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 Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 10:29 pm
A fever was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. He refused to get another and would will one away with sheer force of will. The ache was everywhere, but pain brought him a morbid sense of comfort. He hurt because he was alive. There was no part of him that wanted to be alive; the biggest part of him, however, wanted truly to believe it was okay to want it.
He just needed a reason. One he couldn't find before. He was Exploration; he knew where to look for things. That's why he turned and looked at Hero. The irony was in how frightening it must have felt to be unable to deny how afraid he was. Jude could have stared at himself in the mirror and the great Master of Denial himself would have had to agree the intimidation was visible, obvious.
For her.
Freedom would always be part of Sagittarius and Jude alike. But Hero could bend him, pull him, push him.
Right now, Hero Barrett could break him.
She just might.
"Hero, do you love me?" he whispered tonelessly and turned back around. Let her be not influenced by his eyes or his voice, but by the truth. All he ever wanted was the truth.
Perhaps he could live with himself easier if she said "no" rather than saying "I love you, Hero Barrett" and watching her cut him down like the failure he knew he was.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 10:36 pm
Hero Barrett got up from the bed and walked away.
This was answer enough. She'd left him. She cut him down by turning her back on him, kneecapped him. She could have taken her hornblades and shoved one deep into his chest, into his heart -- it would have been better. All it would have needed would be to give Barnaby his cursed starseed, knowing Barny would be a better Sagittarius than he had ever been, maybe even someone that Hero could be proud of. She walked off into the dark. Silent. Away.
But then she came back.
She came back holding a steak knife. Well, maybe that was her response to this too. Satisfying to die in Obsidian's hands; all right maybe too to die in Hero's, that would be --
She grasped his right hand, the ring finger with the pale mark around it like a ring that he'd tanned over, and she gouged the knife around in a circle around the white mark -- deeply, so that it bled like bejesus. Then she took her own hand and, unflinching, drove the knife into it, cut a ragged circle around the white mark her own hand held, and she enfolded her fingers into his. Pressed them against the painted shabby chic wardrobe. Looked him dead in the eye.
"Ask me again," she said.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 10:47 pm
Hero Barrett got up from the bed and walked away, and Jude Lawson sat as a defeated, worthless man and an even worse Senshi. He didn't think, didn't move, just sat there and stared at the floor that probably cost more than everything he owned combined. What was it like to not care about those without money? About anyone?
Why couldn't he be Obsidian? Beatings aside, life was so easy for him, wasn't it? He liked being hit, Jude bet, so there was really nothing wrong in the life of a serial killer.
A serial killer that Sagittarius could not himself kill.
He would never be Obsidian, and Hero would never love him. The cut was not a testament to her devotion in his eyes, not to him. It showed her feelings to the Zodiac. Always the Zodiac.
Sagittarius had to be there.
Jude didn't.
Jude was nobody.
He shook his head and rolled his shoulders, forcibly pulling his hand from hers and standing. "I think you answered me, Captain."
Not "Captain".
Captain.
Captain like he didn't care anymore. Captain like he was going to find Barny, shove his pen at him and give up.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 10:58 pm
He shook his hand free. Hero Barrett reached her fist back and suckerpunched him.
Jude had already had a long night -- part of it devoted to being suckerpunched -- and he stumbled back. He didn't go a**-over-teakettle, which was something to be proud of, but he stumbled; she'd caught his cheekbone, and he was going to have the most amazing technicoloured bruises. He was already going to have the most amazing technicoloured bruises. Like Joseph, just with contusions. And Hero's eyes were blazing, and her bleeding fist was raised:
"Do you know? Do you even KNOW? Do you even know what you're ASKING?"
Yes. Yes, he had.
"No, you damn well don't!"
Her fists were raised. Was she going to punch him again --
"Every time my heart beats," she said, and her voice was barely controlled, a tremor in it. "Every time -- blood goes through my veins. Every time I henshin. Everything I destroy. Everything I ruin. My hands -- my hands are too stained to hold you."
Her voice was stuttering.
"I let you have me. I let you have me like a woman."
She was flushed.
"You stand there and ask me if I LOVE YOU?"
She reached out to punch him again, but he was a boxer, and he caught her fist. Hero struggled. She struggled viciously. "Rip open my heart," she snarled, "tear it open and find your name there, but don't you dare ask something so simple as DO I LOVE YOU? Slice me open! Cut me down! Cut me down!"
Hero Adelaide Barrett was:
- a captain,
- in over her head,
- young, with him. They were both young. And they were both tragically much too old.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 11:15 pm
Fueled by insanity and the need to hate someone other than himself, the fire representing the battles between Obsidian and Sagittarius had burned brightly for quite a while. Now it had the force of a candle. They had fought, he had won, and he knew Obsidian was no more a man of revenge than he was in the end.
He was bored of him. He was gone.
There was no eternal rivalry to seek out, to die for. This was no never-ending struggle.
Only now could he admit that to himself. Such a dangerous, self-destructive process of jumping from one obsession to the next was the equivalent of putting a thin board between the windows of two different buildings and walking across it. You were safe when you got to the other side. Until then, you were in danger. You could fall.
He might fall, because he was walking across now; his buildings were Obsidian and Hero. Not Aries. Hero.
Had he never died, this would never have been. Had he lived a normal life, he'd be a different person. But he had and he hadn't. This was the reality neither of them could change, just alter.
One step closer to the other window, Jude was watching her like she was the most amazing thing in the world.
She was.
"Too stained from what, Hero?" The calm wasn't disturbing, it was logical. Hero was no longer the levelheaded one, so he had to be. They were balancing each other by playing opposites.
Fate. It sucked.
And sweet Jesus she was totally batshit insane.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 11:26 pm
She was wild around the eyes. It probably would have been better to jump out the window and escape her at this point. They were doing an old, struggling dance -- he still had her fist in his hands, and she had stopped trying to yank it away. Still. Disturbingly still. She was breathing hard, chin jutting out, frantic and lit-up and absolutely batshit ******** nuts -- "What do you think they're stained from?" she demanded, heated. "Letting you all die! Letting you die twice! My hands have been stained with blood since I was born, Lawson!"
Hero was breathing much too hard. "And now," she said, "I am stained. With you. You ask if I love you. You ask. You ask -- take my heart between your teeth and bite down. Die and I'll haunt your gravestone like a specter." She was always flushed when she was furious. "I would tear you to shreds and use you up and build stairs out of you for the Zodiac Guard cause -- do I love you?"
She struggled with their hands again, impassioned, voice rising. "Love is impatient. Love is unkind. Love is offense. Love is injustice -- go out into the world and do whatever the hell you want! I will die with your name choked down my damned asphyxiating throat!"
Hero jerked her hands away from his, taking a few steps back, rubbing her wounded finger.
Hero Adelaide Barrett: possibly the most melodramatic person in the entire world.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 11:52 pm
Things changed and things stayed the same. It's how the world worked. But to two people in a townhouse somewhere in Destiny City, what was happening between them was an Earth-shaking string of events that was going to change at least one dynamic of the Zodiac, for better or for worse.
"Hero." The sound was like he was just calling for her until, "I barely understand a damn thing you just said." What he had managed to decode into... you know, English, was more than enough. Sagittarius was a man who wanted to give everything he had to those that needed it. Hell, he wanted to give them things taken from people he felt had more than they should. He had, sometimes.
A selfish person in the skin of a self-appointed hero that did his acts of justice for reasons simple as benefiting his own beliefs. So selfish he'd never once stopped to think maybe they weren't all as okay with this as they looked. Maybe Grayson wasn't alright with putting a gun to his head and firing. Maybe none of them were alright with anything he had missed.
Nothing had he overlooked more than this. He was disgusted with himself. Not the self-loathing that he'd been feeding off of this whole time, but the sort of insult that made you want to get up and try harder.
Again: "Hero..."
He must have liked being hit, because he was invaded her space, taking her hand. "Listen," he requested before she could strike him. He'd keep going anyway. He would not stop talking unless she physically made him. (This would require death.) "I don't want you to be Captain Aries. I want you to be you. Be Hero. You're a woman; you're a great woman. You're a student. You're young and God, Hero, you're alive. It means something that you're alive."
Don't you dare wuss out, Jude, he kept telling himself.
Man Up.
"I love you, Hero." And he kept going: "I know you love the Zodiac. I know you love the princess. I know you have this duty and this guilt I should have seen before. I can tell you what I want, and I'll do my best to give you anything you want for it. God help me, I'll go to any Denny's in the damn country. I can't promise I can love all the Zodiac because damn it, Hero, I didn't have room enough to love my own family there were so many of them. But I can try--I will try."
For a price.
"Just love me most, Hero, is all I want. I need you or I can't do this."
Jude Lawson: possibly the second most melodramatic person in the entire world.
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 12:10 am
"I don't know," she was saying, uneven -- god, Hero was uneven, Hero was rubbing her temples with her free hand. "I don't know if we can do this. I don't know. You won't be pinned down; you're chronically depressed and you won't do a damn thing about it, you're manic, you're impossible, we're both impossible." She was still flushed. "I can't stand failure -- and I'm not entirely a woman, Lawson, you know that. Don't try to convince me it's otherwise. Oh, God. I don't -- "
She cut herself off. Trailed off. Looked up at him. She suddenly moved forward and wrapped her arms around him, her chin on his shoulder, eyes closed. Hero rarely embraced anyone. She was more likely to hit someone -- he knew that -- but now she was wrapped around him, her hasty breathing in his ear, her heart hammering in her chest. Was she frightened? Hero was the very essence of bravery, right down to her sphere -- was she?
"I will never not be Captain Aries."
Her fingers were digging into his back -- ow.
"I cannot be -- not a Zodiac Guard."
Her mouth was at his shoulder.
"But I swear to God, I swear here and now, before you and before Heaven, -- " She didn't falter, she just waited. Waited for herself. "One day you'll die and I'll put you in a grave and you can rest." She said that before. "On that day, I die. Love me, god damn it. Love me like this. I'm cruel; I love cruelly; I'm rough -- I love roughly."
I love you of all things.
"You hate yourself. You hate everything you are. I'll love you anyway, and I will love you bitterly. But I'll do it. I can do it. Can you?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 12:28 am
Could he?
"Yeah, for a little while." He stood still as she embraced him, not returning the gesture, but comprehending her rantings better. His first wish was for Hero to love him more than anyone; the second was for Hero to speak like a normal person so he could actually understand what she said when he asked her these serious questions. "For long enough."
The exhale was longer than long enough, and loud. "Maybe I do, Hero." Over and over he said her name; he loved her name. "Which is why I can only take feeling like you do for so long. I'm not built for this unspoken relationships." Relationships he had with each and every Zodiac. What a hypocrite. "You can't answer my questions with a straight answer. I don't understand you. You have to tell me things or I'm not going to know. I wish I was that kind of person who could just see it, but I'm not."
Was he really going to tell her this?
"Barnaby Price is the new Sagittarius," he said, as if this were fact. Yes, he was going there. "I'm going to train him, and when he's ready he can step up. I don't want you to die with me, though."
Still not touching her except where she was latching onto him. Had this all been a waste? "Until then, if you have to be Aries, then I don't have to be Jude."
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 12:41 am
She didn't answer this. He'd expected an outburst. Of telling him, no. Of freaking out, or of smacking him again. Of telling him, you are Sagittarius. Of freaking out over Barnaby Price. Of asking who the hell Barnaby Price even was. His depression. His acceptance of it. His acceptance of his own death -- his desperation for his own death.
"I will love you more than any one or any thing."
She said it in the manner of a vow. A promise. Then amended: "I love you more than any one or any thing," and now he could hear the guilt in her voice: I love you more than duty, I love you more than God, I love you more than Chronos. I love you more than God. "So don't shut me out. Do not lose yourself from me. Do not go where I can't follow. I will give you your space. Just."
She was holding him.
"Let that be enough. I can't promise that we won't hurt each other -- we will gouge each other, we will tear strips out of each other. Let that be."
She hadn't said anything about Barnaby?
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 1:03 am
Silence happened. A lot lately, more now than ever. He'd had more than a few with Grayson, just to name the most trying example. Stunned and being quiet were different. The number of times he had been startled into shutting up, not submitted to the idea of it, he could count on one hand. Lift one more finger, Jude. Here was the next tally.
"That's fine."
Selfish, but alive.
"More than enough, Hero." And when he really looked at it-- "This place isn't so bad. We could stay here more often, if you want."
He had an assumption this was her jungle.
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 1:12 am
"This is my parents' house," she said with the contempt of a rich girl who nonetheless lived off their largesse. "It's not my jungle."
It was somewhere she hated, obviously -- somewhere she was bitter at, as though it were a person to channel her anger to. That was where they were similar. Places could have lives, beings, personalities. This wasn't her jungle. Anti-jungle, maybe. She was already crawling back to flop on the bed, on the expensive coverlet that Jude had already bled on. She did not seem to give a damn that Jude had bled on it at all.
She was back on her parents' bed. Her parents had a huge goddamn bed. Who even needed a bed this big.
"Well," she said.
Well.
All right.
They'd pledged their bitter, passionate, tumultuous love. Now what.
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 1:20 am
And when he really looked at it this place was still horrible.
Thank God she hated it too. (One less thing to argue about on a very long list). Felt like the dwelling of a fat cat more than a home. Not a fat animal of the feline variety, mind you. Those he would love having around.
--Maybe he'd get a cat.
But not a guardian cat. He hated guardian cats like he hated shouting sphere puns at his opponents.
And school. Was he ever joyous to be out of school.
Man, he needed to sleep.
"Weeell," Jude echoed her, both in motion and in word. He grabbed her and pulled her too him, looking very much like someone who could rival Grayson in laziness just then. "I guess you're not going to school tomorrow. We're going to the jungle."
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 1:26 am
"Lawson, I have school tomorrow -- Lawson." He was grabbing her by the hand, manic now, leading her through the dark corridors of the townhouse. "Lawson, is that a grotesque euphemism?" She hadn't gotten much sleep. He hadn't gotten much sleep. "Lawson this is ridiculous -- "
Hero Barrett lost that battle.
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