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Awakenings

Part Two

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by anonymous

“Just what do you think you're doing?"

“Hanging around with that riffraff?"

“You know he's been in trouble with the government? The police? Did you ever think of that?"

Sabrina looked down, breathing slowly and evenly – but her father just grabbed her chin and yanked her face up, forcing her to look at him. To look at the man whose words poured over her like an unstoppable flood, red in the face and blotchy, a five o'clock shadow on his face. His hair was greying and curled, the collar of his shirt too tight around his neck with a tie that hung out from his body, following the line of gravity while he towered over her, looming darkly. Even in her younger days, when she'd been much smaller, a young girl growing up, she'd always thought of him as a giant. But not a big, friendly giant, like with the BFG, but a monstrous, grotesque, stomping giant, like from Jack and the Beanstalk.

“Are you listening to me, girl? You've got a lot of explaining to do!"

She did. Maybe. Depending on one's opinion of her. She tried to take a step back, to smooth down the front of her blue dress, the sleeves coming down to her elbows, her bosom unflattering – not that she had ever really wanted all that much attention to be there anyway. She was the image of her mother, slim and pretty, but her features kept plain, not given or allowed any special creams or treatments to give her face a healthier glow, like all the girls in magazines did. Or women, she supposed, being that she was an adult at nineteen, even though Sabrina didn't feel much like an adult, not while she was living under her parents' roof.

“Do you hear me, girl?" Her father practically snarled, a hint of spittle flying from his mouth even as her mother tugged weakly at his arm. “This is what comes of associating with boys like that – boys, full stop! No good, no good at all!"

“James…" Sabrina's mother whispered, tugging at his sleep, ineffectively trying to calm him. “This isn't helping… Let her sit down. I'm sure Sabrina had good reason for talking to…"

“Oh, what?" Her father scoffed, tossing his hands in the air and storming back, as if he was done with her: if only. “To talk with rats off the street that have been chucked into the system and think that they won't bring home disease? Do you know what's happened to that boy, girl – do you?"

Sabrina swallowed. She didn't want to talk, didn't want to say anything. Yet her heart hammered, pounding and aching, her chest hollow. It was the worst way to get bad news, her body already locked down in survival mode, though sometimes she did not even think she would survive the next conflict and argument she had with her parents.

“Sabrina," her mother said, stepping up, pairing with her father, even though her mother didn't want any screaming. “We hired a detective to follow you. You've been so secretive… We had no choice. But they saw you, again, with that boy, time after time… We've told you that you're not to see him again, you know what happens with people like that."

“What happened to him?"

Her father whipped around, his dark, beady eyes fixed on her.

“What did you say?"

Sabrina took a breath, her head raised. It couldn't possibly get any worse than it was already, could it? With her cheeks flushed with pink, she met his gaze as levelly and as calmly as she could.

Breathe…

_ _

David had taught her that. It was something that she would carry with her for the rest of her life.

“What happened to David?"

Her father barked a laugh, her mother stepping forward. Sabrina loathed how she wanted to recoil even then. She couldn't remember the last time a touch from either one of her parents had been paired with a kind word, though she couldn't let them see how much they were getting to her.

“He's gone, girl! Gone! How's that sound to you?"

Her father's chest puffed up as if he had personally “put David away", as if he had had a hand in what he would always assume was the right side of the law.

“Stupid boy got himself into trouble, went mad as a Superhuman… It was always going to happen to someone like him, someone who's not really from around here. Even when he moved in with the Steven family, well, everyone knew that he didn't belong. He should never have come here, that bad influence, dragging everyone and the whole goddamn neighbourhood down with him too. Just by being here. If it was anything else, it would be an achievement."

Sabrina gasped, her father pouncing, zeroing in on her weakness.

“Oh, you didn't think we knew about that too, did you? Was it just the secret meetings and sneaking off with that boy that you were worried about us finding out? Well, I've got news for you – you're not going to see that boy ever again! Least of all when he's probably going to spend the rest of his life rotting away in a cell for his crimes, a fitting end for rubbish, but because you're not going to that university anymore! Putting ideas in your head…" He scoffed. “Girl, your life is not going to be as free as we've allowed you to be, mark my words. You ungrateful harlot…"

Sabrina flinched. She'd heard that word a lot, flung from her parents or whispered under her mother's breath at other women, women that she'd thought looked normal, just fine. Never had she heard it sent out in her direction.

“Please… Don't…"

“Oh, no, please, don't!" Her father mocked her. “You'll never see that boy again and you gave give up on those studies of yours too! We're not funding that when all it's doing is putting the ideas of a whore in your head, a woman above her station. You've taken advantage of us for long enough, now it's time for you to act like someone your age, not chasing these ridiculous ideals."

Sabrina didn't know what that meant. All she knew was that something had happened to her friend, her best friend in the whole world. Sometimes, she had thought that David was her only friend, the only one that knew the real her. Of course, she had had friends at university, but she was not living in either outside student accommodation or the student halls on campus, making it more difficult than ever for her to make real friends that wanted to see her in more than simply lectures.

That was not the first thing that her parents had done wrong to her, saying that she would pick up “the wrong ideas" if she lived away from home, that they would only fund her studies if she stayed at home. Thus, that was what had happened, even if the university had given her a tiny lifeline through which to live her life, or so Sabrina had thought. She'd never considered that getting coffee and hanging out with friends between lectures, studying together, could have been considered anything other than exactly what it was.

She'd heard the lectures all before, though she did not honestly believe that David had done anything wrong. He was too quiet and too sweet, someone who kept themselves to themselves. She'd never even seen him smoke and he'd even handed back a cigarette that someone, trying to be friendly, had offered him outside the canteen at the university. Of course, they were allowed to smoke there, but he hadn't wanted to, simply because that was not his desire. He'd never been one to fit in with the “cool crowd" and to be social did not require something like that, making his way, his own path.

In David's unique way of living, he'd shown her that she could forge her own path through life too, regardless of what her parents thought she could or could not do. As her father's barrage of words swamped her, she held her breath and swam. For, in the sanctity of her mind, a place where he could not reach in and snatch words out of her head, everything was sacred, everything was real, everything was her.

She remembered, times not all that long gone by, David living behind her house. Where the trees lined the back of their property – to give them greater separation from the rougher neighbours, her mother had said back then – she had found a weak spot in the fence, a plank that did not appear to be broken and yet could be swivelled out of place. It had been easy, back then, for the young girl and skinny boy to wriggle through the gap, their private cut through where they could speak and sit, playing and laughing in the dirt for hours on end.

Her parents didn't often come outside, leaving their gardener to take care of the weeds, mowing the lawn to crisp, measured protection, once every week or more when the rain was particularly affluent. Even in the back garden, which no one saw except for the meetings and gatherings that their church held, they had the best-groomed lawn in the neighbourhood.

And none of it mattered, except for Sabrina making sure that her secret path was kept safe, always. She wouldn't have wanted to see her one lifeline to the outside world, not even going to the same school as David, cut off, not under any circumstances. The extremely strict school that she went to kept such a rigid dress code, hardly allowing any talking between classes, that she didn't know what to do with herself. Even the books in the library had to be approved before they were added to circulation – and the school itself wasn't even that heavily religious! There was a line there and it was not that religion was controlling, but that many used it as a method of control.

She'd wished that she hadn't had to learn that at such a young age, though she was only just coming to realise the extent of it as an adult, struggling and pushing back at her parents. Sabrina didn't want to think about how her life could have been like if she'd had different parents, a different upbringing, and she didn't even understand the true extent of how different her life had been from others, not yet. That would only come out in time, each sliver revealed with a sharp stab to her gut as she, once again, saw all that had been done, apparently so in the name of love.

Where they had claimed to love her, all that had been laid over her like a shroud on her deathbed had been control.

She blinked tears from her eyes, not wanting her father to have the satisfaction of seeing her cry, though there was something in the chilling gaze of her mother, the one who was usually a little softer and lighter, a little gentler, that set her on the back foot. She wanted to shrink from that look, the look that came as if her mother could see right through her, pick apart the blackness of her bones, one by one, see her dismantled into nothingness. No, her mother's control was deeper and more insidious, coming in small, gentle words, cajoling, pressing, consistently maintaining one course of action and a line of attack until, at long last, Sabrina gave in.

Restricting her portions of food at dinner. Having her weigh herself, in front of her mother, daily until Sabrina had managed to put a stop to that by breaking the scale. Laying out her clothes for her. Not allowing her to choose her own clothes. Grounding her to her room with nothing to entertain her or anything at all to do, not even homework, for the smallest discretion – like answering the doorbell when it rang.

There was more, but the rage of anger in her chest, forcing her heart to pound and pound until it was nothing less than a drumming beat between her ears, a dull roar that still could not drown out her father's screaming. He took her by the shoulders, shaking her like a dog with a rabbit it had caught, yet her body was not yet dead, even if she had felt as if she was dead behind the eyes for some time already, each time she dared look in the mirror.

Act right, do only this, behave only impeccably, be perfect: the only way to be was how her parents wanted her to be and anything else was less than satisfactory, at least in their eyes.

Nothing less than perfection was accepted and while the bar was high for Sabrina, as it had been from the first time in her life she had been able to know and recognise what it was to “be something pleasing", the goalposts were forever changing. She could never be perfect enough for her parents, her stomach growling late into the night, her skin chafing under the rough, coarse cloth of the clothes that her mother purchased for her. Whenever she'd thought that things were going well, that she was doing everything that she needed to for a quiet life, something else came at her unexpectedly, something that she had not even known she needed to be doing – or not doing, as was the way of it.

Her parents had never approved of David or his foster family…yet they had never, not once through all their years, caught her physically sitting with him, chatting and laughing, dirt smudging her nose and her hair tangled with twigs and leaves. They'd never been able to take those times and those days from her, regardless of what she thought of them, what they had tried to make her into.

That was what Sabrina held close as she crawled into bed that night, dressed in long pyjamas, even though it was still autumn and she was not cold at all. She'd never been cold in her bedroom, except when her parents had turned off the heat, deliberately, to her room, as yet another punishment. When that punishment had begun, she had not even known what she'd done wrong, but, back then, had merely accepted it as her due. What more could a young girl do when she still lived under her parents' roof.

She didn't have any recollection of how the argument had ended. After having so many of them, they were all a blur, one blending into another, although something in her, the dark recesses of the back of her mind where she could retreat when things were especially bad, told her that it was the worst yet. No blows had been struck, yet her body ached as if she had been running track, around and around the track, her smart, white trainers pounding the coloured tarmac of the track. She could feel the ache of it in her calves, even her shins hurting, the imagined impact of her feet striking it, again and again in the repetitiveness of running, throbbing up through her in pain.

Yet it was not just her legs that ached as she heaved for breath, burying her face into the pillow, hugging it to her chest, her whole body shuddering. Hugging the pillow to her chest and face wasn't going to help her breathe and yet her body locked onto it more viciously than she could have expected, holding it so tightly, as if it was the only thing that was keeping her from imploding on herself. Her tears soaked the pillow, plain cotton sticking to her face with the moisture, yet all Sabrina could think about, as exhausted as she was, was David, where he was, what could have happened to him.

She should have tried harder to stay in touch with him, she lamented, sobbing, trying to be quiet – if she wasn't quiet, that would be just another reason for her parents to punish her. although Sabrina almost wished that it would be another course of the silent treatment, considering that any conversation with them those days did nothing more good for her, only ever ending up in a screaming match. It had not been like that when she'd just gone along with everything, but, well, things had to change at some point. And she simply didn't know how to find the road out of where she was, floundering and struggling. But she hadn't even asked David for help.

If she'd asked him, would things have been different?

No… No. That wasn't a thought that she could follow down, shaking her head, her chest aching deeply, yet she had no more tears to spend, as much as the strain in her eyes and across her forehead built. Better to sleep, to fade down, to slip into blissful unconsciousness, if only for a little while. If nothing else, sleep was a respite, and there was no way that Sabrina would ever be able to face the light of morning without some kind of sleep. Even a bad night of sleep would be better than nothing.

It was with David's face in her mind, the pillow clasped to her as if her arms were around him, that she drifted into an uneasy slumber.

*

It happened quickly, so quickly and smoothly that she didn't honestly understand what had happened when she awoke. All she knew when she was back in the waking world was that her body felt lighter and stronger, as if she had had the best sleep of her life, her chest no longer aching – for that matter, neither did her muscles. She yawned, stretching her arms over her head, sitting up in bed, though she didn't notice, even then, that she was able to sit up only using her abdominal muscles to draw her torso up. With her eyes half-closed, squinting through the back-arching, spine-crunching yawn, she didn't look at her arms either.

Yet what she did feel was the pull of her ruined pyjama top as she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, the plain, blue fabric with the white trim too tight around her chest for comfort anymore. Her brow furrowed. Had it twisted in the night?

“What in heaven's name is this?"

Yet all became clear as she brought her hand to her chest – and instantly recoiled as if it was a foreign object. For what she saw there was not her hand at all, not as she remembered it, but something scaled with slimmer fingers, more knobbly at the joints than she had ever seen up-close.

Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a scream, yet her mouth was not where it was supposed to be either, something long and blocky (at least in comparison to a flat, human face) meeting her hand instead. She bit down hard, intending to clench her back teeth, yet finding the entire line of her jaw locking quite naturally, as if every one of her teeth fit perfectly between the ones opposing them. Her heart hammered, yet it was easier than she could have hoped for, at least when it came to physical moving her body, to shakily get up, to fetch the small hand mirror from the top of her dresser. Her mother had said that any larger mirror would see her falling prey to vanity if she was allowed to look at her reflection for any length of time.

It did not show the rest of her body, but Sabrina did not need a mirror to take in how her chest pushed out against the front of her pyjama top, though it was across her back that the cotton had torn. For what greeted her in the small mirror, intended for maintaining one's appearance for politeness only, was the muzzle of a gorgeous, jaw-droppingly beautiful dragon anthro adorned with ruby and amber scales as if she had been dipped in the riches of a royal from a history book.

“Oh…"

Sabrina's jaw fell slack and so did that of the dragoness in the mirror, turning her head weakly from side to side, her head about the same size but with a long, elegant muzzle that did not come off as “blocky" at all extending from the front. Her nostrils were lightly curved with raised ridges above them, her teeth lining her much longer jaws right to the back, lips folding softly over them so that they didn't have to be shown, not all the time, when her jaws were parted.

Yet that was not the extent of it as she shakily brushed the line of her jaw with her fingertips, finding that her fingernails had become claws. The same ruby and amber scales draped down her arm to her hand, the new dragon Titan tugging at the collar of her pyjama top to look down there, her bosom much larger and fuller than it had been before. It was hard to guess a size, as she stood taller too, her back wider and stronger where she had wings to bear too. They were large, big and strong enough to have ripped through her clothes, yet she could not help but laugh faintly as she flapped them, buffeting herself with a soft gust of air.

It felt…good to move them. As if they had always been meant to be there, a part of her that had always been missing and that had only just settled into place on her body.

Although it was not technically “allowed" in her house to spend more than the strictly necessary time in nudity, she stripped down to inspect the rest of herself, licking her lips, a tongue that was thinner and more tactile than what her human one had been tickling her muzzle. A muzzle! She had a muzzle! She hadn't seen many Superhumans before who had transformed into other creatures, though she had known of it happening, gasping softly over her impressive wingspan, how her tail swung lightly behind her, the tip curling back and forth.

And her muscles… She was powerful, even if she was not built like a body builder or anything, but a more tasteful, curvaceous female form than she could ever have dreamed of. Maybe that was partly because she was looking at her body as if for the first time, but Sabrina could not stop herself from running her fingers over her hips and up to the curve of her breasts repeatedly, the lines of her body changed forevermore.

A Titan… She could feel the strength running through her, shoulder blades pushed back, the odd sensation of hardly expending any effort or energy at all falling over her. She'd never felt as strong as she did then nor as quietly powerful, as if she didn't have to do anything, really, to take a single step. It came with less effort to her than twitching a finger might have.

Still… There was the problem of her parents, though she told herself that they had to have known and understood that her powers were to have awakened at some time. It was about the right time for her and she was good and strong and powerful and… She hesitated. That would mean that they would be proud of her, wouldn't they? Even if the awakening of her powers, in becoming a Superhuman (even if she was a dragon, technically), was not what they might have expected, they made her special, they made her different. She held that in mind as she dressed, though she had to put on her big, fluffy dressing gown over her new breasts and a long skirt that fell to her ankles to cover up her larger body. Even the skirt only came to the tops of her calves after her change and no shoes would fit her.

Before going downstairs, she brushed out her long, auburn hair, the curls falling down the back of her neck, free and loose. They were a far cry from her blonde, yet her blue eyes were the same, the light of relief in them as she looked back at herself from the mirror, truly herself for the first time.

She took a deep breath. Her parents would understand.

Ah, if only it could have been that easy…

“What have you done?"

Her mother screamed, leaping up, hands clapped over her mouth, backing off from Sabrina as if she had seen a ghost. Although Sabrina had tried to announce herself, to give them warning that something had happened, her father had roared over her and then she'd been in the room and it had been too late to do anything other than let them see her as she truly was. Her father's fists were in the air, yet her more sensitive hearing could not take the blast of his voice thundering over her, as if she had done something terribly wrong.

“You're a monster!" Her father belted out, slamming the flat of his hand into the wall. “What do you think you've done, transforming into this…this thing? This is not how we raised you!"

“We never wanted you to change like this!" Her mother snapped, though her hands shook terribly, the colour drained from her face. “Why couldn't you have been a nice Kinetic like Julie at the Church? Oh, you could have been helpful, but… Oh… Oh, Sabrina! What have you done? Why have you done this to us?"

Her mother crumpled into herself, hands clutched to her chest as if she was praying, though Sabrina did not know of a god that would listen to those words.

“Oh, ohhhhh," her mother all but wailed, the manipulation that Sabrina was becoming so familiar with entering her tone. “Why have you forsaken us, Sabrina, your parents? When we've been nothing but good to you, done nothing but right by you? Why must you defy us at every turn? We only wanted you to be a good, polite, respectful young lady, but the influences of others have led you astray. We only wanted the best for you and you will be the shame of the city, everyone will talk about you…"

Her mother shuddered, heaving, gasping, though Sabrina did not honestly believe there were true sobs behind her words.

“Everyone will see you as a whore looking like that!"

Maybe she could have handled it all if it had only been her father screaming at her, yet her mother wore her down even more, the last vestiges of her patience and resilience fading fast. Down and down and down, as much as she tried to snatch at her composure, her fists clenched, shaking, breath coming in short, tight gasps.

She had to keep herself under control. But she didn't know why that suddenly seemed so important, her body hot and prickling all over, far too hot for comfort.

“This is all because you were with that boy!" Her father spat, as if merely referring to David left a foul taste in his mouth, barely able to look at his daughter. “That boy – do you want to know what happened to him then, Sabrina? Really? Do you want to know what's happened to those you took influence from?"

Please don't…

_ _

But she couldn't stop him, frozen in place, eyes wide, staring, shoulder locked where she was.

“He didn't just go crazy, that boy you think is so special – he murdered good, well-doing people in a fit of rage! A brute! A beast! That's who you've been skulking and slagging around with! He got his powers and that was that! You can't change someone like that, barely had changed and he was off on a rampage, insane, a lunatic, slaughtering everyone that came within range. Is that what you think is the ideal, the way you want to be? He's probably already been executed, you whore, and you think that changing now is going to get you back to his side?"

Sabrina did not understand the track her father's mind had gone down but she did see the darkness in his eyes, his hand whipping back. What he had imagined for her was not what she had done, for she had never been the “whore" that they thought she was, never even the once acting in a manner that could have befitted that. Regardless, it was not becoming of someone to judge a woman for how she enjoyed her body.

As if in slow motion, she watched his hand sweeping through the air, connecting with the side of her muzzle and snapping her head sharply to the side, a line of pain shuddering down her neck. Her mother gasped. Her father snarled.

And that was enough.

“No more!"

It was her time to thunder, leaping into the air, throwing her dressing gown from her body, revealing herself in her naked glory. Yet it was not for shock value, the awakened dragoness not in her right mind, not as she reached for her parents. Every punishment, every injustice, every cruel word, every bit of pain they had caused her built up and up and up to that very moment, her body finally one that she could fight back with. No more could she be locked in her bedroom because her parents thought she'd done something wrong and no more could they control her, not as she struck them, backhanding her mother with a roar that bellowed up from the depths of her gut.

Her mother flew across the room, body buckling like that of a ragdoll, eyes wide, the last scream breaking and dying on her lips as she smacked bodily into the kitchen wall, a cupboard falling, plates smashing. Yet Sabrina did not even pause to take in what she'd done, rounding on her father, her tail lashing, tearing off her skirt, leaving her naked before him, the man recoiling his hands up.

“No… Sabrina… Lord have mercy…"

Yet there was no mercy for the man as she slammed her fist into his chest, punching through his ribcage, though the light did not instantly leave his eyes. No, it lingered for a moment as his blood soaked her scales, dripping and running, dragging her arm back with a ragged breath, wings keeping her hovering even as her father's body slumped to the floor. He was dead before he hit the carefully cleaned tiles, splattering them with his life essence, what had been deemed so important, blood relation, in her family, in the Church that had held too many outdated values over the reality of being a good person.

And Sabrina was the result of that, broken, wiping off her hand and arm on the wall, breathing shortly and raggedly. Yet there was no horror in her for what she'd done, a giant crack in the wall where she'd tossed her mother at it, two of the wall cupboards on the floor, shattered plates and dishes strewn across the floor. Somehow, in the fray, the wooden table had been tipped on its side too, yet she had no recollection of it.

Through it all, she felt strong, vibrant, energised, nostrils twitching as the oddly metallic smell of fresh blood clawed at her nose. It was like when she was preparing fresh meat for dinner with her mother, wrinkling her nose at the blood that remained, but it was better like that, something that she had chosen, something that was finally under her control.

“Yes…"

She hissed, eyes alight, blue chips of ice in her fiery muzzle, though there was no light and dark in her to balance out one side from the other. For too long, she had been held back, had been restrained, had been told to be something that she had never been going to be, something that was not her. For too long, she had lived her life in the skin of another, pretending to be someone she wasn't, and even that had shaped her, driven her down into the dragon that she had always been inside, only waiting to let out her true passion.

And what was that passion? David's image floated to the forefront of her mind and she clung to it greedily. Yes, to find David. To find the one who she should have given her heart to long ago, but had only held back from because of her parents. And her parents were no more! They couldn't stand in her way and if anyone else tried to get in her way too she would cut them down too!

It was her, her true self, laughing as she tossed her head back, not noticing the flecks of blood marking her muzzle. If she had seen them, however, Sabrina would have only thought they would suit her.

Yes, she would find David, rescue him, take him with her to freedom, live their lives together. Whatever came after that would be seen, but she would never again hold back from what she wanted, she would never again be repressed.

The dragoness' wings flapped, laughing and laughing while her gut did not even ache, sirens filling the air. The television set in the living room was still switched on and, as if it was fate, the tale of the Superhuman who had “lost control of themselves" in a blind rage after awakening was plastered all over it. It took mere moments for her to collect the information that she needed from it, for the government wanted to reassure everyone so much that he was contained and no longer a threat that they even gave up his location.

How kind of them. Yet that revelation would be their downfall.

The sirens blared. Sabrina grinned.

It was time.