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 Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 12:55 pm
He heard her scream, and it was at that moment that his blood ran cold in his veins.
This wasn't... No, this couldn't be happening. He almost tumbled down with how fast he got up from his nook and slid toward where he'd heard the sound.
His gloved hand caught her arm, and he pulled her up with a strength that didn't match his shape at all. He carried her, then only let her down on her own feet when they were far from the edge.
"Europa..."
Was he going to rip into her ? It almost looked like he would, but then he just grapped her as tight as he could, bringing her against him and letting his face fall against her shoulder.
Something wet slid down there. "I- I can't lose you too..." And just like that, whatever facade he'd been holding for the last month and an half all but crumbled, and he had the breakdown that was a long time in coming.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:31 pm
Somewhere between falling and being set back down, Europa had begun to cry. First in quiet little sniffles, but then in big, quivering sobs. Something had clicked, deep down, the instant that she'd felt the earth spin under her. Chalk it up to a loss of potential energy - whatever stoic momentum she'd built up had crumbled.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm a shitty leader, I'm sorry-"
She sniffed loudly, tried to get her hand up to wipe her eyes, but he had her pressed too close. "I'm sorry," Europa said again, "I'm getting your jacket all snotty."
It was strange to cry so intensely and yet feel the least miserable you'd felt in weeks.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:41 pm
Her crying only seemed to make him cry more, which was... well, a little pathetic to behold. This was something he never wanted to let anyone see, and if anyone else he knew as a senshi beside Bellatrix jumped by and saw this, he probably would have half a mind to jump off the building.
But this was Europa. This was okay, even though right now it was a little hard to puzzle out who was crying on who, or even who was holding who. All that was evident was that this was a mass of crying senshi. Had he not been wailing himself, he would have still held her close, tried to comfort her, but right now they each needed just as much comforting as each other, it seemed.
Earth, meet your saviors ? Nevermind that Themis wasn't even sure he could be considered that. "I don't give a s**t about my coat." Came the muffled answer from where he'd buried his head against his shoulder.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:58 pm
Europa laughed when he dismissed her worries about his coat. It was only a matter of time - the catharsis of near death experiences, she could write a whole paper on it if you asked her. "I'm sorry, we don't- we don't have to patrol tonight."
She doubted they'd be much good for patrolling right now, anyway. Mess of tears and blubbering that they were.
"We should, um," she said, trying to take control of her voice, "Get down off this roof, maybe?"
She didn't trust herself roof jumping any more tonight. Too much adrenaline, and not the good kind. Mostly it was just making her shaky.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:01 pm
"Probably." He managed, somehow. "Let's... Let's just go back home."
Oddly enough, he had completely forgotten how she'd deemed it a dump only a few minutes prior. Funny how that worked sometimes.
"There's a fire escape around..." He looked, the tears slowly stopping. "Here... Yeah." He pointed.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:15 pm
Europa had equally forgotten about calling the apartment a dump, and so it was with relief that she crab-walked towards the fire escape.
"But if we'd found a youma," she said, smiling as she eased herself down the ladder, "We would have kicked its a** into the stone age."
Just keep telling yourself that, Europa.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:21 pm
Themis said nothing in answer to that - probably because his answer would have been 'Yeah, sure, Europa' which... probably wouldn't have helped very much at the moment.
They de-henshined in the alley once they were down, and they made their way back to his apartment, looking little more than two shaken teens with red, puffy eyes. And then, once they were there, he started over and told her everything. His dad's reaction to his getting nearly killed, that fear he'd had until Taranis had managed to drag it out of him. He told her about Maia, about the fight he had with his mother, he told her what happened in the last fight in Elysion.
He told him everything he could feasibly tell her, which meant everything but Bell's own secret and how he had to shoulder her though it. He told her how desperately he wished for things to be normal again, but that he knew all too well that it would never be.
How he didn't want to fight for the supposed good, but for the people he cared about he loved. That, in reality, he wasn't even sure he was meant to be a fighter at all.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:54 pm
For most of Xavier's story, Tallulah could only hug her knees to her chest and nod at him. She couldn't tell him that while he'd been fighting monsters in his dreams and dealing with family drama, she'd been trying not to sleep and mostly being useless useless useless.
When he got to voicing his uncertainties, though, that was where she spoke up. Because this was the angst that was on everyone's minds and she was sure of it, because every conversation between senshi... it always came down to this.
"I don't think we ever had a choice," she said, after some thought. "It's that old Shakespeare quote, context aside... some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them? I guess..."
What did she guess, really?
"I've never thought about whether we're born to be senshi or we're born because we're senshi or the cats do something to us," she said, biting her lip in thought, "But it was never a question to me whether we have to fight or not. I mean, what else is there for us to do?"
"Or maybe looking at it with all the usual superhero tropes is wrong and I'm all wrong in my logic," she added dismissively. "Feel free to pick it apart."
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 2:59 pm
"I don't know." He said, shaking his head, sending his ponytail back and forth. "I... Really wish I did. All I know is what I've seen."
He paused. "...I do see me in him." He said. "When I go to Themis... the things I see... It's not hard to believe that he's me. Or that im him. However you want to look at it."
As for the why here, why now... Xavier had no answer. He could only hold onto his 'sister' and do his damnest not to start crying again.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 3:09 pm
Tallulah nodded from where she was slumped against his shoulder. "It feels familiar, when I go to Europa," she agreed. She didn't question the science of it, the incarnation. If Kunzite could be a Crystal Girl and an ancient knight at the same time (and now, dead), then the logic that the senshi had all, each and every one of them, lived a thousand times a thousand years ago... it didn't strike her as odd at all.
"It's all sort of like the Dali Lama, if the Dali Lama was Superman," she said, struggling for a metaphor. She glanced at him questioningly. "That makes sense, right?"
"I saw my past self dancing with Regulus," she said, after a few moments of hesitation. "I've been thinking a lot lately... how much of anything I do, do I actually decide? How much of it was already planned for me?"
She hadn't even been awakened yet when she'd started dating Jaimie, so did that mean her past had been magnetically guiding her towards things... since when? Since birth?
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 3:18 pm
"I haven't seen anyone." He admitted. "Not... well, anyone I know now. I saw a guardian cat... But it's none of the cats I know, I don't think. I don't recognize her."
Beside that, all the figures he'd seen were people from Themis. No other senshi. The figure he supposed what his father, who looked nothing like his father from now. Probably not even the same person, and it was too hard to think about the pale, elfin man as 'father', so he let it go.
"...I threw a fit when the cat awoke me." He said, hoping to get at least a chuckle out of Tallulah.
He didn't like believing in destiny... but it was hard to argue it.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 3:46 pm
"I saw Ganymede," said Tallulah, "Though I haven't told Ganymede I saw him yet." (She'd only met the present Ganymede once, and she'd seen him on Europa first. Was that weird?) "Everyone else... I didn't recognize them, I don't think they were senshi."
She quirked an eyebrow at the idea of Xavier throwing a fit at a guardian cat. "I just went with it, but it was Pyxis and me versus that blue plastic elephant they used to have at the playground."
She gave him a look that suggested he probably knew which one she was talking about.
"If you ask me, we were doing a public service by destroying it."
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 3:57 pm
"Well, I meant him-me. Not me-me." Confusing. Truly. "...Though you could say I kind of pitched a fit at ********* too."
"Superb service to society there." He couldn't help but agree. That thing was ugly when they were kids, and time hadn't helped. And the new slide was better in all aspect.
"Do you want to stay the night ?" He offered her. He wasn't sure if he wanted her to power up and go home, after what had almost happened.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:06 pm
"Uh-huh," Tallulah nodded sleepily against his shoulder. She reached for the remote. "Dad won't mind," she said, turning the TV on low volume. Angus never objected to requests for impromptu sleepovers at Xavier's, and probably even less now that he knew they were both senshi. "I should text him, though."
A bit of weird contortion later and she'd gotten her phone out of her back pocket without getting off the couch. She pecked out a quick message to her father, while keeping one eye on the TV.
"What do you think's on?" she asked.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:14 pm
While Tallulah was busy texting her dad, Xavier had taken the remote, and was flashing though the channels on his satellite. It came with the apartment, thankfully, though he rarely watched TV. His TV was mostly used for gaming.
...Which made him wonder where he'd thrown his headset, but then at the same time it all seemed so unimportant that he let it go.
"Adult Swim..." Zap. "...Some sort of old movie..." Zap. "....Dude is that Dr Who ?"
It was. None of the recent one, through.
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