No. Just....no. (Henry, Thornton)

[Katurian Arsov]

A week. A week of noise, of pushing and shoving, of lying awake in an unfamiliar bed and trying to work out what the hell anyone had said to him. He pushed back, scowled at the teachers, spoke as little as possible in class, but nobody seemed to mind. Katurian felt as if he’d gone through the looking glass. He was always having to concentrate, and when he got too tired to do that the situation became intolerable. So far Kat had been sullen and volatile, although he hadn’t yet let his anger get the better of him – he’d come close to hitting someone quite a few times, but the situation had always been too public. That was the trouble with Hammel: there were so many people around, all the time. It was getting on nerves Kat didn’t even know he had, and he was getting jittery. Part of it was the tension. In Odarennyi, he had known exactly where he stood. At Hammel, everyone seemed to be playing a waiting game with him. Katurian didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up.

This wasn’t anything he was used to, and Katurian wasn’t sure he could deal with it for very much longer.

More than anything, he just wanted to be left on his own for an hour. When Kat was by himself he didn’t have to impress anyone, didn’t have to listen to anyone, didn’t have to watch his back. Since coming here, straining against the language barrier and training with Thornton, his head had been in constant pain. His bones ached. He’d never been able to sleep without dreaming of fire, but it had never bothered him this much before. When he closed his eyes at night he could feel the flames trying to creep up, and while he hadn’t lost control yet, he had the feeling that it was becoming more and more likely that he soon would. If he didn’t start getting proper sleep, actual rest, he would be in a lot of trouble.

Maybe that was why he found himself half an hour early for a training session – the fireproof rooms were cool and comforting, and as he closed the door behind him he could hardly contain a sigh of relief. It was empty. He was alone. Kat sat nestled in the corner between two of the walls, a math textbook resting on his knees. He’d only intended to get some reading in, safely by himself in blessed silence, but his sleep-deprived body wasn’t going to forgive him for the three scant hours he’d been able to close his eyes the night before.

It was only a few minutes before Katurian’s head started to nod. After ten had passed he was asleep, curled against the wall.

[Henry Ballo]

Training. Henry was not thrilled about this part of his Hammel education. After his practice with Ravyn he had improved…somewhat. But it was still an exhausting exercise that usually left him feeling more frustrated than accomplished. Why couldn’t he keep himself aloft for longer than ten minutes at a time? Why did he have such difficulties with getting down? And why did this even matter? He was no longer floating on his own—didn’t that he could technically be done? He heartily wished that was the case. But he only had a year left, which meant he could no longer afford to regularly skip his training sessions. It meant he had to show up on time—although that was one thing he’d done already—listen to what the trainer had to say and do it with a minimum of talking back. Had it been a subject Henry had enjoyed, this wouldn’t have proved difficult. As it was not, training was proving to be a slow and painful process for all involved.

At least things were getting better socially. He was spending more time with Estelle, Robbie was…small, blonde, and annoying, but not the worst company he could keep, and he was managing to be somewhat civil to people these days. Due to this, he wasn’t in a completely foul mood when he arrived in the training room, but he couldn’t be described as cheerful, either.

Then again, it was Henry. Smiling twice a day is an achievement with him.

Today he thought he would be early, and pick out a training room so he could attempt to center himself and prepare for the session. Most of the rooms were full. A few had trainers and trainees inside, and some were just students practicing on their own. As what Henry wanted was some peace and quiet and solitude, he moved past those. There was one that caught his eye—a single boy was in there, and he seemed to be asleep. Henry passed by it initially, but after being unable to find another open room, returned to it and stared at the boy inside, expression less stony than it was among others and more thoughtful.

He wasn’t going to demand for him to leave. That would’ve been stupid—perhaps the other student had an appointment or something.

Mind, this didn’t mean Henry was going to be nice about this. Henry has no intention of leaving him alone. He just wasn’t going to be an ass and kick him out. Instead, he was going to be a slightly lesser jerk and wake him to ask if he needed to be in the room. He hesitated for a moment outside, glancing around, then stepped inside, knelt by the other student’s side, and lightly shook his shoulder.

“Excuse me. Should you be sleeping? Is there something you are doing here?"

Yup. Henry has a while to go before he becomes a nice guy.

[Katurian Arsov]

In Katurian’s dreams, the fire had started. This time it was cool, a slight flickering sensation against his skin as he walked through it – he almost smiled. But Henry’s touch to his shoulder jolted him through several layers of sleep, and he awoke with a start.

Katurian had been shaken awake several times, and each time had had one thing in common: it had never been a positive experience. Punished for falling asleep in class (which he’d gone through a phase of when he’d first been learning how to control his ability), woken in the night for something unpleasant devised by his classmates, or roughly dragged out of bed by rivals for a bit of midnight pyro practise – it is hopefully unsurprising to discover that one of Kat’s least favourite things was being woken up by someone else. In Odarennyi he had frequently been awoken by other pyrokinetics who wanted to spar with him – or even just by bigger, older students who wanted to try out what they could do against someone who could set them alight. Odarennyi had all been about who was top dog, and Kat was constantly reminded that he needed to say in his place. The teachers had ignored this behaviour, even approved of it – they liked the idea of their students being tough enough to withstand something like that. Kat supposed that in a few years, he would have been doing the same thing to the next pyro who came along.

But the long and the short of it is that Kat did not view being woken up by an older student in a positive light. So when he opened his eyes to see Henry crouched in front of him, he did the only logical thing at that moment: he panicked.

His brain was still half-asleep, so none of the English words registered. All Kat saw was a young man who was considerably bigger than him (and rather alarming in appearance – racism aside, Kat was from a very small village in rural Russia. He wasn’t used to seeing anyone who wasn’t white, and he was still struggling to keep from staring around here), getting much to close to his face for comfort.

There was, as ever, two options: fight or flight. Kat wasn’t consciously thinking this, but it was always there – and flight didn’t seem like an option at the moment. He was too penned in, there was no way he could make it past Henry without being caught. It would have been his first reaction to someone that much bigger than him, but it wasn’t possible – he was going to have to fight. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d been on edge for, and the one moment he’d allowed his guard to slip…

Katurian did what he would have done at Odarennyi, when everyone but him was a threat: he cast the textbook aside, and aimed a fist squarely at Henry’s face.

[Henry Ballo]

If one simply looked at his size and tendency not to smile, one would think that Henry often got into fights. This was not the case. Oh, when he’d been a younger boy, he’d gotten into quite a few scraps. He’d been a young boy left largely unsupervised running around a large city. Boys left alone like that tended to form groups and duke it out with each other, mostly for stakes of being saved from mud or, occasionally, to stop oneself from losing their lunch or money. Sometimes it was more serious. Henry had a tendency to get into fights over the honor of his mother, because being a single mother in Botswana was not quite as universally accepted as it could be in the U.S. But he had largely stopped those fights when he was twelve and he’d last gotten into a scuffle over an insult over his accent. After that, he’d grown tall enough for people to start leaving him alone. So as a result, when it came to fistfights, one could say that Henry was a little rusty.

But he’d also been practicing with Charlie. And as Charlie couldn’t be described as shy or kind when it came to her training, Henry was slightly better off than would have other been expected otherwise. Which was good, because the last thing that he’d expected was for the other boy to wake up and to try to hit him in the face.

Well, it was good in theory.

Henry didn’t react in time at all. Katurian’s punch hit him squarely in the face, and Henry was knocked out of his crouched position and flat onto his back. His nose throbbed, and his head pounded from where he’d hit it. Due to these factors, he remained still for a moment. So what happened next was definitely not from the logical part of his mind. Humiliation paired up with anger for a heady combo, and he moved back onto his feet and without any real thought, moved to tackle him. It was crude, there was no training involved, but part of Henry—the one that was kind of thinking—thought that perhaps his superior weight and build would prove useful. Plus, there was a convenient wall behind him.

Not that Henry was intending to use the wall to his advantage. We think. If he ever comes back to reality and away from the more primal stage he’s in.

[Katurian Arsov]

Katurian wasn’t very big. He was still growing, but he was 5”6 at the moment – and it was safe to say that he’d never reach Henry’s dizzying heights. He’d learned one or two things, though, the first of which was that if you’re smaller than your opponent, then the situation has no room for foolhardiness. You fight if you have to. If you don’t have to, then you get the hell out of there.

So while he was gratified that he’d managed to floor Henry with a single punch (it didn’t happen that often – Kat was used to fighting people who were considerably better at fighting than he was), he was more surprised than anything else. There was a pause, and he froze like a deer in the headlights – but then his common sense kicked in, and he cast around for the easiest way out of the training room: the door he had entered by. He was penned in by Henry’s prone body, but he figured he could just about make it…

The moment’s pause had been just a second too long. Just as Kat was starting to attempt his exit, Henry was coming for him – Kat felt the older boy barrel into him, and all the air left his lungs as he was pinned against the wall.

Henry was bigger and stronger than fifteen-year-old Kat, and panic set in when he felt the weight of the other boy holding him down. Katurian gasped for breath, and began to struggle as soon as he realised that Henry wasn’t going to let him go. He kicked and wriggled, trying to land punches with his one free arm. He was cursing in Russian, shouting for Henry to release him – English had vanished as soon as he’d woken up. The fact that he couldn’t be understood was lost on him: he was solely focussed on being let go, of getting out of this suddenly claustrophobic space.

There was panic, sure. But there was also exhilaration – Kat felt adrenaline rush through him as he continued to fight against Henry’s hold, and he found that he was almost smiling. If he’d been capable of thinking straight at that moment, he would have been able to make a guess at the reason: this was the first time in a whole week that he was doing something that he understood. This was a situation he could make sense of. So there was a small, determined smile on his face as he tried to lash out, hoping to catch Henry with his fists once again.

[Henry Ballo]

This was a spectacularly bad idea. Henry’s mind—which could be surprisingly logical when he felt so inclined—could have presented on-cue all the reasons why not to do this. The person he was currently fighting was a lot younger than he was. He was also a lot smaller. If anyone came in it was going to look hellishly bad. He had no idea what he was doing. Estelle was going to kill him.

But these thoughts would probably occur to him later. When he wasn’t angry and his nose and ego weren’t throbbing.

The way Kat gasped for breath as he was pinned against the wall almost had Henry pulling back. That was the instinct. He hadn’t gotten in that many fights, and as he could see it, his point was already made. The pressure against Kat relieved a little—probably practical, considering how he was flailing against him, trying to land a punch. It didn’t work out as well as he’d hoped, as the punch ended up hitting him in the ribs and he found himself doubled up, which broke his grip on Katurian

Henry didn’t know a lot of curses in Tswana. His mother had thought him to be too young to share some of the more explicit ones. The few he did know were the kinds that children found out from accidents and would share as they huddled together, and would giggle when they tried to say them or debated seriously over their meaning. Now he said them with vehemence and lurched forward, grabbing for one of Katurian’s arms and trying for a punch to the solar plexus. Charlie had taught him well. He was in a more defensive position now, crouched with a fist protecting his already bruised stomach. And he was trying to be practical about this. His goal was just to get the damned boy to stay still long enough for him to regain some brain cells.

Actually, there was no practicality to this. Katurian might have felt the rush of adrenaline—well, so did Henry. It wasn’t exhilaration on his part. Henry lashed out with his temper. Normally it was with words. He was good with words. But in this case, it was with his fists because it was easy. Because he didn’t have to think and because it was so much simpler than anything else he’d had to deal with since he’d arrived in this gods-forsaken country.

[Katurian Arsov]

Henry’s hand closed around Katurian’s forearm (he tried to pull away but the grip was too strong – he would have bruises in the morning, and the thought gave him a stab of perverse satisfaction), and he had only a moment to register it before the older boy’s fist collided with his abdomen. Kat grunted in pain and shock as he was propelled back against the wall, head and left shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. It was a moment before he could lift his head enough to look up, and he tried to work out if he had time to catch his breath.

His shoulder hurt. His head hurt. His arm hurt where Henry had grabbed it – but Kat ignored it. He’d been in pain before. This was no different than the time he’d tried to take on the biggest kid at Odarennyi, and he’d made it out of that one alive. It sure hurt a lot less than his burns had done. If it hurt, you knew that everything was still working, to some extent – the time to really start worrying about injuries was when you couldn’t feel anything. Belatedly, it occurred to Kat that he still didn’t know why Henry had started this (and as far as Kat was concerned, Henry was the one who had made the first move: he took waking him up to be a hostile action, assuming that Henry had intended to start a fight by doing so).

But that wasn’t the question, here. It didn’t matter why – all that mattered was who was going to have the upper hand.

It was probably going to be Henry. Kat was no fool: the older boy was bigger and stronger than he was (that much had been evident from the way Henry had been able to hold onto him), and he looked to be in better shape. But Kat was damned if he was going to let Henry walk over him – he wasn’t going to give in without a fight.

They were at a kind of stalemate, now. Katurian narrowed his eyes at the other boy, fists clenching, body tensed to fight or run, depending on Henry’s next move. He was in the weaker position, still backed up against the wall, and there was a hard set to his mouth. His English wasn’t quite there yet, but he knew enough to get his point across: the blow to his head seemed to have returned the power of speech to him. ‘Fuck off,’ Kat growled, his gaze not leaving Henry for a moment as he tried to stare him down.

[Henry Ballo]

Henry felt the impact from hitting the younger boy run up his arm, and he released his grip as Katurian was pushed back and into the wall. He still clenched his hands in a loose fist, and his hands were up as he continued to crouch in a guard, his hands lifted up to protect himself and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t go after him. Henry was not by nature an aggressive human being. That might’ve surprised anyone who had been on the sharp end of his tongue. How could anyone who acted like such a cold, stuck up prick be the kind of person who wouldn’t make the first move?

The good answer would have been because Henry had not always been the stuck-up pain in the ass that made up the majority of his personality today. Oh, he’d always been distant. But once that distance, that general sense that he wasn’t all there, had been because he was lost in some other space or too shy to speak up. But for people who are that way, it doesn’t take much to turn a head-in-the-clouds quality to protection behind very high and very daunting walls.

Of course, there was also a bad answer, which was that Henry had finally gotten his moment of standing still and thinking, and that had brought to his attention the fact that Katurian was quite small, seemed not to have English as his native language, and was much younger than Henry, and in all this would end very badly for him if anyone was to find out about this. Henry wasn’t attacking because he saw his future potentially crashing down around him and he didn’t like it. For that reason alone, he would’ve even stopped, apologized and left—maybe even tried to make amends if he thought the boy had a chance of “telling.”

But then Katurian spoke again. Henry’s frustration welled—after all, who had attacked who here?—and he moved forward. He might’ve tried to aim a punch toward his stomach again. Or perhaps he was just trying to pin him to the wall to make it easier to give him a knee in a vulnerable place. It wasn’t clear even to Henry. Frustrated, in pain from the blow to the nose and baffled, he just wanted someone to hurt and he preferred it not to be himself.

[Katurian Arsov]

Kat wouldn’t ever have described himself as being claustrophobic, but he was definitely wary of being in tight spaces. Then again, who wouldn’t be backed into a corner by a huge guy and not be just the slightest bit nervous about it?

He could see the expression in Henry’s eyes just after he’d spoken – Katurian didn’t know exactly what the look would be called by anyone else, but he knew it very well indeed: it was the look someone got on their face when they were just about to punch you. One glance and Kat knew exactly what was coming. He tried to move just at the same time as Henry did, but he wasn’t fast enough. The cry he gave when Henry managed to shove him against the wall was more anger than pain, but there was fear in it as well. Henry may not have meant to look as stern as he did, but there was something in his expression which had implied to Kat that he didn’t mean to mess around, this time.

Henry’s knee (fist? Whatever. It hurt, whatever it was) collided with Kat’s stomach and he grunted, lashing out frantically at the older boy. Something – it could have been the wall, or it could have been an elbow – met the side of his face, and Kat could taste blood, feel the warm slipperiness of it running down his throat. He choked for a moment, coughed and gasped, struggling fiercely against Henry’s weight.

For a moment – just for a second, not even long enough for his brain to really process the idea – Kat thought of the way he could really win this fight, if he wanted to. For that second, his clothes began to smoulder; but as soon as the acrid tang of smoke reached his nostrils, he realised what he’d done. Kat shut off his ability instantly, and pulled away from Henry as violently as he dared.

What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t use his power on somebody else. Kat spat blood out onto the floor next to him, and twisted again so that he was facing Henry, arms going up in an attempt to block any more punches coming his way. But Henry was still holding him down, and he did his best to kick. By this point he was flagging – he had no hope of really trying to hurt the older boy, but he couldn’t go down without a fight.

[John Thornton]

It was at this point that Thornton got to the training room he expected to be working with Kat in. He was still a little early but it was important he had some time to figure out the day's lesson, and being in the room helped him plan.

You know what didn't help him plan? Walking in on two of his students in the middle of what was quite clearly a brawl.

Without speaking, he strode forward and stood between the two students (he could remember Katurian's power all too well) and pushed them both, hard, away from each other. Thornton was not in any way stronger than the average man, but he had a good 20 years on them both and he was furious. They could have hurt one another, badly. More than the bruises and cuts he could see here. Henry was a big man, he could deal a lot of damage if he hit the right places and as for his most recently acquired student..

There was a reason both of these boys had been assigned a trainer who was impossible to hurt.

"What do you think you're doing?" he roared. John hadn't had cause to really shout since he had started teaching. It wasn't necessary and really didn't help much. However, this time he was not thinking about how to help the students. He was furious, and his rather low voice was reverberating off the walls.

Blazing blue eyes shot between Kat, who's teeth were clearly stained with blood, and Henry's nose had swollen badly. He wanted to shake them by the collars like bad puppies. Instead, he pushed them away from each other with all the force of a 39 year old man who took care of himself.

"Explain ye'rselves," he said slowly, no longer yelling though his voice was rough with fury. "Now!"

[Henry Ballo]

Katurian’s struggles made Henry’s efforts to keep him pinned to the wall a little more difficult. He was not a stranger to pain, so the blows that Katurian did land—one to the arm, one to the ribs here, one against the leg as he struggled—made him grimace, but he didn’t sway from his goals of keeping Katurian still and, if he could, landing enough punches to sooth his pride. But he hesitated at Katurian’s cry, and that let the other boy get a blow to his face, creating a thin cut on Henry’s lip. He flinched back and then pressed Katurian further against the wall, aiming another elbow to his stomach—and a blow there too if he could. He ignored the struggles until he smelled something that seemed to be smoke. Smoke? This made him pause. After all, this was a school for people with different powers. This boy could be pretty dangerous, so when Kat janked away, Henry didn’t resist too much. The kick hit his stomach, though, and he was recoiling backwards just as Thornton came roaring into the room. Henry released Katurian completely as Thornton pushed him away from the other boy and struggled out of Thornton’s grip. He was breathing hard, his eyes were flashing, He spat some blood out on the floor—his split lip stung like hell, and his nose throbbed in the center of his forehead—and took two steps away from Thornton, hands still up in an open-palmed guard.

But that was stupid. Thornton was a teacher. He wouldn’t harm either of them, even if he was furious. So instead Henry straightened up, folded his arms behind back and glared at Thornton. To Henry, Katurian had started it. He’d landed the first blow. And had he been a different person, he might’ve said so in the hopes of getting out of trouble. But Henry, for good or for ill, had a firm belief that you didn’t rat out on people. You took care of it yourself. And you didn’t let any stuck-up trainers try to teach you differently. He looked at Katurian, then turned back to Thornton. And all he said, flatly, was one word: “No.” Let Thornton make of that what he would. 

[Katurian Arsov]

So focussed was Kat on what was happening between him and Henry, that he didn’t notice Thornton’s approach until their trainer was standing between them. There was shouting, but Kat didn’t register the words, only the tone – all the same, he made another leap for Henry and had to be pushed back a second time. Kat slid down the wall and crouched on the floor, looking up at Thornton with wary anger in his grey eyes. Even like this he was still tensed for flight, watching the older man for any signs that he was going to attack.

He touched the side of his head – blood was trickling from where he had struck the wall. But his trainer’s voice made him look back up: Thornton was angry. Really angry. Katurian froze, clearly confused.

Whenever teachers became involved in fights at home, they were never that furious. They would bawl you out with the hint of a thin-lipped smile, and give you some kind of punishment – but there was always some approval, there. Fighting was never a cause for this much anger. Kat narrowed his eyes at Thornton, trying to work out what his game was. For a moment he looked past him, to Henry, and met his gaze.

There was one thing you never, ever did at Odarennyi: grass on another student. True, questions were never usually asked about what was going on, but if they were, you definitely didn’t rat anyone else out. Katurian had learned that rule in his first week at the school, and he had never broken it since. Looking up at Henry, it didn’t even cross his mind to say anything incriminating to Thornton – the consequences would not be worth it (and there would be consequences, Kat was sure of that. Henry was clearly to be reckoned with, and he had no intention of pissing him off any further. The punishment other students meted out to people who ‘told’ was always particularly unpleasant).

There was an awful moment when Henry looked at him, and Kat was sure that he was going to say something – but then the other boy said just one word, and Kat almost breathed a sigh of relief. Katurian just shrugged mutely when Thornton looked at him for an answer, eyes still fixed nervously on his trainer – if the older man decided to get the answer out of him through rougher means, he wasn’t going to let his concentration slip.

[John Thornton]

Thornton's eyebrows shot up, then clapped back down when Henry's hands went up, as if to start hitting again. "You'll hurt yourself," he warned sharply, and then quickly turned to grasp Kat's shirt front and push him back gently as the younger boy made another go at it. "Enough!"

For a minute, real concern that one of them might throw a punch overtook the trainer and he glared hard to make sure that did not happen. They're break their fingers. It had happened before, and while usually if someone had a swing at him they had it coming, these were his students. Who seemed to have already done a number on themselves, or at least each other.

Henry's one word reply had Thornton inhaling sharply through his nose, and while the boy was his height, in fact maybe half an inch taller it was still entirely possible to look down his nose at him. He was furious, and unable to get rid of the mental picture of Henry's charred skeleton and Kat's head twisted around. People were so fragile, and as far as John was concerned, they might as well all be made of blown glass.

"I don't care who started it," he said after a moment, arms loose in case he had to stop Kat again. "I thought you were too old for this," he glared at Henry, "And that you wouldn't start fights when you had only just moved here," he looked back to Kat, "but I will see you both in detention, for the next three months. You," he turned back to Henry, "The nurse. Go!" The last work was barked, and left no room for argument, even from the giant of a student he was facing.

"You," he turned to Katurian, "Stay here. With me. We are going to talk." While he was no longer yelling, Thornton was still speaking at a low roar, and his expression was as dark as an Icelandic winter.

[Henry Ballo]

It was only slightly reassuring that the other boy seemed to have the same code of not-telling as Henry did. Reassuring because it meant he couldn’t get into more trouble if the boy started telling stories of how Henry had started beating him up without provocation. But it was also bad because the boy wasn’t saying that Henry hadn’t started the fight, and as the Tswana boy was the larger and older, the odds of him beginning the fight were not in his favor. That could end badly. He didn’t flinch at Thornton’s glare, but stared right back, dark eyes flashing and hands carefully flexed open so he didn’t do anything stupid. He refused to cower. To anyone, even Thornton, whom he had recognized (although not aloud) as not bad, as far as the teachers here went. He had the students best interests at heart. But Henry wasn’t going to be happy with any authority figure right now. Three months of detention? With two jobs and a girlfriend? He was half tempted to take a swing at the trainer even though he knew very well what the results would be. So instead he just stood there and looked down at Thornton’s rebuke. He was too old for this. But he’d be damned if he’d be dismissed like some misbehaving child. His eyes lingered on Thornton, then to Katurian, who was shifting…nervously.

Just moved here. Probably from Russia. Well, Henry could understand that of all things. And Thornton was frightening. His jaw clenched, and then he straightened up.

“’m not leaving.” His swollen nose made his English muddier than it normally was, and he cleared his throat again. “He is scared. You are angry. I am not leaving.” It was not his most articulate statement, but it wasn’t an articulate thought. It was just that Henry knew what it was like to be scared, alone and in a foreign country with people who only wanted to yell at you. And although Katurian had just possibly broken his nose, he disliked the idea of leaving him alone with the clearly furious Thornton.

No, it didn’t make any sense. And Henry could care less.

[Katurian Arsov]

Fear. It was like a kick to the stomach, squeezing the air from Katurian’s lungs as soon as Thornton’s order left his mouth. Kat was very still, his breathing coming rapidly – panic and adrenaline set in despite his injuries, and he looked up at his trainer with wide, nervous eyes. Everything about Thornton’s voice and body language said that Katurian was in deep, deep trouble. When an instructor got that look on his face, things were going to get very bad, very quickly. Could he make a run for the exit and avoid getting caught?

No. There was no point. He wouldn’t be able to move very fast, and it would probably only make Thornton more angry – if that were possible.

For a moment, Kat’s gaze flickered up to Henry. He tried to read the older boy’s face, to work out what was going to happen to him from his expression – there was an unspoken question in his eyes: what should he expect? But then Henry spoke, and Katurian’s draw almost dropped. He hadn’t intended to ask the other boy to stay, hadn’t even considered it. It definitely wasn’t the kind of thing that had ever happened to him before, and Kat took a second to work out that yes, Henry was staying out of some kind of…protection. His disbelief must have shown on his face.

Nobody at Odarennyi would ever have stayed. They would have taken the chance to leave the room and escape the anger of the trainer, and they would have run the hell out of there.

Which begged the question: why? Why would Henry do this for him? Kat got shakily to his feet, figuring that he would do a lot better standing up than he would if he stayed crouched against the wall. He stood in front of John, looking up at him with ill-disguised apprehension, wincing from the pain of his injuries.

He didn’t know the other boy’s motives yet, but there was one thing he understood: Henry had answered his plea for help, so he was going to have to pay him back.

‘My fault.’ His voice sounded clogged, and he could still taste the blood in his mouth. Kat looked down at the floor for a moment, before he thought better of it and kept his eyes warily on Thornton. ‘I…’ he paused for a moment, unsure of what to say. But trainers didn’t want excuses, so he closed his mouth and shrugged. ‘Was…me,’ he said finally, expression a mixture of insolence and apprehension as he braced himself for Thornton’s first blow to fall. He’d admitted to being the wrong-doer, so he was just going to have to face the consequences.

'Talk' could have only been code for one thing. Kat swallowed nervously.