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 Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 4:06 pm
Zia hadn't had an easy few days of shard hunting, and hadn't been home as a result. Although Xanthus had gotten a 'don't wait up' and 'everything's fine' text, when she finally had the energy to mirrorwalk her way home, she spent a lot of time hiding out in her room until now.
She managed to limp her way across the open area of living room before stumbling and throwing all of he weight on the back of the sofa.
In the heated apartment, she had shed her sweater in one of the rare moments since winter started, and the bruises on her upper arms had started to yellow and fade, although further down her limbs were small burns from what felt like mass energy drain. She seemed more angry and frustrated with herself, letting out a half barked '********' that brought Dodge scampering to her side.
If it was just an energy drain she should have slept it off by now, and she was starting to grow anxious with the amount of shards out there, more, now that what she had already collected couldn't be saved from mirrorspace.
So overall her mission wasn't going great. And right now she would settle for the ability to grumpily limp her way to the kitchen for coffee.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 4:31 pm
The door to his bedroom clicked shut quietly behind him as he stepped into the hallway and walked in the direction of the not quite sufficiently barked swear word. He was wearing battered jeans and was barefoot, the back of the cuff already wearing down from getting scuffed up underfoot, and a green t-shirt with deliberately faded logo, as well as the small urn shaped neck necklace he'd been wearing since he dragged it back from his Wonder, and his face had an forced look of blankness that might have looked better on a white marble bust in a museum. "Everything's fine, huh?" He noted, crisply, glancing down at her arms and sharply back to her face. "Ok I need you to tell me right now if those have anything to do with Luxor or your Ex because if they do..." He didn't feel the need to explain exactly what he'd do, she could figure it out for herself. "Or maybe Castor?" He suggested. Castor had thrown him into a wall. Given the right cause he could easily see Castor changing wildly between being an gropey a** and bruising her arms up at minimum.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 4:45 pm
Zia might've spared a greedy glance to the necklace from his wonder a beat too long, but the accusation towards Luxor pulled her gaze up to glare at him head on.
"None of the above, thanks," She huffed, although she had the distinct distress of someone who was already winded and trying not to sound winded present in her voice.
"Ellie," She said flatly, pointing at the healing bruise on her cheek. The cut on her lip was mostly mended by now. "Also Ellie. This one's..." She pointed at the marks left from being grabbed and shaken when the squire snapped, and trailed off before mentioning Alfheim's name, unsure if that was a can of worms she wanted to open.
But the burns on her palms and discoloration further down was another story and she pushed her self up to stand on her own without leaning with a lot of effort so she could hold both out to him, and then pull them back to look at them herself. The bruises were fading, but these showed no signs of healing. "I tried to cheat Cassandra's game and restore the crystal myself. It didn't go so well. Something... happened."
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 5:23 pm
"ELLIE? Like IRIS Ellie?" He didn't know why he was surprised. She'd swung her fists around before, but somehow he hadn't expected her to leave marks like this set. "OK. Ok. Fine. I'm going to go get the burn stuff, you're going to come with me, and you can tell me what 'something' happened that you decided I didn't need to know about until now." He pointed sharply toward the Bathroom in directive. He didn't much like being left in the dark. It was a sore point with him, and he'd made very little secret of it. "What the hell happened?" He demanded, barely waiting to see what she had to say before digging through the cabinet looking for burn cream. "Why the hell didn't you call me for any of this?" Ok he had to admit he was a bit pissed off on that front. It was assumptive, he realized it now, but he'd sort of gotten this idea that certain people would call on him when they needed things. Iris hadn't. Zia... wasn't. He'd hung a certain degree of his attempts to get his feet on having a purpose, on the idea that they might call on him when they needed a strong pair of hands. He'd thought he was their knight and it smarted every time he was reminded that he was wrong. Themiscara would have probably told him to be his own knight, and she was probably right, but it still smarted. "You could have called me, goddamnit."
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 5:53 pm
"I went after her," Zia countered as if such a distinction matter to her pride and turned her hands around to show the results on her knuckles from repeatedly making contact with the bigger girl's face.
"...After she left me in the desert for a couple hours with no water to teach me a lesson and I found out the entire reason m brother has been actually paying attention was because he's been her ******** spy."
She was posturing being tough and capable, which was not going well since she was still wobbly on her feet. There was a disconnect, where she felt the opposite. Weak and incapable and always running to someone to cry on, she felt like she needed to prove she could do things on her own and just resulted in hiding. Again.
She had given up this attempt to make any sort of half competent appearance and just kind of slumped in a defeated daze as she sat on one of the marble counters in the bathroom, happy to let her feet hang freely without the pressure of her weight. She hadn't even asked for his help, but she had grabbed him for support regardless to both walk there and get up there. "It was a stupid plan, I didn't think you'd approve," She murmured, resting the side of her head against the wall and holding out her hands in anticipation of him finding the salve.
"Zirconia had a spell, I was going to try to restore the crystal myself by falsely amplifying the necessary energy in a mirror enchanted with a weird magical array. She didn't remember what she knew the sorcery from. It was a dumb mistake to try."
She raised her shoulders and let them sink. "I just had to try...something. Cassandra hasn't told anyone. Less repercussions if she leaves me to die or screws me. I don't like relying on people who keep the fact I survived their dirty little secret. I didn't know what to do... And then there was this weird... thing."
She kicked off her socks to expose the equally ugly injuries on her feet. "It felt like a killer energy drain so I thought it was going to be okay after I slept it off. But it wasn't. And I'm not sure if it's going to be." She looked at her hands with a look of pure defeat. "I was just... trying to avoid my shitty future, not rocket launch into it..."
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 6:12 pm
Xanthus raised a hand in demonstration and pointed vaguely to himself with the tube of ointment. "Hit a prince repeatedly with things when I was a lieutenant, market pretty cornered on stupid choices. Also not convinced we're on a track we can't jump to that shitty a** future. Vespa purified for one... and I am pretty sure I'm not...." He turned slowly red and then adjusted what he was going to say. "Still single. I'm still single." Not involved with one person, let alone two. Yeah that was a great reason to not totally hate the dark future. hey everyone's gonna die but I get some first.. So smooth brain. "And definitely not an Royal Knight." He added. Change the subject. Change that subject. Didn't feel like detailing that to Zia if she didn't know. "You think she's really going to screw you over?" He wondered how it related to the strange version of the future they'd seen, if at all. "Jeeze...how the ******** did you walk home?" He started gently daubing burn cream on the injuries with a frown as he puzzled through things. "...I don't like the sound of that. And it's nothing Zirconia remembers encountering?" Massive drain, hadn't gone away... ? He thought of Metalia, the bottomless pit she represented, always hungry for starseeds and energy. Always. Would it be like that to be drained by her directly? "...What happened to the crystal?" They'd fished it out of a dead guy already after all. It was pretty central to everything she was trying to do.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 9:35 pm
"Yeah, and I'm not weak because I got cut being someone's stupid pawn to punish someone more important, I'm just weak on my own terms. I'm still weak," Zia snorted, looking bitter and contemptuous as she watched him apply the burn cream.
She glanced up at his face and statement about still being single and gave him a long look of confusion as she shrugged. "All I know is maybe I should have used my 'kill me' failsafe on moving to the suburbs instead of if Zirconia takes over on a permanent basis."
Which I still find a touch on the dramatic side, by the way.
"Oh shut up, you don't get to talk," Zia sneered before she realized it was not immediately obvious she meant the voice in her head and just made a few stammering gestures to her temple.
"I-- uh... no. It's... It's weird." Her brow furrowed, "It was mirrorspace, but when I try to dig in to her memories about it it's like there's this big block. Just like the stuff from when she was corrupted. Sometimes if I push it I get this weird, dizzy feeling. But it was Mirrorspace, Xan, it just kind of... came out. Of the mirror. Space bent and then there were these tendrils of reflective material like quicksilver that grabbed me. It was like being sucked dry by a wraith on steroids, and it would have taken me and the crystal if Camelot hadn't felt the energy recoil and pulled me out. It was ******** freaky."
She let out a long exhale. "I thought... I mean, I've been drained before. And it hurt like hell, when they took too much, but nothing you can't sleep off. But it's like. I recovered a little. I crashed at Luxor's and then I mirrorwalked home as soon as I could but... It's not healing. And my magic isn't coming back at full capacity. It hurts..." The burns hurt, but her chest and her starseed had been causing a subtle but unrelenting pain that refused to let up. She was damaged, and she could feel it, and talking about it was building up a panic, almost on the verge of tears. "And I damaged the crystal. And lost a few small shards. Cassandra's going to know I tried to pull something. God, Xan, this was so ******** stupid. I ******** up, bad."
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2014 2:37 pm
"That... is definitely weird." He'd never heard of the like, and wasn't sure where to even start on trying to tell someone how to fix it. "...As far as the crystal goes... I'm... I got nothing." He couldn't even say if it was a terrible idea because well... they'd certainly learned SOMETHING new and exciting and... dangerous. And what she'd done was pretty much Zia in a nut shell. Also most cats. "You're alive, that's a pretty good recovery from most ******** in this city." He pointed out. "Let's... maybe... not? Play with the mirrors for a little while?" He offered. He wanted to shake her by the shoulders and tell her that YES she screwed up. Yes it was awful and a terrible idea... but she'd just close down and sulk and not talk for days, which would make things worse. "I can't believe you mirror-walked home after that." He growled, the irritation slipping out through clenched teeth in low tones. "That kinda puts the icing on this particular cake." Ok yeah that was counter productive but... damnit... "I'm not... yelling... ok?" He noted preemptively. "I'm just..." Just dumbfounded. Frustrated. Concerned. All those things and more.
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Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 10:48 am
She wasn't looking at anything in particular when her eyes widened to be a pretty intense stare into space as Xanthus highlighted a strange blind spot in Zia's judgement. Now that it had been mentioned, her use of mirror magic so shortly after the event looked like playing with fire, but it had felt nothing but natural to her.
As if there could be bad mirrors and good, and she could see how totally ridiculous that sounded. The affinity for the unknown portals that each mirror represented, the pools of infinite depth and potential, were not her joy. They held no comfort for her. That was Zirconia bleeding into her mind, she reminded herself. She needed to keep her head straight. They were separate people who were not going to converge or consume one another. At least she thought if she continued telling herself that, she would force that reality.
"But I have to find something," She half whispered to herself, and then looked directly at him with a little bit more determination. "Zirconia and Cassandra are out for themselves, I have to find something, some way out, or they're going to eat me alive."
Her eyes darted around and then back to him, starting to well up as panic visibly began rising again and replacing the daze. "What am I gonna do, Xan?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 10:10 am
"But what, exactly do you think you're going to find?" He demanded, reflexively, then reached to put his hands gently on her shoulders, trying to be a calming anchor. "Take a deep breath. You can do this, ok? The important part to remember is that, damnit, you're not alone. The rest of us may not be mirror masters, but it doesn't mean we won't try and help you if we can. Rest. Try and heal, tell the rest of us what we can do in the mean time. Hell, I can go fish for some DMC if it'll accomplish anything. Won't tell them what you've got of course... but I can handle harassing a couple of them to see if I can pick any information out of them. If something's being unusual in there, maybe someone's noticed."
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Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 7:39 pm
"I don't know," Zia did her best to exhale the mounting pressure and instead seemed to just deflate with it. "I don't know, there has to be something. S-... somewhere, I don't... I don't know."
She seemed to freeze when he put his hands on her shoulder, and she flinched in a way she hadn't in nearly a year. It was a common reaction, back when he was Realgar and she was still new to picking up the pieces of her life. Physical contact she didn't initiate made her flinch and pull back with regularity. But it hadn't happened in a long time.
Something about the way Alfheim had grabbed her seemed to trigger a lot of unpleasantness and drag it back up from the depths, but she put one wrapped hand on his wrist and nodded before she leaned forward to grab his torso in a hug and bury her face in his chest.
"Thank you."
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 6:13 am
"You know I'll do what I can to help..." He assured her, gently, giving her a gentle hug in return. He hadn't intended to make her start. He just wanted to help... "I'm sorry you're going through this. I wish I could do more."
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