The Body Tempest

Tempest In The Pen

Another day, another round of classes that bored her out of her mind. It was easy enough for Seraphina to get passable grades in school, even if she was only paying attention half the time. The real game was walking the fine line balancing her test scores pumping up her average versus her constant tardiness bringing it back down. After all this time it still struck her as amazing that she ever took school seriously. Getting the highest grades, securing her position within the hierarchy as one of the strongest Royals, making sure she was acknowledged as a force to be reckoned with by everyone at Wellston High. These ideas— not hers, but those forced on her by her mother, by the society her mother represented— were strong enough to convince her to oppress others for years, but weak enough for someone to shatter into pieces in weeks.

John wasn't in this class, which bummed her out to no end. It was advanced placement, so it was a lethal combination of positively dull and absolutely impossible for him to have had any chance of getting in. For all his positives, he was far and away the worst studier she had ever met. Maybe, actually, that was just another positive she liked about him?

He tore through the bullshit that was the structure built around her life, but didn't give her freedom. John didn't work that way; he only gave people the honest truth that cut to their core past all their defenses, and then left you out in the open. Exposed, free of the cover bullshit gave you as well as from reservations you'd built up fearing it leaving you.

Now she wore her hair how she wanted, not how anyone else did. She didn't care about the Royals anymore, except to keep an eye on them to make sure they still behaved as they'd promised.

And, most importantly, she hung out with John whenever she wanted. That was what she really loved about being free. John would be there, demons and all. Even when he was King, haunted by his past and taking his trauma out on others— even on her— he still lurked there on the inside, screaming out for her to come rescue him just as he'd helped her break free.

Her mother would've hated him when he was masquerading as someone without any powers and would've gladly joined everyone berating and bulling him for that perceived weakness. And there was also no doubt she would've loved the conniving, desperately brutal nature that John displayed when he was spiraling out of control. Even if he said it was for smashing the hierarchy, she would've seen the hypocrisy that Seraphina saw— but whereas she saw the good person John had as his true indisputable nature, her mother would have seen the hypocrisy as just another fact of power. When you're a leader without remorse or equal you can claim whatever you're doing is for the greater good; you can claim that you're tearing down an unjust system even while reinforcing it for your own gain.

It hurt her to ponder what would've happened if the darkness in John's heart was the dominant part in him. That side's sadism would've earned him the utmost respect from every preening, cold, calculating, and pernicious Royal walking the halls. At the very least, even Arlo would've given him begrudging his due as a member of the hierarchy.

But just like the chains that held her down, all those things went away. King John Doe was no more, but then again the old facade that was powerless John went with him as well. Now there was just John, carrying another cross as he tried to find out who he really was, who he could really be. When she held his shoulder on the roof that day he came back, she could tell that there was an air of honesty around him that she'd never quite felt before. A new-found center, a conflict of morals that now turned him towards justice. He'd managed to transform into every little bit of the warm light in her life that he'd become, and yet something so much more wonderfully complicated. Sincere in his penitence, a metamorphosis divine.