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10. Normalcy

Normal was probably the furthest thing from his mind, now that this "lake" seemed to drudge up...memories, it seemed. Still, despite himself he couldn't not look again. He couldn't not see again.

As with most things that ought not to be poked and prodded, he couldn't leave it alone. So, he peered over the edge again, a mild curiosity stirring in him, though one wouldn't be privy to such information just by looking at his face. And he reached down...

One day.

Just one day in every year, and today was that one day, wherein she was too preoccupied with other things to pay much attention to him. He didn't know why, but he didn't need to know. He didn't care, either. As long as she left him alone...

The room was quiet. Dark. Empty save for him and his "home" of he wasn't really sure how long at the time. He would sit, barred in as usual -- but that was his version of normal -- and stare idly into the corner. Forcing his emotions down. Forcing the pain to furthest recesses of his mind. Learning. Adapting. Surviving.

That was his normal.

He drew his hand away only moments after it surfaced, the auditory stimulation making way for familiar images to flash through his mind in quick succession. Nothing pleasant about what he heard or what he saw, and yet it felt so familiar that it seemed almost...

If wishes were stars Akakios would have found a way to fill the whole sky. Simple as he preferred his life, he was the type to dream of things being better than they were.

He'd met hunters. He'd met his fellow students. They were both good people. Yes, there could be bad among them, but for the most part that consisted of some from both sides of things. Which meant no part of things were entirely in the right. So... why did they all need to be apart?

Sherry and Jake had said it was dangerous to go to the one place they could be? But they weren't dangerous. He didn't like the thought that it should be scary or bad to see someone he wanted to like. So... perhaps it was a silly wish. But he wished that everyone who was good could get along.

Because they certainly weren't bad.

[ENTER]
6: Endings

Voices laughed around her, but she couldn't quite make out what they were saying. Entranced, Millie followed them to a large lake where memories swirled around her and what was being said became clearer.

Her brothers laughed on the other side of the wall, no doubt brought on by some zinger Shane thought up. At times, she was insanely jealous of how close they were and how distant she was to them at times. They certainly didn't treat her like a sister.
To be fair, she would rather have the company of a good book. At least the book wouldn't... explode in her face for no reason like most things did when she tried interacting with the things her brothers liked: Video games, skelly phones. She wasn't good with electronics.
Her father was somewhat the same way around her. Distant. Didn't treat her like a daughter. It was like she didn't belong because she couldn't enjoy the same things they did.

They may be family, but often they sure didn't act like it. She was done with them. It was time for somewhere new. Somewhere where she wouldn't feel so alone. Somewhere she could actually accomplish things.

They hadn't even wrote to her once in the whole year she had been at school.

16. Nostalgic

Happier times at the academy. She was much better off where she was but there were times where she would remember when Shane, the older of the two brothers actually treated her like a sister.

He read one of Millie's book once but couldn't follow all the characters and titles and hierarchy there was in the story.

So, he sat on her bed while Millie explained what "Taiho" stood for and why the title of "king" was used regardless of the gender of the person holding the role.

It was one of the only times Millie had been sought out for knowledge. That day was more important to her than Shane would ever know. The day he was interested in something she liked.

// EMPTY


It was cold, and so was she. It felt frigid, and brought pains she could never label or find. It drew out a winter that wouldn't stop, and left ice at her footsteps and frostbite at her touch. It kept everyone too far to study or observe, so she hid it with stacks of books and numbers and achievements of merit until she couldn't see it anymore.

That helped. Delusion felt right. She welcomed its moments of relinquished control: when it singed her frayed edges until they hardened and scarred, or kissed her temples to send morphine to the loud parts of her mind, or scraped away the newest layers of rust and one layer of waning bone alongside, most everything seemed better again. She could read a little longer, work a little harder, move a little farther. She accepted repairs without learning the price, and paid blindly into its hands with fingers too thin to recognize as her own.

Just one more to try. Just one more week to wait. Just one more project to write. Just one more test to process. So close. Just one more before they knew her name. So close. Just one more while she could still ignore just one more unfavorable fact: even an inhuman monster or an empty shell or a brilliant mind could die.

She was so close.

Then she would prove that a particle as small as a boson could patch the holes that she could no longer hide behind books and numbers and achievements she no longer had, revive the name of a dead woman who would have never been praised for what she would discover in shadows that they could never see, offer all of the answers to equations that had never really contained the right variables in the first place. It was never too good to be true if she could prove its verity, and its promise might have seemed magical if it were not a thing of science.

So close. Just one more time.

This would always be worth the cost.

Just one more time.

// HOPE

This was all wrong. None of this was as intended. Research was halted and progress was set back by half a decade. She completed her tasks on autopilot, otherwise too disgusted by their simplicity, and they were right to call her a robot. There was no reason to be anything else.

But then he was there, for reasons that she didn't understand, but there had to be something underneath the surface, something important and irreplaceable, or he would have been by now,

and there to not ask (any other) questions when she showed up in his room in the middle of the night, unannounced,

and there to carry her home on the day that she died, the only way she got that second chance,

and there to wrap his arms around her, impossibly tight, until words crept out that she had never spoken before,

and there to coax her into sleep and good decisions,

and there in another time, really there, in a way that made her want to try harder, push farther,

and there when she woke up, through the death of someone he loved, in her room in her bed with her comfort, her comfort, though it was lukewarm and timid and so very unsure,

and there in the dark with her hands on his chest and her scissors at his heart, with a kiss instead of condemnation, a reminder that he was what she was searching for,

and still there even after, tipping her chin up when her eyes left the stars, never taking her from what she loved, even when she was doing just that in return,

and still there with a plant just for her ('because'), hydrangea macrophylla, lethal to dogs, where she named him Laika and promised a very special trip to see the stars,

and still there to spend the breaks in his infirmary work worrying over her, to tell her that it was okay to want what she wanted, two cards that had fallen into just the right place in a dark little room,

and still there in the shadow of his failure, blind to the darkness washing over him at the second he found her, with words of promise, words like 'I'll do anything, if you ask it' and 'I don't wanna study with nobody else but you, Mimsy', words a girl banned from tutoring held dear to her (inhuman) heart,

and still there through her envy, to soothe her with rules of her own, to answer questions about feelings like she wasn't broken and odd, while she explained her love through analogies and grand tales of a place called Wonderland, where she could believe six impossible things before breakfast, where it would no longer seem so impossible that she was in love,

and still there after a mission with a golem to a mall, through her melodramatics and naivety and petulance, when he showed her a new way to give her his love,

and still there to take her to a place neither of them had ever been before, where he gave her everything that someone was supposed to give on a date like this, one more way to prove this time was right,

and still there to find her at the end of a hallway and her rope, to carry her to bed, to help her belong, with 'I'm here' and 'I got you' and a source of existence stronger than the one before,

and still there to say he was wrong, to make him try, working to win back her prize, refusing 'too late' because there was never such a thing for her,

and always there in a place where everything had gone right, to make her feel loved again, to give her the last thing she could ever want,

and remained there through smoke and fire and hurt, through the loss of another someone he loved, to refuse to ever let her go, to plead with her to keep him when the ashes still smoldered from what she had done,

and firmly there through the conflict of past and present and right and wrong, when her best friend was a ghoul who had torn him apart, and through denial of revenge he healed the ghoul he had harmed, all because he cared about who cared about her,

and reliably there when they made her feel guilt for all that she'd done and thought and said and felt, where they were offered wishes and promise and asked for nothing, because who could ever ask for more than what this was,

and patiently there while she questioned him and herself and all of her thoughts, repeating words that she needed, so she felt just fine saying 'I love you' twice,

and faithfully there when this place was as awful as it always was, where he never once made her move from a little dark closet because it made her feel safe, while he offered her normality, and a little piece of space that was only for her, and a promise of a home so she'd know what it was like,

and contentedly there while he took all of her punishment as his own, as he valued their safety and believed her concerns, where he named her Laika and kept them all far from harm,

and--

and here. He had to be.

Here because he always was.

Already rolled a 19. Picked 13, Fear

Another memory bubbled up from the depth of the lake and the Gryphon wanted to learn more of what he could see. It made the water dark and it frighten him of what it could be. And then, it was that horrible time when he had lost himself when he was living at home. He and his friend were playing outside which was something he didn't want to do. The Rakshasa rather stay inside and read or meditate, but the ghoul put up a good, pitiful act and made him go out. She had hurt her knee to the point that she was bleeding. Even the reflection of the injury had made him salivate slightly, and his sense of control was gone.

A feral beast took his place and attacked the ghoul in wanting more. His family saw the act and they were highly pleased about it. But he wasn't at all."Stop it!" His hand splashed the water in wanting it to go away for he couldn't see it any more. It was . . . so painful to relive that. He didn't want to hurt his friends, the ones he care for the most, but that need was still inside of him; wanting to lash out and hurt others. Feral_monk wouldn't know what he would do if it happened again . . .