I wanted to talk to Dex, but at the same time I didn't. I had no idea what might have happened if we tried to talk to each other. We both were obviously not in the best mood and we seemed to just make it worse for one another.

“Violet,” Lena called out as I hurried my way down the hall, right by the rubble the flying punching bag had caused. “Don’t go so fast!”

But I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to. I needed to get out of the DAU. I needed to clear my head.

But I wasn’t able to get very far. Hank and Nay suddenly skidded out of the meeting room and into the hallway, stopping me dead in my tracks, along with Lena and Kristie, who were behind me.

“What just happened?” Nay asked, referring to the mess behind me.

Dex was still in the exercise room. If I didn't leave quickly, he'd come out and I'd have to face him again. I did not want to see him yet.

But Hank and Nay were blocking my way to the exit. There was no way I could get by them. I was stuck, unless I spoke. But I just didn't know what I was supposed to say.

“Violet,” Nay said, looking from me, to Kristie, and then to Lena. “What is going on?”

How was I supposed to answer that question? Oh, nothing much happened, really. Dex just kissed me and I flipped out, and then he punched a punching bag through a wall. That wasn’t that big of a deal, right?

Just then, Dex made his way out of the exercise room through the hole he had made. He seemed surprised to see us all standing there looking at him.

“Um, hi,” was how he greeted us.

Nay seemed to be growing frustrated now. “Maybe I’ll be able to get an answer out of you,” she sighed. “What just happened?”

Dex looked at me, and both of us looked away when we noticed the other person looking. I felt incredibly awkward.

Hank seemed to understand that it had something to do with Dex and me. “Oh,” was all he said, the word long and drawn out.

Nay was still frustrated. Kristie and Lena were silent. Dex and I still didn’t look at each other.

“I was pissed,” Dex finally said, shocking me by speaking. “I was pissed and I wanted to punch something. Sorry, Nay.”

Though she seemed relieved that someone had finally given her an answer, she was still visibly angry. But much to my surprise, instead of focusing her anger entirely on Dex, she turned toward me.

“What did you do?” she questioned, obviously annoyed.

I stared at her for a moment, completely dumbfounded. What did I do? I stood up for myself!

Annoyed as well, I answered Nay’s question. “I didn’t do anything,” I huffed. “Dex is the one at fault here!”

Dex rolled his eyes at me. “I’m not the one going out on a date with someone I just met!”

Hank looked from me, to Dex, and then—with Nay this time—again went, “Oh…”

“Who I go on a date with is none of your business!” I shouted at him now.

“It is too!” Dex’s fists were clenched at his sides. “You’ve been locked away for five years; you don’t know anything! He could take advantage of you!”

I scowled. “Like you took advantage of me?”

Dex looked shocked. “I didn’t take advantage of you!” he exclaimed. “I only kissed you!”

“Against my will!”

“You’re being ridiculous, you know that?”

I didn’t care if I was being ridiculous. How I felt was how I felt and Dex had no right to judge me for it. I could like who I liked and I could date who I wanted to date. Dex did not control me.

“I trust Tom,” I finally said. “But even if he did try to take advantage of me, I can take care of myself!”

“With what?” he questioned me. “The powers you can’t control?”

I was growing angrier and angrier by the second. I trained everyday to get better with my powers, but that just didn’t seem to be good enough for anyone. It wasn’t like it was my fault.

“I’m done talking to you,” I snapped, turning away and back toward my room. I didn’t need a new outfit for my date with Tom. “I don’t even want to look at you right now.”

This seemed to anger Dex and he grabbed onto my arm—a little too tightly—and spun me back around so I had to face him.

“Are you really that clueless?” he spat. “You can’t see why I’m acting this way? Why I’m so pissed off at you all the time now? You can’t see how much I… I…”

“Say it,” Hank whispered, his hands cupped around his mouth. “Just say it.”

“How… How much of a bitch I think you are?”

Hank immediately deflated, along with Lena and Nay. “So close,” he sighed in disappointment.

This only made me angrier, and I ripped my arm out of his grasp and took a big step away from him. “You know what, Dex?” I scowled, a large chunk of the debris floating up off the ground beside me. “Just leave me alone!”

I threw the chunk at Dex, who ducked out of the way to dodge it just in time. He looked at me in shock, as if he couldn’t believe what I had just done. And honestly, I couldn’t believe it either.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, dodging another rock that I threw at him. “Violet!”

I was done. I was done talking and getting nowhere. If he wanted to fight, then we were going to fight.

“Come on!” I shouted, enraged. “Fight me!”

My head pounded, but I ignored it as I threw another rick at him. He jumped out of the way, the rock barely missing his shoulder.

“Violet, I’m not going to fight you!” he refused.

“Violet, stop it!” Nay shouted at me. “This is ridiculous! Stop!”

It may have been ridiculous, but I didn't care. If this got my point across to Dex, then so be it. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lena take a step forward, ready to intervene. Nay reached out in front of her, blocking her from coming any closer.

Kristie looked terrified as she practically his behind Hank, but I didn't really blame her. I think I'd be pretty worried too if my teammates were arguing with each other like this. It had a different feel to it than when we were fighting Malicius and Lynx.

I continued throwing things at Dex, since that was all I really knew how to do with my powers. Dex was right when he said I couldn't control my powers, even when it came to the simple things that I knew how to do. But as long as I was quick, I shouldn't have been able to lose control.

I threw another piece of the broken wall at him, and this time, he was unable to get out of the way in time and it bashed right into his arm. 

Dex shouted at a cuss word, and looked down at the bloody cut on his arm. He seemed to realize then that I was being serious when I said I wanted to fight him, and the look he now gave me told me he wasn't going to hold back anymore.

“You know what? Fine,” he finally agreed, picking up a rock. “If you want to fight, then we'll fight!”

I dodged the rock and he suddenly disappeared, and I couldn't help but feel antsy. I had no idea where he could have been now. He could have been behind me, or maybe he hadn't even left the spot he had been standing in just moments before.

I was suddenly being knocked over, but just as I hit the ground I rolled and sprung back up onto my feet. He was close. I just needed a way to find him.

When I was knocked over again, I was prepared this time. When I hit the ground, I kicked out, getting Dex’s legs and taking him out with me. He turned visible again the second he hit the ground.

I rolled away from him, pushing myself up from the ground and throwing another rock at him. He rolled out of the way and back up onto his feet, kicking a rock at me. It grazed my arm, but otherwise did nothing else but bounce off the wall behind me.

“I really don't like this!” Kristie called out from her spot behind Dex. “Why are they even doing this? All they're doing is hurting each other and making a bigger mess!”

This was true. But I still didn't care.

“Aren't you going to stop them?” Lena asked, speaking to our two mentors who were just watching us in shock. “They could really hurt each other!”

“It's hard to stop a fight when we can't even see one of the fighters,” Hank informed her, his eyes never leaving me and Dex.

This entire fight was mostly just us dodging everything we threw, and it was really starting to get on my nerves. There wasn’t much else we could have done though, since Dex never got close enough to me for me to hit him while he was visible.

But when Dex picked up another rock, he flung it at me so quickly that I didn't even see; I didn't know to dodge or block. So it then cracked me right on the temple. 

The force was so strong that I flew back, slamming onto the ground. The room went silent around us.

“Violet…” It was Dex who had spoken, but I could barely hear him. “Violet, are you okay?”

I reached up, feeling blood where the rock had hit me. I was in shock, but only for a few seconds. Instead of crying or giving up, this only made me angrier.

“Do you really think that’s going to make me give up?” I growled, pushing myself up off the ground as I wiped at the bloody wound on my forehead. “It's really on now!”

Pieces of the wall floated all around me, and I suddenly threw them all and they pelted at Dex. He immediately turned invisible and disappeared from sight.

I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore. I just continued to throw things, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. What else was I supposed to do when I couldn’t even see where Dex exactly was?

My head suddenly hurt, and not from the gash Dex had given me. I dropped the rock that I had picked up and clutched onto the sides of my head, my eyes squeezing shut as I tried to make the pain go away.

Broken pieces hanging from the walls began to shake and fly across the hall. My head felt like it was splitting open.

“Nay,” I heard Hank call out, sounding worried. “Nay!”

Our female mentor seemed to snap out of whatever trance she had been in, and she sprung into action.

“Both of you, stop it!” Nay finally shouted, and she jumped in between Dex and me, her hands out facing both of us. A powerful gust of wind now pushed me back, and Dex in the other direction.

Dex and I both slammed onto the ground, the pain in my head ceasing the second I landed. I could hear Dex shout out a cuss word like he always did. The debris we had been throwing crashed to the ground, and the hallway around us went eerily quiet.

I could hardly breathe. Though before I had been filled with energy, angry and wanting to fight, now I felt sick and I couldn't believe what I had just done.

“Whoa.”

It was Aiden who had broken the silence, and I looked up to see that both Aiden and Anthony had joined in to watch sometime during the fight, and I immediately felt self conscious. What the heck had I been thinking, fighting Dex like that?

Anthony looked at the two of us, seeming more unamused than he did surprised. “Of course it’s you two making all this racket,” he said. “I almost thought Malicius or Lynx broke in or something.”

“I was hoping that was it,” Aiden remarked, and I realized that sometimes it was just really difficult to ignore him. “I’m in the mood to kick some ass.”

Nay glared at our team leader. “Yes, well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?”

Aiden said nothing more.

Nay now turned back toward Dex and me now. “Both of you are acting stupid and reckless,” she snapped at us, and Dex and I didn’t get up from our spots on the floor. “Neither of you are going anywhere until this mess is cleaned up, you understand? You’re going to clean this up together. With no powers.”

That didn’t seem like a very good idea, since the room had gotten this messy because of the two of us. Leaving us to clean it up would probably get us absolutely nowhere. I remembered when Dex and I had been stuck cleaning the meeting room, but Lena had been the one to cause that mess. Now instead of making the mess, she was witnessing it.

“Before you start cleaning, we should treat your injuries,” Nay informed us, still seeming flustered over everything that had just happened. “Even though I think we should just let you bleed out for this mess you made…”

She mumbled the last part, and I seemed to be the only one that heard her. I pretended I didn't.

“Here,” Hank now said, clasping a hand down on Dex's shoulder. “I'll take care of Dex and Nay'll take care of Violet. The rest of you, uh…”

“I'm still going to the mall,” Lena shrugged, and I shouldn't have been surprised that a fight like this wouldn't have stopped her from going shopping. She now turned toward my three teammates that hadn't had anything to do with the fight. “Let's go.”

It wasn't a question, it was a command, and I realized she wasn't going to the mall just because she wanted to, but because she wanted to get everyone else out of the way.

Lena really was a good friend. She just didn't really like to show it.

Since my injury was worse than Dex's, Nay took me to the infirmary and Hank took Dex to the meeting room. I didn't really get why they thought separating us while wrapping up our wounds was a good idea but then sticking us back on the battlefield together to clean it up was okay…

“That was really stupid,” Nay scolded as she wrapped the gauze around my head. “You don't know what you could have done.”

“I know,” I sighed, trying to look anywhere but at her. “I know, Nay. I really could have hurt Dex. I'm sorry.”

“No, Violet.” She shook her head. “You don't know what you could have done.”

There was something about her tone of voice that made me feel uneasy, but I didn't ask any questions in fear of what the answers might have been.

After she was finished and made sure the gauze was tightly wrapped around my head, she brought me back out to the destroyed hallway where Hank and Nay already were.

Dex’s eyes went wide when he saw my gauze, but he said nothing. I said nothing to him in return. He was no longer wearing the blue checkered over shirt—the one I had ripped and most likely had blood on it—that he had been wearing earlier, but was now wearing a grey undershirt so I could clearly see his wound. I couldn’t help but feel guilty.

“You guys don't really seem as angry as I thought you'd be,” I couldn't help but comment. “I mean, we destroyed the hallway…”

Nay didn't seem angered by this at all. “You'd be surprised how easy it is to fix these kinds of things when you're superhuman,” she explained, and I guess she had a point. “We know people that could fix this in a matter of minutes. We just want you to clean it up powerless because you need a punishment for doing it in the first place. And for fighting and making it worse.”

Dex and I said nothing. Hank and Nay have us buckets and mops, along with brooms and dustpans. We were going to be here for a while, that was for sure.

Dex and I didn’t even look at each other once Hank and Nay left and we began to clean. He had gauze wrapped around his bicep, but not nearly as much as I had wrapped around my head. Luckily it didn’t hurt much now that it had been treated.

I was sure this was going to take more than one day. We had school, and then I also had the date with Tom on Saturday. If I was even allowed out of the DAU anytime soon…

Every time I turned to steal a glance at Dex, his back was to me. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. He probably wanted nothing to do with me ever again. I didn’t really blame him. Even I knew that I was in the wrong.

But it wasn’t like he was perfect. All of this was just as much his fault as it was mine.

“That was some impressive power you had out there,” Dex suddenly said to me, breaking the silence. I nearly dropped my broom in surprise. He seemed to be trying to make small talk. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you do know how to control your powers.”

I gulped, shaking my head. “No. Half of what I did, I don't even know how I did it. I don’t even know… why I did it.”

Dex frowned, and said nothing else on the matter. He just continued to sweep. He didn't look back up at me. I expected him to say more, but he didn’t. And I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed before I went back to sweeping along with him.

I felt like I should have talked to him. Maybe that was what we really needed to do. I thought we had to fight, but that really got us nowhere. Though talking had gotten us into this mess in the first place, I felt like if we talked like civilized adults, things might have gotten better. We just couldn’t yell at each other.

I was about to say something to him, but was stopped when he said something instead, surprising me greatly.

“Look, Violet…” he started, not even looking back at me. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t look at him either. “For what? Kissing me, hitting me, or calling me a bitch?”

Dex let out a long sigh and continued to sweep. “All of them,” he finally answered after what felt like a million years. “I didn't know you'd get this pissed over me kissing you. I didn't mean to hit you, at least not that hard, and I wasn't even thinking when I called you that.”

I didn't know what to say. I guess I could have apologized, too, but I really didn't do anything that bad... except start the fight.

“I'm sorry for starting it,” I apologized. I knew I couldn't fully blame him for this entire ordeal. “I guess I wasn't thinking either.”

I turned toward the discarded, broken punching bag covered in debris. I bent over to pick it up, but found that it was too heavy and I nearly fell over on top of it.

Dex was beside me in a second, helping me up and picking up the punching bag on his own. “Here, let me get it,” he offered.

“But your arm…” I swallowed, reaching out to touch the gauze around his wound. The wound I had given him. “I don’t want you hurting yourself even more.”

Dex smirked, reaching out to finger the gauze wrapped around my head, right where my wound was. The punching bag was still hanging off his other arm, as if it weighed nothing at all. And I guess, to him, it didn’t.

“The last thing I’d ever want is for you to get hurt.”

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that, so I said nothing and we walked by me and into the exercise room.

After he placed the punching bag back inside the room and we began to clean again, it went silent again, both of us just sweeping. But this time, it wasn't awkward, and when I bumped into him, he bumped me back. When I smiled at him, he smiled back. And I knew that everything was going to be okay.

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Oh, hey, that took way too long...

This time of year has always been really stressful because of school, and this year is supposed to be the hardest (it definitely is so far) so I really don't have a lot of time to write. Summer's in about a month and a half, and I'll be able to update more frequently then.

Please COMMENT, VOTE, and FAN! :)