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 Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:03 pm
Chel paced her room worriedly. The things Chris told her- they weren't Chris. She might have been able to brush it off if he was drunk or tired, but he was saying things she'd been saying last year. It was too coincidentally timed with his disappearance.
She'd promised she'd talk to Jack first. It had been their deal.medigel Text to bfg: emergency. Com 2 my room.
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:21 pm
Midsip into his third coffee, making his rounds on the Version B lepus, his phone went off. Normally put on silent while with his particular pet projects, he knew it could only be one of two things wanting his attention right now--and judging from the fact that multiple phones weren't going off, it wasn't an island wide mission alert.
Seconds within reading the short text, Jack was downing his coffee, sending a response to herald his arrival in a few minutes, and taking great strides out of the lab, removing his gloves and putting the safety goggles aside, grateful that at least the timing meant he didn't have to worry about returning equipment. A noncommittal noise was made when the trainee he was supposed to help gave him a quizzical look, followed by something along the lines of just don't let them escape.
After scaling the staircase two steps at a time, he briskly made his way to the door and ducked in. Multiple images that could have constituted an emergency had had their dark pleasure on his mind, and he found himself bracing for the worst even as he called, "Chel?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:25 pm
She met him evenly and said, "It's cool. I'm fine. I'm fine," just to salve the immediate worries she was sure his brain had conjured up. She knew that few details were the only way to make him come.
"It's Chris. He's-" She ran a hand through her hair as she moved past him to pace the room. "He came back from that mission and somethin' ain't right." She gave Jack a short moment to let the adrenaline wear off.
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:28 pm
He'd never like someone else using I'm fine. Those were his words, and he knew they had just a good a chance of being bullshit as they were being true. Normally one to eye roll one way or another when it was Chris who needed to get discussed, this time he retained eye contact with Chel, exhaling the breath he had been holding in since leaving the labs.
"Did he have an episode?" Jack prompted, remembering what he had seen while they had scoured the caves for her artifact.
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:31 pm
"No he-"
She moved kept pacing, the explanation making her more worried than she had been before. "He came back an' we were talkin' just fine and he said he just went on a normal cave mission and didn't have reception, but then he starts talkin' 'bout how I still have Merlin's powers and that I should kill H to make a show and let us escape."
Her feet turned on a dime and she looked at Jack with confusion and shaking hands. "I don't have those powers- at- at least I don't think-"
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:38 pm
What the ********> Jack couldn't help but think, though his surprise was restrained to just his brows rising, the dread all but pushed under the carpet. It had been too long; the other shoe was going to drop eventually. But wasn't that just a knight vision...? Hell if he understood the rules for legacies and their powers, much less through alternate universes.
Calmly he stepped forward and took both of Chel's shoulders, knowing he had to be the unshakeable one here even when both of them shared the same fears. "Take a few breaths for me," he said. "Then I need you to tell me what exactly happened. Do you want to keep pacing, or do you want to sit down?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:47 pm
Chel put her face in Jack's torso. She could hear the fear in his voice and how hard he was trying, but in the hysteria of everything crumbling she couldn't find calm in them.
"Don't wanna sit, but I'll stop movin'," she told him, letting the hug go and instead looking up at Jack and putting her hands over his in solidarity. "He came through the portal. I went to chew his a** out for scarin' me and Daws half t'death. He said he was pulled into a mission and didn't have time to text us or nothin'." Which was believable if it wasn't stacked up against so many other anomalies.
"Started talkin' 'bout us gettin' off the island.." There was something guilty in her eyes, but resolute too. "I ... I heard him out. Didn't agree to nothin', wouldn't leave you and Abs behind or nothin'." She blew her bangs out of her face. "Thought he was just blowin' off steam like we always do about leavin' this shitty pile of rocks."
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 9:52 pm
He wasn't particularly surprised about either the topic or her reaction to it. Chel had never made it a secret that if given a chance, she'd take her people and get the hell out of dodge. What was strange was why Chris was bringing it up now like it was somehow a possibility, like something from the vision had given him the impression that Chel could carry out his plan with the same powers. Now he thought her cousin was stupid, but he wasn't ever put in the deluded category. The timing was terribly suspicious as well.
"Of course," he said with a small nod and no trace of sarcasm, waiting for her to go on as he lifted his hands off her shoulders and simply took her hands for the time being. Chel could white knuckle and tremble as she needed.
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:05 pm
With Jack's approval she shuttled into the next part. "Then he starts askin' me if I still had Merlin's power and that I could kill a lead, make a scene and we could get out."
(Given the opportunity and 100% assurance, Chel honestly wasn't sure if she wouldn't kill H. What was one person to her freedom? Her life?)
"I went with it t'get info out of it." Now she actually did feel guilty about that one. Feeding Chris for info was not something she was proud of. Chris was her cousin, he shouldn't have been used for that. "He's targetin' H. I don't know why, but he's sure that if I go to H, I can take him out." Trembling came then. "It doesn't add up. Somethin' happened to him on that mission. I'm scared Jack." She took his hands in a tighter grip. She'd been thinking about this. "You have to go tell H. I'll lock myself in a quarantine." She looked down, waiting for his verdict.
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:19 pm
There was no musing mm this time; the noise had come with time as conversational tool, a way of filling the silence that he knew Chel hated while he deliberated. There was no stopping the uncomfortable sensation he felt, however, when she brought up quarantine again, and it showed in his expression and in his grip. Not again, not again, god damn it. He wished he could convince them both that it was just Chris having a small break from reality from, he didn't know, lack of sleep, PTSD, any number of afflictions that were common amongst hunters surviving trauma.
But why Dr. H? As far as he knew, Chris didn't have any ties to the Life lead, negative or otherwise. There was only Dr. H's knowledge of Chel's confinement from before, which had been brought up the time Jack had...
(And as the waking world begins to drag and pull at Jack, Clarice leans up to whisper in his ear, Tell him what you remember.)
His heart skipped a beat with the growing theory, the rare spark of fear fused with adrenaline once more.
"It doesn't," he agreed, still calm as he could be, running his thumbs over her skin to try and soothe her (soothe himself, remind them, together this time) while he thought. "When you noticed he was acting strange, did you ask him to summon?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:22 pm
She shook her head slowly. "No ... should I have? ********>"
She made Jack look at her. "You have to tell him. Turn me in or I might hurt people."
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:37 pm
The pulse in his jaw was as good as an audible curse, and the calm facade cracked as logic waged war against emotion. Pulling Chel in, half for the comfort and half so she didn't have to watch his stormy expression, he tucked his head over hers and tried to breathe normally.
"Just...give me a minute."
In his head, Owain was uncharacteristically silent. No whisper through the leaves, no jovial rants. A forest air charged with the calm before a storm.
"It's not going to be like last time," he murmured at length. "It won't. Assuming we even have to do quarantine." The unprecedented if piecemeal optimism spoke volumes.
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:57 pm
"I know," she said, closing her eyes and pressing her cheek into his chest. His heartbeat's erratic speed actually soothed her. His panic was her comfort. It meant he cared enough that he was as panicked and terrified as she was.
Tenebrae chose his silences well. "I'm sayin' it 'cause I want to. I can take it f'it means keepin' people safe." As in, keeping Jack, Chris and those that mattered safe. What was one lead-
"You can be Prince Charmin' and get me out like always." She squeezed his backside, stroking it lightly to assure herself just as much as him. "I trust you Hawthorn." She did, she always did. Even if Jack called that she was too big of a risk and had to be taken out, she would trust his decision. She remembered her vision in the cave, the impaling dark crystals. She'd take herself out before hurting him and others. "What d'we do 'bout Chris?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2015 8:43 am
He didn't want to have another situation where she had to be saved. He didn't want this uncertainty, this utter paranoia. No amount of visionary Chel deaths would ever prepare him for an instance in this universe where it could happen. Jack didn't know what he would do if that became the order rather than risk confinement instead; he chose to terminate that train of thought instead.
"I don't know," he replied. "Notify his leader of suspicious behavior and possible clone identity, I suppose. I'll take care of it." He began stroking her back as well, burning a hole in the wall ahead with his eyes.
"God ******** damn it," Jack muttered, and the emotion finally entered his tone.
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Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2015 11:07 am
She squeezed him a little tighter like a hug could make the impending threat go away. Jack was carrying far too much of a burden for her comfort and she wanted to take it away from him somehow, wanted to take herself away from him if it meant keeping him safe.
But there was no way to do that. She let go of his back side and put her palms on either side of his face, forcing herself to look at that storm and grab it by the tail with her own look of determination mixed with fear. "Jack Hawthorn don't you dare worry 'bout me," she tutted him, with a weak smile on her face. "I'll tell Daws and Abbi t'get to Edith. They're moons, it'll be faster." And then you don't have to worry about it.
Her thumbs ran over his cheekbones but they were shaky and she tried to keep it out of her eyes. "We'll be okay." She could cry when it was over, not now.
< And if you aren't? >
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