|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 4:32 pm
Tourmaline's arms were still lightly bandaged beneath the sleeves of her coat, more to keep fabric from rubbing directly against the still sensitive skin than anything else. The more time she spent powered the faster she seemed to heal and the less the burns hurt. Summoning her weapon had been entirely out of the question for at least a week, which is why she had taken to the rooftops that night to prowl, not hunt. Little spikes and pockets of powered had popped up here and there, but none close enough to actually draw her attention or catch her interest. She had honestly considered powering down when one, a light bubbling just as brightly as she had once been dim as a Captain, popped up nearby. "What kind of officer would I be if I didn't look, at the very least," she murmured to herself as she hopped down from the rooftop onto the fire escape and from there down to the ground. The ripple of order that she could feel was only a block or two away, at best. "Time to practice those tracking skills, General."
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 9:28 pm
Luckily, the fish hadn't done too much damage to him and he had fared much better than most of the people who had responded to Denebola's call for help. That meant he didn't need to spend too much time in recovery and could, to his relief, still slip out of the house relatively unnoticed when the nightmares and darkening thoughts tried to cloud his mind.
Tonight had been particularly bad, with an uncomfortable feeling crawling up his spine and settling in the spaces between his bones.
General Labyrinthite was back. Six long months and the man had surfaced.
At least he hadn't seen the squire, though Midgard was certain he wouldn't be recognized. Glamor and magic was a funny thing, but when the good general learned of his betrayal, he feared for the worst. That made sleeping almost impossible with the onslaught of possibilities plaguing him to the point that even if he tried to rest, he couldn't.
The night appeared to go by without trouble, until he felt it and the hair on the back of his neck stood on edge, gut twisting painfully as he tried not to panic. The aura was strong and every instinct he had was screaming at him to run, flee. No longer did he have teleportation as an out, if they got to close and they saw him -
There would be nowhere to run and he would have to fight. His legs wouldn't move, not the way he willed them to and instead he found himself clinging close to a wall in an alley.
Run, he told himself, but he couldn't.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 1:02 pm
When the aura that she'd locked into began to move at first she had prepared herself for a chase, her heart pounding with delight at the very thought of racing across the rooftops; catching air as she launched herself over alleyways while hoping she didn't slip. When the aura stopped moving she almost ran past it, heels skidding to a stop after her next leap as she paused. " Breathe. Breathe and think." It had taken Tourmaline longer than she would have liked to learn to trust her instincts. She didn't have otherworldly senses or any qualities that would mark her as gifted in tracking. She had a sound mind, though, and the prickling feel of Order raising the hair along her arms. The General turned back, stepping up onto the building ledge. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with fresh air and her heart with courage before dropping down-- first to the fire escape beneath her and then into a tumble as she hit the asphalt below. "You had a chance, you know. I almost missed you. If you'd just managed to go another way when I ran past instead of pausing..." Her voice carried a sing-song whimsy to it as she spoke, grin on her lips as she turned to straighten herself out. It faded almost instantly as her eyes settled on her prey. " You."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue May 02, 2017 10:12 am
He recognized her.
Or, rather, something inside him recognized something about her. It was the softer, round features of her face that gave it away, because Aluminite had spent so many hours quietly observing the beauty he found in his then-girlfriend. Or maybe it'd been that grin she flashed his way before it immediately fell. Or, more likely, it was the colors of her uniform, the pink dripping from the ends of the jagged hair cut he both did and didn't expect to look so good on her.
Tourmaline had always been a bit wild and unpredictable.
When they'd been on the same side, it had been a breath of fresh air because she reminded him what it was like to be adventurous again all while pulling her back in, tethering her to something safe.
Now, he didn't get either side and he was forced to face her and her fallen face and accept that she was a general.
"You've been promoted," he said in a matter-of-fact way to hide the despair, dread that began welling up around his heart and crawling into his throat.
Midgard should have been backing up, making to run and flee because if he wouldn't fight her before, he wouldn't fight her now, but he seemed locked into place. "I - " he stopped, rueful smile twisting the corners of his mouth up. "The hair cut looks nice." Such a stupid thing to say, but he couldn't help himself. Not when looking at her hurt and he wished that he'd done something, anything more to save her.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu May 11, 2017 6:18 pm
"I have. General Tourmaline-- Has a bit of a ring to it, don't you think?" As she spoke her lips curled again, this time into a smile so fake it almost hurt to have it on her face. Tourmaline wanted to hate the man standing in front of her. She wanted to tap into that wild madness and tear him to shreds, rip him to pieces. There he was with his stupid face and his stupid voice saying stupid things... The compliment tugged at the part of her heart she hadn't been able to close off completely and her expression softened as she took a slow, deliberate step closer to him. "Like it? Felt like it was time for a change... Not enough of one to swap my black out for white like some people, but long overdue for a post-breakup haircut." For emphasis she brought her hand up, brushing her hand back through her hair, the silver gleam of her gauntlet's metal tips catching in the alley light. "You're still alive, though. That's a good thing, right?" Her hand dropped back down to her side as her lips pressed together into a seemingly more genuine attempt at a smile as she took another step towards him. Tourmaline didn't tilt her head as she spoke, however, keeping her eyes down until she stopped before him, finally glancing up. "Do you miss me at all, Wonderboy?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2017 2:58 pm
Midgard didn't respond, watching her mouth twist into a smile that made him want to wince. To his credit and own surprise, he remained rigidly in place as he stared at her. Unwilling to admit that his tongue was dry and his words used up, he remained seemingly locked into place with only the slow rise and fall of his breathing giving away that he was still readily present.
Tourmaline continued to talk and even stepped forward, the squire swaying response but not actually moving away. She wasn't close enough yet to plunge her hand into his chest, there was enough distance for now even if his hands were twitching in anticipation at his sides. "Doesn't matter what I think, does it?" He tried not to sound bitter as he spoke, her jab feeling like a slap on the face.
"Depends on your definition of good," he countered, swallowing when she took yet another step. This time he took a step back, mindful of their positioning in the alleyway. He couldn't get trapped against a wall and he knew that she had the potential to overpower him if he wasn't careful.
"Of course I care." This time, he couldn't keep the hurt from his voice. "I never stopped caring." Tourmaline and whomever her other identity was crossed his mind almost daily, but he couldn't say that. What would it matter?
Would she even believe him if he did?
"But you never understood what it was like for me, being apart of," he gestured at her, stepping sideways to introduce more space between them again. "that."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2017 6:21 pm
"That's not what I asked. I didn't ask if you still cared. I asked if you missed me." Her tone might have remained soft for the time being had he not kept talking. It was something that she had liked about him once-- loved, maybe? Now, with his side-stepping and his gestures it was just infuriating. "A part of me? Or a part of the Negaverse? You can use your words, you know. Unless you're afraid of them. Are you?" The questions came rapidly, her tone taking on a heated edge as she took another deliberate step in his direction. "You're right. I didn't understand. I didn't understand how you didn't enjoy being part of something that felt like family. I didn't understand how you could reject the idea of having people who cared about you and looked out for you. I still don't understand how you could have kept things from me, how you thought that it was protecting me to do so. I don't understand a lot of things about you." She'd wanted to. Taking his journal had been an attempt at figuring out more about the way his mind had worked before they were together, while they were together and after things had fallen apart. She might have had an odd way of showing it, but she had cared for James, for Captain Aluminite, more than she'd thought possible to care for anyone. "Guess it's different when you have pretty, perky little pages trying to lure you away... Connie's sweet. It was a real shame to see her cry."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:59 am
He recoiled.
"Why are you asking questions about things you know the answer to?" The sentence felt clunkier in his mouth than he would have liked, but something was flowing hot and rampant in his veins and thinking straight was beginning to feel like less and less of an option. Something sharp flashed in those green eyes of his as he looked at her. Longing passed across his expression before he shoved it away.
He didn't want to say it, because he thought it would do him no good, but he could also see that Tourmaline wouldn't be backing down and now - without the ability to teleport, he had very few escape options. Midgard could only hope that it placated her enough to avoid a scuffle. "I miss you every day." The woman crossed his thoughts often, especially when he was developing his film or scribbling in the new journal his housemate had provided him with as he struggled to piece together the large gaps in his memories.
"You don't understand because what you experience is not what I did." She hadn't dealt with the surrounding and the confusion that pervaded his mind. She hadn't seen the way the festering chaos had warped the charming, mischievous boy that had warped into the wolf in sheep's clothing that made up General Labyrinthite. She hadn't seen the way it striped people of who they were, piece by piece, and until him, she hadn't experienced what being part of that army meant or cost.
He hoped she never would.
"You fit with them in ways I never would. I had you." And for a while, he thought that was enough. "You weren't there, you didn't do what I did. Besides, you never wanted to understand you just wanted me to forget." He hadn't forgotten the way she dismissed his concerns. He wasn't capable of just existing in the present like her and he had tried, he had tried so hard for her because he loved her and it wasn't enough.
The mention of his friend had everything veering into jagged, cutting edges of focus and Midgard struggled to keep the snarl out of his voice. "She had nothing to do with this. I swear to - " He stopped himself. He wasn't going to give away his alignment, not when she would use it against him. "If you hurt her -"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 7:53 am
"We could have made it work. You could have told me what happened. I would have helped you," she snapped, flashing her teeth when he stumbled over her mention of the sweet, precious darling of a white knight. General Tourmaline had found the button that she was looking for and she intended to use it, pressing hard. "That's what it was, wasn't it? So soft and sweet. I can see why that would have caught your attention. So different from everything you had, everything you were used to. Sunrise on the horizon after a long night?" Tourmaline tried to keep the edge to her voice, wanting to keep him riled and just as angry as she was. She slipped, though, at the mention of sunrise, thoughts drifting briefly to those they had shared at the tail end of a lengthy patrol. "If I hurt her you'll what? Hurt me? Is that where this is going? Because, if we're being honest, I'd like to see you try, Wonderboy." The nickname dripped from her tongue like acid, harsh and raw. She didn't want to call him that but he still hadn't told her his name and he wasn't Aluminite anymore. Not mine. "Come at me, sweetheart. Or do you want to hear how I made her cry first?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2017 10:20 am
"You didn't want to make it work."
Though, Midgard had to ask himself then, had he wanted it to work either? He had clung so tightly to Tourmaline in the wake of everything and when he couldn't share with her, she had left him. They had been hurting, they were always hurting and solace wasn't found in each other and yet-
He loved her.
Had he ever told her that?
"If I remember," he said slowly, trying to keep the instinctual bite out of his tone. For everything, she didn't deserve that, not from him. Not when he had left her, his own conflict be damned. "You broke up with me." That was a memory that was still sharp and vibrant even if everything else was tinged with doubt and fog. "'I can't do this anymore.'" He recalled. "And then you left."
His jaw ticked as he struggled to reign himself in. There wasn't much he had to hold onto, in either life, but Connie was a sweet, naive soul who had done nothing to deserve whatever Tourmaline had done.
"Leave her out of this." Words came out through gritted teeth. "She had nothing to do with this." He gestured to himself, fingers twitching in anticipation for his tonfas. She was a general- he didn't have the strength...
But he would try if he could.
"I loved - love?" He hesitated, unsure if it was past or present tense because looking at her hurt and he knew she was hurting and what he wanted to do was to hold her and kiss her until things were right and normal again but they never would be. He wasn't made for darkness and loving her wasn't enough for him to drown in his sins.
"I loved you and it wasn't enough. Love wasn't worth the cost of my soul." He shook his head. "I left because there's no place for me there, Kit. With or without you."His voice was shaky. "Take it out on me, don't make other's collateral damage. Please."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:05 am
"There's always collateral damage in war, and you picked what side of it you wanted to be on." Her lips curled into a sneer, teeth bared for a brief moment. Being here with him like this was only feeding into the Chaos. She could feel it bubbling and burning inside of her; a dark, deep rage that she kept leashed because she was determined to not become a beast even if it was too late to keep her from becoming a monster. "You don't have the right to call me that anymore. You don't know me. You don't know who I've become or what I've gone through to get here. You didn't stick around for any of that, sweetheart." She edged closer to him as she spoke, armored boots sounding against the ground beneath them as she weighed the pros and cons of summoning her weapon. Would it hurt? Would the pain be worth it? Would it hurt her more than she would be able to hurt him? As she closed in on him she reached out, bandages showing wrapped around her hand as she trailed fingers slowly down the front line of his coat. "I'd like to take it out on you, I assure you, but I didn't come out tonight to fight... And when I do come out to fight, I'd like it to be fair-- against you, at least, out of whatever respect I have left for whoever you were before. I want you at your best the next time we meet and I'll expect nothing less."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 2:25 pm
Midgard swallowed the first words that tried to slip out of his mouth in rebuttal. It didn't seem to matter to the woman that she played just as big of a role in things as he did, she wanted to blame him for the way everything fell apart. He could have kept trying to push back, to remind her that when he needed her, she had turned her back on him and told him to simply forget the things that ailed him. He could have reminded her, again, that she had chosen to end things and for all she claimed, he was nearly convinced now that she hadn't cared to the levels that he had.
"Maybe I don't know you now," he said slowly, quietly because he was afraid that if he rose his voice at all, he would say things he didn't mean and that instead of talking they would just end up yelling at each other with no positive results to salvage. "But I don't think you ever really knew me." With so little memory of what they were in a relationship, with so much of it coated with bad instead of good, he didn't truly know if she had known him.
Though, Midgard supposed it didn't matter. Whatever they had been, whatever they were to each other was history and it was something that needed to stay buried in the past. At least, after this night.
"You wouldn't stick around for the bad." The accusation slipped from his mouth before he could think twice about it, a bubbling frustration threatening to burst from his chest as she continued to jab at him. When her hand trailed along his chest, he grabbed her by the wrist and jerked the touch away from him. Backing away he shook his head at her, jaw locking as Midgard struggled to reign himself in.
Angry wasn't something he let over take him if he could managed but somehow she was pushing all the right buttons for it.
"You don't know me," he parroted at her, inching closer to freedom. "You don't get to expect anything of me anymore. You lost that when you left."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 6:15 pm
A hissing sound passed between her teeth as she sucked in a breath of air the moment his fingers closed around her lips. The flesh beneath the bandages was still too tender from the burns she'd sustained fighting against the Senshi of Lanterns and the pain was enough to immediately send a dampness to her eyes.The physical pain brought the glimmer of tears as she looked to him, she reminded herself, no matter how much she could feel her heart wrenching again in her chest. Tourmaline wanted to tell him that he didn't know her now, and that he hadn't known her then. She desperately wanted to defend herself but the moment she heard the words 'you wouldn't stick around for the bad' she knew that she couldn't. There was no way to deny that it was how she had been then... And maybe it was still a bit of how she was now. She ran out of weakness. She ran out of fear. She ran because she cared so much and she had no idea how to show it because she was young and stupid and she'd never cared about anyone that much before. "I lost a lot of things when I left." The bitter sadness lingered softly in the air between them, the space growing as he stepped away. "I lost a part of myself and I..." her voice cracked and the sound turned into tattered laughter. "Oh, Wonderboy, we might not know each other anymore but I'll never stop expecting you to shine your brightest or be your best. That's what I expect of any senshi or knight I go up against and in that you're no different than the rest." If he ran now she wouldn't chase him; whatever thrill there had been in catching him was now gone. She wanted to teleport away herself, but she was always leaving first... Maybe now it was his turn.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 9:36 am
Seeing the sheen of wetness in her eyes made his heart lurch. Part of him wanted to move into her space and wipe the tears away, to comfort her but he remained rigid and in place. They weren't like that anymore, Tourmaline had made her choice when she had told him I can't do this anymore and left. He knew that they'd never be like that again.
There was no them in a world where she stood bathed in that swirling cloud of chaos that he could be a part of.
It used to ache, the thought, but now, now that he knew she would threaten someone who had done nothing but be sweet and kind and listened to him...Midgard didn't think that he could harbor feelings for her. Not when she threatened his friends; the people who were there for him when she refused.
He forced himself to remain stony face as she talked. Each sentence stabbed something inside of him, reopening the mess of wounds inside that never got to heal, but he didn't do much outside of blinking in response. "That's not my fault." His voice was firm when he spoke. He refused to let her blame him for whatever pain she felt. They made their choices, he had tried so hard and she hadn't wanted it. He had been safe and caring and ever the gentleman, but had that even been something she wanted?
It didn't matter, whatever was between them was now was dead as the man he had left behind.
"Do whatever the ******** you want." The curse was a harsh as his tone, something jarring and perhaps unsettling when slipping from a man who liked to think himself of as gentle. It sounded out of place, wrong, but it only cemented that maybe, maybe being around the general, this new Tourmaline he didn't know, brought out the worst in him just like chaos tried to.
He was strong enough to resist the corruption, but not what she did to him and he couldn't even feel ashamed.
"It's not like you ever cared what I thought anyway." With that his booted feet shuffled backwards and he teetered on the edge of the roof watching her with some sort of conflict passing across his expression. For one moment, his lips parted like he had anything left to say and instead the mouth clamped shut and he dropped off the side of the building.
There was nothing left for him to say.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 10:03 am
"I know it's not your fault, I'm just finally admitting it's mine." The words came too late, falling softly from lips after he had already dropped away. The aura of Order, his aura, had been so bright and warm. If he'd stayed he might have burned her with his brightness, worn her down with his light and broken her again. It was easier to breathe again as the feeling began to fade away, the distance he was putting between them physically taking the burn of that brightness with him. It was better this way. It was.... It's not like you ever cared what I thought anyway. "Goodbye." Her voice cracked and she was glad that there was no one left behind to hear it, relieved that there was no one else to see the tears that slid down her face as she closed her eyes, focusing on somewhere else that was warm and safe. Home. I want to go home. The shadows rose around her, disrupting the space she inhabited for only a second longer before teleporting away, closing the book on the final chapter of what had been one hell of a ride. [Fin]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
