GLASS || The Catalysts, #1 [REWRITE]

IV

Between the 'Who are you?' to his 'What did you do?', Lena can't decide which question she wants to retort to.

"What do you mean?" Lena shoots back eventually, yanking her hand away from Caelus. Infuriatingly, he doesn't react, his hand loosening as he lets her go. "Who are you?"

"You already know," he responds, half a whisper as if he didn't mean to say it out loud.

If it isn't for his hard gaze, Lena might think he meant that she'd been watching and knows him as Caelus, or Stormbringer—whatever the Catalysts, the passengers, and his friends are calling him. She did, after all, say his name. But this is different. He doesn't mean it that way. There's something else to it.

Since he doesn't explain, Lena decides not to prod further. "Everyone is shouting your name."

On cue, the microphone blares, "Caelus Aveyard, step away from the authorities' weapon and refrain from destroying the train."

Lena gives him a look that said, 'I told you so', and Caelus gives a furtive glance over his shoulder. Only then as Lena follows his line of sight she realizes the train is tilted, perhaps at nearly a forty five degree angle. She hasn't realized this because of her blurred senses from the supposed explosion before. Then again, the area doesn't seem like an aftermath of a blow from a bomb; the only mess is the swept glass pieces littered all around the metal ground and broken glass panes, the Aerotrain all but intact except that it's now bent at an odd angle. Looking past Caelus, Lena sees that the gap between two suspended halves of the train has widened with this half dangling at a precarious position.

"You leaped over that gap—"

"Caelus!"

Lena groans. "What did I say."

This time, it is his friend Neesha's voice. She asks urgently, "What happened?"

But Caelus merely glances back once for a quick nod before his attention returns to Lena again. He looks at her as if she's a subject he can't master, but when he takes in the school uniform she wears, something like alarm flickers in his eyes. She can't really tell through his impassive mask, but something of her is making him hesitate.

"What were you thinking?" Caelus says softly, a little on edge from his usual impassiveness. "Running into the explosion like that?"

She blinks repeatedly at him, uncertain. It takes her a great few moments to collect herself, and then her recollection of what happened. Something snaps in her. She was running toward the explosion... The Supernova!

Her senses are obviously dulled because of soemthing like an explosion, but she didn't really witness the actual thing. And why did she take so long to recall what happened? This is making her lose her mind; she's much too young to have dementia. Jokes aside, it's a sensitive topic for Lena, because she's attending Arcane Academy in search of her missing memories and possibly the mysterious cause of it. If she's struggling to recall just a simple occurrence involving her very self—like the Supernova blowing off seconds ago—what does this imply?

She doesn't realize she's shaking. Maybe it's just the aftermath of the explosion, but Lena is no longer certain of anything. A hand appears before her own quaking ones, and she glances up, leveling herself with Caelus' purple eyes. He's just an inch or so taller than her; this close, she finds that his eyes are not really purple but blue with a red hue.

"Are you all right?" Caelus asks, a hand reaching out tentatively.

So he's actually polite. This takes Lena by surprise—what had she expected, really? Just because his first words to her were rather strange and rude, doesn't mean he is a bad guy or that he is unkind. Perhaps she'd misjudged; she does have a bad habit of hating on first impressions.