Rehab for SuperVillains (18+)-Chapter 43: Just to understand

"There must be something that turned you this way."

The words hung in the air, and a thick, heavy silence descended, pressing down on the small room. Freya’s breath stalled, caught in her chest as Kael’s quiet probing sliced into the raw, frozen edges she’d spent years burying.

Her pale blue eyes narrowed, flicking upward to search his face—scanning for judgment, for pity, for anything she could use to push him away. Finding nothing she could grasp, her gaze darted to the wall, and she draped her forearm over her face, shielding herself as her jaw tightened.

"You don’t know shit," she muttered, her voice rough and gravelly, but the usual venom was absent, replaced by a faint tremor. Her fingers curled into the edge of the cot, gripping it as if it were the only thing anchoring her.

Kael leaned closer, his voice softening but steady, a lifeline extended into her storm. "Maybe not. Or maybe I do." He tapped the file with a gentle, deliberate motion, the sound a soft punctuation in the quiet. "Those kids in the alley—the ones you froze to death. They were your first, weren’t they?"

Freya didn’t respond. Her silence was a fortress, impenetrable and cold.

"It’s not proven," he continued, undeterred, "but I can tell. The overkill. Your dormant powers rose to the surface there, didn’t they?"

Her head snapped back so fast her platinum-cyan hair whipped across her shoulders, a wild cascade framing her face as her queen-like mask cracked.

"Don’t," she hissed, sitting up in a flash, her poise shattering into something feral and untamed. Her blue eyes blazed, fierce and unguarded, her breath ragged as she leaned in close—too close—her face inches from his.

"You don’t get to dig there." Her voice trembled, anger a thin veneer over the hurt bleeding through, but Kael didn’t flinch. He wasn’t scared of her, nor did he meet her hostility with his own. His hazel eyes held hers, calm and unwavering, a quiet strength in the face of her fury.

His hand lingered near her leg, the faint hum of empathic resonance threading through the air, feeling the tempest within her shift: rage, yes, but grief too, a crack he could gently widen.

He dialed down her anger, coaxing the grief to the surface, making her heart beat unevenly, a heavy lump weighing it down.

"I’m not digging to hurt you," he said, his voice low and earnest, cutting through the tension like a steady pulse. "Just to understand."

She scoffed, the sound harsh and jagged, leaning back as her arms crossed tighter over her chest, but her eyes stayed locked on his, conflicted and stormy.

"Understand what? That I’m a monster? Save it—I know what I am." Her smirk returned, bitter and brittle, a shield hastily thrown up, but her voice wavered, a fracture in her icy facade.

Kael shook his head, slow and firm, his tone slicing through her deflection.

"I know you’re not the monster others claim you to be—or what you claim yourself to be. You’re someone who got pushed. Those kids—what’d they do to you?" Her breath hitched, her eyes widening for a split second before narrowing again, her silence a towering wall.

But beneath it, a flash of shame flickered, a memory clawing its way free, and with his resonance nudging her, she felt an unfamiliar urge to let it spill after years of locking it away.

"They..." she started, her voice low and halting, then stopped, her jaw clenching as she glared at the wall, fingers digging into her arms until her knuckles whitened.

Kael waited, patient and still, his hand brushing her knee again, the resonance softening the air around them, coaxing her to speak.

"They owned me," she spat suddenly, the words sharp and venomous, her eyes flicking back to him, raw and fierce. "Every day—shoving, laughing, mocking, degrading, making me their bitch. And one day, something in me, just snapped."

Her smirk twisted, dark and pained, her voice dropping to a near whisper. "Froze the shit out of them—their dead, horrified faces made me feel alive. Strong. As if the tables turned. The hunted becomes the hunter. The slave becomes the master... You don’t get that."

Kael nodded, slow and deliberate, his hazel eyes steady, holding hers without judgment. "I get more than you think," he said, his voice quiet but firm, a thread of understanding woven into it.

"Feeling weak—then finding power, then going on a revenge rampage. It’s a rush, an addiction. But it doesn’t have to stay that way." Freya’s laugh barked out, short and bitter, her head shaking as if to dismiss him. "What—turn it into hugs and hero bullshit? Pass."

He leaned closer, his voice dropping further, earnest and unyielding. "Not hugs—control. You must have noticed that after a point, your revenge felt empty. But then you kept going to avoid feeling that emptiness, afraid that if you stopped, you’d turn back into your old self." fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

Freya didn’t answer, her silence louder than any retort. Kael had struck a nerve, his words piercing the spot she’d buried deep. He pressed on, his tone gentle but insistent.

"You’re strong, Freya—stronger than they ever were. No one can call you weak anymore. Look at you." His gaze swept over her—her poised frame, the cyan T-shirt clinging to her lithe curves, the dark pants accentuating her regal strength.

"You don’t need to keep proving it by breaking everything." His hand rested lightly on her knee, the resonance a soft hum, offering not judgment but a quiet challenge—to see herself beyond the ice and the wreckage she’d left behind.

Freya’s icy blue eyes searched his, skepticism warring with a flicker of uncertainty as his words settled over her, sharp and weighty. Her breath steadied, though her chest rose and fell with the effort of holding herself together. "And what—you fix me?" she asked, her voice dry and cutting, a blade wrapped in disdain.

Yet her arms loosened, slipping faintly from their tight cross, her guard trembling at the edges like ice beginning to thaw. Kael stayed still, his hand resting near her leg, empathic resonance pulsing low—a quiet thread weaving through the air, tasting the shift: anger cooling, pride bending, a raw ache rising slow and unsteady.

He shook his head, a small, genuine motion, his voice dropping softer, deliberate. "Not fix. I want to see you. The real you, under all this mask you’ve created for yourself."