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 Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:47 pm
"Cool," Ike whispered, studying Julian's forehead for traces of blood.
Rabid pulled away, yanking on a curl. Alright. Now she was angry.
"You ******** angsty b*****d," she growled, "You're not alone, damnit. We've all done things we wish we hadn't. It comes with the goddamned status. I would bet you every one of my worthless wordly posessions that I've done worse things than you could ever imagine. Don't try to feed me this crap. If you were noone, you wouldn't being going through a massive mental breakdown over it...and if you were too damned weak...if it was your "time"...then why the <********> are you still ******** alive." She took a deep breath, clutching at her chest with her free hand. Maybe she did still care. Maybe.
"Woah," Ike murmured and turned to Len, "She never uses that word."
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:07 am
Lenore simply rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"Good grief."
Julian gave a hollow smile.
"Where this is concerned, I think I'm a bit alone, yeah. The things I've done while I was there, they make what I did to William barely hurting him at all. I ordered the slaughter of hundreds of prisoners just because one insulted me. I tortured and maimed and killed just because I wanted to. And you want to know the worst of it?" he paused and gave a laugh as hollow as his smile.
"I've wanted and tried to kill at least half the people here, you, Crow and Lenore included."
Lenore made a choked off sound of startled fear, gaping at Julian. Huh?!
Not hearing the sound, Julian gave a long withering sigh.
"I'm alive because I'm a stubborn a**, I suppose. I guess wanted to see if I could survive and keep my sanity intact." He paused, looking wry. "At least I'm alive."
He held up his hands helplessly, shaking his head a little.
"I just want things to be like before. I know they can't be - I'm.... not a well person." He ended, laughing humorlessly.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 2:32 pm
Ike gasped and grabbed Len quickly.
Wait! No! Len was out of harm's way! Mummy wasn't! The boy leaped to the ground, landing on all fours and glaring, his body slowly going into attack mode. He didn't actually plan on immediately doing anything, but he had little to no self-control when it came to things like this.
"You think I didn't know that?" Rabid said, although something like grief began to tear at her chest, "I'm sorry, kid, but you're not going to die now. You're not well, no...but you're strong enough to have not torn my throat out yet." She threw her arms up and took a step back.
"Which you're totally free to do, if you're well enough to drag me back to Liam. You know. Make the immortality permanent."
I tend to do this often, don't I?
Her head snapped to the side as her son hit the ground.
"Oh God, Ike...go back up there. We're just having a little argument."
"No."
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 2:54 pm
Julian merely gave Ike a blank look, shrugging.
"Go ahead and rip the s**t out of me - not exactly in the mood to care about self preservation."
"MALACHI DEVREAUX, YOU LEAVE HIM ALONE!"
Lenore plunged out of the viny canopy and scrabbled forward on all fours like an animal, planting herself firmly in front of Julian and spreading her wings out in warning.
"You heard it yourself tha' he ain't right. He coulda killed me, but he didn't! It's the same for Rabid and Mum and ever'body else - he's sick, how many bloody times to I have to tell you?" she said, though she gave Julian a deeply venomous look over her shoulder.
"Iffen I didn't trust him, d'you think I'd let him come anywhere near me or anyone else? He's got it in control - don't you lay a finger on him!"
With that, she rounded on Julian angrily, razor feathers rattling loud enough to set the windows to vibrating.
"An' YOU! You freakin' angst-bucket, get over it! I hear you moanin' and talking in your sleep at night, and I seen you take off more than once to go into th' woods an come back all bloody! You're not THERE anymore, so quit angsting about it! Yeah, Mum made you sick, but it's not like there's not anything you can do to keep it from gettin' worse!" She paused to take a breath, and jabbed the astonished Julian in the chest hard with a twiggy finger.
"Bein' crazy and bein' emo are two TOTALLY different things, yanno!"
Completely irate and reckless, Len turned on Rabid, too, practically ready to explode.
"And you! Quit offering to let people slice you up to freakin' ribbons! I know what happened when Mum stuck you with her knife-thing - One o' these times it's gonna get even more out of hand, and there'll be nothing left of you but a pile of freakin' ENTRAILS!"
Never, ever had Lenore raised her voice and shown her feelings like this before. Her face was flushed a dark grey, and her eyes shone with profound annoyance. Her usually quiet demeanor was broken at last - she was tired of everyone being so uncomfortable and hateful.
"Now just get over yerselves and be friends again already, would ya?" she said, stomping her foot and looking at the three pleadingly.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:02 pm
Ike, in his usual way, gave a half-hearted growl and once again scaled the vines behind him.
Rabid shrugged. Entrails or not, there was no way she was going to die.
"Good point, and I know his sick, damnit," she nodded to Len, "and I would like to point out that he did not, in fact, tear my trachea out. You're more in-control than you think."
"Marque. Need. Really," Liam said from his post in the doorway, leaning on his now-tangible rifle. He had an eyebrow cocked and was absentmindedly rolling a bullet between his fingers.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:12 pm
Julian, completely thrown off kilter by Lenore's outburst, looked up at Liam blankly.
"Uh. Um. Knew that. Getting right on it."
Realizing Julian was most likely startled into permanent stammering stupidity, Rabid just didn't get it, and Ike was probably never going to speak to her again, Lenore gave a frustrated roar and folded her wings back so hard a couple feathers snapped off.
"You're all just so god damn- GAAAAAAAH!" she shrieked as she tore at her hair, pushing past Liam and storming out into the grounds. She rounded on him, her face an even darker gray.
"YOU deal with them - you're the one with the freakin' GUN!"
And with that, she stormed off and away, fuming.
Julian blinked in total shock, mouth gaping slightly.
"Holy s**t."
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:16 pm
"See? We pissed Lenore off. We defy logic," Rabid said as she watched the girl stalk away.
Ike, suddenly horrified with himself, dropped out of the canopy and landed horribly ungracefully, skittering after Len as quickly as he could.
"Damnit...WAIT!"
Liam waited until the children left before he loaded his rifle and cocked it. He approached Rabid and Julian, the gun resting on his shoulder.
"What the <********> Hell is going on?!" he yelled at the sight of the cracked, bloodied window.
"Angst. Lots and lots of angst."
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:33 pm
Blinking in complete astonishment, Julian ran a hand over his hair, eyes wide.
"I didn't even think it was possible to get her like that."
Looking over at Liam, he hunched his shoulders and felt a squirm of hot embarrament over his childish behavior deep in his gut.
"That pretty much hits the nail on the head," he said dryly, wincing as he took in the damage he'd dealt the window.
"Damn damn damn damn DAMN! Oooh, I should just shove needles down their ears while they're all asleep - or put arsenic in their cereal, or throw 'em in a vat of giant ticks, or spit 'em and roast 'em," Lenore hissed furiously, her voice shaking with unexpressed anger. Hearing Ike behind her, she made no move to slow down.
"Iffen you're comin' to yell at me or be angsty, I ain't gonna slow down!" she shouted over her shoulder, her face pinched into a deeply frustrated expression.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:42 pm
"Me neither," Rabid again turned toward the doorway, although they children were far gone, "We're just that annoying."
"Well...just...stoppit," Liam gave a frustrated huff and traveled over to the window, pulling it back into place and causing the blood to slough off and pool on the windowsill. He'd have to work on that.
"Seriously," he said, gesturing up and around with his gun, "You, Julian, are a pathetic waste of emo that some eyeliner-wearing asshat in Barton could put to good use. Until you find the magical ink of un-doom, you're ********. Deal with it. And you. Get the Hell over yourself. You're to weak to get rid of him, even if you wanted to. God, you people piss me off." He tapped his rifle against his forehead, cringing in utter mental anguish.
"Eurgh," Rabid tugged at a curl again, "Mwen regret sa, Julian."
"Lenore! STOP!" Ike growled and sprinted to catch up before falling into step with her, "You're right. Imman idiot, and I'd bloody sorry, okay?" The tips of his ears began to slowly grow red.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 3:58 pm
Bowing his head like a chastised child, Julian flushed brightly. He knew Liam was completely right - it had just taken the total mental breakdown of a frustrated child and a few well-worded insults to get him to realize it.
"I've been looking, they're hard to find," he offered in weak protest, too embarrassed to look at the shorter but still more threatening man. "I'll look harder, honest."
Lenore kept up her furious march until she reached the very edge of the out-of-bounds forest's border, then turned and looked at Ike sharply.
"It ain't about apologizing to me, or even admittin' you're bein' dumb- it's about gettin' over wanting to kill Julian just 'cause your mum's his GIRLFRIEND!" she shrieked.
And with that, she burst into tears and fled into the woods.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:07 pm
Liam nodded, rubbing his temple with a free hand. He gave an almost childish sigh and dropped his gun to his shoulder again, peering up at Julian. Damn, he was tall.
"If you need help, come see me. Seriously. I'm on your side."
Only then did he realize that he was pointing a loaded rifle at someone's head, and quickly proceeded to remove the bullet and push his gun back into intangibility.
Rabid, being her usual over-emotional self, had scampered off to the wall for support and just kind of stood there, biting her lip to hold back tears.
"Oh, Lenore," Ike mumbled and shook his head before taking off after her like some kind of predator.
"Look!" he shouted as he ran blindly, "I'm over it, alright? I'm over it! You can't tell me you'd love Liam is you watched your mum shoot herself in the head because of him! God damn it, Lenore...I'm over it!" He gave a small whisper as a low-growing stick tore across his eye.
"Can you even hear me?! We're not safe in here! We need to turn around! Talk about it, if you want!"
It frightened him, how much he sounded like his mum.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:24 pm
Nodding mutely, Julian unhunched his shoulders a little.
"Over-reacting kinda runs in the family," he managed to joke a little weakly, thinking on what Lenore had told him of Crow's Ourobat episode a few weeks back.
Lenore could barely hear Ike, she'd run so far. Each breath burned her lungs as she sucked in the frigid air. Her tears had frozen on her face, it was so accursedly cold. Not wanting to go back, she gave a choking sob and slowed to a jog, weaving through the trees unthinking.
She burst onto a rocky clearing, a hill rising to tower over the trees and casting a gray shadow across a wide swath of the forest. She leapt lightly from one rock to the other deftly, cursing Malachi, Rabid, and Julian alike. The rocks grew bigger and bigger the further up she went, until a granite rockfall with enormous boulders lay before her. Climbing onto one of the largest rocks, she knelt in the snow and beat at the rough surface with her fists.
"So - bloody - stupid!" she screeched, breaking down into aggrieved sobs again. She gave a feral shriek, squeezing her eyes shut and beating at the snowy rock harder, spliiting her knuckles wide open and painting the snow black with her blood.
Behind the girl, a guttural, pained growl answered her shrieking.
Lenore's eyes flew open and she stiffened, turning her head to look behind her slowly. Something heavily muscled and wide, something enormous, was peering down at her with four very angry looking eyes.
"Oh....s**t."
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:31 pm
"I seem to trigger oh-ehm-gee insane reactions," Rabid raised a finger meekly. At least things were calmer now.
Ike shook his head, growling and pushing himself to go faster. He heard Len's reaction, and figured that she hadn't been listening. Or that she didn't want to. He sighed and gritted his teeth against the conglomoration of emotions within him. Len was the main focus right now.
"Len! I..............oh my God..." The boy peered up at the whatever-it-was, approaching slowly from the side, as low to the ground as physically possible. His ears had folded back and he, once again, began to painfully creep into attack mode.
Don't do anything stupid. Don't do anything stupid. Don't do anything stupid...
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