Up until now, everything's been easy. As strange as it might be for most people to imagine, Claire Bennet's leap off the Compound has been the best thing that's happened to her yet on Tabula Rasa. Maybe it isn't the healthiest- after all, where the leap from the Compound was supposed to help her shed that mask, come face to face with all that fate'
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Arya had never made much pretence of being other than blunt.
She wasn't talking about the way Claire was prodding at the bandages, because that's an impulse she understood, or thought she did; testing the limits, reminding oneself of where the pain was, what it was like. She'd poked enough of her own bruises in her time, stretched against tired or damaged muscles.
No, she meant the leap itself, which as far as she could tell had no apparent purpose. And maybe that look in her eyes; Arya was fairly good at reading people, translating the way a face moved in all its unconscious ways into meaning, but she couldn't figure out the context in which that expression made sense.
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"Hey," she replied in a voice slightly hoarse from disuse, trying for a smile, one that didn't quite make it there. At the very least, she could wave for Arya to come closer, pull a hand out from under the covers and hold it out to the other teen, beckoning. "Sorry."
Whatever excuse for a smile there'd been, it faded away entirely as Claire tried for her next words. "I... I slipped?"
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"You slipped," she repeated, trying out the words. "You were on the compound roof and you just... slipped?"
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She was just afraid.
"I..." Claire blinked up at Arya, then looked down, then closed her eyes altogether as a hand rubbed over her forehead, her entire body still aching from the effort it took to move. "I've been slipping for some time, Arya, but it's not- it's not how it looks. I just needed to find something out, and I did, and now I'm done."
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Struggling to soften her tone (she used to be so good at that), she draws her fingers through the girl's hair. "Claire, it's everyone. You could have talked to me about this, you know that, right? Why did you do it?" Not knowing isn't the same as a reason; it's just an excuse, a cushion, an oh, it's okay because -
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She squirmed, with some difficulty, in her bed.
"Hey," she replied at last, glad that it was easy enough to return that greeting as given. Unable to turn fully toward Mary Jane, Claire allowed her head to rest on the pillow, licking her lips, offering a tentative smile. "...honestly? I'm- I'm feeling pretty guilty. But also really... really amazing. And I don't mean because of the meds."
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"Yeah," she confirms. "I think... you know, I think that a part of me knew, or suspected, or... I never heard directly from anyone, that my ability wouldn't work here on the island, but so many people told me about how their disappeared; I can't have completely blocked that out. But I wouldn't know until I tried. Maybe I should have gone for something smaller, like. Stapling myself."
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Edging around the bed, she pulls the seat closer as she eases into it. "Claire, my God," she says, "what happened? Is there anything I can do or, or get for you or - ?" She shakes her head, abrupt, not sure what she' ( ... )
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"You scared the hell out of me," she admits. "God, we need to put, like, some serious railings up there or something, like they had on Mardi Gras, so things like this don't happen." Somehow the idea of it is even worse than the idea of people vanishing. Olive may not be accustomed to the idea, but it's common here, people just up and disappearing, but in a place like that, anything more ordinary is somehow alarming for its
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He definitely didn't think he'd be going back to the clinic this soon.
Zuko's got a scowl on his face when he walks in and stands at Claire's bedside, one that has nothing to do with his own recent experience and everything to do with how she's landed herself in here in the first place. "What were you thinking?" he says angrily, keeping his voice low and tightly controlled in an effort not to yell and get kicked out by a doctor.
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He doesn't know what's going on - it's pretty hard to kill yourself from ten feet up, and Zuko is pretty sure that wasn't her intent - but something's up, and he can't figure out what.
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But he's already seeing through her lies, apparently. Claire pulls her arms to herself, tries to cross them over her chest before the sudden sting of pain keeps them at her sides after all. "Does it even matter? It was really late at night, and it just... happened, but it's not going to happen again," she insists. "Okay? I'm not going to go wandering on the Compound roof at night again."
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