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 Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:42 pm
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:44 pm
Regular:: Until you make me move.A weeping Grayson is an awkward find, but Jude does his best to tend to the damage via inspirational speeches and punching him in the arm.
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:45 pm
Regular:: Trapped in a FreezerJude, Barnaby and Grayson get stuck in a freezer like true failures. Awesome job, guys.
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:47 pm
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:48 pm
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:49 pm
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:53 pm
Regular:: Getting Catty in the RingHero meets her alternate, feline ego; Jude gets in a bitchfight then gets bitched at for smoking.
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:54 pm
Regular:: Promises BrokenJude and Grayson mourn over their favorite football team losing then decide to try and work for once. "Try".
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:55 pm
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:57 pm
Regular:: Mother of All GuiltJude has a discussion with Barnaby's mother and must face the lingering guilt of trying to make him a Senshi.
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:58 pm
Solo:: The One Left Behind
Everyone lied.
Some more than others. Some only under certain circumstances. Some, like Jude Lawson, frequently misled people without meaning to. His presumed trip out of town made it to the city limits before his tires were planted firmly in place. The truck worked fine, all things considered; the problem was it's pilot.
What he called living other people called surviving, and he'd never make a case against any assertions the drawbacks of his lifestyle outnumbered the perks. Sitting on the border between destiny and freedom, finally he accepted those shortcomings outlasted the benefits, too. When the place you called home could move with you, the sky was the limit; the road definitely wasn't. That's what he'd thought.
He'd lied to Hero and himself this time; he wasn't going anywhere.
Destiny City wouldn't burst into flames if Sailor Sagittarius found the willpower to turn the keys, hit the gas, go just a little bit further. Every Senshi was a snowflake, and he didn't mean that in the charming, you-are-an-individual way that a parent would tell their child to make them feel better when they got picked last for kickball. Senshi were like snowflakes because if just one of them fell, no one would notice. The world would keep turning. Winter would come again. Life would go on.
The Zodiac had been dead a while, he knew that. So, why were they back here? The Negaverse wouldn't be so kind as to do them a favor, and their leader wouldn't be so arrogant and stupid to revive them just for the sake of watching them all die again. On a personal level, he knew nothing of that man. On a professional level, he felt it smart to assume an idiot wouldn't be put in a position of power like that. From what he'd learned prior to the explosion, and what he'd found out since then, the Negaverse didn't function following some birthright like the Senshi did. Aries was born to be Captain, and had she been an idiot, she'd have still been Captain.
This foundation they built upon based on what a bunch of cats said wasn't working. Evidence to the contrary wasn't enough for him to believe they weren't losing. So they'd escaped Barren Pines. So what? How many people had been hurt needlessly? Killed? Tortured? Leo had shot himself in the head, for God's sake!
And what loses had the Negaverse suffered for it? The annoyance of having one plan foiled. Hmph.
The tangents let off steam, but that's about all they did. He still couldn't answer his own questions: Why were the Zodiac back? The world, obviously, didn't need them. If so much time had gone by without them, why? Why now? Why ever? It didn't make sense.
And why did some students make it out when Marcel didn't? What was even the point of the place entirely?
Get up, get in line. That was still about the only thing he knew had happened after his death.
He also knew how cliche this scene was. His whole life lately was out of a bad movie with a recycled script used dozens of time. This would be about the part where he started bringing back memories and dwelling on them, and he played that role well. Everything that had been said to him since Barren Pines he maintained at least a foggy recollection of. Some stuck out more than others, of course, but with those reminents of what had been he could go back and piece everything together.
Do you call what you did fixing?
Tell me what you're afraid of. I think you're afraid of facing your own damned failure.
Jude stepped out of the truck and slammed the door. The end of a cigarette glowing in the dark chill of night was reminder enough how aware of his failures he was. Hero was right about a lot of things, but she was wrong about that. Dying at Barren Pines had been a failure. Hell, he'd willingly accept--even tell you himself--his entire time as a Senshi was one big, long frustration and more proof of what he'd always thought: leave things to fate and you'll wish you hadn't.
He wasn't a Senshi because he'd earned it, nor he was the kind of white knight you'd want standing beside you when the world came crashing down. He was a Senshi because some force greater than himself picked his name out of a hat and rolled with it. Life would checkmate him every chance it got, and if there had been a time where he was unwilling to accept such truths... that time was over. The failure wasn't what was killing him, it was why he'd failed that chained him down.
For a time he'd convinced himself that what had happened was for the greater good. He'd gone off to find what was wrong with the school because that's what a hero did. They saw a problem, and they fixed it. The thing was, when he really thought about it like he had that night, he knew complaining his valiant actions should grant him higher ranking made him a hypocrite and a liar. The reason he'd gone--the real, true reason--was a selfish motive from a person who couldn't stand being a caged bird. The reality was he didn't care at all how many wasted away in the cages beside his so long as he made it out.
He'd lived and died a lie and a failure.
Give a slice of bread to a starving man every time he changed his mind on the issue and half of world hunger would be a thing of the past. Give them one for every time he sat down and thought about it, and you'd feed so few people you wouldn't need every finger on one hand to count them all. Thinking time was always in stock these days, but for every issue he thought about, there was another he ignored. The important ones were always ones he'd get to later. Tomorrow was always a day away.
Until now.
"Hello?"
Finding a payphone hadn't been as trying as he'd thought it would be in 2010. Finding one secluded enough to use? Yeah, that was the challenge. Two convenience stores and one gas stations later, he'd find one off the left side of a 24-hour rest stop. This call could go one of two ways: a) she would hang up on him, or b) she'd scream at him. He was as ready for either as he was ever going to be. Not very.
"Samantha?"
"Yes? Who is this?"
"It's Jude." He held the phone tighter and didn't bother giving his last name. Considering it had almost been her last name, she knew it well.
"Jude?! Where have you been?! My God! I thought you were dead! What happened?!"
"There was an accident, but I'm okay." Some kind of rehearsing would have helped, but far be it by him to know how you could truly brace yourself for a situation like this. What was he going to do? Call up his ex-fiance and tell her he'd become a Senshi unexpectedly then died in an explosion? He might have if he'd thought she'd believe it.
"What kind of accident?! Where are you?! What the Hell happened, Jude?!"
"Don't cry, Sam," he whispered into the phone. He knew she was, and he knew by the end of this she wouldn't be alone. "I'm sorry. I can't tell you everything, but--"
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'I CAN'T TELL YOU EVERYTHING'?!"
"Samantha--"
"No! No! Don't you use that voice with me! You--damn it--Jude, you've been gone over a year! A year, Jude Lawson!"
"I had to."
"Why?! Why did you 'have to'?!"
"Come on, Sam..."
"Tell me. Just tell me why. Right now."
"I can't! You wouldn't believe me if I did."
Samantha was breathing heavy on the other end. Her face was probably red, too; she and Hero both looked the same when they got worked up. As if reading his mind, she went on: "It was another girl, wasn't it?"
"No." Jude didn't hesitate. He was giving an honest answer; Hero hadn't been part of the equation in such a serious way until after they'd all died horribly. "Sam, no. It wasn't another girl."
"Are you coming back?"
Now, he did hesitate. He hesitated so much she repeated her question louder and more frantically. Jude bit his lip and tangled his free hand in his hair. "No," he said. "I can't come back. You didn't wait for me this whole time, did you?"
"What?! Of course I didn't wait for you! You vanished, Jude! Dissapeared into thin air, and now you've got the nerve to ask if I waited for you?! Just who do you think you are?! You never change! I thought you had, but you didn't! But no, Jude, I'm not seeing anyone else. You know why? Because you--you--you always, always leave women worse off than how you found them! Always! Why are you even calling me now?!"
He remembered Hero again: I was a -- I was a fool thinking I could ever get through to you!
"Well?!" Samantha screamed. "Why now?!"
"To say I'm sorry. I needed to tell you I'm sorry."
"You needed to tell me you're sorry? You're SORRY?! I left my home for you, left everything for you and you think SORRY is enough?!"
Jude shut his eyes and reminded himself to keep looking at things from her point of view. He'd deserved some of this, but he didn't deserve all of it. "Sam, it's not my fault--"
"Of course it isn't!" the woman hissed. "It's never your fault! It's always their fault, isn't it?! I should have known from the start! All my friends told me girls are just like toys to you but no, I didn't listen! All of them were right!"
Ouch. Hero could take guilt lessons from her, Jude thought bitterly. "You know I never cheated on you when we were together, Sam."
"Do I? Do I really? And even if you didn't, Jude, what does that matter when ditching people is just as bad? You just stick with a girl until you get bored with them, then it's off to the next one to see what fun things they can do until you're done with that one, too! You never care about them more than you care about seeing this or seeing that, and there's always something better, isn't there?! I hope you found what's so much better than me, Jude Lawson, because I never want to hear from your voice again!."
"Sa--" The line went dead and suddenly the air felt colder than he remembered. He slammed the phone against the wall and his fist soon followed. "Damn it!"
The satisfaction he was sure he'd find after handling his problems was once again oddly absent.
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 12:00 am
Solo:: The Brother Who Knows
--Pending.---
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 12:01 am
Solo:: A Friend Indeed
--Pending.---
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:09 pm
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