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Solo #77: Introspection
December 11, 2011
The first thing, pretty much, that Jada Chamberlyn had done when she had her own fingers back was text Marlo. “Keep the hat and chest. I don't need them.” After all, Halloween was over, and she was hardly going to be a pirate again next year. It didn't take long before her phone lit back up, and she tiredly opened the message from Marlo, dreading what she would see within in reply to her obvious desire to not see him.

“Alright.” The text stared up at her, and Jada stared at it, torn between pique and dumbfounded. Alright? That was all he ******** had to say to her? After all the s**t he'd put her through earlier, after all the crap he's spouted at the mysterious little 'p***y' he was going to tell her okay and leave it at that?

Whatever. She dropped her phone and went back to checking her email, glancing through the pictures that Zora sent her of the Thanksgiving dinner that she and Lucas had enjoyed with Michael. Macaroni, Hamburgers, and brownie cheesecake. It wasn't another ten minutes later when another phone message came through. Him, again? She eyed it, and red lips pursed in displeasure.

It was like him. Bossy and entitled, it seemed, nothing like the boy she had fallen in love with. He wanted dinner, no excuses? “Excuse yourself Xanis. I have plans, and I'm not in the mood for fish on Wednesday. Besides, I'm mad at you. May be able to meet you after Christmas.” There. A nice, polite answer, noncommittal. Quickly, she added, “Someplace public, where you might be able to keep your mouth partly shut.”

In the pictures, Zora and Lucas were wearing little Indian headbands, and the two of them- at fifteen and eleven!- had apparently made macaroni hand-turkeys. Her siblings really were ridiculous. The heiress leaned back on the couch, felt Castor shift behind her and then drop into her lap and curl up, and scowled. She'd been planning to bring her laptop up here. No such luck.

In the pictures, Michael's eyes were sad, lonely. He was 43 years old, his wife had cheated on him, manipulated his daughters, tried to woo his son away with talks of mothering and love. He worked. He smoked. He worked. He slept. He worked. He tried to help his children, to be at their sides. Sometimes, though, Jada thought he... well, sometimes it could seem like he was losing the battle. Yet there was a reason Zora and Lucas had chosen to live with him instead of doing what Szelem desired. Only Kayley lived their mother's dream for her... His eyes were lonely, but if he wasn't so focused on work, he would see what was still clinging to him.

Things. So important, all the little things.

She didn't want to have her father's eyes. She had always dreamed of having a family, being surrounded in it. Dreamed of being loved and adored, like her mother had been. Dreamed of continuing to enjoy the privilege that her ancestor's work now afforded her. She would live in some of those pretty little homes she knew her family owned but she'd never been able to live in. She'd buy a house in London, and another in Milan. Stay on top of fashion, always stylish, always in the center of a crowd.

She didn't want her mother's eyes, glazed with greed and dreams. She would have a massive family, though with her accident... well, they'd probably all be adopted. It wasn't like she would have the problem of not being able to afford kids. She could sell all of her stock shares and live in comfort until her great-grandkids were 100. She didn't want her mother's perfect, plastic features- she was all natural, and she'd still be that way at 39. Szelem hadn't believed in exercise. Though if Jada kept drinking like a fish... (And speaking of that, maybe it was a Xanis trait. Somehow, she doubted Maria had been a fish before Giovanni had dug his claws into her and ripped her soul apart.)

Love. The all-important love. A curse, a tragedy. It had worked its wiles on her mother and father, worked its wiles on Elisabeta and Lucian. Her family was full of miserable marriages that lasted forever, or blissful ones cut short. Her relationships- would be no different, probably. But she could live in hope.

Glaring at the text message from Marlo, she deleted it, and scowled blankly at her laptop. “Men.” she told Castor, who sneezed at her and rolled onto his back.

Her 22nd birthday had been day 851 of not henshining for anything other than visits to her planet. She had left Destiny City on April 11, 2012, and she had hardly looked back but for one week later that year. She'd made a career for herself. She'd been to Venice, spent time in Paris, New York, Tokyo. She'd had her face shoved in a few magazines- and then backed out of it, like a coward. She couldn't bring herself to let it happen. Hated the looks she'd gotten that said they all thought she had bought her way to success. And who was to say daddy hadn't bought it for her? He'd been so happy when she had left.

But what had it mattered? Szelem and Kayley had been murdered that following October as they moved through the streets of New York doing some Thanksgiving shopping. A gift for Jada- the last gift of a best friend who loved her in some twisted way that Jada couldn't quite wrap her mind around. Szelem had left five bewildered children behind, one of whom was mourning the loss of her other half, and two who hadn't even learned to pee in a potty. Michael had risen to the occasion for his three children and their half-siblings, who knew him as father more than they had ever known Szelem as mother.

The mansion had been boarded up. Jada's flat had been sold, but her smaller two houses had been rented out. No one quite knew what to do with them, and what if she wanted to move back into one of them? They'd been left to their own devices, handled by daddy's financiers, and Jada had hidden it all away in a mockery of success, modeling, and people and things she shouldn't have been involved with. But as always, life caught up to her. They wanted to sell one of the houses. The maintenance on the three homes in Destiny City totaled a hefty drain on her trust fund, even with rents and her father having offered to help pay for the maintenance of the house- which was hers, legally, since it had been a gift from her grandfather.

"Well there isn't any purpose to it," Jada muttered to herself as she collected her bag off the rotating belt at the airport. She'd had them open one of the wings in the mansion. Her manager was going to be enjoying a few days off with her, see if he could get her some local gigs with artists or people in the area- little things, more publicity than any good pay. And she was going to be looking into buyers for the homes, at pretty hefty losses. She wanted them gone more than anything else. No one had gotten a call that she was returning. Hell, no one had heard from her in years. Most of the people who would care were either dead or corrupted by now, or thought she was.

As she stepped out of the airport into the silence, she could hear the difference. Smell it. Destiny City smelled alien to her now, with years between them. It didn't feel like coming home. It felt too heavy, too quiet. The cabbie took her small bag from her, tossed it into the back of his ugly yellow vehicle. She'd only brought a carry-on, figuring she could just shop while she was here. Shopping had always been a therapeutic, social activity, and her getting out and about would let her take a look at who might be interested in the houses, as well as make her manager overjoyed, thinking she was ready to take her career to the next level.

Maybe she would. She sighed, staring blankly at the yellow cab until the man looked concerned. "Lady, come on. It's almost 2am." She jolted a little, then ran her hair through her curly, long-again hair. "I'm sorry," she told him, and passed him a $50. "I'll walk." he was going to object, but there was someone else who wanted his cab- and it was her funeral, he'd gotten paid.

Gripping her case in her left hand, Jada pursed her lips and looked into the darkness. Well, she'd walked it before.

Welcome home, Scylla.

It was a nice night. Not too hot. Not too cold. And fifteen minutes into her walk, not too deadly. A definite change of pace from the last time she had been here, burying her mother and sister. She had been afraid. Every shadow housed a killer. They still might, but she was too tired to look for them. Too resigned? Too done? Why had she come back? This was stupid. Why was she walking? She turned, started to lift her hand- No. She'd started this, she was going to end it. It wasn't like she was tired. or like she was going all the way out to the mansion tonight. She could, but that would be... Tempting fate. Irresponsible. Selfish! Just what she wanted to do. It wasn't like she had reservations anywhere anyhow. But a 15-mile walk would be 6 hours, and that was stupid.

It took 30 seconds for a phone call, for a taxi to meet her in an hour near Crystal. It took her half that time to walk there at a brisk pace. More time to walk around, pacing uncomfortably, remembering the years she had spent in the dorm here. Remembering the years that had followed in a frantic rush that had culminated in a freefall, hospital trips, failure, loss, agony. She didn't belong here. But Jada had returned for a purpose, however human. And she would keep to her oath. No henshining. Scylla, however much the power and the memories beat at her and wept, was a prisoner now, trapped inside Jada. Never to be set free. (Or maybe Jada was the prisoner.)

The taxi pulled up silently, and Jada slid inside giving the driver directions in a curt voice. Home, James. The home had been her prison for 18 years. What was the rest of her life, when her whole world was decaying as she pretended not to notice?