Welcome to Gaia! ::

She had been sitting there staring at her phone. She had started to write at least a hundred text messages. She’d either trashed them or saved the drafts. She felt confounded that she was at such a loss for words. No matter what she wrote; she thought it sounded terrible. She knew he would work for three days in a row sometimes. Then, there was the several days she had disappeared as well. Was that more than a few days? When she thought about it, she wasn’t sure how long she had been gone. She had been taking some trips into the Rift. When there, it was easy to forget all about time and space up on the surface. A lot of it was just plain curiosity. She was often just wandering around cloaked in a long black sith like robe. Often, she’d lurk somewhere to watch other people.

Still, she knew she couldn’t very well come back and be like; “Oh guess where I went today.” She also didn’t realize he had his own dual life secret from her as well. Living in the dark of a secret like that, she felt she was the only person keeping such a secret. Still, even if part of her wanted to come clean and tell him. She knew she couldn’t. Even if she was told not to do stuff like that; she feared he would have thought her crazy and a lunatic. She had taken it well when Buddy had revealed some things to her. Still, she generally took most things in stride. She considered that one of her greatest strengths. It allowed her to find her way through most situations.

Still… she had embarked into that whole little ensnaring of her assistance with this army of sorts. She had done it while she had only just met Xander. Before he became important to her. She hated that she felt like she was lying by omission. There were things happening to her, and she couldn’t tell him about them. That made her feel guilty. If she was honest, that had a lot to do with her calling and visiting a little less frequently.

She had noticed that he hadn’t been especially pestersome with calls or messages either. That bothered her. She would spend entire days arguing with herself whether it makes her look stupid if she’s the one who calls him. Should she let him call her? What if it doesn’t even occur to him that he should do that? Was he waiting for her to find him somewhere? While she had uncanny talent in doing just that; why couldn’t he be the one to come and find her?

The more these questions filled up her mind; the chaos that was growing in her heart started to torment her. She started to nearly feel sick every time she thought about Xander. She had started to realize then just how much she cared about him. The more she felt she loved him; the more the chaos would torment her. It was a horrible feeling, and she decided after she came home from some run ins with some senshi. She needed to rid herself of this pain. She needed to pull it up by its roots. Was that possible? She had to try.

She finally settled on writing him a message. “Do you think it’s really an admirable thing to just not call or visit someone that loves you? Ignoring is probably not really very nice either.” After she hit send, she stared at the wall.

The message went unanswered for a good hour as Xander was at work on shift in the hospital. They were understaffed, but that couldn’t be helped because it was Destiny City, the city, fighting an invisible war. He’d been at the hospital for 36 hours now, with just a short nap to tide him over. He walked into one of the staff’s lounges and sunk into the nearest chair available, closing his eyes only to open them again at a voice.

“You probably shouldn’t get too comfortable, this week seems to be absolutely hectic so far. You’ll probably just get into a good doze and need to run back out into the ER,” said one of his coworkers.

Xander sighed and nodded, “beside I think I heard a buzzing from your locker earlier. You might want to check, it could be Lily.”

Another nod from Xander and he tiredly hauled himself out of the chair before heading over to his locker, not paying much attention to his coworker who presumably went to hide out somewhere. He grabbed his phone, unlocking it and hitting the little messages button.

A message from Cerise was at the top, but he could only see the first few words. He clicked and read the message, then felt a little bad, but at the same time he felt a little confused. She hadn’t texted or come to visit him either, he’d been at the hospital for three days now and nothing. Was he not getting her messages, but then he got this one?

He texted back, “I’m sorry, have you been texting me or calling? Ive been at the hospital a lot lately. On a 36hr shift thus far right now? This is the only message I’ve gotten from you in a while. Maybe it’s my phone. Sorry I haven’t called or anything though, the ER has been extremely busy this summer. I am also going away, you know, I told you, so they are using me as much as possible until I’m gone for two weeks.”

He looked over the message again before a nurse came in and said he was needed. He quickly hit send and headed out leaving his phone on the table.

She sat there in one of the arm chairs that was in the u shaped part of her room at the top of the stairs but outside of the back part where her bed was. She was looking through one of her dessert cookbooks she had picked up a few months ago. She had been so busy lately. She hadn’t made time to learn any new recipes or make anything that was so amazeballs as to recruit new fans.

While she thought about it, she hadn’t really been doing anything to create new fans in at least weeks. Was it almost a month? She wondered that she was really starting to feel mentally ill. It just wasn’t like her to not work on making herself famous. The chaos in her attempted to comfort her and make her feel like with its help; she’d eventually have everything she had ever wanted.

Did she even know anymore what she wanted? Not really. She did. She always knew. Things were feeling differently lately though. As she paged through looking for something very eye catching or named intriguing, she saw her phone light up. It played his ringtone. She picked it up and read it. She attempted to roll her eyes, but it ended up coming out mostly as a sigh. She hadn’t liked the idea of him going overseas. She wanted to go and to ask if she could; but part of her felt like it might be wrong to ask. What more; some part of her had at some point fantasized that he would just show up at her house one day, and he would say he wouldn’t live a single day unless she went with him. Of course, that didn’t happen. She was mostly not surprised it didn't. That had been a crazy flight of fancy.

Just like she had for a while made up her mind to chase him and make herself his most favorite person ever. She was sitting there making up her mind to make a change of course. She didn’t like this path she was on. Most people talked about falling in love like it was beautiful and full of warm and fuzzies. She was full of malcontent and always feeling nothing but opposites. Like, if you could be hot and cold both at the same time.

After staring at her phone a while, she decided to do a thing that was rather terrible. While even doing it, she knew she might regret it. Her heart told her to stop and not be so brash. However, her pride was blazing like a category five tornado of epic proportions. The chaos totally not helping any of that.

Her response for him to find later just read, “Yeah. Who knows what happened to those messages. That’s right. Your vacation. Isn’t that special. Since you are SOOOOO busy, and since you have SOOOO much stuff going on. I’ll make it easy on you. Don’t even worry about me anymore. Because I am not going to call you anymore. Or come by. If you feel like you feel like being inconvenienced by making the effort to get in contact with me entirely on your own; feel free. I can’t live my life waiting for someone to make me feel like I’m important. Have a GREAT vacation.”

Boy. That was a little childish. As terrible as she was being, such was the wrath of an only child who grew up always wanting other people’s attention and never having gotten enough. As an adult, she was hell bent on everything being just the way she wanted it. If it couldn’t be that way, she was going to just move on to the next thing.

It was a few hours before Xander was back again, he phone still sat in the place where he left it. He looked at the little light that let you know you had a message flashed every few moments. He was so very very tired and he needed a nap. Finally he had relief and could leave, but if he attempted to drive now. It would be bad.

He unlocked his phone and read the message, then sort of just sunk into the nearest chair and stared at the message. He didn’t really know what to think or even what to say. He felt like she wasn’t being very fair to him. He was a doctor and he worked in the emergency room and he was only newly hired. He just finished his residency in December, he had no kids and most of his family was in England, so he regularly got the worst hour, but he didn’t mind not really. Cerise knew that, didn’t she? She would come and visit him and bring him food.

He sighed rubbing his tired eyes, feeling conflicted and not entirely sure if it was just his lack of being around or that vacation, or even if there was more to all this. He read the message again, she essentially said she was giving up on him. He knew they had barely seen each other or even talked in what, was it a month now, but did that really warrant this?

“Is that really how you feel?” was the message he sent back, followed by another, “I thought you understood how my job could be, these long shifts in the hospital tending to the sick and dying. You are important, but right now I think you are being a little unfair Cerise.”

He leaned back in the chair, tired but feeling like sleep wasn’t going to happen any time soon. He got up and headed out, he might as well try to drive home. He currently could only think about her text and the whirlwind of emotions it unleashed, most of which he couldn’t even identify.

She had been on her bed listening to music and doing anything and everything to attempt to rid her mind of him. It felt like an uphill march, but she knew she could do this. She knew what she needed. She needed to go out somewhere. Maybe go visit someone. In the midst of moving around, she heard his ringtone again. She peeked at it. She could only chew the inside of her cheek. He was right. She was being perfectly terrible.

As she changed her clothes and looked to make sure her outfit to go out looked great. As she looked into her own eyes, she knew that really wasn’t entirely how she felt. Her feelings about him were a powder keg. Deep down, her conscience smote her for doing this.

Still, as she felt the chaos tearing at her. She felt like this just had to be done. It’s not like she had wanted it all to play out like this. It was just… The timing of her falling for him with the timing of her getting involved with these people. She had been watching someone get a starseed yanked out of them. She wondered to herself if it was a serious conflict of interest to accompany people who lose their life; and for her to continue to date someone who tried to save those lives.

Before she left the house, she sent him a reply. “How I really feel… is that… I have feelings for you that have been making me feel miserable. I don’t think that’s fair either. It probably isn’t your fault. I’m sure you don’t do anything wrong. I just… don’t want to go on feeling like this anymore. If you are on such a long shift; why are you replying to me? Go get some ******** sleep, Xander.”

She turned her phone off and dropped it into her bag. She went over to find a great pair of shoes. No. Not shoes. boots. This called for boots.

Xander was driving when she responded back. He didn’t think after a 36 plus hour shift it would be a good idea to try to text and drive at the moment, so it wasn’t until he got home that he grabbed his phone and checked his texts. His jaw literally dropped at what he read. He just sort of stood beside his car looking up at the sky and feeling like, he didn’t really know what he felt like, but he was rooted to the spot for several minutes.

Feel miserable … the words bounced around in his head … miserable. He looked down at his phone for texts back. “Ok Cerise.” He didn’t really even know what that was suppose to mean, but if she was miserable than he didn’t want that.

He stood there for a few moments longer before he clinched the phone in his hand and tossed it as hard as he could. Before he knew it, he was headed straight for the pool house, sleep was the last thing on his mind. He kicked off his shoes as he went, dropped the white coat, followed by his shirt, his under shirt, belt, and then his pants. Thankfully his neighbors will well distanced because he was literally leaving a trail of clothes across the lawn.

By the time he was in the pool house he was literally wearing socks and underwear. He pulled the socks off and jumped in, and swam. Laps as per were his usual, up and down, back and forth. The water, it was always soothing.