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 Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2011 9:00 pm
With the picnic basket stowed in a saddle bag, Fallon wasn't going to do any serious riding that day. It was fine by her. This was just a day for relaxing with friends. She needed to remind Taillevent that he was hers before making demands of him. Truth be told, Fallon was woefully out of practice too.
Taillevent bristled when Lady taunted him, but then nipped at her flank. He wouldn't let her boss him around forever. "Some things never change," Fallon said, tugging the reins to guide Taillevent's head away from Lady Luck.
The two girls and their horses went off down the long, winding path that led to the hills in the farthest reaches of the stable property. The trees were still brown and stiff, but on a few low branches, Fallon could see the beginning of leaf buds preparing to spread.
After a few laughs and a few miles later, the cinnamon-haired teen turned to Jada and said, "I forgot my birthday this year. Can you believe that?" Her birthday was February 29th, a leap year baby even when it was not a leap year, but it was already the first of March. "But then this year, with Elysion... I was battling on my birthday. Well, for the most part. And now it's March, and I didn't even plan a thing. I didn't host my dinner party." Fallon's gift to herself was always a dinner party thrown entirely by her. Jada had been attending for as long as she could remember.
"What does that mean?" she said suddenly. "What does it mean when I forget my own birthday? I don't forget anything."
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Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:10 pm
It was so good to be just a girl again. Hanging out with her friend, Lady and Taillevent nipping and headbutting each other. (Jada was of the opinion her Lady had a crush. She didn't pick on any of the other boys like that, that she'd seen!) They just talked, about silly little things. Memories from school, things that they had missed out on due to life just being a punk. And when at last they were sitting out on a blanket, the food spread out and the horses grazing, there was a moment of peace that blindsided Jada.
"I forgot your present." Jada admitted. "It is at home, on my dresser." What did it mean, for Fallon? In Jada's opinion, it meant that her friend was forgetting herself. Forgetting that she had once been just a girl, with thoughts and fears that had nothing to do with fighting for her life. She'd been a girl just like Jada. She sat up, scooting behind the taller girl on her knees and sliding her arms around Fallon's shoulders, draping herself over her friend. "I don't have any answers for you, Fallon. I wish I did. I just... it is hard, isn't it? Keeping two lives apart from one another? There isn't enough time every day to be Scylla, and Jada; To be a sister and a student and a senshi and a friend and a mentor? You've just... made the choice I can't, yet." You've started to give up the things I never could. The words went unsaid, yet rang out clearly.
She was waxing more eloquent than she'd thought, and it was sounding rather trite. "Do you remember? When we weren't allies, but we were just friends, and this entire day would have been so stunningly boring and normal?" she smiled, ducking her head and resting it on Fallon's shoulder. "I miss you cooking for me. I miss just being Jada, and you just being Fallon, and us just being two normal girls. Beautifully boring, and I bet you don't feel like today has been wasted. Do you?" Jada's arms were tight around Fallon, holding her in a hug. This close, Fallon would be able to feel the black-haired girl shaking, feel the hitch in her breathing as she drew it in, going to say something else, then cut the words off.
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Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 6:59 pm
Fallon had not mentioned her birthday to guilt Jada about her present and immediately felt guilty. "I didn't mean it pointedly," she said quickly. "My mother showed up on my doorstep to take me to dinner. That was how I remembered. My mother. My forgetful, messy, selfish mother." She laughed, but it whined at the ends, tinged with sadness.
Painted nails pinched an immaculately trimmed petite sandwich. Pink vinaigrette slipped out and soaked into the bread. Fallon stared at it like it was captivating somehow. And maybe it was? These were the little things that she never had time to think about anymore.
The pressure of Jada's arms around her made Fallon stiffen instinctively, but she tried to relax, even if her shoulders held their tension. "I miss cooking," Fallon said suddenly. "I used to do it everyday. I used to host a weekly dinner party." She sighed. "I can't remember the last time I did that now..." No, now she had daily training sessions and weekly Blood Moon Court meetings. She had traded one love for another.
There was an unmistakable rattle behind her, the choked sounds of Jada fighting tears. Crying made Fallon uncomfortable so she pretended not to notice. "I don't miss being just Fallon," she said suddenly. "But I miss the accoutrements of it. Like cooking, just cooking until my fingers were sore. Riding horses. Learning ballroom dance. Participating in French Club." The bouts of missing those things had become fewer and far between.
"But those things are pointless, aren't they? Isn't it all? There is only this war, and us -- the soldiers in it." A tiny voice in her head told Fallon to soften to her friend, to embrace her and weep together. But that was not who Fallon was, even before Ares. Now that she housed the Senshi of Smoke, there was no hope that she would ever become that person. "My birthday is a milestone because it means I survived another year," she said, voice hardening.
It was almost as if a switch had been flipped. In the face of her own weakness, her ego took over to push it out. Fallon couldn't indulge herself this way, not ever. There was danger in longing for normalcy.
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Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 7:36 pm
"And when it is over, Fallon? What will you do? What will Ares do?" Jada hadn't been crying, but she'd been thinking, debating what to say. Over and over again, something had tried to make its way out of her mouth, only to have herself cut it off. Her eyes were dry, and her face was pale. "I miss being Jada." she said abruptly, and pushed away from Fallon, shifting her position. "I hate Scylla. I hate being Scylla. I hate the way she makes me feel, when I am henshined up and I am more than I was before... Sometimes the two lives, and having her memories, seeing through her eyes a world I never knew, it is like a parasite feeding something into my brain, and I just want to cut it out of me, piece by piece."
She wanted to be that flimsy, frail, air-headed human girl, the mask she clung to with desperation. She wanted to spend her days doing normal things, not driving herself to exhaustion training, planning, and wondering what it would be like to just be human again.
Her face was contorted with loathing, and there was nothing pretty in her aristocratic face for the brief moment that such hatred was present. It was bitterness, making her eyes standing out starkly. "I hate them, because if it wasn't for them, I would just be that girl, who had found her niche. I would be able to just float by on my life instead of having to fight my family, because they wouldn't be terrified that I was getting myself hurt. My parents think I am suicidal, and the members of the board want to cut me out of my inheritance, have me declared mentally unstable, and right now I don't have the time and energy to prove them wrong. I'm only eighteen." She paused, briefly.
"If I hadn't become Scylla, I might be married by now. All the excuses I used on my mother, I wouldn't have had them. I'd be so tired of fighting her, maybe I would have caved in. If I hadn't become Scylla, maybe I wouldn't wake up sore and tired every morning; I wouldn't pounce on my phone every time it rang, praying it wasn't someone I loved having been hurt, or killed."
Black hair sprawled across the blanket as Jada fell back onto it, staring at the sky. "There hath he lain for ages, and will lie / Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, / Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; / Then once by man and angels to be seen, / In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die." she said it slowly, letting the words drip from her mouth carefully. "Sometimes, I wonder how much those old dead guys really knew. I mean, mixing up the Kraken and the Leviathan there, but he wasn't the first to." Was that it? Was Jada afraid of her own death? No... why would she be scared? Everyone died. It was the circle of life. But senshi weren't really part of that circle, were they? Time and time again they had been reborn, and so long as the Space Cauldron existed, so they would continue to be.
"One day though, it will all be over, and all these children-- even the enemy-- will be so ******** up, and there will be a bunch of loonies in a bin. And what will any of us do then?" As abruptly as her whimsical self-pity had started it was over, and her face was blank, model-pretty, as peaceful as though Jada hadn't a care in the world.
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Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 8:40 pm
Over? Over? War never ended. War was a cycle. Wars ended and then started all over again. It was one of the things that Ares loved so much about this White Moon Kingdom. Their histories were fraught with more wars than the Black Moon had seen in its eons of existence. Ares lived on war. She breathed in it. The battlefield was her home. If the fighting stopped, then where would she go? Ares could never be content sitting to the side of a throne doling out mundane punishments for mundane crimes. She needed an enemy to fight as surely as she needed air to breathe.
This tiny revelation from Jada nearly made Fallon's heart stop. So she said nothing as Jada spoke about her own senshi identity, her own struggles. Ares was too busy envisioning a world without crime, without battles, without enemies. She saw this world, and it looked like Hell.
Jada pushed away. Fallon did not try to pull her back. She only turned slightly to catch the girl's eye. Fallon saw the hatred in those purple irises, the loathing, the bitterness. She had never found Jada so beautiful. For an instant, Fallon's eyes softened in appreciation of it: a glorious expression of rage on a lovely face. It was poetic.
But then Jada sprawled backward onto the blanket, and the moment passed. Fallon waited quietly until she was certain her friend had finished speaking. She drew in a careful breath and said, "We die and are reborn, fresh and white as a perfectly bleached carpet. Our enemies die, and at some point, in some way, they come back and we fight all over again." A smile touched her lips. Fallon had always purported to want an end to this war, to kill every Nega and stop them from ever returning, but here in this field with Jada, she whispered the truth.
She never wanted it to end. Not for one second. She simply wanted to win this round, die, and come back to try and win it all over again. So it goes.
"All of this has happened before," she said, "and it will happen again."
Fallon patted Jada's hand as if anything she had said should be comforting.
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Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2011 10:36 pm
The sky was beautiful today. So blue, and the clouds were white and perfect. It was a perfectly boring, stereotypically lovely day. It was the kind of day that Jada hadn't been able to appreciate, before all of this s**t had happened. It was the type of day that unknown numbers of innocent people would never be able to enjoy because of a pointless, ceaseless war. The heiress shook her head, black curls flying, trying to deny the truths that Ares saw. "It can't go on forever." she was lying to them both, knowing that Ares was speaking some sick, twisted truth. Hadn't it happened before? Hadn't all of the senshi died, only to be reborn now, in this tiny place? "We'll all be old, or we'll all be dead. I want things from my life, some day. Things more than what being Sailor Scylla can offer me. Fighting doesn't hold my hand when I am lonely."
An eternity of this cycle was more than Jada could bear to think about. Her past self had been content with battle, with this life. She'd never known anything but being a senshi, though. "If it is all going to keep on happening, Fallon, then what is the point in all of it? We save one person, only to turn and watch another fall."
She closed her eyes, feeling the light beat against her face. "Is it always this tiring? I feel helpless, Fallon. We take a step forward, and the Negaverse takes two. We gain more powerful warriors, and they find four, five, that we can't even touch. They could destroy us all, and we are like babies, wailing and flailing our fists." she let her voice trail off. "If I die, Fallon, I need you to remember me, not Scylla. I'm fighting now because I have someone- something- that I am taking a chance on. I'm going to die in this war, Fallon." so much conviction, so much helplessness. "I have people to protect, I've been spending my life so that I can at least raise their chances." Jada opened her eyes. "But I swear to God that when I die, Fallon, it won't be without rocking the s**t out their world."
She curled up, all the bravado gone, and all that was left was a girl who was confessing that she thought she wasn't enough. Jada had always been proud, and even now her head was tilted at an angle that dared someone to mock her for her feelings. The fact that she was admitting it at all was a frigging monument to how much that Jada trusted Fallon, and how close she felt they were. She was not above admitting her weaknesses in the right context, but not so starkly. "I've been doing so much self-reflection." she said finally. "It is really a pain in my a**." She squeezed Fallon's hand when the woman reached down to pat it.
"I want to do this again, and I promise next time I won't bring up all my hesitations. Next time we'll ride our horses and plan how to torture some Cadets and fellow Mercs. I have a couple ideas that would be... effective." Jada's eyes were awful shifty. "Would that make it more comfortable for you? You get some human time, mixed all up in business time, and Talon won't be lonely, and I will have someone to ride with."
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Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:28 pm
Fighting doesn't hold my hand when I am lonely.
Fallon looked down at her own hand, the one the sat limply in her lap. She had been alone for as long as she could remember. As a child, she was a loner. She didn't play well with others, her father didn't have time for her, her mother was selfish. She alienated girls her age and found herself more at home in a knitting circle of ancient women than sharing a meal with her classmates.
So Fallon came to Barren Pines and saw the loss of most of the only people she had come to know as friends, bearing particularly hard the loss of Leonette, a girl she had cared a great deal for at such a young age. In the wake of that tragedy, she was left feeling even more alone. Others had become senshi and were allowed to keep their memories. Fallon only had question and pain and loss.
Loneliness remained her default state until she came to house the soul of Ares -- who was, it would seem, a bit of a loner in her own court. But Ares loved what she did, her faction, and Fallon came to know a wholeness that went along with just being an undeniable part of something. Then the parallel court was obliterated, and she lost was little companionship she had.
Until the Blood Moon Court. And in this new group, she fought to find that wholeness again -- but it was a mission in vain. Fallon had chosen her companion in life: battle and victory. All else was lesser, and for this reason, she found herself unable to understand the feelings that Jada was espousing.
Silence, she decided, was the best course of action. Fallon let Jada get everything out, all the words, all the feelings. She even waited several moments after, taking a slow sip off her bottle of iced green tea. A hint of cantaloupe had been added to it. It was a nice touch, she thought idly. She'd have to try it again.
Only then, with her thoughts properly gathered, did Fallon speak again. "I would like to do this again," she said with a smile. Quietly, she began to pack up the finished lunch, but it wasn't so simple. Fallon had something left to say.
Magenta eyes landed back on Jada. "We are more than ourselves, Jada. We are our mission. And our mission is vital -- and you," she put a hand on her shoulder, "are vital. Absolutely so. The fact that you are not afraid of your doubts makes you strong. You aren't afraid to confront them." Fallon got to her feet and then held out a hand to help Jada up. "In order to make this existence a successful one, we have to learn how to become greater than the sum of our parts. We do not need royalty to tell us what is right and what is wrong. We are a force to be reckoned with -- and you are a part of that." She smiled warmly. Fallon meant these words.
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Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 3:24 pm
Bright purple eyes stared up at the sky. How blue, how beautiful. It was another one of those things she took for granted. It was another one of those things she was fighting to protect. Jada fought so that this sky didn't share the same nothingness of the skies of Scylla. She fought so she wouldn't have to watch her friends suffer and die.
She fought because she hadn't been given a choice.
"We will do it again, then." Jada found it easy enough to reply to that portion, and rolled up so that she could help Fallon pack away their lunch. But Fallon had more to say, and when she laid a hand on Jada's shoulder, the dark-haired teenager looked up at her friend. Her Captain. Her Red Queen. Ares stood in direct opposition to the White Court rulers in personality and drive, and she had collected her own army around her, each of them loyal to the vision that she had laid out for them. But Fallon was wrong about one thing.
Jada was very, very scared of her doubts. And it made her weak, not strong, because she dared not look away from them, for fear that she would lose sight of them.
Instead she smiled at Fallon, not knowing just what to say to her in response. Fallon meant the words she spoke, that much was clear, and it was touching that she was at least trying to reassure Jada that they were on the right path. There was still time for it to get much darker on the road they walked, but the darker it got, the sooner the sun would be to rising-- right? Such optimism. Jada whistled for Lady and watched the mare trot her way. It was then that she reached up, taking Fallon's hand and rising to her feet.
"I'll race you back to the stables." she issued the challenge as though it were the first time, giving Fallon a wicked smile.
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Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:04 pm
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