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 Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:19 pm
Ami's tied her scarf around her neck one more time with one lazy hand. The other hand was quite full as she was carrying a tiny wicker basket. Upon a pink cloth (which was actually just one of her other scarves- she had to improvise) was about a dozen or more snickerdoodles, made with care via the hands of Wilson, Madeline and Ami.
Madeline had jokingly said she was going to eat them all herself, but Ami had other devices for these cookies. First and foremost was an apology, and an explanation.
She daintily knocked on room 172, hoping that he was in. If he wasn't, she'd have to leave them there in the hallway. Lord knew there were too many mischievous, or simply hungry hunters that would snatch them up, and her point would be all but null.
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:36 pm
Lex's scarf was hung neatly in his closet, along with his coat. He was off duty, and frankly didn't even feel like wearing his whites. Instead, he was wearing one of the two hooded shirts he'd brought with him, made from a comfortable blend of cotton and silk. He'd been sitting in bed, book on Norse ruins in one hand, cup of coffee in the other.
He'd been dealing with Regal's absence quite well, truth be told. The tablet was currently stashed under his bed, and Lex didn't have a minor migraine daily. But...he kind of missed the ball of feathers. He almost felt empty without the aggressive beast.
The knock was welcomed, and surprising. Probably Solia.
Lex opened the door, looking down to see the brunette.
Instead he found the blonde midget. With cookies.
"Ami! Come in, please." The surprise was obvious on his face, but his manners didn't drop. Company was company, after all.
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:17 pm
Ami gave him a skeptical look and sidestepped his welcome. "Expecting someone else? I can leave if you're awaiting company." Not rudely said, not cold. Mere politeness.
"All my hard work will go to waste then I'm afraid." Her fingers tapped on her little basket. No cookies for Lex then. "We can do this some other time."
The sad part is that you really couldn't tell if she was joking or completely serious about leaving.
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:39 pm
Lex gave the woman a quirked eyebrow and a small chuckle, before stepping out into the hall, making a ' come in' motion with his arms. "No, I just don't get too many visits from people during the day."
His eyes gravitated towards the basket of cookies, saliva glands activating. They smelled and looked delicious. He loved snickerdoodles - no chocolate, super sweet, and soft. Show him a better cookie, and Lex's mind would be broke.
"Let's not let your hard work go to waste, hm?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:53 pm
Ami rolled her eyes and padded in, moving to set the cookies on his nightstand. "I want my scarf back, don't get attached."
She sighed, goal accomplished. Well, first goal. The other one was much harder. It involved talking, explanations and worst of all- feelings. Unfortunately for Ami, it was time to be a big girl and open herself up a little. Not much, she would still keep her secrets, but she could start here. Marcus would've been proud of her- albeit still worried over her sleep. Junpei would have encouraged her as she went, telling her to be nicer when she wanted to say something mean. God she missed them.
"I know you've become a real Sherlock Holmes about the whole ordeal, but I'd like a chance to elaborate before the human imagination inevitably blows to a proportion I can't control." She looked around for a place to sit, but found nothing but a bed. No chairs? Well he was male. They weren't supposed to keep nice living spaces.
Instead she consented to stand, hands folded politely. Look Jumpy. Making friends. I hope you're proud.
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:30 pm
"Pinks not my color, dear." Lex quipped off, sitting on the bed and patting the spot next to him. "Or I could stand and you could sit, that'd be more proper." And that's what he did. He stood up, smiling still, and took a cookie from the basket.
"Well then, do tell/ I'd rather not assume anything, and make it out to be worse than it is." He bit into the morsel, nearly melting. The perfect amount of cinnamon, the perfect softness. Ami needed to make cookies more. Probably ones that spelled out "sorry for being mean."
In all honesty, Lex was truly surprised she'd even made him cookies. Or came over. Or was speaking to him. Their last talk, Lex had told her to be more open, to help people. He figured she'd take that the wrong way.
It was nice to be wrong, sometimes.
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:52 pm
Ami's fingers squeezed awkwardly, her body language clearly reading that she was uncomfortable. Alone with a man she barely knew, telling him her life story. In a funny way, it was like she was finally getting to make up for Killzone's therapy. It didn't mean she was sitting on that bed though. No way she was going to be coerced onto his bed.
She rummaged through her pocket for a moment until she found the object of her dejection. "His name is Junpei," she said, clacking the three pieces together until it formed the hairclip she knew so well. "He's a ningyo- according to him it's like a mermaid, but the top is more ... monkey."
The light smile that had threatened to cross her face quickly disappeared as she continued. "A few months ago I was captured by horsemen ... They're sort of like the Halloween monsters, but they don't just lurk in the shadows. They kill. Needlessly." Her eyes hooded, face on the ground as she told the next part. "A while ago we ... quite frankly, we exterminated the majority of their race with ... a bomb of some kind." That was Ami's interpretation on the event anyways. The trainees hadn't been told much of anything. She looked up at Lex seriously, making sure he understood what she was about to say. "I don't regret it. They deserved it, the ruthless bastards."
She shook her head as though it was a tangent. "In retaliation they captured some of us- I'm not sure how many to be honest." Her hands went to remove a sleeve of her cardigan, but not before adding a skeptical, "I'm not stripping for your enjoyment."
Turning around, she revealed an open backed shirt she hardly wore any more, and especially not without a sweater of some kind. Harsh burn scars and cuts littered her back as though her skin was merely meant to be printed that way. She pushed her braid out of the way, revealing the ugliest scar of all, a strange torn up circle where a bug had bore into her skin. "Torture," she finished quietly, trying not to recede into that state of mind. The small part of her mind that still said she was there. The small part of her that believed none of this was real.
She paused for a moment to let the history and facts sink in. In reality, it might have been a pause so Ami could give herself a break. She hadn't told anyone this much detail. Not even the life techs who had prodded her for answers afterwards. Opening up was hard to do.
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Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 11:24 pm
Lex shrugged when Ami wordlessly denied his offer, reseating himself on the bed and chewing more of the cookie. Good lord were these cookies amazing.
He finished the baked treat just in time for Ami to pull out her broken weapon. Lex was curious about that - why did every other weapon become a tablet? Maybe it had to do with the way they were 'killed.' He'd go with that, for now.
He gave a soft "ah" to her explanation of Horsemen, and a shrug to the idea of bombing them. Killing demonic creatures, it was what he signed up for.
He only gave her a sigh at the stripping comment, but then an audible gasp at the scars. "Holy crap." He almost made a move to touch the nasty one on her neck, but realized that no, that would be an awful idea. It could harm her psyche, bring back memories of the scars. Not gonna do that.
He did stand up, though, and grabbed both shoulders lightly. "Well...I'm glad they're an endangered species, then." He let go of her, picked up a cookie, and pressed it into her hand. "Here's to them going extinct."
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 10:22 am
Ami buttoned her cardigan back together, relieved that he understood what she was trying to say. That, and he didn't pry for details. The last thing she wanted was to tell more when she was already using a lot of energy to tell these meager scraps. How she felt about the shoulder touch was left to the imagination. She didn't react one way or another.
"I wouldn't say endangered," Ami said, taking the cookie, but not biting into it, her appetite all but lost. "They're growing. I don't know what hell hole they crawled into and called home, but they're still alive. Kicking even." A sullen despair crossed her face.
She shook her head and said, "Sorry. I probably shouldn't word things so desolately to a poor newbie who just joined only to lose his weapon." She bit her lip, judging if Lex could keep a secret. He didn't seem like the gossiping type. Exasperated with the effort of hiding for almost a year now, something gave. "It wasn't just physical," she said quietly. "I told you when we first met, didn't I? I'm not in the right state of mind."
A hollow chuckle escaped her and she put the cookie she was given back into the basket it came from. "I hated bugs before becoming a hunter, but now I can't even look at them..." Her eyes seemed to cloud over, her mind drifting elsewhere. "I sometimes wish I'd never become a hunter in the first place." Now that was definitely a secret.
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 11:36 pm
Lex gave Ami a good hard stare, before lightly snorting in defiance of what she'd said. "Can't help it; things happen for a reason." Like their weapons being taken away. Or Lex's inability to make Ami feel better. Or his father leaving.
Everything happened for a reason. Sometimes, though, the reason was that you were being an idiot. Or others were being idiots. Lex tried very hard not to think of others as idiots, but whoever sent them on that suicide research mission? Idiots. So much pain could have been avoided if Death had done better recon, if Life had been prepared with more first aid, if Sun had sent reinforcements, if Moon had been ready with a stronger barrier, if Mist had just cooperated with everyone a little bit more.
But mostly, the blame fell on the higher ups. Sending them to investigate something they knew was a threat, like a bunch of lab mice. A grizzly frown passed his lips, tired eyes adding age to the man's face.
"It all happens for a reason; things get better eventually."
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Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 12:26 am
"I am inclined to disagree," she said immediately. Nothing good had happened to her, nothing remarkable. She didn't even believe she had anything left to live for. Cowardice was keeping her alive. A fear of death.
She crossed her arms and looked at him. "Keep your buoyancy. Better to float than sink."
Ami let that sit for a moment and then adjusted herself. "Return the scarf to me when you'd like." She took a few steps towards the door, apparently willing to impart her tragedies and then leave. A vague look to her right. "You still haven't finished the norse runes?"
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Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:13 am
Lex gave the scarf a good look, grief leaving his face. He had plans with this scarf. Dinner plans.
"I don't think you're really in the position to tell anyone to keep their buoyancy, miss." He gave a light chuckle, and stood up to let the small woman out of his room. He had cookies, peace of mind, and no Regal in his head - he would be set for a while.
But then she had to go and mention the runes. His lips pursed into a little pout, left hand rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah...not having Regal there to help me has actually deterred me a small bit. I know he'd like for me to keep studying them, but I just can't." The man sighed, looking up to the ceiling. "I get a few pages in, and I just think of something he'd say about a certain ruin." A sad smile to match the wispy tone his voice held. "When we came across the symbol for woman, he had a ball with that."
Wait...was he actually missing the abusive turkey? Slightly, maybe. Not enough to shed tears over it, though.
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Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:45 am
"It is my shipwreck that merits my position," she said astutely, tucking her hands behind her back. She never knew where to put her hands without her heavy white coat to weigh them down.
Like a pixie she moved to his bed and bent over to grab the book. Her lips puckered in thought as she pondered its pages. For a moment it seemed as though she'd forgotten Lex was there altogether, completely lost in the book in front of her.
All at once she snapped it shut and said, "Stay here." It clearly wasn't a request, but a demand.
She scurried out of the room and no more than 10 minutes later she came back with a small stack of textbooks, which she set on his bed. A battle went on in her head, and she finally decided to sit down on the bed. "These are mine." A slight lie, actually. They were the life labs', but when you had a keycard to the endless libraries and nobody kept track? It might have actually been the answer to why Lex couldn't focus as well. Ami took all the best books for herself and left the scraps to everyone else. "If you get so much as a scratch on them, I will put a bullet through your skull." Ami really just had a charming way of getting caught between utter seriousmess and a jovial jest.
"When Regal comes back to you, at least show him you've spent the time learning something." Her tone implied that he would learn. Whether he liked it or not. She cracked the norse book open and turned to a random page, and then handed it over to Lex.
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Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:16 pm
Lex would have had a clever retort about her position if it weren't true. She was a sunken ship - yet kept floating. He overcame the urge to say something stupid like "i'll never let go jack" or "i'm king of the world." Who the hell even said those things anyway?
And then she examined the book like it was an original Van Gogh, completely shutting out the world. She earned a piqued eyebrow and a small chuckle that was really an inward laugh at how freaking dainty she looked when she was reading the book. Who would have thought; Ami being cute.
Whoops, not so much. She was out his door in a flash, and returned with books. Lex inwardly groaned at the tomes, giving them a wary eye. He wasn't even through with Norse basics yet. Now he was supposed to cross reference and read multiple books on the same subject at the same time? What did she take him for, a literature major?
"Ami, I highly doubt you'd manage a bullet to my skull from point blank." A jovial smile, and Lex hefted up a tome, wondering how in the world the tiny woman had carried these textbooks.
"So..." His voice became more serious as he leveled a look at the Life trainee, smile dropping to more of a partial grin. "Why the sudden interest in helping out the bane of your existence?"
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Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 1:15 pm
Ami pouted, somewhat insulted by his comment. She may have been the worst shot on this side of the island, but even she could manage that!
She looked up from her book to give him a snarky remark, but he asked a question before she could say anything at all. Her expression softened and she said, "Don't take this weirdly, you just ... remind me of someone."
Abruptly she put her hands on the books, attempting to gather them up while scowling. "If you don't want them, I'll just take them back. I can't teach something that doesn't want to learn." This had been such a stupid idea. Coming in here with her books like he actually wanted her problems shoved on to him. Just stupid.
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