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 Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 6:33 pm
It Doesn't Beat The Way It Used To
No one typically questioned where newspapers came from. They were usually everywhere as background clutter, no matter how few people read them these days with up to the minute new on your phone. Everyone had someone in their life that still got their news from a newspaper, and then the paper would be discarded and left around until eventually trashed or recycled.
When Zia found it resting on a box, she was more enamored with the strange texture of the paper rather than what was printed on it, but after a second she realized there were words and information. She seized up the entire bundle of papers and skulked off to a high perch beneath a tent canopy and nested there to fervently read all she could among stolen blankets and shredded pillows. Outside world information, but here, in the safety of the circus. She didn’t have to leave!
Even though the majority of what she was reading were pretty terrible stories of awful things happening, which made her twist and turn in her crawlspace. She preferred the ads, or the event pages. They were typically happier, sometimes with pictures that made her smile. Sports were even better. Zia had never been fond of sports even before, and didn’t understand the articles about players or team loyalties or fans. But she liked rules, and numbers, and analyzed the score sheets happily, doodling random connections and keeping track of statistics with a pen.
It wasn’t long before her little niche started looking like the legitimate nest of some animal, between the shredded and gathered textiles stashed up there for warmth and scraps of paper carefully pinned up around. With the doodles and lines and notes.
If someone had told Zirconia a year ago that there would come a time she obtained legitimate power over the Black Moon Regency and she would spend the next immediate weeks obsessing over football scores, she’d have dismissed you as a lunatic. But here she was, excitedly reading about how a team and been eliminated from the playoffs and something called a superbowl.
Finally, she had something going on in her life besides fawning over Chester’s hair and sleeping her life away in Tartaros, and so gathering up papers with things printed on them and skittering off to her den became a biweekly routine she looked forward to. Until got ruined, as all things seemed to, eventually.
It wasn’t really anyone’s fault but hers. It was a windy day, and it was already cold weather, so she picked up one of her blankets and wrapped it around her shoulders and a stack of the newspaper sections she typically discarded for being too depressing tipped over from the shift. A photo in one caught her eye and chilled her spine. It was a black and white low quality printing of her, looking into the camera and smiling awkwardly as an older woman rested her chin on her shoulder nearly out of frame. All at once, she could remember the event this was taken at. Matthew, Zia’s oldest brother, had been holding the camera. Zia was 20 years old. It had been her niece’s birthday. Her mother, Caroline, had grabbed her and spun her around and the photo had been a shock. She could remember the string lights in the garden of her father’s home and the screaming when Eloise fell in the pull and her brother jumped in wearing a full suit to get her. Her sister in law had burned the cake, she remembered, with so much clarity she could practically smell the entire scene right there.
It froze her completely as she sat there, hands clenching the blanket, and staring at the photo sternly as if to scold it for the intrusion into her little cave. Of reminding her of the people out there she was so terrified of coming home to.
After a long moment, thin and shaking fingers reached to pick it up, and read why something like this had been printed in the paper.
Connolly Heiress Missing; Mother Offers Reward for Information
On December 12th 2014, Zia Hartley-Connolly vanished from Destiny City Memorial after a weeklong stay for an unreleased medical condition. The youngest child of financial and entertainment mogul Robert Connolly, the twenty-six year old heiress has had a history of running away and returning in various states of health that have sparked several rumors. Now an adult with no evidence of foul play at hand, her parents only wish for information on their daughter’s whereabouts and condition.
Hartley-Connolly was last seen by half brother Robert Noah Connolly on the day of—
Zia turned red and crumpled the ad up before reading further. It was all a lie, she told herself. They didn’t even get her name right.
She held on to the crumpled ball of paper until her knuckles turned white, hunched over and feverishly staring down at her hands resting on her knees. She felt so angry her chest hurt, and she didn’t know why. Her family remained in the back of Zia’s memories, hanging there like intrusive artifacts. They weren’t good people, she told herself. They were awful, flawed people who had hurt her and misunderstood her and had no idea what she had gone through. It would be better, she thought, if it as possibly to just forget them entirely as things of the past. Along with any other allies who would no longer stand with her. She didn’t need them.
Except, Zia was reminded rather involuntarily, that she was also a flawed and awful person in her own way, and had hurt people and let them down and left them. She was in the process of doing that right now, even.
She tried to push these feelings back, and go back to repeating to herself that they were gone now. Out of the picture. But memories seemed to force their way through the barrier anyway and over tense facial muscles and grit teeth, tears started flowing freely. She logically knew the hurt was there, but all she could remember were nostalgic memories of warmth, kindness, and love that at the time felt unconditional. And she hated it, and ached for it to stop as she finally caught a breath in her lungs and it escaped as a long, pained wail as she fell into her blanket and laid there. After that, it was a short step to unrestrained sobbing. Memories wouldn’t stop coming. Memories of stupid, little things. Xanthus’s cooking. Noah complaining about teething puppies. The way her dad left warm cinnamon rolls on the table when it was just the two of them and he had to work on Sunday mornings.
Things were simpler last month.
Things were simpler last year.
Things were at their best five years ago before she knew anything about this or knew that she could be betrayed so badly or that she was capable of the things she’d done.
She missed everyone. She missed them with such a sickening pang of self-loathing and the weight of her choices. She didn’t just miss Zia’s people, she missed her own. She wanted to see someone’s face again. Touch someone. Feel some kind of connection to something—anything—again. And the sensation of disconnection and loneliness physically hurt.
Chester was probably in reach somewhere on the grounds, but she couldn’t find the motivation to get up. The only movement came from the way choked sobs wracked her body while she waited for sleep to take her away to Tartaros again, just to feel closer to a dead body, lying just beyond the dimension encased in crystal, that she’d never get to see in person again.
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Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 6:37 pm
If Destiny's Kind...
Zia didn’t tell anyone about her plan. It really couldn’t even be called a plan, so much as a building impulse she finally broke into indulging. She went out for her usual walk to stare up at the moon, but took a sharp detour. Something in the back of her head must have been planning this, because she wasn’t wearing wispy nightgowns or stolen shirts from her boyfriend. She was wearing jeans and a pull over hoodie. Practical clothes to move in and get s**t done in. She wasn’t the earthy amnesiac wandering around under tents and moonlight babbling about magic in cryptic sayings. Tonight she had somewhere to be, and with a deep breath she took her first step outside.
She waited until the dead of night because she was hoping she could just slip around and not be noticed when she found herself at the gate of Robert Connolly’s large home.
She looped her fingers around the wrought iron fence and peeked in. Before she was going to talk to any of her knights, and of her claimed charges, her brother, she ended up here, which was as close to ‘where it all started’ as she was going to get.
She had grown up in her father’s house, throwing rocks over the wall of the backyard and hiding in this attic. She still remembered the first time she had ever faced off against a youma, and that the end result had her gathering up ********* and taking her home. To this home. They ate cinnamon rolls in the foyer hoping the housekeeper didn’t walk in on them.
She just wanted to see the inside one more time. She had been invited over for dinner once since she had been kicked out for dropping out of school, and it had gone poorly. She saw the foyer and the dining room. She had conscripted Realgar to break into the garage, too, but tonight Zia had her eyes on another prize.
She still remembered where the spare key was. Some things didn’t change.
Her push on the door ceased when she remembered it had a habit of creaking. From there it took some maneuvering to get it open enough to slip in. The feel of the wood floor under her shoes as she looked on at the entrance hallway made her throat leap. The decorating had changed, just slightly. The vase didn’t have fresh flowers in it. But it was still, in several ways, the same, and the amount of memories it triggered was dizzying.
The smell of the place was strangely frustrating. It was close enough to be reminiscent of how she remembered it should have smelled, but too different to truly fill the sense of longing for it. It was stale. Dustier.
She got her bearings and slowly started stepping around floorboards she knew would groan and creak, creeping down the hallway and stopping to look at photos on the living room mantle. Most of them weren’t of family, but of her father with his various prizes and toys. His ponies, and his racers, business owners he backed and funded. She stopped at a framed photo of the two of them together, and brushed her fingers over it, leaving streaks in the dust. She picked up another of a motorcycle racer he was sponsoring and narrowed her eyes at it.
Until the kitchen light flicked on and she dropped it from being startled.
“I had a feeling you’d turn up,” A flat voice sounded from the open arch that connected the living room to the kitchen. Zia whirled around to see a tawny haired woman who was maybe five or six years older than her. She’d never met her face to face, but she could still remember the phone call with Matthew shortly after her return from Operation Rota.
“Sorry, did I scare you?” She asked, sliding her feet into slippers and walking in to pick up glass shards from the frame. “I’m—“
“Yeah, I know who you are,” Zia said, taking a few quick steps back and crouching on an armchair, pulling her legs up and hiding behind her knees as she stared at her in her nightie and stupid, perfect hair.
Dad has a new gold digger and she’s ridiculous, Noah had said those years back when he forced her out of the house, Who wears pearls to bake cookies?
“You’re Amber.”
“And you’re Zia,” She said, standing up with a few pieces of glass held carefully in one hand and the photo in the other. She turned it over and read the label on the back. “Falco Marks? Is there a reason you’re looking at Robert’s sponsorships?”
“No,” Zia snapped defensively and scrambled forward to take the photo and skitter back to the chair so no one could sneak up on her again. Now out of its frame, she just clung to the clipping of the ancient race from forever ago, occasionally letting her eyes flick down to study the blonde boy on the bike when they weren’t narrowed suspiciously at the other woman. Amber seemed to stare back like she was expecting something more.
“Why’d you think I was gonna turn up?”
Amber looked puzzled. “Because… because the reading is…? I’m sorry, didn’t you run away?”
Zia’s mouth became a taught line. She didn’t run away, she died. Sort of. But she remembered that Noah couldn’t tell anyone else. There was no magic here. They couldn’t know, they thought she just ran away from the hospital. She was afraid of hospitals, it had happened before.
“I--.. Right. Yes. Are you going to tell my dad I was here?”
The way Amber’s face twisted instantly put her off. Zia found her fingers tightening around the photo in her hand with a soft crinkle. The silence went on and on and suddenly became suffocatingly tense. “What?”
Amber just stood there looking away, still holding glass shards in her hand. “What?!” Zia raised her voice, and then jumped and quieted down when she remembered she didn’t want to wake the other occupant of the house.
“I’m sorry, I thought that’s why you were back,” She finally answered, looking stiff and uncomfortable.
She turned on her heel and started marking into the kitchen to, ostensibly, discard the glass. Zia, annoyed and frustrated with the lack of information, bolted up and followed, and then froze at the evidence of a catered party in the kitchen. Well, not a party, as the flower arrangements and sympathy labels strewn across the kitchen and dining room table indicated.
“Robert died in his sleep last Wednesday,” Amber elaborated as she hit the foot pedal on a stainless steel garbage can off to the side. “His will was read after the wake. I assumed that’s why you showed your face; You’re here to collect.”
Zia didn’t really hear anything after ‘Robert died’. She sort of did, but comprehension was lost. Amber’s voice just sort of sounded like she was underwater and muffled out.
Robert was in his eighties, it wasn’t exactly out of the realm of reality that he didn’t make it to 2015. But to Zia he was immortal. He was an unflinching powerhouse of a man whose age had done nothing to make him appear less intimidating or any less mentally sharp. His imposing stature and intelligence made him a terrifying force to be reckoned with, at least from where she sat, and above all he was her father. In the back of her mind, she never doubted for a second he would live forever.
And even as Amber spoke, she felt like she had to be lying. She could feel his presence. He was sleeping right upstairs, and they were going to wake him up if they didn’t quiet it down and turn off the lights.
She exhaled, trying to find her head again as she stood there in the wide open kitchen looking pale and nearly dead herself.
“You’re a very good actress,” The other woman crooned before she started looking in cabinets for a glass. Zia watched, and then her gaze narrowed with judgment.
You’ve been living here for almost three years, She thought. And you’re so used to the help you can’t find a ******** glass.
“I’m not here for my inheritance,” She finally said in her own defense. “I didn’t… I didn’t even know.”
And then after a beat of searching her memories, she stuffed the photo into her pocket and clenched her hands into fists at her side. “Daddy wrote me out of the will a long time ago anyway.”
“You got everything, you little b***h,” She snapped as she finally found a glass and slammed it down. “The boys and Eloise all got small trusts and you got everything else. The house, the stables, the cars, everything. Unless they couldn’t find you. But I knew once that got out, you’d show up here again.”
She started pouring herself a lot of vodka.
“You couldn’t stay away just a little while longer?”
Zia was frozen where she stood. It had been everything she was afraid of, this was why she wanted to just slip in and avoid being spotted. She wasn’t wanted. She was upsetting people by coming back. She was rejected. This was going so badly.
There were other layers of devastation as well. Her father hadn’t cut her out after all, not completely. He had made concessions for her, he had thought about her. And he had passed away quietly while she was busy hiding. She couldn’t even use the excuse of being trapped in Tartaros. She had been back by then. If she had immediately made her presence known she could have seen him before he passed away. But she’d stayed away, because of their stupid estrangement, which always seemed more like a petty fight. No matter how many years went by, part of her always assumed that they would eventually reconcile and she’d eventually be allowed back home.
And now that was never going to happen.
“If you don’t want it, ownership will revert to me,” Amber seemed to be oblivious to the fact Zia was standing there having a silent breakdown. “So if that’s true that you’re not here for a handout, you’re free to get out. Or better, sign it over to me,” She lit a cigarette and took a few puffs. “I can’t believe I was with that man for three years and he didn’t give me a cent.”
Zia was still shell shocked, staring at her shoes.
She didn’t come here for this. She couldn’t take this. She tried to will her legs to move so she could run back. Go back to the circus, go to sleep. Go somewhere safe and never do anything stupid like leave again. She could leave this place behind. It wasn’t her home anymore, she had made this place a thing of her past.
Amber kept on talking, but she didn’t hear her.
She managed to move one shoe towards the door, and then the other, and then it sort of seemed to sink in and snap. It was her home. Her dad left it to her. If she could conquer a dream realm, then she could sure as s**t conquer her childhood home, which was rightfully hers in the first place.
“Get out.”
“I’m sorry, what, honey?”
“Get out. You have three days to move out. You can start packing your things in the morning,” Zia turned around and changed trajectory to walk into the kitchen instead of out, and she ripped the glass from Amber’s hands and pointed. “Get off my property.”
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Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 10:21 pm
I've Got the Rest on my Mind.
The next few days were a blur and suddenly Zia felt less rejected by her old life and more captive. Caroline had rushed over at six in the morning and nearly squeezed the life out of her, bawling and weeping and not even questioning how Zia was suddenly unscarred and unwounded. She seemed just genuinely happy she was alive and safe, and Zia tried to take comfort in that fact. It would have been too easy logic to convince herself that Caroline had started publicly searching for Zia because there was a set time frame for her to appear or else Amber would gain ownership of all of the property and assets Robert had left to her. It was nicer to say she just wanted her back because she was her mom.
From that point on, Caroline rarely left her be, always close, with a choking grip on her arm. When lawyers and family members and questions appeared, the brief moment of strength Zia had mustered to take back her place seemed to have left her, and it was okay. Caroline seemed to have the smarts to beat back every question and defend every prospect. Zia often glanced up in awe, wondering when the once-teen mother gained such ruthlessness, but she also seemed to remember a very different woman in her place. Apparently a lot had changed, and she just didn’t notice until now.
It seemed almost impossible to just slip away and call Chester so he wouldn’t worry, but everything seemed to swarm all at once. She had papers to sign and estate discrepancies to sort out. There was an overwhelming amount of questions and obligations and demands at everything, and Caroline kept a white knuckled grip on her arm at all times.
Zia was dazed. She didn’t know what she wanted to do about the payroll at the stables or the terms of the rented properties, she could barely remember basic vocabulary to keep up the appearance of not being a total amnesiac. Luckily people seemed to be attributing the quiet distance to her disappearance and her inability to answer was seen as someone refusing to talk about a sensitive topic. People could make up their own stories in their head, and she could let them.
It took two and a half days of checkups and meetings and Caroline clinging to her before Zia finally broke away to address what she’d come to the old house to see. Caroline was having a lunch meeting with someone who could offer more professional advice on how to untangle the house of cards that was Robert’s finances and assets, and Zia found herself finally alone in the house. She stood in the living room again, holding photos again.
And then with no detours to distract her from her goal, she started heading up the stairs to the room down the hall. She used to be annoyed at how the décor remained a little childlike well into her teens and even when she had finally gotten to get rid of the stupid pastel pink motif she still spent her teens and a little bit of her twenties with a canopy bed and pink accented crown molding. It was insulting and infantilizing to her, but right now she just sort of wanted to check and see if it was still there. Confirm that this was real, and these memories were somewhat tangible.
Opening the door got a blowback of dust that sent her choking and coughing, but once she waved it away to peek inside, she saw a reminder that was a punch in the gut.
It wasn’t the pristine little girls room she remembered growing up in, but it was, she realized, nearly exactly as she left it. Her stuff was semi packed and just left for storage, the bed was taken apart, but on the wall was the result of coming home after Operation Rota and trying to get serious. Ramblings about Laocoon, Aphrodite and Nehelenia listed as confirmed deceased, were still vaguely visible under an attempt to paint it over when she left. Dog hair in the dust, from the old dog she had lost when she broke up with Pascal and moved out. More memories, and even the pleasant ones hurt.
It felt a little bit like standing in the rubble of something that used to be good, and was never going to be rebuilt again.
She was starting to rethink this whole claiming her inheritance thing. She had already had an overwhelming compulsion to run home to the circus instead. But when she turned around to flee, someone was in her way.
“Oh. Hi.”
“That’s it?” Noah hadn’t planned on participating in any family matters surrounding their father’s death. Between that and Zia’s weeks earlier, he had barely left his home. The diner didn’t do any of its seasonal mad dash sales. They sold out, and closed up, and when it was open it was limping along without the owner being as hands on as he always had been, because Noah was too busy drinking and sleeping his life away. He had at least, once he heard Caroline gushing about how Zia had come home, put on some clean clothes and come to that gatherings that ensued, only to stare at her suspiciously from a distance. Private confrontation had been impossible until now.
Zia resisted the urge to look away and defiantly made eye contact. “Guess so.”
She pushed her way past him and started moving down the stairs to the kitchen as if he didn’t matter. He wouldn’t matter, she told herself, if she had enough willpower to make it so. She had the will to make others bend. She would bend all of Tartaros, and she would bend this single, solitary human man who smelled like alcohol and appeared to have not groomed himself in ages.
And still, he stubbornly followed after her. “Which one are you?”
And all illusions of resisting any damage he could cause to her were broken in an instant with the one question she dreaded, and she stopped in her tracks. “Does it matter?”
“It does if my sister’s dead. And you’re walking around with her face.”
“You don’t recognize me?”
“Sometimes,” Noah admitted, stepping a little closer and reaching out for the back of her shoulder. He thought better of it and dropped his hand before physical contact was initiated.
Zia could almost sense the reach, feeling her stomach lurch when it was abandoned. She thrived on physical contact, it made her sick to go without, but she still felt too much of a rift to turn around and grab him as tightly as she could. There was a wall there, and a small voice telling her don’t. He’s dangerous.
If even Noah was dangerous, did that mean everyone was? She didn’t understand where this fear of all of them came from.
“And then other times not so much. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to trick me or play any of your stupid games.”
“I’m not playing any games. Not everything’s a game,” She said, whirling around with hands in fists. She’d gotten that speech from others, before. As much as Zia had tried to be the chess master in the past it had unfortunately lost a lot of trust with those who knew her best, and knew her compulsion for lying and often suspected her at the worst moments, when the truth was a dire and desperate thing.
“I don’t know everything! I don’t always have plan!” She continued, voice raised, “I can be confused! Sometimes I don’t… I mean… sometimes things are just complicated. You should,” She tried to regulate her breathing before she slipped into hyperventilation or something that was equally coded as incapable or vulnerable. “You should leave. Probably. Get out.”
Noah just sort of side eyed her for a bit, and she felt like he was digging holes into her flesh the entire time. Just when she got so woozy from the sensation she thought she was going to faint. She was too weak to properly be cold and off putting, but he couldn’t stay. His presence hurt, memories of him hurt. Everything hurt.
His stare and look of uncertainty hurt. She remembered being his sister. She wanted to be his sister. But she was different, and she was sure he didn’t want her different. No one was going to want her now that she was different; They would either look for Zia as she was or Zirconia as they knew her, not whatever third thing she’d become. Rejection was anticipated, and she wasn’t sure she could tolerate, and he was resisting her push to get him out.
In the meantime, Noah weighed his options, crossing his arms over his chest and standing firm. Either this was Zirconia, playing an excellent act in an effort to blend in and survive. Or Zia had lied to him at the beginning of the Tartaros summit, and had been speaking to him before, and now. He was still thinking in terms of one or the other, but he liked the latter better. He could be mad at her for playing a con game later, but it was still the easier choice. The nicer choice. In the same way Zia had just gone with it in the hopes her mother wasn’t using her as a pawn, Noah could go with this in the hopes that he actually had his sister back.
He heaved his shoulder and let out a long sigh.
“Okay,” He finally exhaled as if a surrender after a long, long fight.
“You should come in to the kitchen, you look nearly emaciated,” He urged, grabbing her arm only for her to let out a yell in protest and jerk it back.
She held it her wrist to her chest and stared at him with flared nostrils and offended eyes. “Don’t touch me without permission.”
“Okay,” He held up his hands defensively and made a gesture in the appropriate direction, “Would you like to come in to the kitchen?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Okay…” Noah huffed, having assembled a basic and simple dinner and popped it in the oven. No one has really been shopping in a while, but with catering leftovers and a little bit of creativity, he managed to whip up at least something. “Food should be ready in about twenty minutes.”
He was just glad to have an excuse to break the silence. Zia had crept into the kitchen curiously at the smell and has been sitting at the breakfast bar that ran through the back of the house’s large kitchen. Watching. And not saying a word as she kept her hands clasped together and simply stared silently at his assembly.
Without food preparation to busy himself, he put his hands on the counter and leaned back. He met her gaze for a few seconds, and then became uncomfortable and glanced around, desperate for something to say or some interruption. “I uh… I…. Hey!” He noticed the full coffee pot just lingering. “Coffee! I mean, do you want coffee?”
Zia shook her head and made a face.
“You like coffee.”
“I like how coffee smells but it’s bitter,” She complained, recalling the incident at Chester’s when she found the coffee beans and wouldn’t stop sticking her face in the bag.
Noah rolled his eyes and grabbed a cup out of the counter as he let the coffee warm back up. “Because you don’t drink it like that, you drink it like… well…”
He had always made fun of the amount of sugar, cream, and other desserty things to keep coffee from tasting like coffee, but now he gladly assembled a sugary cappuccino with whipped topping and slid it towards her.
Zia stared at it skeptically.
“That’s the coffee you like. Which, by the way, is super lame, and not coffee.”
Zia continued staring at it, and then at him. And then she gained motion and started caning her neck to observe it from different angles, eventually going eye level with the counter.
She tested a dab on her finger, and after realizing it was sweet, she picked up the mug and chugged the entire thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“More!” Zia announced, slamming the empty mug down on some spare counter space among empty, dirtied plates. Noah had started out the meal assembly thinking he’d made too much food for one person, only to discover there wasn’t nearly enough. Zia had eaten her share, and his, and was now gnawing away on leftover cold chicken and had guzzled roughly six cappuccinos.
Noah was sitting opposite of her, his arm wrapped around his limp head. The free arm slid the mug away from her, watching her bounce and jitter in her stole. “I think you’ve had enough. I’m surprised you’re even doing homework.”
Caroline had left her with a shoebox and a task when she left, and after lingering in the kitchen took so much time, Zia had gone to retrieve her shoebox and work with the hand that wasn’t shoveling food into her mouth.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of messes to untangle. I’m surprised she keeps still asking me and hasn’t figured out that I don’t… really remember anything.”
“You look like s**t.”
“Jerk.”
“Well it’s true! I mean you don’t have the gnarly scar carved in your chest but holy hell, Zee… what happened back there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where have you been?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don—“
“I will hit you with this plate if you say it again,” He said, lazily picking one up and then slowly setting it back down when she stared at him with wide, hazel eyes like he would actually do it. He replayed his tired tone in his head wondering why the threat hadn’t come across as empty as it was and decided to just back away and leave it alone.
“I’m surprised Caroline left you to fend for yourself today.”
Zia stared at him for a few more seconds and went back to inhaling food and reading. “Yup. She hasn’t let me out of her sight since I kicked Amber out.”
“I think that for all your years of emotional trauma that was really all you needed to do to get on her good side,” Noah chuckled to himself as he reached for a piece of paper to read too. It was a partial list of some of the local businesses their father had stock in. “Just show up unharmed to heroically kick dad’s fiancé out. Hey, you know uh…” He set it down. “You know he thought about you. Right up until the end.”
It was sort of a test. Noah refused to have any relationship with his father since he had gotten himself emancipated and skipped town. Zee would have known that. Noah had even turned down his inheritance; He called it blood money and claimed to have more integrity than that.
Zia stopped and stared some more, and Noah let his head roll so his forehead was pressed against the countertop. He was really getting sick of the practically alien, big eyed stare she kept reverting back to.
But then her brow furrowed, and she looked back at the papers. “I… uh… okay…”
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say. Without memories in linear form and without the complete story, it was difficult to tell what she was supposed to be thinking or feeling about any of these people. She had some memories, although she was realizing she was occasionally attributing the wrong ones to the wrong people, and she had her instincts.
But it still felt like a quiz with ‘right’ answers on her feelings.
Noah wasn’t sure if that was a pass or a fail on his test, so he chose to just heave a sigh and let it go. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“Cassandra betrayed me, and so I took Tartaros from her.”
“And uh… Zirconia?”
“I d—I mean uh… It’s complicated. I guess,” Zia sank on the stool and took a break, sighing as the rare feeling of fullness set in. “I don’t know. I took over the nightmare world, I’m alive. I’m queen regent, although I still don’t know how to repair the bridge. I just… I feel like I should be tearing through town ready to take over the world but I just feel tired, and weak and lost. I don’t even… I mean really I don’t… I’m not sure who I am anymore.”
“Well you’d better figure it out. Caroline’s not going to let you stay in Destiny City if she has anything to say about it,” Noah announced in his most down-to-business tone, although a visible wave of relief washed over his face. For a moment, and he wasn’t sure if he was projecting, he saw at least an honest glimpse of what he knew to be Zia. She could be unsure of things and scared, and while he hoped that wasn’t forever, she also wasn’t an inaccessible creature from another dimension. Or, as far as he knew.
“Yeah… I’m supposed to be making a decision. Do I want to go live at the beach house in Pismo or come with her on a trip to Barcelona or Sao Paulo or you know… just basically anywhere far away from here,” She heaved, showing him what she had been looking at. The real estate photos of a recently purchased property in California. Noah took the papers form her and on closer inspection, realized his step-mother had purchased it with Zia’s newly inherited wealth. “Ah… that’s why she’s toting you around. You have to sign the papers.”
“Is that why?”
“You’re just signing whatever she tells you to?”
“I guess I mean…” Zia spun her coffee cup around. “I’m still trying to… to get a grip on who I am and what things are and… uh… I don’t really know anything about this estate stuff.”
“You shouldn’t just blindly trust people in our family like that,” Noah grimaced as he returned the papers on request. “They’re all jackals when dad’s money’s involved.”
“Oh, I know,” Zia quipped. “I can at least recognize that.”
“You shouldn’t trust anyone.”
“I don’t,” She said it so plainly, he just kind of felt his gut twist. She leveled a clear gaze at him and added with a chill to her tone. “I don’t trust any of you.”
An awkward exchange of stares occurred, and just like before, Noah always broke first.
“You have no work here that needs doing? Do you still have all that power? I mean, that’s a lot you could be helping wi—“
“I don’t think I have the will to resist Caroline. I’m too weak, and she knows more about how to turn tables in this world than me.”
“You can take over a dreamworld, but you can’t stand up to your mom?”
“Even the dreamworld thinks I’m weak,” Zia said, her fingertips crinkling into the papers she was holding as she tensed. “It changes. It doesn’t always listen. It slips in an out of my grasp. It doesn’t think I’m worthy, and Cassandra is missing.”
“She’s alive?”
“I don’t know if she even exists anymore alive or dead.”
“Oh…” Noah was already making excuses for Cassandra’s fate, though. It was an accident, it was the heat of the moment, whatever. Again, the easier option, as opposed to suspicion and wariness where otherwise advised.
He remembered something, though, and got up and walked out. Zia watched him, automatically assuming it was her fault somehow and sat back in her stool, taking a sulky posture. And then a familiar stone pendant and strange device slipped in front of her. “I’ve been saving these. Since you’ve been in the hospital,” He said, shoving his hands awkwardly into his pockets.
Zia picked up the pendant first. The stone carving she had stolen from Alfheim’s wonder, the Celtic knot that marked the tower and his armor. She had worn it when she wanted a place in the universe, and had adjusted it to cover her Blood Moon Court brand. Her brand that wasn’t there anymore.
The cell phone was left alone, looking like a glossy alien brick to her right now.
“I mean, I don’t know if you want it back, but I just—“
Noah was cut off when she lept off the stool to wrap her arms around his midsection as tightly as she could and lean into him with all her weight, nearly going limp on her feet.
“Thank you!” She bawled, descending into sobs as the man just stiffly looked around and made an awkward attempt to hold her. It was a small thing, but that necklace meant something. It had been her craving for a connection to something that drove her to steal it in the first place, and here it was again when she needed it. And she didn’t have to steal it, he was just giving it to her.
“I uh… I. It’s no problem, Zee,” He mumbled, giving her ringlets a light pat. “I mean I want you have it. No matter where you go. If you go again, you’re going to come back, though, I mean… right?”
“A beach in Barcelona isn’t really the same as being forced out of existence under the weight of horrific nightmares,” She said with a weak attempt at a chuckle, and then a sniffle. “You’re right, there’s probably work to do here, but it can’t be done by me. It’s gotta be done by someone better. I’m just not good enough.”
“I don’t… really agree with that. I don’t agree with not trusting anyone, either.”
“I wasn’t really asking for your opinion.”
Oh, look. Another suffocatingly tense silence. Just desperate for something to say, Noah heave a sigh and asked, “So. Barcelona, huh?”
“Or California or Sao Paulo. Or… Maybe I’ll just run away and join the circus,” She snorted.
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Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2015 10:21 pm
Backdated to shortly before Christmas
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Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2015 9:33 pm
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 1:21 pm
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 6:11 pm
Open the Door
Zia discovered that even as an autonomous adult one could somehow have outside privileges taken away and reveal your autonomy was an illusion all along. At least that’s what the revelation seemed like when she realized that Caroline had been running a long game to avoid any more walks, adventures, or disappearances and once she had figured out the manipulation, there wasn’t much time to work around it.
It seemed so fast, to suddenly have a passport shoved in her hands and ushered around. But she remembered the experience, the airplane ride, the rush of customs and security, the car service. It came flooding back as she opened her eyes to a foreign ceiling and the smell of ocean salt air in her nose.
Caroline had been trying to get her out of the country for a while. She didn’t know why it came as a surprise when she had so much warning. But it had as her brain scrambled to piece back together the adventure from Destiny City to a beachside hotel suite in Brazil. Which was difficult enough with someone pounding on the door and calling her name.
As consciousness came fully, she sat up, and shouted back, “I’m awake!” Only to have the door open anyway and have a worried Caroline come stumbling in hard enough to knock the posh sunglasses from the top of her head. “Or, you can just do that…” Zia mumbled bitterly before she flung the covers back over her head and flopped back down to the pillow.
“Oh, Rabbit,” Caroline huffed and righted herself. The bronze skinned woman seemed to be thriving in the south of the equator weather, and the fact winter was long over here in the tropical climate making beach trips possible. “Don’t be such a spoil sport, we’ve been here two days and you haven’t left your room.”
She invited herself to sit on the mattress corner and rest one hand on Zia’s calf over the covers.
“I don’t really feel like vacationing,” Zia muttered, grabbing a spare pillow and sandwiching her face in it.
“It’s not like I kidnapped you, you’ve barely had a word to say one way or the other on how everything’s being… handled,” She said with an awkward wave of her hand.
“You mean everyone sticking their hand out for a piece of dad’s assets?” Came the muffled grumbling and grousing from beneath the pillows. “I don’t care, I guess. I just don’t feel well.”
“You’ve been saying that… for a very long time…” The older woman said as she cradled both of her arms. “Longer than usual, when you disappear to do god knows what and come back looking like something the cat dragged in. It’s a terrible thing to do to your moth—Hey!”
She stood up with her arms stiff at her sides when one of the legs under the covers kicked at her backside. Almost in an act of revenge she stomped over and swung open the curtains to the ocean view and bright sunlight poured in, revealing cracks and weaknesses in Zia’s pillow lump. Zia emitted a loud wail and promptly rolled over and tried to reseal her face in all of the bedding.
“Sulk if you must, Rabbit, but when we get back to the states we are going to have a serious look at proper treatment. Like you promised you’d get when I gave you the penthouse keys. If I have to baby you the way Martha babies Lucas, I will.”
Zia bristled as her father’s first wife was invoked, specifically in the way she shuffled her most troubled half-brother around five star resorts that were rehabs in disguise. It was an ugly thought, realizing she was now competing with him for the ‘troubled’ one, her behavior from the horrible things she witnessed being shuffled and reclassified to fit the messed-up spoiled rich kid stereotype. She probably needed help, the same help she’d urged Tara to get during the Exidor episode.
And now she was desperately trying to push all of the connecting thoughts out of her mind again and force herself back to sleep. Which was very hard to do when Caroline was stomping around her hotel room. And suddenly Zia was assaulted with an avalanche of clothes as one of her luggage pieces was dumped out on top of her. She broke, and could no long remain a lump under the covers. Instead she screeched and flailed her arms as she sat up and eventually jerked the small suitcase away from Caroline.
“Are you twelve?!” She nearly roared in incredulity.
“Well at least it got you up,” Caroline huffed. “I don’t care if you come down to the beach cabana but we are going out for dinner, Rabbit, and I expect you to at least change out of your pajamas by then,” She said in a weak attempt to sound stern before she picked up her beach bag and strutted towards the door with an obnoxious sense of self satisfaction.
Zia exhaled a long, dramatic groan of displeasure and flopped backwards, now stuck under a mountain of clothes and miscellaneous items packed. She picked up a swimsuit top from the pile to look at it for a small second of consideration before tossing it to the side, and instead grabbed a baggy of small accessories to dig out the two precious items Noah had given her before they left. The Alfheim pendant hat been her target, and she was instantly soothed running her fingers over the carved stone, tracing every familiar groove and letting a small smile creep across her face.
It still hurt, to think of everyone she was hiding from. To think brothers adopted and blood might not accept her, and how it might’ve been kinder to let them remember her how she used to be, in case they were as skeptical of who she’d become that Noah was. Elijah welcomed her back to the land of the living with open arms, but she’d lied to Kairatos. He’d seen what she’d done.
What would Chris do if he knew?
Would Finn still want to be her friend?
Would Tara understand? Was Tara even okay after her failure?
She felt pain seize her stomach as she thought about what Kent had accused her of, and she believed it. She didn’t go looking for Tara, she’d let her run. She let her down, and now she was running too. She felt like she had failed and disconnected herself from everyone, but no one more than Tara. Tara was the only one who understood, sometimes, the weird defective way that their heads seemed to be ******** with. It wasn’t always a healthy kinship, but it was someone who got it. It was someone who had never really seemed like they judged her for being broken. Tara was precious, and she’d let her friend slip away before this all started. Because she didn’t have the answers she needed.
With a deep breath, she reached for the cell phone and turned it over in her hands.
“How do you work?” She mumbled, holding it in texting position like muscle memory told her to, useless as that was with it turned off.
”White Moon’s Earth technology is fascinating in an alien caveman sort of way,” Said a small, white bundle of fur as it crept out of hiding and onto the bed comforter.
Zia hadn’t been in total isolation when she hid away in dark rooms from other humans. She had recovered the strange creature as she felt herself becoming conscious in the pain and darkness of the collapsing dream realm.
Hello, little one… She had crooned into the darkness as she held the little monster in her hands, and she knew she had truly been reborn when her old familiar had responded. Hello, my Lady.
For now he served as little more than another voice to talk to in her self-imposed isolation.
“I remember I was very attached to this…” She explained, holding it at an angle so the little bat could observe it for himself.
”Why? It just looks like a shiny brick to me,” He warbled. ”Does it open? Is it a box?”
His little bat wings reached for it, trying to scratch at the casing with a claw thumb.
“No!” Zia yelped, jerking it up above her head and frowning. “It’s a screen, I think.” She turned it over again. “It turns on…”
”Oh! Let me see!”
“No, you’ll break it.”
”I will not, let me see,” He pleaded again, and his round body rolled on the blanket surface with a long, sustained warble. A warble that turned to a whine as his rolling turned into just sad rocking back and forth in a blanket fold.
Zia rolled her eyes and brought her arms back down. “I’m serious, don’t break it.”
He got up and waddled around it, wings brushing against the glossed surface with a little more care this time. ”This little nubby thing pushes in!” He declared, pushing in the volume button on the side. Some more waddling around the corner, he announced, ”Another nubby thing!”
But when he pushed this one in, Zia dropped the phone when the screen lit up to show the Apple icon.
“Oh! You did it!”
She waited for it to load, excited to see what information it was going to display for her, and what holes in her memory it would fill.
But when it loaded to the lock screen, her expression sunk. Oh…
She felt suddenly assaulted with two smiling faces from better days. Her own face was painful to look at, one arm clearly going out of frame to indicate the photographer taking a selfie and a bright expression unburdened by just how shitty things were going to get. She knew things were shitty then, but they seemed like much, much brighter days in hindsight.
The other face in the photo was worse, though. Tara held captive under her arm and in frame, and an in your face reminder that her failure to her friend wasn’t going to be a simple matter of pushing it out of her mind.
Suddenly unwilling to explore further, Zia tossed the phone aside and pulled the blanket over her head and flopped back down to lay on her side again.
”Lady? Laaaady?” The small bat prodded at her, and then looked at the mountain of clothes she was under, but Zia was unresponsive.
She didn’t have a response for reality right now.
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:59 pm
I want to breath that fire again.
Back home. Real home. Zia’s dad’s house had something rooted in her subconscious, probably planted there in the formative years of her current incarnation of life that couldn’t be overwritten by Zirconia’s centuries and timelines worth of memories. From the foyer to the kitchen to her stupid, pastel room upstairs, this place was a weird kind of home that refused to displace itself from her mind.
She had left without telling Caroline. A behavior that she now counted on being seen as typical. Disappearance without warning and a note. She would expect a phone call the next time she didn’t show up for dinner and warranted a burst into her room.
But jetlagged and eager to be back in the surroundings that called to her, Zia was just happy to be where she belonged. Caroline had made a passive comment about not going back to Destiny City. They would go live in Los Angeles where there was noticeably less terrorist activity and more work relevant to Caroline’s business. What Zia had told Noah about whatever work was left back in Destiny City needing to be done by someone better, someone less messed up, was still present in her mind. But she belonged here, and she needed to see. Just see.
Settling into the living room, where Robert had his stunning array of photos documenting his legacy of sponsorship and ownership, she felt more at home. She crossed her legs, sitting on the floor with her back against the same chair where she had deposited an exhausted ********* all those yeas again, and with a deep breath to steel her nerves, she turned on the phone again and tried not to shut down when she was faced with the photograph of herself and Tara that occupied the lock screen. “I can do this…” She exhaled. “I just… gotta…”
She followed the directions to swipe her finger and was greeted by the keypad. It took a few tries to get her pin right, but muscle memory saved her again, and after a few failures she committed the numbers to memory, realizing they were familiar too.
Getting the phone unlocked was a journey in itself.
The very first thing was the burst of notifications. Friends who hadn’t gotten the memo she was missing or random alerts. The one with the most unread messages definitely stood out.
Pascal >Zee, where are you? Want to get a drink? >zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee? <******** b***h >wad he good lay????? >... sorry. >Are you okay? >zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee where r u? >They said you're missing. ZEE. THIS ISN'T FUNNY. >I checked everywhere. EVEN UNDER THE BLANKET. >... dont joke dont do this to me i love you >zeeee i cat do this nemore >zeee plzzz
Her hands were shaking as the face in the photo icon next to his name brought back a slew of memories, and the pained documentation of texts that went back further.
The automatic suggestions offered words and a keyboard, and she found it way too easy to suddenly type in response to the triggers.
Pascal zeee plzzz< >You lied to me. >I’m not mad >I missed you >I miss you >I feel like I shouldn’t. >I’m sorry. >I ******** up bad and I’m so sorry >I wish you knew how sorry I was. >The mirror isn’t real.
It was cathartic, and the phone offered a window into so many other triggers. Selfies. Pictures of meals. Bar runs. Pictures of the dogs. Stupid things. And in another app was the index, and all of her photos of the knights she collected. Notes. Her favorite senshi. Her favorites everywhere. Precious memories flooded, and the deprivation of affection and connection seemed to burst a dam. And she wrote. She didn’t know if they would get them, she didn’t even really remember how this worked. But she was shaking and crying as each painful trigger came and she typed what the names on her screen brought to mind without much other thought.
She couldn’t hide forever, if she wanted to stay here. The thought of rejection was a sobering and frightening one, but she also didn’t know how else she was going to stay here in Destiny City. Hiding made her too anxious. She had power. She had purpose. She could come out of hiding and do something again.
The onslaught of images and memories and the scream of consciousness rambles she pounded on in response was a terrible feeling, and the entire exercise left her a sobbing mess on the floor. She’d skim the index again, look at their faces again, cry herself out, and maybe stare some more, waiting to go back to sleep.
Not for long, though. She could pull her out of the refuge. She could be present. This was something, she whispered to herself, that she could do.
She could make this mean something.
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Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 8:43 pm
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Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 8:45 pm
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Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 8:47 pm
[R] Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?-
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Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 8:48 pm
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Reply
