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 Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 3:03 am
It was a beautiful night, clear and calm, with a soft wind and a bright moon hanging low overhead. The small apartment that Kaia and Khaldun shared was silent and peaceful save for the TV that buzzed in a corner of the living room.
Then that calm, careful facade was shattered in the span of a few seconds.
Alkaid burst gracelessly from thin air, tumbling instantly and catching herself on her already bruised hands and knees. The scrapes of her palms smeared pale smudges of blood through the beige carpet that she had worked so hard to clean only weeks before. As the familiar comfort of the only home she'd ever known closed in around her, the last stitch in her mask fell apart and the emotions rolled out of her one by one, each one more choking than the last.
Hot tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and rolled down instantly, first a trickle and then a river that trailed down her pale cheeks and into the crevice of her throat. She tried to reel herself back in, but the floodgates had been released, and as the first taste of salty tears brushed her lips she began to sob. It was a hard, painful choking that shook her entire body and made every muscle clench.
She bowed over slowly, doubling in on herself, and pressed her forehead into the carpet. She squeezed her strained eyes shut and tried to blot out every ounce of light that flooded her senses from a dim overhead fan. Her fingers curled into the short fibers of the carpet beneath her and she dug at the matting, trying to pry up the braided work with her gloved fingernails. Bruises were blooming on every inch of her exposed skin, pitch black gravel was ingrained in her pale dreads and there were smears of blood across her arms and face that could have belonged to her or anyone else for all the grit and grime that covered any possible wounds.
Her sobs were quickly escalating into a panic attack that constricted her chest, each breath feeding off of the last and shooting a deep, stabbing pain further through her chest. There was no sense in it, there was no attempt to speak. She was tired and broken and the taste of failure still sat heavily on her tongue.
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:47 pm
"Let's take a look at the forecast for the week. Looks like it's going to be another sunny week in Destiny City, highs in the upper-"
Click.
"- riot police had to be called in to remove the protesters. Another curfew has been -"
Click.
"- side effects include dizziness, confusion, fatigue, anxiety, headaches, mood problems-"
Click.
"- those cowards in Washington won't do a damned thing until it's too late. Have you been to a morgue in Destiny City any time in the past couple years? You know as well as I do that they don't report even half of what goes on here on the major networks - let me finish, Jim, hey, HEY -"
Click.
"- another DCNN exclusive report of Destiny City's new heroine -"
The TV droned on and on while Khaldun tossed the remote up in the air and caught it a couple of times. Nothing but infomercials and late night news and a lot of boring reruns. When he wasn't helping Kaia with chores, she usually left him some movies, books, or anything else to try and distract him from getting into trouble within the small space that was the apartment. She probably hadn't counted on him figuring out how to switch it to cable.
On the fifth catch, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. It was an emotional wreck covered in a cascade of white dreads. Well, not completely white any more. He'd already jumped to his feet at the sudden door-free entrance, but it had only given him a better view of how messed up the senshi was. Brown, red, blue, and black interrupted what should have been pristine whites. He recognized blood and knew she had to be in pain, but he didn't know what to make of the noises she was making or how she seemed to shake and cough.
"Kaia!" He crossed the room and dropped to his knees next to her. He knew it was Kaia only because she'd already shown him she could transform like this - they shared that ability. He didn't know anything else - where she always went like that, why, and how she had gotten hurt. One hand hovered close to her arm, but he couldn't risk hurting her just to show her he was there. What if she was hurt worse than he could see? "Kaia, what's wrong?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:20 pm
Somewhere in the back of Kaia's mind, muffled by the pain and failure that filled every inch of her consciousness, she was dimly aware of someone calling her name. The deep, panicked breaths began to slow and she slowly resurfaced, coming back to the world around her with a feeling that was something like rising out of the water. Sound suddenly rushed back in a the blurry darkness spread away from her eyes, leaving her once more in the living room of her apartment.
"Khal," she said weakly, her voice breaking over the short syllable. Her breath still came in short bursts that made it sound a little like she was choking, but she seemed to be more coherent than the sobbing pile of dreads that had first appeared in the room.
She slowly pushed herself up to kneel on the floor beside him, though the tears still streamed in hot rivers down her cheek. She tried to draw a breath to calm herself down but it petered off at the end into a series of sobs and she simply reached out for him, grabbing his forearms with her hands and shifting her weight to make him support her.
"I failed," she rasped, curling her fingers tighter around his arms and smearing blood and grime onto his dark skin. "I failed, Khal, I failed. I failed her, I failed them all." Her words were rushed and jumbled as she tried to speak through her tears, which only seemed to make them fall more quickly. She choked on another breath and squeezed her eyes shut just before another round of broken sobs rang out.
She dropped the power then, letting it snap back out of existence and leaving her in civilian clothes that were certainly less dirty and destroyed than her fuku had been. She was still clinging to him, trying to take some ounce of his energy to keep herself going, but she couldn't find it in her to calm down. The tables were turned and Kaia, it seemed, was faltering to pick herself up out of whatever emotional turmoil was leftover from the tragedy she'd just survived.
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Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 9:02 pm
"It's okay, Kaia. It happens. It'll be okay." he reassured her, somewhat oddly. His memory had been coming back, little by little, and only as he had some idea of what to actually try to remember. There was no way to tell for sure, but it was probably all there, hidden only because he didn't know what he was even looking for. It took reminders. Names, faces, places. And in this case, situations. Failure he felt intimately familiar with. He sympathized with her as much as he could without knowing exactly what he'd failed at himself.
No. Not now. It was easier to look over Kaia and understand what had happened to her than try to scratch that mental itch. Shedding her illusion only covered things up, nothing went away. She looked worse than he could have imagined. There was barely anywhere that wasn't turning blues and purples and other hideous colors from bruising. Her palms scraped at him with gravel as she tried to maintain her handhold.
He bit his lip in contemplation. He'd been complacent for a while now, as he was recovering. Complacent and apparently stupid. Someone had hurt Kaia, and what could he do? Nothing. The poisonous feeling that he'd had from the memories just out of reach had returned again, sick at the idea of what could have happened. He had no way to protect or avenge her, and as for returning her favor and doing something for her injuries... "Your shoulder..."
Blood, definitely blood. It was soaking through her top like some kind of liquid fire. He gave her an imploring look. There had to be something he could do, even if he had no idea what. "How do I fix it? I- I can go get one of the first aid kits... and..."
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Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 12:20 am
Even if she was too panicked to understand everything that he was saying, Khaldun's words were slowly washing over her and with every one that she heard, she began to calm.
After a few minutes of panicked gasps, she had relaxed into a trembling state with only the occasional whimpering breath. She seemed to be aware of where she was and who she was clinging so desperately to. With the realization, however, also came the pain and as Khal pointed out that she was bleeding through her shirt, she realized that her shoulder blade (as well as other various parts of her body) was on fire.
"Go get a first aid kit," she whispered, hoarsely, and slowly unwound her fingers from his wrists. She trusted him to do it, he knew where all the supplies were kept by now.
She put her bloody, grimy hands to the floor and tried to push herself up. It was wobbly at first, but she managed to finally stand on her own two feet. She crossed behind him towards the bedroom door, leaning into the wall as she went to support herself. She had just enough composure to slip her shirt off clumsily and toss it aside. She was still wearing a bra, but somehow that seemed.. inappropriate. She didn't want Khal to try and deal with injuries and modesty all at once, even if she had faith in him to be as professional as he could about it.
When she reemerged from the bedroom, she had found an old t-shirt to hold up across her torso. It was enough to cover her chest, at least. She made her slow, careful way to the couch where he had just been watching TV and collapsed into it, draping her upper body somewhat over the arm and sweeping her dreads to the side.
"You're going to have to do it for me, Khal, I can't reach it." She called out to him, wherever he was by then. "It probably need to be clean with alcohol and then just bandaged." Not that she relished the thought of letting him cover her wound in what would feel like acid.
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 1:19 am
"Th-thats it?" he called back. He'd been hesitant to just leave her, but they had to do something. So he ducked into the kitchen and scrambled to the cabinet under the sink. There was a first aid kit stashed in every room of the apartment. Khal had no idea where they came from, but they were placed around as a testament to the philosophy of 'you can never be too careful'. Also, good for shoulder wounds. Right? Yeah. Khal's knowledge of biology was always... severely lacking. A kit like this was like a box of ******** magic. First aid. A lot of people could do it. That meant it was easy. Kaia was going to be fine. He grabbed the box and a clean kitchen towel off the counter and jetted back to the other room.
Kaia was going to be...
If she could see his face, his expression wasn't hiding any of his concern for her health. She looked like she'd lost more blood already than he would have guessed people had in their whole bodies. 'Fine' seemed a little much to hope for now, could she settle for something like 'hey the good news is the bleeding stopped'? What was the point of a first aid kit if it didn't do that?
"I got it! I got it. Alcohol and bandages. Ok." The kit was slammed on top of the coffee table and the clips snapped open. Khal was staring into a box of individually wrapped mystery. About the only thing he recognized right away was the roll of gauze, which he fished out and started tearing out of its wrapper. Rubbing alcohol, rubbing alcohol.... he knew what it was, but he'd never actually looked at a bottle of the stuff before. He faintly remembered some unhelpful warning someone had given him once about how it wasn't for drinking and was actually pretty poisonous. What? No, he needed to focus right now. He unscrewed the top of the closest bottle and sniffed it. Kaia could intervene at any time; Khal was in full-on 'don't ask for directions' mode.
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 1:58 am
The panic in his voice was too obvious to miss and, even stretched over the couch arm with bruises and scrapes and wounds, Kaia had to be his guiding hand. She should have thought about it before she teleported back home but what could she do now? He had to deal with this some time. She would just try to hide the worst of the pain from him until it was done with.
She watched him as he reentered in the room, proud that he had put his panic aside long enough to find the kit, but beginning to worry over the expression on his face. She didn't know if it was simply worse than she thought or if.. maybe he was just panicked at the site of her. Sometimes she didn't know what was going on in his head.
"That's good, that was fast," she nodded at him and tried to give him an unconvincing smile - but that was just what it was, unconvincing. Her lips turned up slightly, but beneath her still watering eyes and surrounded by bruises it was like a snowflake in a thunderstorm. "We need the gauze, alcohol, the medical tape, and the pair of scissors so you can cut it.."
She trailed off as she saw him pick up a bottle and sniff it. She wanted him to learn on his own but, despite herself, she was already shifting and holding herself back from picking it all out herself.
"No, not that one, the transparent white bottle." It was patient, but the pain she was trying desperately not to show was creeping in at the edges. Almost as an afterthought she added, "and get that bottle of Tylenol out for afterward."
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Posted: Fri May 06, 2011 3:22 am
Khal could see the way Kaia was leaning ever so slightly in, the way her expression was fraying. She didn't have time for this s**t, she was kind of bleeding to death. He redoubled his efforts to pull everything out that she listed. Medical supplies finally laid out in a line, Khal stared fidgeting and staring down at the carpet, waiting for some instruction. Her impatience was becoming his, and he was the one holding up everything with his complete lack of basic medical knowledge. He was too stupid to even navigate a first aid kit and it made him angry with himself.
"Kaia, help," he whined. "I don't know how to do this. I'm just making it worse!"
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Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 12:27 pm
Despite the fact that she was bleeding (maybe not to death, she would have been quick to correct Khal if she knew he thought such a thing) and hunched over the couch arm, Kaia recognized that familiar 'I want to give up' tone that he was taking. He seemed to do it every time he didn't understand something - that, or simply gave up in a rage quit. She knew he couldn't keep doing these things, despite the fact that it was his nature. He had to learn how to take care of himself eventually.
"Khal, calm down," her tone had suddenly switched to patience, like she always did when she was trying to guide him through something. She was tired, and her voice was still a little on-edge, but she could try and help him with this even now. Not that she really should have had to help anyone in that moment, but she was always a guide.
"Take the kitchen towel you got and soak it with alcohol, then wipe it very gently," she made sure to emphasize that, since she didn't really want him to try and dig through her back with a rough kitchen towel more suited to soaking up dish water, "over the wound so you can sterilize it and wipe up some of the blood."
She would just have to guide him through it one step at a time. She at least managed to nod her head at him a little to tell him to hurry the ******** up, in a very polite way.
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2011 12:14 pm
He shut up fast and followed her instructions, though his emotional state was anything but secret with the way it was plastered across his face. He poured out the bottle of alcohol into the kitchen towel and started trying to mop up the blood on her shoulder. Slowly. Getting rid of the bloody mess revealed, well, a gouge down her shoulder blade surrounded by bruising. It was pretty grisly. Khal didn't like what he was seeing - Kaia shouldn't have been hurt at all. Something was going on and it wasn't good.
"How did this happen?" he asked quietly as he worked. "How did you get so hurt?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2011 6:52 pm
Kaia drew a deep breath and looked away as Khal came towards her with the alcohol soaked hand towel. Her arms tensed where they were draped over the couch arm and her fingers found grip in the plush fabric. She was pre-worrying over the pain and the slow, agonizing way he moved towards her was making it worse.
When he finally set the alcohol against her skin and fired erupted as it sank into the open wound. The deep breath she had filled her lungs with came out in a hiss between her clenched teeth, but she didn't scream. What good did screaming do?
"I tried to tell you," she said softly, a raspy whisper from her constricted chest. Her eyes squinted and finally closed as he continued. The burning felt like fingernails in her back, in already raw flesh. When he pulled the towel away to assess the situation, the burning lessened and faded to a dull ache. She found her breath then, but the words didn't want to come out for a long time.
"We were ambushed." She swallowed against the lump in her throat and let her head fall onto her draped arms. She opened her eyes and stared dully at the wall across from her, replaying it all in her head. Their confidence, the fight, the ambush. She shut her eyes again and tried to block it out.
"You need to bandage it once you're done, okay?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:24 am
"Ah, yeah." He tossed the blood-soaked rag on the table and traded it for a roll of bandages. This part he assumed would be at least a little easier than trying to tell identical bottles of clear liquid apart. He got to work on that.
While he covered up the injury, he tried hard to understand what she was telling him. He was worried! Worried and almost helpless that he couldn't do anything when doing something counted. He had a dependency on her help and patience and company. Because of the state he was in, Kaia never delved into much detail about where she went at night and what she did. And Khaldun never asked many questions. It was never important to ask, because all the other times Kaia didn't appear out of thin air crying and bleeding all over the place. She had done a good job of hiding any injuries she'd incurred before, but not this time. Her sobbing about failure ten minutes ago cast her latest comments in a worrisome light. Failure in an ambush meant...
Between the zipping sounds of unwinding and winding bandages, Khal, quietly but with conviction, voiced his feelings on the whole thing. "I'm just glad you're okay."
Relatively speaking and all.
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 6:16 pm
Okay was a relative term. Physically, Kaia would recover from her injuries and probably be perfectly fine in the span of a couple of weeks. Emotionally? She was a wreck and she knew nothing would fix that until Tanzanite and the others were rescued, safe back in their homes.
Despite that, Khal's company was calming, for a number of reasons. He gave her something to concentrate on, someone to help when others were helpless, and he was just an all around distraction in general. She knew that if she let herself fall completely apart then there would be nothing left to hold him together, there would be no one that would keep holding his hand through the confusion.
"I didn't mean to worry you," she said softly, opening her eyes and staring down at the floor on the other side of the couch. As she felt him withdraw from her and finish the wrappings, she sat up and held the shirt close to her chest. Her eyes swung to him, slowly, until her bright eyes settled on his dark ones. For a long moment, she just stared at him, until she found her voice again.
"I need you, Khal. I can't do what needs to be done alone and you are all I have left." She clenched her jaw for a moment and glanced down at the couch cushions, trying to stave off tears. Once she was back under control, she looked up to him again. "You have to be a soldier again."
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:52 am
Khal sank back into the couch, visibly uncomfortable with the idea. Leaning his head back to rest along the top of the couch cushion, he stared up at the ceiling. Dreadlocks splayed out around his shoulders that hadn't been caught behind him. Her confidence was a little misplaced. A real soldier wouldn't have ended up in the position he was in right now, only ever a burden. He was spared the full agonizing guilt for now, but he couldn't yet handle the pressure of being responsible for a mistake that could cost Kaia dearly.
"It's fine. You're fine, that's what's important." He toyed with the roll of bandages to give his hands something to do instead of wring themselves out. It was hard to find the words. "If there's ever anything I can do for you I want to do it, but that..."
"You should take the tylenol," he stated suddenly and deliberately, peeling himself away from the situation. He slid the bottle down the coffee table till it was within reach of Kaia. He still hadn't worked up the courage to look at her either. Pathetic. "I'll get you some water."
He left Kaia half-curled on the couch, alone save for the sound of running water emanating from the other room for far longer than a glass of water's worth.
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