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a gdocs RP

Nightmares.

Nightmares Misha hadn’t had since… before…

Visions of flames licking up walls. Ceilings collapsing. Red hair burning in the inferno. Her body crushed in the collapsing building. Misha burned his hands pulling white-hot rocks from the pile. He knew where she fell. He knew where she was. But no matter how deep he dug. No matter how many rocks he pulled away, he could get no nearer to her.

Misha?

A whisper on the wind. A voice he did not know. The shimmering image of a woman with red hair but wrong eyes. A new addition to his own personal hell.

She kissed his blistered hands and cried for him. With him.

Misha had woken up in a sweat for three days in a row.

He needed to get back to work. He’d only taken a week off. He needed to get on the plane. 5:15 am take off time. His alarm went off at three and he turned it off. 5:15 came and went and still Misha lay in bed, trembling beneath the covers.

When he saw her again, it was like a dream. A woman with gently chiming bangles and long gossamer skirts gliding through the farmer’s market. Her hair was up in a bun, but it was messy and haphazard, like an afterthought. She smiled at a worker who called her “Miss Lee” and told her to have a good vacation. She thanked them and left.

Misha followed, though he knew not why.

What answers could he glean from following her anyway? What could she say that he wanted to hear? What explanation would be good enough?

Of course she lived in the same building as a farmer’s market. Where else would she live?

Misha followed her around the side of the building, back towards the gardens (already cleaned out for the coming autumn, he noticed) and towards a violet door. She paused and turned.

s**t.

Misha hadn’t planned. He always planned. That was his job. He was a city planner. And yet, here he was, in front of the sister he thought was dead… without a plan.

“Uh… look I…”

Well, now what? He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes glued to the ground, and searched for words.

“I wanted to um… to talk… and I totally get it if you don’t. I wouldn’t want to talk to me either. I just… I need to know.”

And then what? Then you leave? With the knowledge that Micah lives and breaths and walks and lives in the same building as a farmer’s market because of course she would?

He looked up at her again and she was smiling. Now that, he recognized. The face-splitting, toothy, eye-crinkling grin of the girl he thought he’d lost. There was comfort in that, he found, as he followed her through her garish front door.

“So… Micah… you live behind a farmer’s market?”

Xi-Wang wasn’t normally the sort to invite himself over...but this was Rhona. He was sure she, and her partner, wouldn’t mind all that much. He also might be planning to make some food for Rhona, because she was somewhere around and he could make her lunch. She worked hard and he knew sometimes didn’t eat when she should, he did the same when gaming or sleeping.

So powering up, a bag full of groceries in hand, the eternal senshi slipped through his bathrooms mirror and right into Rhona’s bathroom...and stumbled - of course he did. Yelping loudly, and crashing into something, he nearly fell face first onto the floor. Powering down as he tripped, and made a mess of things, Xi-Wang was really hoping he didn’t break anything or gain anyones attention.

“s**t.”

The curse flew from her lips as the familiar sound of Xi’s yelping reached her ears.

No no no. Misha just got here. Things were already so complicated… adding this to it… this might scare him away. He might leave again. He might hate her. She had to get there first. Granted, Rhona had no idea what she would do when she got there, nor how she would explain the six-foot-tall marshmallow in her windowless bathroom.

Maybe Misha wouldn’t notice.

Rhona bustled into the bathroom and immediately went about checking Xi over for injuries, tutting here and there about being more careful when mirror walking, especially since this was a new exit point for him, and she could bear it if he got hurt in her home.

“There are… no windows in here…”

s**t. He’d noticed.

Rhona deflated, glancing up at Xi, suddenly very tired again, and said very simply, “no. No Misha there aren’t. Let’s… go to the kitchen.”

He… saw him? When? Just now? Misha lowered the skillet from shoulder height and then relinquished it to Micah… Rhona… his sister’s hands as she led the other man out into the hallway and towards the kitchen again. Wait, and she had been so calm about there being no windows. And she knew the guy? Enough to be bringing over groceries?

Questions swirled around Misha’s mind as he followed the two back into the sun lit kitchen and collapsed into a chair by the window.

The Man apologized. His sister reassured him. Misha stayed confused. His sister filled a kettle, set it to boil, and pulled down three tins of tea. Earl grey for herself (at least that hadn’t changed either), plain black for him, and green tea, he assumed, for the other man.

“Wait… what did you mean you saw me? Who are you? There were no windows in that bathroom.!”

A stupid thing to fixate on, but it felt like the only simple answer he would be able to get from either one of them.

“Tea would be nice.” As he knew she had green tea, which he did prefer, and he could get to making something for them to eat. “Nothing too spicy...I know you don’t handle it as well as I do, though better than Jason.” He said smiling and laughing softly. He did feel bad for Nichal’s partner, since Nischal liked spice as well.

Nodding as Rhona spoke he pointed to her brother. “Brother?” He questioned, despite nodding his head in confirmation.

“Does he know...about you...and the court?” He questioned while moving to set his bag down and take things out slowly. Glancing over his shoulder to the brother. “I saw you….I saw Rhona running out of a bakery after...you. Though I didn’t know why then...and Rhona - I wanted to make sure she was ok.” And he’d seen, and he was certain he didn’t need to explain further.

“I was too far away though to hear anything. But you’re easy to remember - looks wise. I’m sorry for spying - Rhona.” Bowing his head a bit to the red headed woman. He’d felt bad that night but he’d wanted to make sure she was ok, and he was fairly certain she’d do the same to him.

“And you are right, there are no windows in her bathroom.”

Rhona slide Xi’s mug over to him -- a special, oversized one shaped like a rilakkuma bear that she kept just for Xi.

“Misha knows that I’m powered. He knew me when I was white moon. But he doesn’t know what I am now. And I’d like to have that conversation with him alone.”

Misha was working his hands. Before, he’d be manipulating a plushie, but now, with nothing inside of them, his hands were twisting together in what looked like painful ways. She pressed the hot mug into his grip to stop the fidgeting. When Misha smiled at her, however weakly, she warmed from the inside out and swelled with unabashed joy.

“There are no windows in the bathroom,” she echoed with a nod. “What we are… what I became… we have the ability, when powered, to walk through mirrors. Xi Wang did that to get here. It’s faster than walking outside.”

She watched as Misha nodded, seeming to accept this little information, and then asked his question.

Misha watched his sister -- whatever her name was now -- and this young man talking. Talking like old friends. Were they old friends? How long had they known one another… how long ago had Micah vanished? 5 years ago? Almost 6? Had they known one another that long? How had they met? Who else did his sister keep close enough to allow into her home through mirrors?

As Misha wondered, he recognized the slight flutter of jealousy. Jealousy that she had made a life that he was not a part of. A life that he will never get to live with her. He could hear about it, sure. And he knew she’d tell him in her own time. But he’d never get to live it with her.

Not like she’d promised her he would when they were younger.

And then the jealousy turned to anger. Ever since she had died -- no… vanished… Misha had lived a half life. An empty life. A life in mourning. A life without knowing what really happened. He had often wondered if there had been something that he could have done to save her. Could he have said something? Anything at all? And all this time, here she had been, building something new. Something fulfilling. Something without him.

And on top of it all, she was treating her sudden return to his reality as though it were of no consequence at all.

“You aren’t taking this even remotely seriously, Micah Elizabeth Ann.”

A pause.

The tea in Misha’s cup rippled as his hand suddenly began to shake.

“What was that?”

“I said,” Misha began to repeat himself, settling the mug of tea down as gently as he could with trembling hands, “You aren’t taking this. Even remotely. ********. Seriously. Micah. Elizabeth. Ann.”

He finally looked up at his sister. The one who convinced him she had died. The one who ran away. The one who hid right under his nose. The one he mourned and dreamt of and missed with every fiber of his being.

Anger turned to blinding rage as she stared at him with wide green eyes. Eyes he used to share. Eyes that looked so wrong set in a face so foreign. He could hear the frantic beat of his heart and the rush of his blood. The trembling traveled up his arm and consumed him with barely restrained fury.

“I am here for answers. I. Deserve. Answers. Not <********> tea.” He was deadly quiet, and he watched his sister back up against the counter as she registered the frightening timbre.

“I deserve to know -- no. I demand to know what happened. Why you left. Why you made me and mom and dad bury an empty <********> casket. Why we had to write your name in stone and whisper goodbye to a lie.”

“Misha, I --”

“Your death drove mom and dad to divorce. Drove me out of my mind. And all this time… all this time… you were here. You were right here. Right ******** here when mom and dad suffered. I fled all the way to Indiana to escape the ghost of my sister and you weren’t even dead.”

“Misha, I think you should sit.”

When had he risen? When had he began crossing the kitchen? It didn’t matter.

“I don’t want to sit. I want to know why you abandoned us.”

“I was trying to save you, I --”

“YOU CONDEMNED ME TO HELL!” His sister shrank back, her mouth snapping shut with a clack of her teeth.

“Now I don’t give a <********> if this guy… whoever the hell he is… stays or leaves. But before I go back to Indiana to live the rest of my goddamn life without a sister… I want to know why she left me.”