#SuperViral, Ch 15: Glowing Pains Pt. 4

Every lie has its breaking point. Lena's came over roast chicken and a mother's question.

Sunday dinner at David's parents' house. Lena's fingers traced the silver bracelet on her wrist - cool metal, smooth edges, her dimmer switch. The thing that kept her skin from broadcasting every anxious flutter, every spike of terror. Without it, she'd be pulsing blue like a dying star. With it, she was just a girl meeting her boyfriend's parents.

Normal.

David's hand rested on her knee as he drove. Steady. Comfortable. Completely unaware of the tight knot forming beneath her ribs.

The house rose from manicured lawns - brick colonial, climbing roses, the kind of garden David designed for clients. His parents waited on the porch. Susan, David's kind eyes in an older face, pulled Lena into a hug scented with cinnamon and vanilla. Tom offered a firm handshake and thoughtful questions about her art, which he'd researched online. Their relief at seeing David happy radiated off them in waves Lena couldn't afford to match.

Everything went perfectly.

Too perfectly.

Lena played her role flawlessly. Laughed at Tom's dad jokes - controlled chuckle, not her usual explosive bark. Praised Susan's roast chicken - genuine appreciation, but muted, internal, not the visible golden glow that would've erupted without the bracelet. She recounted sanitized anecdotes about her digital art career. Engaging but not intimidating. Charming but not threatening.

The bracelet did its silent work. It suppressed the tidal wave underneath - the terror of judgment, the desperate need for approval, the overwhelming love she felt for their son. She was a ghost in her own skin. A beautiful automaton.

They seemed to adore her.

"Never figured David would date someone who could pack it away like this," Tom said, chuckling as Lena took another bite.

She smiled. Forced the chicken down. It tasted like ash.

"I've always had a good appetite."

The lie came easily. Everything came easily with the bracelet.

"You sure do! Where do you put it all?" Susan's eyes twinkled.

Lena's mind blanked. A moment ago she'd spun some charming story about childhood cooking adventures. Now, with those warm eyes on her, the next lie stuck.

"Well, you know." She swallowed hard. "The holidays. Lots of eating."

"That we have, dear." Susan smiled. "But you seem to have an extra-big appetite."

"More than anyone else, too." Tom laughed. "Look at her, Dave. This is why your pants don't fit anymore."

"Hey!" David's voice carried an edge.

"Now, Tom, don't tease." Susan nudged her husband.

"Just kidding. Besides, our Lena's obviously not having trouble fitting into her jeans. Look at her - skinny little thing!"

Silence crashed over the table.

Tom's smile died. Confusion and embarrassment flickered across his face.

"Tom." Susan's voice carried a warning.

"I'm sorry. That was inappropriate. I don't know why I said that."

Lena stared at him. Her hands clenched around fork and knife. Her skin flickered blue - just a flash, quickly suppressed. Her heartbeat hammered bass-drum loud in her ears.

"It's fine." The words came out strangled. She knew Tom hadn't meant it. Jolly, well-meaning man, instantly regretting his words. But all she heard was the echo: Skinny little thing.

After dinner, while David and Tom argued sports teams over dirty dishes, Susan beckoned Lena into the living room. "Come, dear. Mother's prerogative - embarrassing photo time."

The leather-bound album chronicled David's life in snapshots. Gap-toothed seven-year-old at his first baseball game. Awkward teenager with braces at prom. Proud college graduate in cap and gown. Susan spoke with unguarded love that made Lena's heart ache.

"He's a good man, my David." Susan paused on a photo of him holding a prize-winning rose. "Feels things deeply. Too deeply sometimes. He's had his heart broken before - puts up a brave front, but he's a romantic. Always has been." She turned the page. "I haven't seen him this happy, this settled, in years. Not since he met you."

Susan closed the album. Turned to Lena. Her perceptive eyes searched Lena's face.

"He's so open with his heart." Her voice softened. "We're just so glad he's found someone who can love him just as fiercely. Who can see the wonderful man he is."

She placed a warm hand on Lena's arm.

"You do love him that much, don't you, dear?"

The question detonated something inside Lena.

Simple. Sincere. Full of a mother's hope. But it was the single most powerful emotional trigger Lena had ever faced. An invitation to confirm a sacred truth.

Every part of her being screamed the answer.

The love she'd kept muted and regulated for months surged forth. A tidal wave. Pure. Unfiltered. Chaotic. A brilliant mix of everything - soaring golden joy, deep rosy hope for a future together, desperate childlike need for this woman's acceptance. And woven through it all, sharp piercing blue terror of her own secret. The lie she was living right now.

The surge was biblical.

The bracelet couldn't hold it.

As Lena opened her mouth to answer - to offer the simple honest "yes" her soul was screaming - the silver bracelet protested. Sharp, searing cold. Pain like a brand of ice pressed against her skin. A faint high-pitched whine, audible only to her. Then a final agonizing spike that shot up her arm.

The bracelet died.

The dam shattered.

Her powers roared back online with tidal-wave force. An overwhelming, chaotic supernova of unfiltered emotion erupted from her entire being. A spectacular swirling aurora of everything she felt in that single cataclysmic moment.

Blinding incandescent golden-white formed the core - her immense soaring love for David. Strobing pulses of terrified blue shot through it - horror at being exposed. Flashes of soft hopeful rosy pink swirled at the edges - her dream of a future with this family - only to be consumed by deep mortified crimson. Shame at the spectacle she was creating.

The light washed out the cozy living room. Bleached warm furniture colors into stark white. Cast hard dancing shadows. A silent luminous explosion.

David, walking in from the kitchen, stopped dead.

Susan and Tom gasped. Shielded their eyes.

For several long terrifying seconds, Lena was the sun. A chaotic incandescent star burning away her own lies in one involuntary burst of truth.

Then, as quickly as it erupted, the flare subsided.

The room plunged back to normal warm lighting - now dim and hazy in comparison. Lena stood trembling in the center, the afterimage still imprinted on her retinas. Her skin pulsed with soft chaotic kaleidoscope colors. Gentle gold warred with shame-faced pink. Little flickers of anxious blue still danced across her hands.

The silence was absolute. Profound. Broken only by her ragged breathing.

She looked at their faces. David. His parents. Staring at her. Stunned. Shocked. Confused.

And something she couldn't identify but feared was repulsion.

This was it. The end. She'd been revealed - not as the calm composed artist they'd welcomed, but as a freak. A Super whose powers were messy and uncontrolled. An emotional time bomb.

Her carefully built "normal" life lay in glittering metaphorical ashes around her.

The silence stretched. Each second a fresh wave of humiliation.

Lena's first instinct was to run. But her feet felt rooted. Words tumbled from her lips - messy, tearful, each one punctuated by pathetic flickers of color.

"I'm so sorry." She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to physically contain the light. Dim blue pulsed from her forearms. "I have a power. It's tied to my emotions. I can't always control it." Her cheeks flushed deep luminous pink. "I wear a device - a bracelet - to stop it. To keep it hidden." She looked at David. Pleading. "I didn't want you to see. I didn't want you to think I was a freak."

David, frozen in place, finally moved.

He didn't back away. Didn't recoil.

He took a step forward. Then another. His expression shifted from stunned shock to profound quiet wonder. He stopped in front of her. His gaze locked on her tear-filled eyes, not the shifting colors of her skin.

He reached out. Took her hand - the one without the dead useless bracelet.

"Lena." His voice was soft. Full of awe that completely disarmed her. "That was beautiful." He looked genuinely baffled - not by the light, but by her apology. "Why have you been hiding that from me?"

In the fragile conversation that followed, with his parents listening quietly from the couch, Lena told him everything. The words poured out unfiltered. Unsuppressed.

She told him about the disastrous dates. The feeling of being a "human lava lamp." The constant fear of rejection. She told him about her search for the dimmer switch, her desperate quest for a normalcy she thought he expected. A composure she thought he loved. She confessed her deep-seated fear that no one could love the real chaotic luminous her.

When she finished, her story hanging in the quiet air, David spoke.

He confessed his own feelings. The puzzle pieces clicking into place. He'd felt a distance from her. A wall he could never quite breach. He told her he hadn't fallen in love with the cool mysterious perfectly composed woman.

He'd fallen in love with the glimpses of passion in her art. The flicker of genuine uninhibited joy in her eyes for a split second before she'd instinctively suppress it. He'd fallen in love with the real Lena. The one he'd only just been allowed to truly see.

"Lena." His thumb gently stroked the back of her hand, now glowing with soft hopeful gold. "I don't love you in spite of your light. I love you because of it."

Something fundamental shifted inside her. A tectonic recalibration of her own self-worth.

She didn't need to be "cured." Her emotional transparency wasn't a flaw. It was the source of her art, her passion, her capacity for a love so fierce it could illuminate a room. The dimmer switch could be a tool if she chose to use it. But it was no longer a crutch. No longer a cage.

Weeks later, Lena posted a new video to her Lens and Current channels. She sat in her studio, bathed in natural sunlight, her face open and expressive.

She wasn't wearing the bracelet.

As she spoke to her Glow-Getters, her voice full of newfound confidence and vulnerability, her skin subtly shifted through a beautiful soft kaleidoscope of colors. Warm gold as she spoke of joy. Gentle blue as she spoke of her past fears. Rosy pink as she spoke of love.

"We spend so much time trying to present a perfect filtered version of ourselves." Her smile was genuine. Radiant. "We dim our own light because we're afraid it's too bright for someone else. But your light - your real, messy, chaotic, beautiful light - that's the most authentic part of you."

She looked directly into the camera. Her skin settled into steady warm brilliant gold.

"So let it shine."

She had finally, truly, glowed up.