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 Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 6:04 pm
Suri had tried. She'd given it a shot, going out for evenings and dressing nice and participating in some little social cocktail hour, unwinding and letting herself feel vulnerable around a boy she used to know growing up. She could pretend for a few hours, couldn't she? To be part of society, mingle and people watch and look at faces more than she looked at numbers?
It was a mistake. It was all a mistake.
Suri shoved the double doors of the venue open, storming out into the night air. She was well acquainted with the feelings of anger and fear that fought war in her chest and made it hard to breathe, but some unfamiliar and distant emotion pricked at her eyes and caused her face to burn as she stomped away, out to a car she didn't even have keys for. It didn't matter, of course--Suri was a general of the Negaverse, she knew this, she felt the connection to Metallia steady as her heartbeat pounding in her ears.
But she'd miscalculated--someone had tampered with her memories and made her forget it all in one fell swoop. Even now, she could still smell that sawdust circus floor, feel the rope between her hands, the camaraderie for people in ways she'd never known in this life. Suri stopped at the edge of the parking lot and buried her face in her hands, resisting the urge to scream.
She'd been wrong about so many things. Trey Cameron was not some little boy to protect, nor did he want her concern. Her mind and her memories were not something she could count on to keep, even if they were the only thing she had after her body had been broken. And the emotion that she'd initially categorized as embarrassment or frustration was settling at the bottom of her ribcage as something even worse--disappointment, in herself for not seeing through the ruse, disappointment that of the two worlds, this was the one that lingered.
If Suri cared to, she could have teleported away from all of it, left Trey--no, Fafnir behind to figure the rest of his evening out. But she'd agreed to this night out, and she intended to see it through, even if all that remained was a drive home in uncomfortable silence. She stayed out of the ring of the streetlight's glare, rubbing at a burn scar at her wrist, and she waited. Once she caught her breath, she'd go back inside to find her company for the evening. She just needed a moment to think.
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Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 9:28 pm
His shiny black shoes scuffed the cement in his hurried step and Trey paused just outside the front door, swinging his head to sweep the empty sidewalk. His only sign of what had transpired just now was strands falling from his careful updo and a tightness around his eyes and mouth.
He only marginally relaxed when his eyes finally found Suri, lurking in the shadows next to the building. He almost hadn’t seen her... but the bit if movement had made it past the glare of streetlight.
Long strides ate up the space between them and he lifted his hands as he neared, pausing just before he grabbed her by the arms, and fisted instead.
“Are you alright?” Trey demanded, feeling... shaken. Still not entirely sure of his grip on what was real and what wasn’t. “I... something happened. It... messed with my mind.”
One of ours...? He wanted to ask, but didn’t. He had a lot of questions about what had happened tonight, but there were more important things first.
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Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2019 2:45 pm
She heard footsteps before she saw Trey, and her instinct was to spin around, arms up, ready to call to chaos if needed. She paused just as he did, standing for a moment in frozen parley, and forced herself to relax her shoulders, even if she couldn't quite shake the sharpness of her gaze.
"Alright is asking a lot of me these days," she responded lowly, watching his expression, trying not to feel ill herself. Still, she nodded, holding her arms in front of her, hating the feeling of being simultaneously so exposed and restricted. She wanted the study leather of her bomber jacket and the feeling of power in her veins, she wanted to run until her limbs were too tired to feel this frazzled. She focused on the impulse, bit her lower lip, and slowly it went away.
"I don't know what happened, but I was somewhere else," she insisted, trying not to meet his gaze--even if the memories were fading, a part of her still felt the chilly gaze of false-Trey, the game in trying to get his attention. "Or...I felt like I was somewhere else. Someone else. It's all jumbled."
"...Barrel racing together, when you were 10, maybe 11. Real or fake?" Were it anyone else, Suri might have simply left it alone, stewed with her own discomfort until something new and worse came to take its place. But Trey--this Trey, at least--would know more about sorting her memories out than anyone else she had easy access to. She had to try, to settle her nerves.
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Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 9:13 am
She was at least well enough to respond and he didn't see any blood... though he hadn't seen her get hit, really, either. She didn't look alright, with the tightness of her features, and the frown. Suri frowned a lot, but this was different.
His mouth worked, surprise making him scramble for an answer.
"Real. Suri, this is real. Here and now. You're Suri, the one who baby sat me when I was little, caught me trying to ride a horse without an adult and reamed me out for it. Who took me to the pool and let me play merman for hours. We lost touch, but found it again a year ago. Last Christmas when..." He stumbled there, feeling a stab of old panic and wanting to pull his walls back up, shield the hurt.
"When Chase Black put his hand in my chest, in front of Regan, Prissy and the cats, and found out I was a senshi. He took me to Laurelite." He said it as dispassionately as he could, hoping the detail would help her sort things out.
The words brought the memories into focus, assuring him this was the real life, but... other memories lingered. The smells of sawdust and fur. Popcorn and funnel cakes. The roar of the crowd, and of the lions.
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Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 10:12 pm
If Suri felt lost and adrift, then Trey's voice acted as a lighthouse, distant at first, but slowly drawing her back to familiar ground. She nodded slowly, rubbed her face, then looked at her hands, broken hands that had never known the trapeze bar after all. She frowned, trying to focus on the here and now, on pulling it out of the muck of the false memories, pretty as they might be.
"...You wanted me to come and join you in the pool so badly, but I was busy reading," she recalled, lifting her gaze. That was one life, Suri Ellis who had wanted so bad to leave a lazy summer poolside for the vast emptiness of space, to know the unknown and make her mark on history. Then he spoke of Chase and the others--another life, where Zircon had wanted so bad to control armies and now struggled to control herself. There were other lives, too, ones that Trey didn't know of--the false future where she'd failed, the knighthood she hadn't been worthy to inherit. So many fragmented lives, what was one more?
She thought about the conversation they'd been having before the lights had flickered and the world changed, pursing her lips. "It's never pleasant, being brought into the fold," she said, placing a hand over her chest above where her starseed would be, "...but your recruitment could have been better handled. By all of us. Things could have been better explained. I could have checked in."
Suri looked down, danced around the apology she fought herself to give. "...Are you alright?" She didn't bother distinguishing whether she meant from this evening or everything else. Given his sudden haunted expression, even she could guess it was a little of both.
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Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 6:49 am
Trey's face darkened, a new tightness in his brows and mouth as his temper flared. He felt it burn in his chest, right where Labyrinthite had shoved his fist. It drowned out the memory of the pool, of the horse, and the lions.
"That's what Chase says whenever we talk about it." He said tightly. " 'I should have handled it better'. It doesn't make it better."
Her soft question cooled him a little and he looked at the ground, a muscle in his jaw working till he had ordered himself again. Trey stuffed his hands into the pockets of his suit coat, fighting with himself over what response to give her. The ready-made one, that always sprung to his lips without thought? Or the truth, painful and raw as it was?
"No." He said after a while. He couldn't bring himself to look at her while he said it. "We just got attacked by who knows what, to start, but I haven't been 'alright' since... last year. But its never really mattered whether I was alright or not to anyone but... anyone but Rowan, and I've learned how to live with that, how to function with it. I'm alright because I have to be. I have expectations to meet that don't bend just because I've got my mind on other things."
Trey looked up, his eyes serious and a rare frown on his face. "Rowan's gone and neither Joellen nor Chase are going to accept anything but my best, regardless of my mental state."
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Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 11:23 am
Suri’s eyebrows raised at that tone, her posture straightened where she might have been leaning in. It was easy for her own temper to flare to life, too--she hadn’t been the one responsible for his corruption, and she was trying to reach out and extend the olive branch after a stressful evening that he had started by suggesting they go. But she held her tongue before she snapped back on impulse, to chide as if he were a subordinate officer or a child. He was neither of those, and Suri supposed it wasn’t truly extending the olive branch if she was only going to snap at him for showing anything short of gratitude. She watched him, taking note of the lines on his face, the tick to his jaw, recognized the tension he held in his spine. Suri could work with that--these emotions were ones she used more commonly than ‘idly pleasant’.
So she tried again. Suri forced her shoulders down and exhaled, willing herself to be as calm as a general of experience should have been. “You’re right--we were attacked, and--I forgot who I was, I couldn’t power up, so I couldn’t tell you based on aura. The lion...well...it looked like a lion. I’m not certain what it actually was.” She rubbed her temples and shook her head, but she tried to listen, to think of how she might have reacted a year out of her own drafting. Given what she remembered, she had to concede that Trey was comparatively taking this all in stride. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
She knew what it was to bear the weight of Chase’s expectations, had met Trey’s mother before, but couldn’t imagine the empty space where Rowan used to be. It should have stung, to know the other Cameron boy was gone, but Suri felt oddly numb to it, like he may has well been part of a false life. Frowning, she set that observation aside for another time. It wasn’t something she need worry about, with Trey needing help in the here and now.
“...The expectations...don’t go away,” she offered, reaching up to tidy some of the loose strands of hair at his brow. “I don’t know how to help with that, or your brother. But I do know that you can’t expect yourself to answer to all of these demands if you aren’t tending to yourself first.” It wasn’t advice she used herself, but…do as I say, not as I do.
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Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:32 am
"I'm aware they don't go away." He said with a wry twist to his mouth. "I've spent my whole life living up to expectations..."
She reached to tuck his hair back and he allowed it, bowing his head a little towards her hand. It felt affectionate, and he wondered the last time someone had touched him with affection rather than pride of ownership. Rowan... He shook his head.
"I take care of myself. I could hardly do everything I do if I didn't, so I honestly don't know what else I'm supposed to do. Wallowing hasn't gotten me anywhere and it certainly hasn't helped put me in a good light with Chase. And showing any sort of anger about it..." He couldn't help but remember the last time he'd shown his temper to Laby, and where that had gone. "Well. It was satisfying for a moment, but then what? There are no quick fixes, I know that. So I'm just trying to keep pushing through it. I'm good at putting on a good face... most of the time."
He shrugged.
"It has to get better eventually. But what about you then? Are you okay now? I saw your face, back there. And you said you forgot yourself... Are things coming back?" It was easier to turn the subject to her then keep dwelling on his own painful thoughts. He'd already shared more than he'd share with anyone but his brother.
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Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 4:33 pm
Suri knew what it was to live in the shadow of other people's expectations--her parents', the Negaverse, and most crushingly her own. She listened, let her hands fall away, watched his face as he spoke, and raised an eyebrow when he trailed away after talking about his anger. She knew what it was to let a temper get away from her too, to act rash for a momentary rush of satisfaction only to suffer for it later. Her record had so many reprimands of late, too many for someone of her station, but then, it had always been difficult for her to toe the line between standing up for herself and all-out assault. Hadn't it? Some of her memories were still hazy and a little jumbled, but sometimes she thought she'd been a calmer person years ago, before the chaos and the injury and the war. More determined, less erratic. It was simply part of the price she paid for power, wasn't it? Her peace of mind?
She stopped thinking about it before her thoughts could swirl any darker, and pursed her lips.
"I'm fine," she started, crinkling her nose. Trey was putting himself at risk by admitting his weaknesses to a superior officer, a lesson he should have already learned with Chase, and it would not do for a good example if she were to return the favor by sharing her own insecurities. But she also had a responsibility to tend to him as her ward and family friend, to lead the way to him settling into his duties by showing him in good faith that everyone struggled. It was talking in circles and intricacies that made Suri shake her head, muddied everything else, but in her myriad of considerations she had a final thought:
When had it gotten so bad that she was afraid to tell Trey Cameron the truth?
Grappling with her thoughts, she bit her lip. "...Well. I will be fine, I should say." Suri spoke slowly, struggling to find the words--between this and fighting the creatures inside, she would have gladly taken the battle. "It's...well. I don't know how to explain it. It's hard. It felt like I was living an entirely different life..." Her eyes narrowed, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. "...And it's not the first time my mind has been...tampered with. It's starting to feel like too many lives, too many visions to pick out what's real."
Suri bit her lip--it was too much to admit all at once, she decided, but there was no taking back what she'd said now. "No one else can know," she added, a sharpness in her voice that almost resembled fear. "That I was...incapacitated tonight. It's not a good look. For appearances." How could she explain it, that she was such a failure to the Negaverse that the wrong move could have her removed? What would Trey think of her then, other than washed up and useless? She tried the words, but nothing came, and so she stewed on her confession instead, covering her mouth with shaking hands.
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Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 6:06 pm
Trey's mouth turned down in confusion and his brows drew together to form a line between them.
"I wouldn't tell anyone about tonight... especially not if you wanted it kept private. Who's business is it anyway?" He said, his tone edging on sharp at the end. She seemed... well, visibly upset by the idea of someone knowing. Like it was dangerous. It put his hackles up, even if the idea of him doing anything about anyone who decided to cause trouble with it was laughable. Useless first level senshi that he was... Suri was the general, not him.
He dropped his eyes as his jaw worked. He'd learned first hand about how unkind the negaverse could be, but it was worse, somehow, when he considered it being unkind to Suri. It upset him, of course, but not in the same way this upset him. There was still a note of that fierceness in his eyes when he finally raised them and reached out, taking her hands away from her mouth and squeezing her shorter fingers in his long ones.
"Lets go home. There isn't anything more we can do here. Hopefully familiar surroundings will be grounding. I can get you some tea along the way, or coffee... something warm to hold." The walls had dropped lower than they probably ever had, tonight. They would be back up tomorrow, mostly likely for both of them, but he was not in a hurry for it now. "Whatever happened tonight, we made it through it. We're both in one piece. I consider that a win, even if it might seem insignificant."
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Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:51 pm
Suri smiled, but it wasn't a happy thing, more haunted than sincere. It was the privilege of the naive to anger at their situation, to assume it was something to fight. "Everything we accomplish is business to the sovereigns, Trey. There's no keeping secrets, no running from the truth--and they frown upon weakness." Weakness like me, she thought but didn't say. If Trey hadn't done the legwork to look up her files in the database, then she didn't feel particularly inclined to share all of her individual failures, not now when she was feeling so exposed.
But she nodded at the notion of going home. "I have tea at home," she countered softly, her voice distant while she considered her hands in his. He felt so warm in comparison, the sensations dulled in her fingertips, and even in the low light she saw the outline of the burn scar on her wrist, all testaments to her mistakes, tonight being the latest. "But you're right. There's nothing gained here--we can take a moment, regroup, get out of this dress so I can breathe," she glowered, looking further down at her glittered, tucked in body, only to glance up at him again with an eyebrow raised.
"You and I have different definitions of 'in one piece' and 'win'. But we can discuss that over tea." Weakly, she squeezed his hand in return.
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