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 Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 9:10 pm
Nevada's hand trembled as she took the handle for room 177, Her shared room with Stormy. She didn't want to go in here, she didn't want to be here.
She had thrown away the cupcake and new mist coat from her hospital room. There was no celebration for failure, no new coat for a non hunter.
She was just going to collect her things from here...and slowly disappear from their lives. It was the right thing to do...she'd make herself useful, by disappearing.
Somewhere her mind tried to reach for Leroy, but he wasn't there. He'd never be there again.
She had no support. The door whined as she pushed it open, a tell tale sign that she was there.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 9:25 pm
Nevada came home to an empty room.
There were signs that Stormy had occupied the room recently: a disheveled bed, slippers askance near the foot of it, a closet left open and several outfits picked out but ultimately forgotten. There were three cupcakes left of the batch left behind originally, though by now they were stiff and stale. Conversely, Nevada's side of the room was clean in a clinical way: the bed was tucked to the point that there were hardly creases, the pillows aligned in the center almost as if with a ruler, and whatever she had left lying out that fateful morning was tucked away. The lights were on, so it didn't seem like Stormy would be gone for long.
The were two things of note: on top of Nevada's bed was Michelangelo, Stormy's red panda plushie, sitting in a way that made him face the door directly--almost as if he was watching the room while she was gone. The second was that just beyond the threshold, right behind the little raised panel, were small down feathers. They were a color matching the floor, so an intruder stepping in might not notice them being disturbed should they walk in without looking down. At least, maybe not until they started static clinging horribly to their shoes.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 9:41 pm
Nevada's sigh of relief was so audible that it echoed in the room. Like a whisper around the silence. Where Stormy's side was messy...disturbed? No lived in, It was lived in...Nevada's was meticulousy clean and precise.
It was a testament to how much time she hadn't been here. She walked over to her bed, running her hand over the tucked in bed covers, decorated with a flower design her and stormy picked out. On top was the red panda bear that her roommate cuddled every night.
The same one on the promo mission that Nevada promised Stormy that she would give make up cuddles too. She picked it up, staring into its glass eyes, Seeing the reflection of herself. She still had a mildly healthy complexion, but her eye was glassed over, her face set in a stern and unusual frown. It was the first sign of herself that she knew she was different.
She wasn't confident, she was broken. She'd be broken and fall apart until what was left of her was scattered into so many pieces, you couldn't put it back together.
She moved the plush to Stormy's side of the room, placing it on the girl's bed. She ignored the cupcakes, the completely deflated balloons. Gifts from Stormy? Gifts from Lance who expected better of her.
To her, it was cruel reminder of her failure and now...her imminent demise.
She moved back to her closet, walking in the feathers without really noticing it and pulling out outfits and some of her personal belongings. Small things that she'd take back to her original dorm room and work on willing to people. She wanted to give Jake and Sherry something, maybe they'd mourn for her if she died. She'd leave Ian something too, her heart aching. She hadn't seen him but also knew he was in the midst of his own promotion.
She hoped he succeeded.
She didn't allow the disgusting rage that wished he would fail, experience the pain she was going through. She didn't ever want to wish that on someone, even when she was feeling it herself. But that was now...what would she feel in a week.
She was so disturbed with her own thoughts, she didn't realize she had stayed longer then she wanted in the room.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 9:53 pm
She remained undisturbed for the majority of her introspection. Michelangelo didn't judge her for being moved--he seemed more at home in the midst of his owner's casual mess--but there was something forlorn in the way the old doll seemed to sag once he was placed. Maybe he too was affected by all of this.
It was around the time Nevada started to pull her things out of the closet that she might have heard it: a soft click. The door had closed. There was someone standing just inside the threshold.
"Going on a trip with Otto?"
Stormy's affect and tone were uncharacteristically neutral. She was dressed like she'd just come back from jogging, her hair grown out just long enough to be pulled into a small ponytail, a bottle of water and a bag lunch under her arm.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:03 pm
Nevada should've been listening to the door, for the roomie she was trying to avoid. Her hands froze as she held one of her long white dresses, half hanging on the hanger, half in her hands. Shame and guilt instantly hit.
And a rage. A quick flash of a temper she didn't have before. She turned to face Stormy, again not noticing the disturbed feathers, or the way the red panda was sagging. All she saw was her solid rock of a best friend for almost a year. A girl who had helped her more then she could ever give in return.
And a hunter who had the love of Aria and perhaps even Lance.
"No." She answered back, surprised but not that Stormy assumed her time was spent with Otto. When in fact, more time was spent with Otto then Stormy since she came back from her first mission. "I was gathering some of my things..." Most of her things, "I should relocate to my old room...." She looked away.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:13 pm
Speak the ******** up. Lance's words kept bouncing in her head no matter where she went. The little Mist had taken those words to heart over the past few days, having done a little introspection of her own. Where once had been the passive, supporting impulse, now sat something a little harder.
"Not before we talk, I'd hope," Stormy said, avoiding the strewn feathers with a few careful steps, like they were traps in Deathsweeper. She didn't like being like this, stiff and dark gray, but she was being wary. Still trying to feel Nevada out. A part of her expected her best friend to bolt, and she just wouldn't have it--not now that they were finally occupying the same room. Letting her leave just because it would have suited Nevada better was out of the question now. She couldn't keep dealing with these repressed emotions anymore, not for the sake of someone else's peace of mind.
Her expression did soften, however. "Recovering okay?" It was a careful question: she'd almost asked if she was feeling okay, but what a stupid one that would have been. Stormy didn't know what healing was like without a weapon, but she could hope there weren't further complications on top of the s**t storm they'd brought on.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:21 pm
Stormy had cut off any way of escape and Nevada's reaction WAS to run. She didn't want to be in here, another reminder of her failure. This wasn't the room where they spent countless days just being what they were. Best friends. Watching Disney movies on the little runic DVD player, dancing to some music. Teaching each other a few words of each other's language.
It wasn't the place where she hid herself when she had problems, knowing that if she came here, Stormy would always be there for her.
Right now, it was the room where Aria had broken in, a reminder of her betrayal to the mist leader and ultimately to Stormy. It was the same room that not a couple of days ago, they had been stumbling out of bed to get to the mission for her promotion from Lance. The same one that he had prepared a special gift for her.
Her hands clenched tightly in the dress she had forgotten she was still holding, looking at Stormy with a mixed expression of confusion, hurt, anger and shame.
So much of the feelings were bubbling up that her mind couldn't process, her body refused too.
"I'm not." She gritted her teeth as the honesty leaked through. She should've lied, told stormy she'd be fine. "How would you feel Stormy? If your weapon was destroyed. Not sealed away-" She hissed, anger bubbling up. "Destroyed by the leader you are suppose to trust. How would you feel, waking up to a tech who looks at you like trash on the ground and tells you that you only have a little longer to live. That perhaps, if you are useful, you weren't a complete waste of a hunter." She had to bring it in, bring the feelings in. These weren't words meant to be said to Stormy yet, if they were meant to be said at all. "So no, I'm not recovering okay."
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:45 pm
In spite of herself, she did flinch at first as Nevada spoke. But she needed the reminder that it was honesty hour, that there were going to be things said that were going to scrape and burn, and no shield could stop that. She stood there, sympathy and regret bubbling up within her from the acidic mix she had been keeping at bay in her cauldron of a stomach.
Stormy wanted to offer something: give her a name of the tech and she'd shadow him until she could cause trouble. Maybe just straight up punch him. But when had violence ever helped?
< < She has accepted her fate. Why make this more difficult? > >
Because that's my life's purpose, she snapped.
It was hard: so many platitudes and useless phrases came up:
Lance didn't mean it. (Of course he didn't, he was one of the only decent leaders left at Deus.)
I know what it's like to feel alone. (That didn't matter, empathizing wouldn't matter, why would her past plight suddenly matter now?)
You should have listened to me. (Why? Why did you tell Lance?)
How can I help? (Can you forgive me?)
Why didn't you listen?
How can I fix this? (Please don't leave now.)
I'm sorry. (I'm so sorry.)
Why didn't I stop you?
Stormy's shoulders quivered for a moment as she took a breath through her nose to control herself. "I wouldn't've been able to move from the infirmary until they made me," she eventually answered without pride. "Probably would've been a bawling mess until someone picked me up. But you, you're standing anyway. That's something, right?"
She tried to make that sound hopeful, but it came across as weak.
"You've been battered and beaten before, but you came back strong anyway. That's what Mists do: adapt to what we're given and make the best of it. We can survive. They said you wouldn't be as good a battler with one eye, but you were amazing back there." This isn't any different, she kept telling herself.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:08 pm
She didn't have to hear Stormy tell her what she was thinking, the expressions were clear on the other mist face. Stormy wasn't, after all, good at the poker face. It was the underlining of wanting to please someone, as well as their shared year of living together. She knew Stormy, sometimes she thought, better then she knew herself.
"I bet you would've had they told you they needed the bed for hunters. Not OTHER hunters...but people who are still actual hunters." She laid the dress down now, her hands returning to normal and not the shaky side effect of all the emotions she let rage inside her.
"No it's not, I've always been standing. I still ******** up the s**t I stand in anyways." She stared at her bed, "Stop..." Nevada snapped.
"Stop. Just. Stop." She looked at Stormy, "I told you I was going to die. I don't have long. I can't adapt to that Stormy. I can't adapt to not having a weapon, to not being able to hear leroy anymore...." Her voice broke a little, "Is this what I get? i told Lance. He said it. I was the one who told him." She sniffed and then returned the glare up at Stormy, "I told him about Aria because she's poison. Poison in the well, just like the promotion. I didn't trust her, I trusted Lance..." And he killed her weapon, took everything from her.
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Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:35 pm
"It was an accident, not a breach of trust. You know Lance didn't mean it." She chewed the inside of her cheek to pacify the urge to yell. It wasn't that hard normally: Stormy's voice only ever rose in fear, excitement, or if she had to call someone over. Now, it was like trying to keep back the waves behind the dam by plugging the only hole with a finger. She thought she'd be ready to face a defeated Nevada, but once again the image in her head and the reality didn't match up.
"If you want me to keep listening to your orders, then I'm afraid I'm gonna disappoint you," Stormy said quietly. There was tension in her limbs as she dropped the water bottle and bag on the ground without care, bracing for opposition. "I won't stop. I'm not taking this lying down. If I have to believe in a world where monsters and demons and ghosts exist, then I choose to also believe miracles can happen."
She faced Nevada, fingers curling a little at her sides. "You know what I don't get, though, Nevada? Why didn't you tell me before?" It was strange to see a glare aimed at her from her best friend, but it was stranger still to feel the muscles in her face contort in a way that made her scowl right back. "You know what I thought all this time? I thought I'd screwed up. I thought I'd caused all this mess. And all this time you didn't say a word and let me worry while you ran off on missions, or staying the night at Otto's, or hang around other people while I carried all this guilt around, not knowing how to make up for any of it."
She knew she was saying too much, but like Nevada it was hard to keep the truth of her feelings from slipping out now that they were finally confronting the issues. Even so, the hot button about Aria was still out of her reach, purposefully avoided because things needed to be tackled one at a time. The implications of anything about Aria being poisonous, however, made her stomach turn.
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Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 9:11 am
She had a hard time telling herself that Lance didn't do it on purpose. His face had been shocked when her weapon crumbled, but then she remembered a high shrill in her head, Leroy's final call of pain when he had trusted her to keep him safe. It was hard, at the moment to accept that Lance didn't mean too. He was a new leader, new to the power...She knew all of this. But it didn't stop her from being angry, from being sad. It didn't stop her from a despair she could only feed.
"Why?" Nevada hissed, "Who on the Island do you know that their weapon broke? That Leroy died? Died. He's dead now..." She sniffed back tears.
Her heart ached when Stormy told her about her own guilt and she looked to the ground, the glare easing away.
"Lance told me that they are always listening Stormy. That I couldn't tell you about it because it's just another reason for them to kill us or worse...the whole mist division. We are under scrutiny because of Aria, and anyone that follows her. How was I suppose to tell you when I wasn't even sure if you still trusted her?" She shook her head.
"I couldn't even tell you after new years. Because you were Aria's daughter and I was Lance's! It was like....It was like showing me where we stood." Nevada looked up now meeting Stormy's gaze.
"I took missions to stay away from you, so I wouldn't tell you. I stayed with Otto because it was easier for me to talk to him without worrying that sides would interfere. I was trying to do what Lance said. Keep low, keep quiet. Keep you safe from this." She shook her head.
"The only one that caused this mess was myself. For being stupid, for going along with it at first until I could only tell Lance. And now...now I'm done. I brought my own demise." Stormy wouldn't have to pay for her mistakes anyways, it was better to know that perhaps her death wouldn't be a complete waste.
She tried not to let that thought justify it.
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Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:37 am
"Sides...?" Her voice faltered with shock. "Nevada, when...when did this become an issue of sides?" Was that how she had been thinking all this time? Stormy was at a loss for a moment, trying to comprehend everything she said.
Nevada had been avoiding her. Avoiding. Trusting only Lance, bumming with Otto, and acting like nothing was wrong with any of that. And here Stormy thought she had just been clingy.
"You--" Her throat constricted with a mixture of anger and pain; she had to swallow hard to get the words to come through. "I've been there with you through all of it," Stormy began in a tight voice. "I was there when you missed Alaska so much you didn't want to be alone. I was there when things went wrong with Tuck and Otto back to back. I was there when you screwed up with Roland so badly you made yourself forget. I was there everyday for at least a couple of hours when you were in a coma, reading and talking t'you, holding your hand, 'cause I-I knew you would make it."
This was what she hated most about getting angry, that the more it built up inside of her the more likely she was going to cry, and who would that help? It would just make her look weak, and she wasn't--she was indignant.
"I've always been there even when I didn't agree, like with Chel or that damn promo of yours. I told you, I told you we needed to focus on the mission, but when you abandoned it to follow Aria? I still followed you, Nevada!" Stormy made a frustrated motion with her hands. "I should've stopped you right there, I know I'm guilty of that and so much more--but I didn't leave you to do it alone. I was there like I've always been, at your back, not--not on some stupid other side!"
Thane murmured something about keeping calm, but she couldn't follow his advice. For all her passive qualities, on the inside Stormy was all emotion, all sensitivity. The fact that there had even been a sliver of distrust when she had chosen not to do the same in turn, when she didn't understand why still, offended the very senses.
Stormy took a step closer, staring Nevada down. "You didn't keep me safe, you just kept me in the dark t'make yourself feel better, 'cause I'm still just a child aren't I. You'd rather believe what six hours in another world tells you than what I do? When did I ever give you a reason not to trust me, Nevada? When I decided someone marked as a traitor doesn't have to be bad?" She meant to stop, but it was word vomit, bile rising from her throat, eyes starting to sting. "A-Am I poison too?"
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Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:59 am
"It...It always was!" Her hands shook again, this time from fear and not anger. She was wrong, Stormy, she was so wrong. She was always wrong and she wasn't sure how to make the logic of it justify how wrong she was.
"It's always black and white! Aria is on the side with Halloween, the creatures we are hunting, that tortured us when we were small. She's helping them and not helping us. She's on the side that took my eye from me!" She was starting to panic, her thoughts spiralling, the fragements of herself were slipping again.
"They took my eye, and then we caught Aria talking to them and you volunteered to help her. I couldn't leave you alone with it, but I couldn't stand the idea of doing anything that helped Halloween. I told Lance...I told him because he knew what it was like. He knows it better. He's NOT on Halloween's side."
The angerier that Stormy got, the more Nevada felt smaller, scared and weak. It was a stark contrast to how they used to be. It was all the mistakes building up and piling on top of each other until it buried them both.
"You stopped giving me reason when you chose Aria." Nevada whispered, "When Aria become the line that I wouldn't cross. She said your name on that promo Stormy. She said your name. You can't tell me that you haven't met with her more then once, agreed to help her..." The accusation was clear. "I was keeping you in the dark because I thought it was the only way I could keep you safe from myself. From everything I did. Because Lance told me to remember that they were watching, that this place only needs one thing to kill us off. Do you not see that?!?" She threw up her hands.
"I was so scared, I was terrified to tell you because you want to please everyone, you want to make sure everyone is okay. I needed to be okay so you wouldn't see it, so you wouldn't attempt something stupid by trying to be in the middle of things. Yet you are."
Am I poison too?
Nevada's face paled considerably. Was she poison? Was Stormy poison? Maybe she was.
No her mind wasn't right, she wasn't right. Stormy wasn't poison. She was the only thing that kept her sane. Those days when she thought the Island was the worse thing in her life, Stormy had been there to help.
/but she sided with Aria/
/She didn't do anything when Leroy died.../
/she was still a hunter, she didn't have to suffer through this/
/it wasn't her fault, but it felt like it./
"I need to go...I don't...I can't talk about this anymore." She needed to leave, she needed to go, she wanted to run to Otto again, use him to stablize herself.
To stop her mind from crumbling faster.
"You don't understand, you don't understand who I am now...I'm broken." Nevada tried to move past the smaller girl. "I'm broken, useless. I can't do this."
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Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 12:00 pm
There it was again: black and white. It was either good or bad and never in between, never anything they didn't like. Chafing restrictions. A small part of Stormy recognized that Nevada wasn't in a healthy state of mind now, that she shouldn't be forcing all of this bottled emotion onto her. But if not now, when? Not saying anything would mean not changing anything, would mean she was accepting that this was their fate.
But her worst fears were being realized: Nevada didn't trust her anymore. She was leaving.
Part of her wanted to just let it go, but she just couldn't. She knew what Nevada wanted to do, because running away had always seemed easier and more glamorous; she did it pretty consistently herself. But leaving it like this, as painful as it was already, was wrong.
Nevada hadn't answered her question.
(Maybe she didn't have to.)
"You're not." Something checked Nevada's movement onwards: a balled up iron fist at the back of her shirt. "You're not useless," Stormy said forcefully. "You're not broken. I don't care what they say, and I don't care if you don't believe in me anymore, or if I'm the worst thing to happen t'you since that incident: I'm not giving up on you." Her expression twisted into something forlorn but determined. "We're sisters, and I love you. In this world and the next, that's been the same. That will always stay the same, Nevada..." No matter how much you hurt or despise me. It was the trait that had allowed her to weather even Jack's abuses when they'd dated, that still made her heart ache when she remembered how she had lost her first, best, and only true friend before Deus. She refused to let it happen again.
(Maybe she really was poisonous.)
"Is it so hard to believe that there can be good and bad Halloween people? They have the capacity to be kind enough to stop me from dying on my first mission and cruel enough to take your eye away. It's exactly the same as believing in good and bad humans," she said with a more imploring tone, "in believing there can be people like me and you and people like Finn and Jack existing. I'm not asking you to forgive anyone--I'm...I'm begging you to believe that extremes don't have to be the answer, that what a few do doesn't speak for the whole. And that this doesn't have to be the end," she added more quietly. "Help me understand. Let me help you."
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Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:47 am
Nevada froze at the contact, in no means was she taller then Stormy but at that moment, it felt like a child, a little sister gripping at her big sister. It was like how she felt when Alaska left...except she hadn't even had a chance to bed the girl not to go. It was funny, when it came down to it, how similar Nevada and Stormy could be.
"But..." She didn't know what to say, Stormy wanted to fight for her, she wanted her to live. She was the one who lied to the girl, the one who held secrets, because she always held secrets.
"But..." She offered lamely, because she was starting to see light, a sliver of hope in the dark. Something sick and wrong twisted around her at the idea that Otto and Stormy would still want her. They still wanted her.
For the first time since she woke, tears formed at her eyes. Wet and heavy as everything crumpled on her. She sank to her knees, covering her face as everything heaved out of her.
"You aren't poison..." She heaved out of sobs, "You were the best thing to come to this island. You are so good Stormy, you are so good." She let the tears continue. "You were too good for me and I couldn't give you up. Then When I was scared you were being taken away, I -" She shook her head, "I ruined us, I ruined it by not being honest."
"I want help...." She clutched her fist in her hair, curling herself. "But I don't know how. I don't know how to help myself. I don't know who can..."
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