|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 6:06 am
Zia suffered what seemed like an infinitely long elevator ride from the basement to the penthouse floor of the building keeping up the plucky and sarcasm driven demeanor she had put on after her suggestion to move the mirror to earth, although she had gone significantly quieter beyond the occasional, "It'll be fine."
The silence of the elevator was stifling, though, and she noticeably almost broke a few times, steadying herself by stiffly gnawing on her lower lip.
The many vices around the apartment ended up undoing it, however.
The reality had sunk in that Nehelenia's mission had not been impossible, it had been very doable. That there had been a way out, a possible happy ending, and she failed. She failed to see it there and now it was too late. Cassandra wasn't going to take back one lonely cat with everyone else dead or corrupted. Zia had done more than eternally ******** up her civilian life, she had ultimately failed her one chance to reclaim her autonomy and humanity.
Combined with the goings on of everything else, from the murders and purifications and grand returns, the wave of depression that hit that night had been crushing, and led to stealing away and hiding, as usual.
It had been a long time since she withdrew this badly. So long, in fact, she was stuck with the reminder that she used to hide by going out and causing trouble with Realgar, who had been a friend wonderfully separate from her ******** up life and had been a safe outlet.
So much time had passed that he was her roommate and no longer a self destructive force to seek out.
Zia hadn't been on the roof of the penthouse much before. One or two times to see what was up there. But after days of hiding in her room or creeping down to the basement to stare at the dead mirror in a daze, she had decided that here might be far enough away, just to get away. Fall led to colder night but she had a blanket and booze and a pack of cigarettes. She could hide up here for a while and watch the city.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 2:51 pm
"Well... this is familiar." Xanthus' voice cut over the backgound noise of the city as the roof door closed behind him, and his foot steps made gritty noises on the rooftop. "I recall you never did end up flicking cigarette butts at people." He offered, holding out a cup of coffee where she could reach it, a dark, slightly over brewed peace offering that might, upon closer inspection have a few grounds in it. "Sorry, it's horrible. Need coffee too much to make coffee I guess." Even bad coffee seemed better than sleeping. These nightmares were much harder to shake off than the previous ones had been. There'd been bits of... well... pleasantry in those dreams. Not in these. There had been people he cared about, even loved... not just mindless inescapable horror he couldn't change. He'd shrugged into his ridiculously loud racing jacket, the orange and blue clashing with the more subdued forest green sweater. The sweater, alone at least, actually looked good on him usually, bringing out brighter tones in his eyes like bits of olivine. Instead of... well. Olives. Zia generally looked good in pretty much anything, though at the moment even she looked mostly tired and ragged, or at least thats the part he saw, instead of the usual careful facade. "So." He started, hoping to open a line of communication, some line of discussion, but then stopped, everything he could think of off hand, he was reasonably sure, would just make her shut down more. Or chase him off. "...Coffee.." He finished, feeling lame, waiting with a mug in each hand, to see what would happen.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:31 pm
Zia's shoulders drew up under the blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders into something of a hunched forward posture when Xanthus spoke. Apparently his footsteps had gone unnoticed.
"No, I just hate them from afar," She muttered, her heavy eyes flicking to him before looking back out ahead. And then the corners of her mouth pulled back in her typical smile, which she had done her best to perfect to pristine false cheerfulness. "Wow that was bitter. Give me some of your shitty coffee," She said, injecting a laugh into her words as she took the mug with a weird little salute in thanks.
It lasted for a few seconds before she decided she was too tired to hold it up and sank again.
She stared at the coffee. Zia's weakness was coffee. But not good coffee, as would normally be implied by her upbringing and palette. She liked sugary sweet dessert flavored coffee with syrups and whipped cream and sprinkles until it was dessert.
But in the wake of depression, insomnia, and being practically a zombie, she held the mug under her nose with a contended sigh and then reached for the booze to spike it, holding the bottle awkwardly in his direction as an offer.
She went back to hunching, this time with the near toxic combination of caffeinated burn lingering under her lips and held by both hands.
"Thanks... for your help. On the moon I mean. I feel better knowing that thing is where I can keep an eye on it," She murmured. "Are you still mad at me?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 3:48 pm
"...A little." He admitted. He was tired of lies, and lying about things, and shaded versions of the truth. "But not as bitter as this mug of crap." He muttered, eyeing the coffee cup after he took a rueful sip. It really was a disaster, he'd almost forgotten to put the filter in, and hadn't manage to clean out all the grounds... most of which he was convinced were lurking in his cup, and he took the bottle to spike his own, figuring that if nothing else, he would at least possibly not remember how bad it was. "Mostly I'm just ********' tired. I want to go to sleep and not dream about something ******** up." It couldn't be normal to have so many nightmares, not that he really remembered. But surely it wasn't just a thing people dealt with normally... "You know I don't like information games." There wasn't a nice way to get around it, and he wasn't sure he had the energy to even try and sugar coat it. "And I don't like feeling like an side show attraction either." He added, with a sour note to his voice. Zia was not the only one guilty of this, but she hadn't helped, flapping his arm around like a puppet. She however, hadn't been the one implying the superiority of Cavaliers, absent, and, as far as he was concerned, a purely decorative title for useless people. He was definitely too tired to be charitable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 1:24 pm
"Me too," Her whisper about wanting to sleep was so hoarse almost not audible voice made it into the sentiment as she coiled over the rising heat from the mug.
His statement about information games felt like an accusation, one that made her tightened how closely she hunched over herself. A rising noise made its way from her chest to her throat with increasing power and volume before it was choked into suppression, and from there it dribbled into an ugly and quiet sob, and then finally outright crying.
Her head had been feeling more and more fractured. The ominous feelings about going to the moon culminating in what felt like programmed information when she landed had become retroactively worrying the more she thought about it, and had started to feel like the control over her own autonomous, physical sense of self had been an illusion all along. There was still something unwelcome in her head. Combined with being completely tired, it made for one hell of a crybaby attitude.
"I'm not playing any games with anyone," She heaved out. "I'll tell you whatever, but if I say I don't know then I don't know!"
Someone was projecting. But Thraen's insistence she had always known about the mirror and had been tricking him to get up there still stung and still stuck when it was just the cherry on top of the 'my head is not my own' paranoia sundae. And the tears were especially undignified.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 3:30 pm
"I'm no..." He started, then trailed off, awkwardly, as she started to sob. Not that he guessed he could blame her. Not sleeping, then the trip to the moon... it was like having your nerves sandblasted. "...I believe you about the Mirror." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You haven't been sleeping either huh?" Or he had to assume it. She had bags under her eyes almost as impressive as his, and there was only so much make up could do even if you did use it. "Probably not a good sign right? No coincidences in Destiny City. Or...well... not goddamn many."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:00 pm
"No," Zia said with a deep sniffle and tried to rub the tears off her cheeks. "Sometimes I get migraines, though. They get bad and I black out. And then sometimes I hear singing and I wake up and I can tell I was sleeping because of the hours on the clock. That's all."
She managed to calm down enough to sip at the vile concoction in her mug, and cringed as it made its way down her throat.
"Is there something you want to know?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:08 pm
"Well at least that's one of us then." He sighed. She'd seen enough, and remembered enough, he didn't want to imagine what her nightmares would be like. "That... arguably sounds worse though." Singing? How... weird. He hadn't heard any singing in his dreams, though he wasn't sure he would have noticed if there was. "...I don't know..." He sighed. He didn't think she'd answer anything about Castor. Not directly anyway, and he didn't honestly think the mirror was causing his nightmares, though he didn't imagine it was making things any more restful... "You... remember the crash right?" He knew she'd know the one he was talking about. "...There... weren't... there weren't any powered people there that day right? Not... not that we'd notice, right?" He just wanted to make sure it was just a dream. That he was just blending things together in his head because they were terrifying.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:29 pm
"Her singing. The lieutenant," Zia mumbled in something that sounded almost scowly without further explanation.
She went for another sip, but thought better of it when the bitterness hit her nose.
"The crash? You mean... your..." She turned her wide, hazel eyes on him in questioning confusion and then quickly retracted them to stare back down into her cup.
"I wouldn't know," She answered. She remembered it was a spectator, although her attention hadn't been on the race until after it happened. She never watched those things when she was told to come along, and was usually fielding interaction with whatever young associate she was told to be friendly to or reading something. "I didn't... I mean, I didn't get any clue about this powered stuff until the epidemic. Why would there be anything powered at your race?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:42 pm
"******** if I know, you know I don't remember much about that." He shrugged, took a sip of coffee and almost spat it out again immediately, grimacing instead as he swallowed it. "Jeezus that's ******** awful." "I don't know. I don't think there actually was... it's just... nightmares. You know. They don't have to make sense." He debated over telling her, or not telling her. She'd clammed up when he'd told her what Castor had done... but she'd wonder if he didn't tell her. "...I keep dreaming about it last couple days, but in my dreams... Castor is there, he causes the wreck, he rips apart any bike that gets near him, and..." He stopped, and didn't add and then he comes for me. "...It's just a bad dream." One that had been waking him up in cold sweats, tangled in the sheets, restless and afraid to go back to sleep.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:59 pm
Zia's grip around her mug tightened with white knuckle force once Xanthus shared the content of his nightmares.
And suddenly with only a long, sustained whine prefacing what was to come, she was crying again.
"I'm sorry I'm such a s**t judge of character I didn't think he was going to mass murder a bunch of baby lieutenants," She babbled in a wail with increasing pitch until the final syllable in 'lieutenants' merged into a perfect 'eeee' of a whine. Zia had been sleepily counting all of her relationships and alliances with sleepy lenses and it was not going well, and once Xanthus shared that he had been dreaming of Castor's destruction, it all just kind of bubbled into a weird mess.
She probably wouldn't feel quite so weepy once she got some decent sleep and a clear head. Assuming she ever got decent sleep again.
The clear head was also out of order as she hunched again and then sluggishly fell to lay on her side, in a slow enough motion she didn't even spill her hell-coffee
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:31 am
Xanthus flinched at the sound, which raked sharply against tight strung nerves like a bow across a violin, and knotted the muscles in his neck and shoulders tightly. "Aw Christ... Zee..." For a second he thought something was seriously wrong, that he'd have to run to the phone and try and dial the emergency number or something, but that didn't seem to be the case, it was, it appeared, stress and exhaustion. "Zee I didn't even see it coming, and I fought him as a lieutenant. Those two went... really wrong somewhere and that's on them." He put down the coffee and headed her way, deciding that, chances of being smacked and dignity be damned, he was going to carry her in and put her to bed if she wouldn't stand up. Then he'd go to the couch and watch bad movies until he passed out. Nightmares be damned, he needed sleep. She needed sleep. This was a horrible conversation for them to be having in this state. "C'mon. You're going to go lie down."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 7:29 am
Although the sobs it cut through were still very present in her voice, Zia recoiled from his approach and pulled the blanket tightly over her shoulders again with a very deliberate and forceful, "Bullshit."
Still wild eyed, she glanced to him, and then seemed to settle in stubbornly.
"You know he told me he was going to cut a bloody swathe through this city and I said go for it," She muttered, the bitterness resurfacing under the tears. "And if the details had been different, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't care at all. It's Operation Rota all over again, and I never know... my head just... there's these fractures, and all of these memories and goals that aren't mine. Programming, and war and I look at something and think 'I'd never do that' but then I remember, so clearly, and I already did.
"Helen, Ares, Castor, Orpheus, it never... I can't..." She gripped the sides of her head and cringed again as a wave of migraines came on. "I was with a guy for two years and he was Dark Mirror the whole time. The whole time. I like to think I can play the stupid game with no power, but I can't. I'm just everyone's toy," She heaved out, descending into sobs again.
"You know," She sniffed once she could intelligibly speak again after the latest wave of crying. "I hated Helen so much, for all these years. I thought... I thought she awakened me and told me to find the path home and that it didn't really exist. That she just pulled me into this bullshit with no way out and left us all to rot with false hope when she died. And then that ******** mirror is there... all along..." Se waved one hand up towards the moon, "And it was my job to find it and I was so slow and stupid that I didn't until everyone else was corrupted or dead. And it just hit me with all of this. All of these things, that I was hating her for years when in reality I was just stupid and incompetent and ******** blind."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:08 pm
"Y..." she told him to what? He floundered, drowning for a moment in an surplus of uncontrolled emotion. He took a deep breath, with some part of his mind surprised he could, when he felt like he'd just plunged in over his head into a space that was full of cold and dark and angry.
He wanted to take her shoulders and shake her, to hang those deaths around her neck the way Castor and Pollux wore them. To shout at her and tell her that they'd taken the bodies. That their families would have no consciousness, and did that make her happy?
But it wouldn't. It wouldn't help either.
"...You're not powerless. You have never been powerless, or stupid." He spoke as evenly as he could. "You've been finding ways to collect information in a game about keeping secrets since the beginning, and what you were looking for was on the ******** moon. Which apparently requires a special pass, lunar phase, and other song and dance to get to, and you are going to bed before you do something you'll regret tomorrow when your hang over makes any migrane worse, or so help me I will pick up the phone and let the appropriate people know I think you're currently a danger to yourself and I will personally be watching the building for a fluffy a** tail escaping."
His voice became less even as he went, even a bit angry, because goddamnit, he was exhausted, and... and damnit he was angry, and here he was again trying to put people together again or make them feel better, and God knew he was s**t at this. He'd alienated Bischophite, pissed off Titan... his trip to Mars with Zircon had... he wasn't even sure what she thought of him now. Probably thought he was some horrific freak.
"Zee destroying yourself won't undo anything that's happened, ok? Won't work for me, won't work for you, won't work for anyone. There's no magic confessional for this, there's just us trying to find a way to get on with the fact we ******** up and we're still alive. So... so lets go to bed. "Castor was probably going to do that s**t even if you didn't wave your hand and bless him like the pope of not taking idiots seriously. He's confusing the present and the past, we heard him when they did their little demonstration, ok?"
Not her fault, even if it probably hadn't helped.
"I'm too tired to be good at this and I'm not good at it to begin with."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:31 pm
"Screw Castor," Zia responded with a flatter tone than she'd been expecting.
He was a pattern repetition and little more. She'd enjoyed barbed exchanges with him, but she hadn't helped him plan like Ares, and she hadn't whispered ideas in his ear like Tyndareus.
And on top of that, she realized, she hadn't done those things with them either. That had been Zirconia, whose memories seemed intensely more vivid than her own right now.
Orpheus had been on her mind lately, the more she dug in to Dark Mirror souls and how truly dead they were. How she'd been with someone so completely consumed by Chaos, who had used their identity to lie and mess with her head.
"Here's how ******** stupid I am," She said, steeling her nerves before gulping down her now cold coffee and cringing at the bitterness until her face hurt.
"Orpheus attacked me once. In an alleyway, after he'd been following me for a while. Two years ago, back when you were still... you know."
She rubbed her neck, remembering his hands around it.
"I thought I was going to die. And then he whispered things in my ear that showed just how much he'd been following me, as he sat on top of me, and reminded me how ******** breakable humans are in the world of magical assholes who do what they want. I'd never been that scared or destroyed like that in my life, and you know what? I went home and cried to him. About what he did to me. Because all along they were the same person, and all along he was in her goddamn court. And if he hadn't caught me on the back of your bike that night and gotten this paranoid idea I was cheating on him, I might've married that a*****e. I was with him for two ******** years at that point, I mean."
She slammed the cup down and sat upright, fact contorted into something less weepy but not any more happy.
"You're the only person I've ever thrown my lot in that didn't destroy me or vice versa. The only one ever."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
