A slow hurt- and it breaks us

[seeyousoonthen]

Joe was gone and Savannah had been told she was in charge of the Children's Office. After a bit of a panic attack she had jumped right in and taken over. That was what a person did, after all. You pulled yourself together and went on. Tim had helped her through the worst of her depression back home and Peter had helped her here. She had had the

Comments

[starchilde_lost]

Emotions were raw, living things. As a telepath and empath, she'd gotten pretty good at blocking out the emotions of others so she could function. It was one of the only things she'd been glad to lose. But the sorrow of the girl in the rec room? She didn't need her powers to feel that.

She felt it every day she woke up and her mother was gone.

"Hey, you need anything?" She didn't want to intrude, some people preferred their sorrow solitary, but she couldn't walk by and say nothing.

[seeyousoonthen]

Savannah sniffled and looked up. She shook her head slowly, sadly.

"Just time, I suppose," she replied. "A good friend just disappeared and it hurts." She saw no reason to fib or sugar coat the truth of it. She wasn't one to lie, anyway.

[starchilde_lost]

Rachel almost walked away, but the nagging voice in her head wouldn't let her. "My mom was here... she left, too. Hurts like hell."

She came forward and sat nearby, giving the girl space, but staying close enough. Talking about Jean was still raw, but getting better. Not quickly, but it was getting better.

"I'm sorry."

[seeyousoonthen]

She took a deep breath to try to pull herself together. What sort of first impression was it to be so tearful and sad?

"Oh, thank you," she said earnestly, the mountain country twangy accent ringing in every word she said. "I'm so sorry about your momma. That's just terrible. This place can seem so cruel."

Savannah gathered up her pages and put them all together neatly and laid them aside.

"I'm Savannah," she added since she hadn't seen the girl before, and she would have remembered.

[starchilde_lost]

"Rachel."

She gave Savannah a weak smile, adding the other girl to her mental list of Southern belles. She was up to three, now, Rogue, Sookie and now Savannah.

"And you don't have to suck it up. I get the need to let it out. Life is cruel all over, even back home."

[seeyousoonthen]

"Isn't that the truth?" she replied with a sage nod. If she didn't look for the good it would have been easy for Savannah to get bogged down with the tragedy of it all.

"You're so sweet to sit with me, Rachel. Where are you from, then?" she asked, not so much sucking it up as simply moving forward. She knew all too well you couldn't go backwards and even worse was just stagnating where you were at the moment.

[starchilde_lost]

"I was born in New York." She chuckled, hastily amending, "The state, not the city, and I've lived there most of my life."

Her fingers traced invisible lines on the table, her mind momentarily distracted. "I've traveled a lot, though." Outer space, other dimensions, yeah, she'd traveled a lot in her time. "Never been one to stay in one place for long, I guess."

[seeyousoonthen]

"I've never really traveled. I'm from North Carolina. I'm from a little town in the mountains, but I was in Chapel Hill before I came here." And then, since she had learned through experience that not everyone understood why that was important she added, "I was going to school at UNC."

[starchilde_lost]

"What were you studying?"

Rachel was curious, she hadn't even been in school long enough to choose a major, let alone get into one. the whole thing still felt a little adult and mystical to her.

"Did you have a major?"

[seeyousoonthen]

"I was taking education courses, mostly special education. Back home I wanted to start a camp for kids with autism. A horse camp," she explained. "Have you ever heard of animal therapy?"

[starchilde_lost]

"Sure I have. Gives focus, releases endorphins and lowers blood pressure, right?"

Rachel was impressed, it was a really good dream, a good thing to do. Heck, it might have been something she might have liked, working with kids. Not that she'd ever know, she really didn't see anything but more fighting in her future.

"That's pretty impressive."

[seeyousoonthen]

"I've wanted to do it since I was, ok, twelve," she said. Savannah was happy to focus on her dreams, especially now that she'd vented all of her emotions onto to pages. There were her feelings, all in loops and lines and dots across the pages, and there her feelings could remain. She would tuck the letter into an envelope and send it away and those feeling wouldn't haunt her now that they'd been shared.

"What is it you did, then?" she asked sweetly. She was far more curious than she was interested in talking about herself.

[starchilde_lost]

"Me? I, uh..." She really needed to think of a better answer to this question, every time she was asked it, she felt more and more ridiculous about her answer.

"I'm kind of a superhero, actually. I protect the innocent when I can, stop the evil."

It was a good life, but to those who didn't have superheroes in their worlds... it sometimes sounded a little odd. She just wasn't sure which kind of world Savannah was from.

[seeyousoonthen]

Her brows rose but she wouldn't dare question the truth of it. She'd met all sorts of people here with all sorts of stories and not one of them had any reason to lie.

"That sounds amazing," she said with a bit of a nod. "Where I'm from we only had ordinary heroes. Soldiers. Police. Firefighters. Like that."

[starchilde_lost]

"They are totally superheroes, they just... don't have the superpowers that my people do."

Which made it all the more impressive in her opinion, that they could do what they do, every day, without hesitation. She had it lucky, comparatively. Although they didn't have intergalactic cults dedicated to their destruction.

Maybe that balanced it out.

[seeyousoonthen]

"They really are. Back home there was a thing. An attack. And all the firefighters and police, they were truly heroes," she said, not mentioning the soldiers. Even now, months later, it still hurt to know that the events had torn her and John apart. That he'd chosen duty over love.

"That was September eleventh, right before I turned up here," she explained, the day forever etched in her memory. "I don't think even super powers could have made a difference that day."