'I don't even know why I did it...' I mumbled, though hearing him say that had made me feel a bit better.
Tristan gave me a gently sceptical look. 'Come on, Cody,' he said softly. 'You know why you did it.'
Even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I couldn't stop myself, and looked up at him sharply. He had his eyebrows raised slightly again, and at his expression I turned back to the floor, staring at it intently.
'It's not a big deal,' he started, then faltered and tried again, 'I mean, not to belittle your feelings or anything...'
Oh god, make it stop.
'It's not... You'll get over it. You know? This isn't "it".'
It was the least articulate I'd ever heard him and his discomfort was making me even more humiliated. Guilt over being the reason he was in hospital was the only thing keeping me from running out of there and all the way back to America.
He sighed and I glanced up at him tentatively; he was staring into the middle distance and I breathed a silent sigh of relief that this portion of the morning might be over. After a few seconds he sighed again and tried to reach across his body with his right arm for the glass of water on the table to his left. His face screwed up with effort as his ribs and left arm obviously twinged with pain.
'No, I'll get it,' I said automatically, jumping to my feet and leaning across him to grab the glass. Before my fingers could close around it however, the beeping from his heart monitor sped up.
Freezing in place, I slowly brought my eyes to his chest, where his heart was, staring at it like it might give me answers, before bringing my gaze up to his face. He was studiously looking the other way.
'Tristan...?' I said slowly.
'Hmm?' He still didn't look at me.
'What does that mean?'
'What?'
Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows.
'Oh, that. Nothing. My body is trying to heal itself and I can't let it or they'll get suspicious. It's just exertion.'
Even though this could have made sense for all I knew, some small burst of confidence or arrogance in me caused me to stay leaning over him, and bring my hand back from where it was still stretched towards the glass, to rest over his heart.
Even without the assistance of the monitor, I would have felt his heart rate pick up again from the pounding under my palm.
'Sure about that?' I asked, looking at him again.
Tristan finally brought his gaze to meet mine, but simultaneously closed his hand around my wrist and pulled me away from him. 'Stop,' he said quietly. 'You'll regret this.'
I brought my other hand up to touch the side of his face, but he jerked away from me, and something snapped.
'Fine,' I said sharply, wrenching my hand out of his grip and backing away from him. 'Whatever. You know, for all your superpowers and your inbuilt leadership or whatever, underneath it all you're just a coward. A complete coward.'
I left the room before he could reply.
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A/N: OoOoOoOoOo
One chapter left!
Furthermore, for anyone who cares, I think I will write a sequel to this. Not right away, but eventually I think I will :)