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 Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 5:02 pm
Ever since Zombie Pines, Sue's life had been full of questions. Just one after another after another. Why hadn't they caught Charonite's trap until it was too late? What could they have done to prevent it? What did they need to do to keep it from happening again? With so few memories, Sue didn't even know where to look for answers.
There was one thing he knew, though; both his halves, past life and present, were in perfect agreement. The person to be asking was one Angela Byrne - also known as the Sailor Senshi of Mysteries. Also known as, the only one of them that didn't ******** die in that trap. Which was another, very big, question that Sue had to ask her about.
So he'd called her in. (Weird to phrase it like that, but that's what it amounted to.) Zodiac business, he'd said - need to talk. Direct, no room for arguments. Which was good, because if Angela had any sense, she would have turned down the request the moment she figured out where they were meeting.
The "Cozy Comfort Inn" was cozy, but not comfortable. The room that Sue had was cheap, even in the cheap hotel. It had a bed and a bathroom, a dingy light fixture, and a television with twelve channels of static. The sheer essentials for American living, and not a bit more.
Now, add in Sue and one cat (only one, thank God, only one,) and it was already crowded. Make room for a guest, and it was... uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in that way that meant everyone could stand at opposite points of the room and still felt like the walls were caving in.
If Angela was lucky, though, nobody had seen her coming to the hotel. If she was lucky.
"Sorry," Sue had the decency to grumble, making a vague gesture to the poor accommodations. "It's... what I've got right now." He would have liked to have met her somewhere roomier, more comfortable, more public, but this was a talk that needed privacy.
If he'd used half his brain, though, he might have suggested they meet at her house. Or better yet, at the princess's. Too late for regrets, though.
"I need some answers, Scorpio. You're the only one of us that might know what happened back then." What with the fact that, you know. She didn't ******** die with the rest of them. "Tell me what you know." Sue's eyes glimmered, his arms crossed. He was a tea kettle of frustration and blame, ready to pour out steam. He'd give her one chance though, one opportunity for a Hail Mary in which she magically divined what he wanted to know and phrased it in just the right way to satisfy him.
He was a reasonable man, after all.
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 5:51 pm
Awkward, awkward, awkward... with considerate amounts of confusion and guilt, mixed with just a pinch of relief and happiness.
That was, more or less, a good recap of Angela's feelings for the past good week or so. Most of her confusion had actually been dissipating as the days melted away; it helped to have alone thinking time to gather her stray thoughts and form some sort of time line in her head, but unfortunately, the guilt was not dissipating as quickly as the confusion was. In fact, if anything, it was slowly growing the more she could recall. The more her mind's eye could move into the past, the more guilty she felt and only one question rung in her head above all others.
Why me? Why didn't I die too? Why? Why? WHY?
It was slowly driving her to a breaking point, though she was being as careful as possible to not show it outwardly. She'd kept a polite tone of voice when Sue had called her in, and she'd tried very hard to not point out how horribly... wrong it looked for him to call her in. Alone. To a hotel room.
Awkward.
Very Awkward, in fact.
"I..." she slipped in past the door and kept her hands together, lightly held upon her lap as she took a seat on the bed. She was having a hard time trying not to point out that they could have met at the coffee shop. Or the park. Or her own house. Or anywhere but here, really, "It's just fine," she finally said, hoping to god it did not sound as awkward as she felt.
The awkward promptly dissolved and was replaced by the nagging sense of guilt that had been gripping at her. The girl took a moment to swallow down the feeling, "I remember smoke. Lots of it. It was everywhere - but I never saw the fire. I don't know why," her voice had lowered down to a whisper, "I was going to go back - in fact, I remember turning around, and I remember feeling horribly angry, desperate, and then..." confusion flashed across her features briefly, "Nothing. There was a voice, and it was like Scorpio had vanished, and all that was left was Angela and the anger was gone - the desperation was gone, everything, everyone, all of you were gone."
It was what had kept her alive, really, but it was clear she wasn't all too happy with that. In fact, she looked horribly upset, to the point she was no longer looking at him and was instead worrying the edge of the blanket on the bed, "I'm sorry... it's a blur."
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 6:25 pm
When Sue listened to someone, he didn't go halfway about it. He poured his attention over them. His gaze never left her, not even for an instant. He made no motion to interrupt, though his face flashed annoyance whenever she paused. As intense as his attention was, Angela might have gotten the sense that every word she said was being subjected to a grueling series of examinations - and that might have been true. Because Sue was learning everything now, everything about her failure, and from that he would forever make his opinion of how she could be trusted.
And, assuming she wasn't a liar, what he heard wasn't good.
"You broke, then." It seemed cruel, but it was the simple truth as Sue saw it. But even then, it was hardly simple; there was too much left answered. Sue signed obnoxiously, dropping his arms. Are you weak or a coward was what he wanted to ask, but even Sue had nominally more tact than that. "Where were you before that, Scorpio? Did you have a reason for splitting away from the rest of us? Were you late to the goddamned death trap?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 7:13 pm
"No," she frowned and shook her head, "I didn't break," she finally raised her head to look up at him and there was just a small spark of defiance before it simmered down, drowned by the guilt and sadness once more, "The voice, it was the princess - it was also someone else's. It was... it was..." and the name was just slipping from her conscious mind and she couldn't quite grip it, "It said there was nothing I could do at the time. It told me to sleep, to wait. It told me to find peace," and had it been anywhere else, and any other person, Angela would have laughed bitterly at her own words.
Peace.
There would be none of that.
Her eyes snapped back up to face the boy and for the first time since she entered there was actual anger shinning within them. How dare you? How DARE you imply that? The words were left unsaid, and even her anger seemed to be lacking something; as if she'd not been sleeping well and she were lacking the energy to really fuel it, "I was not late," she said firmly, "And I most certainly did not run away. I'm not lucid on the details, by any means. There's something that keeps blocking me - I can't see past the smoke. Can you see past it? Can you tell exactly what happened on your end? Detail by detail? Because I've gone through what I can recall, detail by detail, for hours, for days, and I have no clue what I could have done to fix it."
A pause followed her words but the anger was still there, weary but present, "What could have been wouldn't have brought you back. I'm not sure what happened then, and I can not really understand what is happening now either, for that matter. It's a mystery," oh the bloody irony, "I can't solve a mystery when I'm missing over half the pieces of a sodding puzzle!" With that final word though, the anger drained away and she looked like she was trying to hold back frustrated tear.
She wasn't doing a horribly good job at it.
Her fault. Her fault. Why not her too?
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Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:24 pm
The princess had been the one to tell her to sleep, then. Sue could accept that - in part. It was a piece, a big piece, one he'd needed to get his fingers around. She didn't break; and more to the point, she wouldn't break again. The next time a big youma came up, Sue wouldn't be wondering whether Scorpio was about to go all amnesic Angela on him, and that was at least improvement.
But if she thought that got her off the hook, she was dreaming.
"Look. You need to listen to me, right now. I don't care what happened then," a lie if there ever was one. "But what I care about, what you'd better damned well care about too, is what's going to happen next time. Because I don't know what you think, Scorpio, but from where I'm standing, we're pretty well screwed if something doesn't change from before."
Out came the fingers, checking off every point as Sue listed them. "The Negaverse has had a year to get stronger in. We don't even have our memories, don't even know what we're doing really. Eon's gone, and the princess is in our hands. Most the Moon folk don't even seem to have their own backs, don't have their own Princess. And what happened at Barren Pines... I don't know if it was a victory for our team, Scorpio. The Negaverse did something big, and we might have broken the barrier, but there's a lot that didn't get wrapped up at the end." He was out of fingers then, so the countdown of reasons why we're ********> had to come to a halt.
"Last time, it was everyone but you and Pisces. Pisces didn't awaken yet, I got that. That's my fault as much as anyone's - finding the Zodiacs was my job. But this is going to happen again. And when it does, every damn single one of us has to be there. There aren't going to be any excuses."
There. It was all out there. And if Angela wanted to throw up a bitchfit, say he was unfair, she could try - but this was what Zue did. He held up the mirror, he highlighted the imperfections, and he told people to fix it before they ******** got someone killed. He could handle whatever the Zodiacs wanted to throw back at him for it, but they were going to suck it up and hold the ******** line, even if he had to nail their feet into place to do it.
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Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 11:19 am
Her eyes snapped back on Sue, and for a long, tangiable moment, the girl was caught between remaining proper and barking out a bitter laugh at the Guardian cat's words. She thankfully chose the former rather than the later and instead offered him an arched brow.
She couldn't honestly believe that he didn't care what had happened back then. Not when it was all she cared about for the past few days. There was simply no way in heaven, hell or earth that he could have convinced her that he didn't feel at least partially the same way as she did about the whole situation. After all, she felt a tad bit useless, but she wasn't an idiot. not by a log shot.
"You're right," she finally said as he finished talking, "The situation is grim. We're pretty much hand-tied, but that isn't just a me thing, Sue. I was there. All of us are in on this. All of us are in trouble - ALL of us should be talking about this. Right now I'm the one that's worst off - I not only have no memories from the past, but my .... present ones are still foggy. I'm still going through all the information, and to make matter worse, I missed everything you went through in that nightmare of a place!"
Well, that wasn't entirely correct; she'd been there for the end of it, but she wasn't too sure it counted. She'd been pretty out of it back then, only newly awakened from her 'sleeping' state and pretty much going on instinct. At least... her instincts worked well enough, she figured, "My fault," she said then, barely a whisper, "It was my fault," she wasn't one to displace blame onto others - she'd been blaming herself ever since she'd woken up anyhow. Getting it out felt better at any rate, "But it won't happen again."
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