LOVE / LOSS

          “ what can i say?  i’m a MYSTERIOUS WOMAN. ”

          the dismissal is playful, but it’s a dismissal all the same.  bee seems to make a point not to be forthcoming, at least when it comes to the important things, like what had happened to her after she’d gone missing from the passenger seat of his car two days ago.

          he’d been a stranger to her when she asked him for a ride -- for all intents and purposes, that was still true, although conversation between them had come quite easily.  even so, today she’d slipped into that same seat as though they were long time friends.

         “ -- i won’t.  i’m stronger than that now. ”

           at least, THAT’S WHAT SHE TELLS HERSELF.  her change of heart reintroduced her to a world beyond her computer, and the part of that world she is most thankful for is certainly the phantom thieves.  yusuke, in particular, has made it easier to open up.  what she knows to be her own bizarre quirks, he seems to see as expressive.

                                MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE HE’S JUST AS WEIRD AS SHE IS.

           in truth, she’s still weaker than she’d like -- weak enough some days to want to lock herself back in her room, cut off from the rest of the world all over again.  but she has something important now, something she can’t stand to lose.  she wonders if he even knows how much it matters to her.

          YOU CAN'T CATCH HIM, HE'S TOO FAST.

                           is the rest of the team down?  yes.  could she have prevented it with a little bit of healing assistance?  also yes.

             but she’s too busy providing the most important support of all.  MORAL SUPPORT.

          it’s not unusual for wick to be SELF-DEPRICATING.  hell, if he started being kind to himself, harriet would be on high-alert, wondering if he’d made up his mind to do something irreparably stupid.  still, it’s rare to hear him say something quite so VULNERABLE so early into the bottle.

          her answer takes time.  she’s known where she stands in regards to wick almost as long as she’s known him, but opening up to him has never been a strength of hers, either.  what a pair they are.

          the request earns a cool chuckle from audrey, already halfway into the tasteful black dress that had barely made it past the door with her when she’d arrived.  she holds the fabric modestly against her chest, at odds with the sultry little grin that accompanies her approach as she climbs back into his bed to kneel over him.

          “ tell me, donovan -- does this mean you’ll miss me? ” she teases, rewarding him with a mockingly sweet kiss.  she would never let something as inconvenient as FEELINGS threaten such an advantageous business arrangement, much less one she so thoroughly enjoys.  she won’t mention that appeal of sleeping beside someone who is her equal.  it’s a luxury she could get far too used to, and that is simply not an option.

          there is a sense of SHAME associated with august’s pervasive misery -- she’ll never understand what it is he’s going through, she’ll never be able to fix it for him, and worst of all, she has played a willing ( if mostly unwitting ) hand in it with every fresh kill.  somehow dragging him into all of this had seemed borderline harmless at the start.

          but he’d still had natalie then.  june hadn’t realized back when they’d first become friends ( ? ) just how much of augie had been dependent on that little girl.  she wonders if there’s anything but the BLOODLUST left.

          tara scoffs, tossing sam an incredulous half-smile in response to his assertion.  despite her famously quick temper, his words are met with nothing but a lazy roll of her eyes and a dash of sarcastic humor.

           there’s something bittersweet in knowing just how deeply he means what he says.  even in her younger years, when she was still eager to daydream, she never would have believed anyone might love her so completely.  no matter how much she ADORES him, isaac always seems to find room to love her just a little bit more.

          after a lifetime of longing to know what it’s like to feel anything, somehow isaac feels more deeply than anyone.  but only for her.  if she hadn’t met him when she had, if her whim hadn’t carried her inside the cafe that morning, what would their lives be like now?  a life not worth living...

          encouragement and reassurance have never come easily to amber.  her father raised her on what her mom always called TOUGH LOVE.  when she struggled, he pushed her.  when she succeeded, he pushed her harder.  adapting to military life had come easily to her, as had holding her squad to the same standards that had been drilled into her since youth.

          maybe there was a time when she thought that was precisely what napoleon needed, but he had been a different person then.  she had asked more of him than he should ever have needed to give -- and the man facing her now is all that is left of him.  for once she wishes she had learned how to be more SOOTHING, how to relieve someone’s burden, rather than urge them to bear it better.

          vanya’s wide, frightened eyes meet her brother’s, and the small shake of her head is nearly imperceptible.  she didn’t do this.  no, she CAN’T have done this.  klaus knows as well as she does that she isn’t capable of ... ANYTHING.

          she’s barely able to keep her spot in third chair after a lifetime of rehearsal.  to have been able to do this -- to have turned a living, breathing man into a bloody mass on the floor -- would require something far more than an ordinary human.  no, it couldn’t have been vanya.

        the concept is entirely foreign to her.  nothing she has ever done has been GOOD ENOUGH for anyone.  not for her conductor; not for her family; not for her readers ( or the startling absence thereof. )  how can it be good enough for him that she is lying here, doing nothing at all?         instinct and upbringing both tell her that if something seems too good to be true, it’s meant to be purchased and experimented on, exploited for glory or profit, and even then, it isn’t meant for her.

        but she trusts him, doesn’t she?  there’s no other way that she could take such COMFORT from something so unlikely.