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 Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 8:15 am
He was careful about choosing the words. "Claustrophobic. Like every breath was just making it squeeze harder. Solid, sturdy. Like nothing could get to me." He would not say safe. "Usual Merlin s**t about needing to murder everything in sight and feeling all powerful."
He wondered if Owain was like Chel, unable to forgive him for letting those crystals invade like that; the giant had thus far been silent on the matter, but Jack knew destruction opposed his very being and had railed against the influence the moment it began.
"What was Excalibur like?" he asked.
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 8:58 am
She was indifferent about his description. She thought maybe knowing how he had felt would make a difference (perhaps the armor was worth it if it made him feel safe? That was, after all, all she wanted), but all Jack's description made her feel was put off.
"Lonely," was the first word that came to mind, but then, "Quiet, real sad. Felt itchy too- I didn't belong there." She made a bar with her arms across her folded knees and put her head against them, giving her a funneled view of the ground. "All I remember is you."
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 10:09 am
"Wouldn't have thought quiet with all those kickass weapons around," Jack joked half heartedly. "But...yeah. I can see that. Caliburn didn't feel right either." Equally as destructive, just self-righteous instead of vengeful. In the end, it was still the same thing with varying definitions.
"Those things I said while we fought..." He turned his head, unsurprised to see her hiding her face. Jack's expression dimmed. "I'm sorry."
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 12:12 pm
"Doesn't matter," Chel mumbled from her arm coccoon.
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 12:18 pm
"Chel." He reached out and laid a hand at her back, wishing he didn't have this impetus to force himself if it meant hurting them both. "Come on. You wanted to talk. Don't tell me it didn't matter."
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 3:41 pm
"What you want me to say? You really hurt my feelin's Jack." She said it with sarcasm, clearly disgusted by the phrase.
< Sensitive. >
"S'just true facts. Whatever."
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 3:46 pm
"Yeah." He started to rub her back, subtly trying to pull her closer with the nudges. "Something like that."
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 4:52 pm
She didn't stop him from touching her (when would she ever stop him?) but she did ignore the nudges. Chel built spikes and thorns.
Something uncharacteristically dark entered her tone. "You don't gotta apologize over nothin'. S'what everyone thinks." A pause. "M'fine. Got thick skin."
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 5:15 pm
He stopped trying to move her but kept his hand there. Instead, Jack moved himself closer. What were thorns now after everything else? He invited them to dig in and join what already nestled under his skin.
"Do you know how much it takes to say you're worth Merlin?" he asked quietly. "That I'd kill for you? 'Everyone' doesn't know what any of that really means. All they'll ever see is what they want to." Bad at comfort, bad at apologizing. He paused as he tried to find the words and almost wished the house was safe enough to use her artifact.
"No-one knows I'm nothing without you either, though," he eventually murmured, as if afraid they were being overheard even now. "Or that loving you has been one of the only good choices I've ever made, even in this miserable life we have to share. But you're everything to me, regardless of who else knows." It's corny enough, even if it's genuine. Maybe confessing it is enough to bring out another punch and a cease and desist order.
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 5:59 pm
What should have been comforting words only made her stomach turn a second time. Chel didn't want someone to kill for her, to hold her up on a pedestal. She didn't want to wield Jack like a sword; knowing that he was a sword that could choose what to kill terrified her even more.
She put a hand on his chest, initially to push him away (too close, too close), but it balled into a fist in his shirt. Shitty person, shitty tears. s**t.
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 6:26 pm
It was killing him to hear only silence; this must have been why she didn't like it. But it was worse for someone like Jack who already was closed off enough, who took it more personally than he needed if he tried and failed, even though he knew the words coming from his mouth weren't admirable in any way. But as much as Chel called him a big damn hero, he wasn't one. And as much as Stormy villainized him, he wasn't one either. In the end he was merely flawed, a man who had never quite shrugged off the instinct for survival or its selfish and sometimes mindless impulses.
He was already pulling Chel closer even before she balled her fist, and the process was only faster afterwards. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Jack curled around her and pressed his face to the crook of her neck when he realized his breaths were growing shaky again. Having said what he had aloud, he knew why now: because nothing he did would have mattered if she didn't let him back in.The disgust with himself, however necessary he felt those actions were, was very real.
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 8:32 pm
There would never be enough words to describe that for Chel, Jack was the big damn hero and always would be. When something arrived to contradict the image, she always took it upon herself to be the blame. Even as Jack claimed love as the author, Chel only saw blame and self-inflicted insecurity.
"Shithead," she curses through gritted teeth as one of the tears falls despite her trying her best to hold it back until he wasn't looking. She wonders at what point she became such a fragile china doll, so fiercely terrified of reality. She wonders when she'd changed to be so hopelessly dependent on another person.
(She's always been co-dependent and needy, but it had been micheivous and it lingered across fleeting lovers and empty beds; now it resided and it burned and it chained to this one soul holding her across broken floorboards).
And despite all of the above, she feels relieved finally, exasperated, betrayed, but relieved. She is in his arms and things can go back to the way they were. Home. It leaves her horribly confused, because in her head she still hears You're nothing without me but in her chest she feels a roar of serenity.
Her grip on his shirt doesn't relent and in fact she cries harder because of it. She's begun to understand Owain's warning.
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 9:39 pm
He bleakly chuckles as he tightens his grasp, digging his fingers into her clothes, her skin, any piece of her he can now. Slender wooden fingers curling over her hand seems too delicate an image next to the bonecrushing hold he has now, as if intending to make her his new armor. As if she wasn't already in some capacity, trying to shield him like she did. This, he wouldn't mind suffocation from.
he corrected her sometime later, wet murmurs against her neck even as he tried to steady his slight shakes.
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 10:05 pm
Until now, Chel had never heard Jack cry. She sometimes caught him making distressed faces, occasionally he got water in his eyes from frustration or tiredness, but never the bleak shaking she had on her shoulder at the moment.
Alone in their little house they were allowed to break down and be the people they really were. The miserable girl that bandaged her mom and the awful boy that was never enough.
The feeling is cold, like ice against her damp skin. Reality finally caught up with them; no more love and idolization, only the raw reveal of who they were, who they would always be, and who they would become. Why in no circumstances this relationship should have worked, but here they were curled around each other just the same. The sun had finally set and Chel now understood that the person she'd chosen to be with was not Prince Charming (although Chel would always think of him as such, and would hold him to such standards) and was in fact only human, made of the same disgusting clay she was. It was lonely realizing they weren't the gods they thought they were.
Chel's normal tactics of sweeping it off the table (one punch and it's okay?) hadn't worked, because it wasn't a problem that could be swept under the rug. Yes she and he would move on, they would leave this dusty house and go to sleep together and eat breakfast the next day and help with the disaster relief, but this problem, this disconnect was something that was going to keep bleeding and bleeding. She was always going to be a fraction more distrustful. He was always going to be a fraction more vengeful.
But love, she thought, was in spite of those things. In spite of all the tiny fractions and misgivings and wet shoulders, she was still going to be there to go to sleep and eat breakfast and help with his disaster relief.
"Always, man," she said quietly in their pitiful state. It bore repeating that when Chel started making a fuss she wouldn't stop for ages. Even long after Jack had stopped, she kept going into pathetic little hiccups and sniffles.
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Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 10:23 pm
He'd long since forgotten the stitches and bruises, the very mortal aches and pains he was lucky to have had a chance to recover from. Owain would take care of it.
< Of course I would, dear one. > It was the first time the giant had spoken to him since getting out of the infirmary, in actual words and not simply in notions like she is scared to remind him to be gentler. Choosing to speak to Jack now, however, wasn't what surprised him.
It was how frosty Owain sounded.
< I am always happy to serve when Merlin cannot provide. >
Jack clung to Chel tighter, an unexpected second wave of slow tears making its way through his clenched eyes. It was no less than he had expected and yet still hurt more than he had imagined. He wanted to bristle in defense and yell that he had no other options, that Owain of all people could understand why he did what he did--but even the most patient weapon had his limits, and an invasion of crystals had crossed them.
"Always," he whispered, loosening his hold slowly, just enough to let him stroke her rather than merely cling. "Always." Agreed.
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