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 Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2015 11:01 pm
The sudden shift in his balance was quickly corrected, and the arm stayed secure around her. Jack was as solid as his inner walls.
He didn't know if this was a question she honestly wanted an answer to, but he still responded because silence this time meant listening to one of the few things he felt divided on. "Funny question to ask after trying to get me to leave," he said with the trace of sarcasm that had been missing from his previous statement. Then after a pause it left.
"You're not responsible for other people, not after a certain extent. You can only do so much if it's a mission."
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Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2015 11:15 pm
"Want" to leave and "should" leave were two different things. Chel let it lie.
"Chris can't-" she whined in a small voice against his skin. "I don't want to be alone." She wished she knew what do to with her hands. They were shaking so fiercely she was afraid they might fall off. That could have just been the watery lens she was view them under.
"They never even told me she died."
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:08 am
Abruptly the space between him and the walls halved, and it was almost dizzying. If he hadn't been locked into this middling of stoic and serene, he would have pushed her away and cursed because he didn't want to think about any of it ever ******** again. And yet all it took was a few words to stir the depths. Maybe he was the one that deserved the cursing.
Jack didn't remember ever having a need to get held, not when he was eleven, not when he was seventeen, and certainly not when he was on the cusp of twenty. The very idea of getting touched while watching the proceedings made his skin crawl in the way nails on a chalkboard did. But Chel wasn't Oliver and he didn't know why he had bothered trying to reason anything at all like that other than to make thin excuses for himself, knee-jerk impulses to keep away that he hadn't been fully self-aware of because they were so natural at this point.
The tension carried into his grip on her. "Bunch of assholes," he muttered. Nevada's death didn't matter to him, he wouldn't pretend it ever would: but learning about someone's death belatedly was something he could sympathize with.
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 10:17 am
Chel nodded with him, assured by the words. Even though in the back of her mind she knew Jack didn't care about Nevada and was probably only playing the part of concerned citizen, it still reassured her nonetheless.
"Stormy texted me. Like a ********' afterthought." She was still incredibly bitter about it all. "A whole month." She said it wistfully, like she'd never really thought about it. By that point everyone had ended their mourning. Nobody talked to her about it, no one even considered that despite being an ex-girlfriend, it might have still hurt.
Her hands finally found a spot clasped in one another so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "Still hurts." The words only made her think how much Chris was still going to hurt. If Nevada could still make her cry, she wondered how far Chris would send her over the edge, or if there was even an edge to go over. Maybe she was already there.
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 10:42 am
For lack of a better answer, he quietly said, "I know." He wasn't in any position to say otherwise, whatever he had told Tenebrae.
"You know how I found out? Ian tried killing himself over it and some other bullshit." Jack gave a humorless laugh. "I win."
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 11:55 am
Chel let out a tiny moan that got tripped up by sniffles she couldn't breathe. Hearing about people killing themselves wasn't helping her mental space at all.
She picked at his shirt and whispered mostly to herself, "But why Chris?" It wasn't a question Jack was meant to answer, so there was an awkward silence left in the air.
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:05 pm
"Okay—" With little warning he pulled her into his lap, because as much as he liked discussing certain things without looking eye to eye, some things he felt necessitated more direct positioning. It didn't matter if Chel chose to duck her head or face away still, this was better than sitting side by side.
"He's been missing. How long?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:20 pm
It was an awkward transition and she resisted at first. Moving made every part of her body hurt; it made her stomach crawl and her head pounded with stress. It wasn't a stretch to say she was dehydrated. Her nose was stuffed and tight and it hurt to acknowledge at some point she was going to have to get up and live her life.
Jack's lap was an intermediate place to start. Her legs hung over the side and she wasn't sure where to put her shoulders, but somehow Jack found a way to make her fit.
"Four days," she had to pause to catch her breath because it was hard, but eventually she said, "They can't go back in for th-th-three days."
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:25 pm
Four days...a while, but not necessarily uncommon. "Why the delay?" he asked, ignoring Owain's pleas to let her be. "Do you know what happened?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:35 pm
"I don't know. They should be out there now. He's all alone- he's-"
More crying. A momentary pause.
"Landslide. They just left him. They just left him."
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:47 pm
So now that matters, Jack almost said. Talia gets a free pass because look at it from her perspective, but these guys are the assholes no doubt about it.
"As long as he has his weapon, he has a chance," he said instead, as steady as ever. "Moons are good at especially survival. If he's half as stubborn as you, he'll be fine. Don't act like he's dead already," he added with something almost like disappointment at how quickly she let herself fall.
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:33 pm
Chel had a thousand defenses for Talia but the deserter girl didn't even cross her mind at the moment. It was too clouded with equal parts Chris and "my head hurts."
Even worse that she wouldn't drink alcohol to numb it all. She was beginning to see why some people did.
Don't feed me your optimistic bullshit Chel wanted to snap. Jack knew as well as her that Chris had a ghost of a chance at best, and if he came back alive it wouldn't be the same. But she kept such thoughts to herself, for fear that if she let the darkness out, Merlin might abuse it. So she nodded and blubbered, "I know," to the best of her ability.
She wanted to scream at Jack how it was the mere concept that Chris could die and it could very realistically be true. It was too embarrassing to admit she was afraid of a concept. That, and she wasn't sure Jack would ever really understand with his visualization of emotions.
"M'sorry," she told him. "Yer always cleanin' up my messes."
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:54 pm
"Mm. Maybe I should be a Moon custodian with all the s**t I find myself cleaning up," Jack joked with a faint smile, but he knew he wasn't any good at comforting others, that much had always been obvious. Nor was his pragmatic view a welcome addition to anything outside of battle really. He wondered if Chel was just talking for the sake of it.
"You want to stay here a little longer or head back?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:57 pm
Chel didn't have the courage to say she didn't really see a point in either option.
"We can go back if you want to."
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 6:12 pm
"Doesn't matter to me." It was colder out, but it was nothing compared to Illinois and less than nothing compared to China. Objectively he had fulfilled his obligations to try and help, but he found it was a nice feeling (circumstances not withstanding), just sitting in the graveyard with someone else. All that was missing was some hot drinks and he could have called it a date.
"So," he said more conversationally as he looped his arms around her waist, "your weapon's a special sort of p***k. No wonder you didn't give him a golem before."
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