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 Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 8:25 pm
Immediately following FateWhen Zia came too and pushed herself off the floor, she was not Zia. For physical appearance's sake she was, physically at least, all Zia in civilian form. But the way she carried herself was different. Pompous, and a bit stiff as if she wasn't used to being in control of her body. Her face was structurally the same but the microexpressions of the muscles, the way she held herself, it all seemed like a different person not immediately recognizable. She seemed older, more mature for all appearances, and as she slowly walked through the penthouse as if she had never been here before.
She absentmindedly lifted one of Zia's textbooks off of the coffee table and turned it over in her hands as if it was a tome of alien knowledge, stopping only when she noticed one of the cats slinking through the room. They were met with an animalistic and hostile hiss to chase them off.
The true parallel was awake, and taking stock of all that she had changed while she laid in dormancy.
"I've missed a lot.." Was all she murmured once the other feline was out of her presence.
---
Zia was waiting for Xanthus to get home in a crumpled state on the floor with her back to the panoramic window, gripping her head with violent ferocity that left red marks in her temples where her fingers dug in.
She had spared a painful glance to her phone, briefly considering texting him, but suddenly afraid to move or focus effort on the action. The fear was irrational and without basis and it seemed to be increasing, simple actions barred from her grasp by unexplainable emotional aversion to simple things.
She was reduced to whimpering and waiting and hoping he didn't stay out too late, because he was the only person guaranteed to show up.
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Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 9:28 am
"Sorry for the wait, I lost the bus schedu..." Xanthus started to excuse himself as he stepped into the room with a paper bag of take out. He'd hung up the keys to his motorcycle as a result of sleeping poorly, and didn't trust himself to drive. His concerns about road safety and their dinner fell apart the moment he saw Zia on the floor however, and he dropped the bag and bolted to her side, almost tripping on the furniture on the way. "Zia! Zia what happened? Do I need to call an ambulance?" He knew she'd been having Migranes, but this felt like a step above that.
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Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 7:28 pm
Zia felt her heart catch in her throat when she saw Xanthus, whole and young and as he always should have been, even if apparently jarred out of his mind.
She released her grip on her head and broke her position of curled up and face buried in her knees to grab him in a loud wail and cling way too tightly in a hug. And there was a long time where she couldn't really talk, and rather just cried it out with enough force to violently wrack her body with sobs.
"I'm losing my mind," She said into his clavicle in the midst of a hoarse gasp for air.
"Zirconia woke up."
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Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2014 3:50 pm
He put his arms around her because he didn't know what else to do, even when her words, when she could finally talk, sent prickles of disquiet running up his spine like a centipede with a particular vendetta aimed somewhere around the base of his neck. "We got the crystal right?" He attempted to reassure her. "And the mirror..." He wasn't sure what to say about the status of her mind, or his mind, both of them had started to come a bit ragged around the edges lately, And he'd had such weird dreams.. some of which were a relief compared to the dreams about Castor, but grim and clinging in their own right. "Let me help you to the couch..." He couldn't call 911 over this... trying to explain someone having a second, unwelcome soul in them would get you locked up... or possibly arrested and then locked up, depending on your audience, and he wracked his brain trying to think who could help with this. Babylon had used his...creepy a** glowy s**t and his shoulder had started healing faster... but that was a physical injury. This was something rather different. He doubted even Babylon's creepy space cooties could do much here.
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Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2014 8:13 pm
Zia didn't have a particular preference to sitting on the floor, but she didn't seem to have much of an inclination to move up from it either as she ended up taking to digging her nails in to Xanthus' shirt. He was solid. He was security. And even grumpy and sleep deprived and doubting his own sanity, he was a tether to something outside herself.
Even coaxed to the couch, letting go seemed to be an impossibility.
The negativity of his reaction seemed to bring a wave of misplaced relief to her face, though. Probably because old reactions to Zirconia's vanishing seemed to have so little concern for her personal autonomy and ranged from playful disappointment to inquiring for how long. Xanthus' skin crawled, and that was a weird sort of comfort.
"There were these weird visions and this flash, and pain and suddenly she was out and talking and... And she was in control for a little while and I just don't..." She lost her breath, and gasped for it back. And soon the gasping turned into the beginnings of more bawling out of the sinking fear that came on. Being a passenger again, watching everything and being unable to speak or scream, or move.
Crybaby.
The insult seemed to put some brakes on the descent into panic for a brief and incredulous look to the side at the voice in her head.
I touched a book and glanced out of the window, I hardly dismantled the world around you. Let me speak.
Xanthus was finally granted release from Zia's death grip as she took to holding her head and buring her forehead against her drawn up knees. "Shut up shut up shut up..."
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Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:35 pm
"What...kind of weird visions?" If he were to go armed into a battle on behalf of Zia's ownership of her own mind and body, information would be his weapons, and he'd get them by questions... questions he wasn't sure he was going to get an answer to the way she recoiled and started chanting 'shut up'. This... this sucked. he had no idea what the hell you were supposed to do in this circumstance, who he should call, or what to do that might remotely help... well... there was... but even in the face of disaster he was sort of dragging his heels on involving. Besides, Babylon was related to his problem, as far as he knew the closest Zia had to a furry ancestor was maybe some hirsute soul or two back in the days when removing body hair wasn't a blip on the horizon. Definitely not the feline type of furry. "Zee!"
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Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 6:26 pm
"I dunno," Zia cringed out, refusing to uncoil from her position of her face pressed out of sight and held with both hands. "Stupid stuff, like everything in the future sucks."
It was a defensively short answer, and she did stop and rethink maybe he deserved a little bit more than that.
"We weren't really friends anymore, I didn't want to help you, but then I needed you and by then you were just... gone. Which is stupid because you're right here, I just wanted to, I guess... see you. And confirm," She sniffled. Very slowly gaining more calm than she had. At least enough to pull her head up.
"She won't stop talking," She added in a breathless whisper like it was a secret. "She... wants to talk."
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Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2014 3:52 pm
...Well for a rude uninvited house guest to someone's body, he guessed he could understand wanting to get some air after being dormant... well... for ages... but... yeah. "I.. had some dreams like that too." He admitted. He didn't want to think about how they'd ended, a lot of the details were still cloudy, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Weird... scary weird, that what he'd put off to a new, weird nightmare sounded a lot like something Zia had also dreamed. Her threatening him with a knife in her kitchen, then sharing dinner, talking about having married Luxor. "But I'm here. Ok? What do you need me to do?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 5:49 am
"Don't leave!" Zia blurted. It was kind of a catch all to everything, him admitting he'd also had weird future dreams, and his question about what he should do.
"I'm going to go to sleep," She finally said, resting her forehead on her knees. "Just for a little while, okay? It just hurts, fighting her down. It's not like it used to be, fighting her hurts. It's just for a little bit. You gotta make sure I come back."
There was an awkward pause as she hung on something she wasn't sure she wanted to say out loud.
"If I don't come back, you wouldn't let someone walk around with my face, right? You'd do something... about it..."
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Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 12:19 pm
"I'll be right here." he promised, even if he was still racking his brain for who he could reach out to. What she asked of him after that though, that stuck in his throat. Had he still been Realgar, he might not have hesitated to swear on it, but this stuck in his throat. "I...will do everything I can to make sure you get your body back." He swore carefully. "...But..." But he hadn't purified to become an executioner. Especially not to one of only the handful of friends he had. One of the anchor points of his existence and she was asking him to rip out. "I'm not going to swear to take on the role of judge and executioner lightly."
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Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 1:59 pm
"You're not my ******** judge," Zia seemed to briefly be revitalized by a bit of fury. "I am."
She hugged her knees a little tighter. "We switch off. You've seen it, back when you were Realgar. You met the nice kitty before you met the chain smoking drunk girl. But if I die, and she doesn't..."
She set her jaw firmly, "You wouldn't let an imposter walk around with my face, would you?"
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Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 2:33 pm
Xanthus's jaw set on reflex, and his heels dug in just at the challenge. "Zee I..." He started angrily, and snorted, frustrated,shaken. "Damnit I..." He wanted to say he wouldn't... but he didn't know if he could make such a promise and not fall apart. "Zee It's not like I can just pull her starseed." It had almost been easy, when he was Realgar. It was a casual, dismissive gesture, but if he agreed, killing Zirconia would be more violent, more personal. "If..." He sounded strangled by emotion, not happy with anything he was being asked. "I'll ... try. As long as you get what you're asking me to do." As long as she understood she was asking him to stand by and possibly watch her die, then basically kick the body. Re-kill whatever was left of her. It left him feeling like they were walking toward a huge cliff with the mirror on the edge, and a long drop into who new what on the other side. And he might be the only one left wondering where he'd land. Where he'd go. What he'd do.
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Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 3:51 pm
"I don't want to ask you to hurt yourself if it's...I just want you to know... where I stand on the matter," Zia partially backtracked with a sniffle. "If I don't get to wear my face, no one does. If there's nothing left of me anymore..."
She trailed off.
And then relaxed. It was a flash of yellow, the way she held her face, posture, everything made a familiar face less familiar. Even the melody of her voice was different as she stretched her legs and sat back against the sofa, reaching for a water bottle left on the coffee table. "The two of you are the biggest drama queens I've ever seen," Zirconia cooed, and then pet the top of Xanthus' head like she had done back when he was a lieutenant feeding stray cats. "How have you been, Realgar?"
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Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 5:07 pm
Xanthus jerked in surprise, jumping back from the touch as though she could burn him with her hands. "You're pretty calm for someone I just offered to end if it comes down to it." he snarled, and it came out sounding more like Realgar than it did Xanthus... or Kairatos. Maybe she just had that effect on him, it was the way they'd met. "I gave up that name, or did you miss hearing that?" "I've been better." He admitted. "But it's still better than being Zinkenite's dog." He'd come a ways from being a dog even. Bull of Mars. "She's trying to send you home, Zirconia."
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Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 5:26 pm
"I'm still sifting through the last two years of memories, but yes, your name change features heavily," She answered, getting up and moving to the bar, investigating what was stocked and skipping over Zia's favorites for a lighter, fruity wine.
"I'm calm because I guess I don't really see you as a threat," She said as she popped the cork and sniffed inside the bottle. "My goals do not conflict with Zia's, I am very pleased with her progress. I have no intention of subsuming her and staying. It's unfortunate she is working with Cassandra," There was a pause as she made a tall pour into a glass, watching the liquid carefully. "There is no reason for you to end me, so to speak, and I've no reason to make war. But Zia dallies. She always has."
She still moved like she wasn't used to control her own motor functions, but she operated with slow precision, doing her best to correct that stiffness. It made for a strange flair to her movements.
"I'm here for one last hurrah to see it gets completed," She said, staring at him with deliberate smugness before she stopped for a sip. "I mean already you've made the mistake of involving Cassandra. It would have been smarter to ask about the whereabouts of Ouranos. But what's done is done. And as long as she doesn't find out the particulars of her brother's death it should be a smooth ride out once she opens the channel and sees the Pyrite crystal we recovered."
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