Elementals

Chapter 18

Earth - Year 3204
Northern Academy

Breeze:
I close my eyes for a bit longer than a standard blink - giving me some time and space to think through what I'm about to do. The only thing that pops up is the numerous of times that I've been humiliated and provoked by the very person that for some reason, finds out that he actually cares about me...or whatever. I sigh deeply as the feeling of not being able to move somehow gets to me. Considering I'm having a visitor, I've been helped to sit up higher, but I barely have strength for anything else. I just sit there focusing on breathing. It still craves a certain effort.

My heart is pounding in my chest as I can hear the door open in the far end of the room. I know who it is. It's just something about the mood that lets me know that Rain is walking towards me. I don't turn my head, not yet. He's had me looking over my back for the last three years. I'm not gonna turn my head towards him, not until I want to myself. I can hear him sit down on the chair by the foot of my bed. There's just silence between us as I let him sit there in his own silence. I can sense how shaky my breath is.

"Tell me something..." He starts. "...what on earth were you thinking getting yourself out in a blizzard storm?" He asks me. There's something about the tone in his voice. It's as if I've violated a rule of his. Let me just be clear: he's never really cared before, so why does he care now? "Are you here to lecture me?" I ask him with a very determined voice. He doesn't answer, not at first. In fact, I don't give him a chance to. "Since when did you even care about what happened to me?" I add after a while as I only hear him sigh deeply when I finally look at him.

That's when I see it. There's something different in his face. I almost don't recognize it because it's been so long since I've seen it, but for some reason it's visible now. "Don't be stupid, Breeze, I've always cared about your well-being." He answers. I try to look for sarcasm in his reply, but I fail to spot any. Then again that wouldn't be the first time. "Wow, imagine that...no sarcasm." I let out as I turn my head away from him. "I know it hasn't seemed that way, but I've been acting the way I have to make you stronger." He starts. My eyes narrows as I turn my head back towards him.

"I've done what I've done and said what I've said to make you grow up independently on me." He adds. "That's your excuse? That's how you explain the harassing over the past three years? That it was all to make me stronger?!" I'm outraged to say the least. This time however I'm not strong enough for my element to come out at him. I can tell he was almost expecting that as soon as my temper rose. "Don't worry, Rain, I'm not strong enough for that...yet." I let out referring to my element appearing out of nowhere.

"Breeze, going to war, you and I would never have been able to go to the field together...I wanted to ease the pain on you so that it wouldn't be hard for you to lose me...if that ever becomes the case." He goes on but I blankly ignore him. "I was told to do it, alright? I didn't like it but that's what I was told to do when you got in here." He lets out. "And you just couldn't ignore an order, could you?" I let out. For some reason I find that a part of me actually believes him. It makes sense of course, but I've made that mistake too many times before and I'm not about to do it again.

"It's a definite rule, Breeze. There's not supposed to be that tight of a bond between two elementals in training...it's a rule in all the academies." He tries to excuse his way out of it. For once I'm actually the one in control. "We're not supposed to put each other in front of the mission when the time comes." He adds. What he says makes sense, I know that, but I don't feel like that comes even close to making up for what he has done to me over the past few years. "Right, if that's the truth, and I'm not saying it is, but if it is...what is it that you're asking of me now, forgiveness? Considering what you've put me through, I don't have that in me." I let out.