you're just the means to an end

Nov 01, 2009 22:35

Nita never used to hate Halloween. She'd spent so many times dressed as something else, loving that she was anonymous, wishing sometimes that she'd have a better costume, or that she'd get more candy. She remembered dressing like a witch and a ghost and a zombie. One great year, she'd actually been a princess ( Read more... )

polly o'keefe, serena van der woodsen, dairine callahan, nita callahan, alain johns, george weasley

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Comments 66

polly_okeefe November 2 2009, 06:35:50 UTC
I stared at Nita a long moment. After my mother, she was one other person that I'd been unofficially avoiding these past few months, ever since we'd gotten off on that wrong foot during the freak June blizzard. But I never could understand why she had been so short with me. And while the guilty part of me wondered what it was I had done, another part of me wondered if there was something deeper about Nita's hostility, and it made me feel guilty that I wasn't more sympathetic.

With all this guilt, it was a wonder I hadn't been raised Catholic.

I was pretty sure that Nita's current outburst hadn't been about me. I'd just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I sensed that it could very well _become_ about me if I wasn't careful. I took a step back, and raised my hands. "I have no problem," I said, soothingly.

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wizard_alive November 3 2009, 05:30:08 UTC
"Then leave me alone." She stood up, leaving the whole mess on the floor. The last thing that she wanted to do right now was talk to Polly of all people, and just then, she realised what was playing on the jukebox.

Sick of all this inertia, oh, won't you mend me?

She felt vaguely sick, and shook her head as she took a step back. "I hate this place," she murmured, more to herself then to anyone else in the rec room.

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polly_okeefe November 3 2009, 05:40:48 UTC
I would have left, and perhaps I _should_ have left, except Nita's muttered comment made me stand my ground. It was a free country, after all, and a public area, so I shouldn't _have_ to leave if I didn't want to. At the same time, I felt that Nita deserved a sympathetic ear, even if she didn't particularly want one.

So, I stayed where I was. Which was near the middle of the rec room, out of her personal space. But I didn't move. Instead, I said, "I know."

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wizard_alive November 3 2009, 05:45:05 UTC
"You have no idea. None." She knew when Polly had shown up. She knew, and this - this outburst that wasn't really anything she'd ever done, and was more like 'Mela or heck, Dairine when she got totally cheesed off or something, was something that Polly didn't know about her, either.

Really, it wasn't even something Nita knew about. "To say you know is a lie."

She pulled herself into a towering rage of 5'6" in bare feet, her hands in fists by her sides.

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turnthebadinme November 3 2009, 08:35:29 UTC
Serena froze, wide-eyed, in the doorway and stood there for several long moments before she shook herself free of her surprise. Crossing the room quickly, she laid her hands on Nita's arms, tipping her head to the side to try and catch her eye. "Nita, what's wrong?" she asked, all concern. If there was anything she could do to make it better, she meant to try. "What happened?"

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wizard_alive November 3 2009, 16:38:29 UTC
"Nothing happened," she said, books and comics in disarray around her feet. "I-" The jukebox started, and she twisted, staring at it.

Sick of all this inertia, oh, won't you mend me? "I hate this place." She looked back at Serena. God. She's going to think you're nuts. "This-" She reached down, and grabbed the comic, shoving it into Serena's hand. "This is the guy who- on Halloween- it's everywhere."

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turnthebadinme November 4 2009, 04:38:57 UTC
Serena stared blankly at the comic in her hands, shaking her head slowly. "I..." She took a deep breath, steadying herself, blinking rapidly as she looked up at Nita again. "Nita, it's gonna be okay, alright?" she said, because that seemed most important to say first. "Tell me from the beginning. It's okay."

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wizard_alive November 4 2009, 05:21:46 UTC
"It's not okay." She shook her head again. "He- Halloween, I- Him," she said, nodding at the comic. "I just was bringing Bart a book, and he- he almost killed me."

She laughed - an absurd sound, one that was teetering between actual humor and something far far worse. "I've watched the sun go out, I've helped stop the universe from ripping itself apart, and he nearly beat me to death."

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and_the_dragon November 3 2009, 15:33:25 UTC
Why did it seem like he never saw Nita when the both of them were in their right minds? Drunk, often. Upset from something, often as well. It never seemed to be a normal day with Nita Callahan.

George heard the crashing of books as he walked past, and thought that he should have been more surprised to see who it was. Still, her erratic behaviour worried him, and George approached her from behind, making as much noise with his sandals as he could so as not to startle her and end up with the corner of a book in his eye. It was only when he cleared his throat that she whirled around.

George took a step back, hands rising with palms forward as if defending himself from an errant book or magazine, just in case. "Much debate on that over the years," he said quickly, the wry humour his normal defense against uncomfortable situations. "But I think the consensus is that it's not just the one thing." He took another step back. Maybe she needed to be alone, George thought.

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wizard_alive November 3 2009, 16:47:21 UTC
She stared at him, books and comics scattered around her feet. "It's not your problem," she managed to say, not even quite sure if that's what she meant. The jukebox queued up, and she heard it - heard that word, and she looked like she was going to throw up.

Inertia.

"It's everything. It's this place, it's everything," she said, and she was teetering between leaving and just losing it.

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and_the_dragon November 3 2009, 16:54:23 UTC
George drew his brows until they were even more closely knit. He glanced over at the jukebox when it started up, shot it a dirty look though he knew the thing wasn't conscious. It really did have awful timing sometimes though, and if it'd been at home it would have been been under some kind of complex but possibly harmless Magic. He still would have been wary.

George tilted his head, unconsciously trying to size her up from a different angle, just in case it would make a difference. He thought back to the last time he'd seen her this upset, over Bart's disappearance, and he took another step forward. "Did you lose someone else?" he asked, the worry that it was the case clear across his face. He didn't touch her, but he thought of it and clenched his fist at the last moment instead.

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wizard_alive November 3 2009, 18:14:46 UTC
"No," she said flatly, before she bent to pick up one of the comics, half-crumpled and torn. "This," she said, as the jukebox kept saying it- "This is the g- the guy. Two years ago, Halloween." She pressed her lips together.

"All of this. All of it, is about that."

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notwithmyhand November 4 2009, 02:41:32 UTC
Alain's eyebrows merely rose as she whipped her head around, the sting of her tongue almost viscious.

"Cry your pardon, Nita," he said, taken aback. He hadn't meant to startle her and had in no way snuck up behind her, but her reaction accused him of both things.

In any case, he was quick enough and close enough to her to know that something was amiss. It wasn't like her to be so on edge, at least not in this way.

He noted the surprised look on her face and the death grip her fingers had on the bookshelf and decided to tread carefully. "I didn't mean to disturb you, but I forget sometimes not to walk soft," he said, and it was an absurd thing to say for a man of his size, but he hoped that it would call a smile from her.

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wizard_alive November 4 2009, 03:03:15 UTC
"I- I thought you were someone else," she said, the strains of music from the jukebox (playing Black Heart Inertia, the display said) sliding in between her words.

She didn't let go of the bookshelf, and hadn't looked down at the cluster of forgotten, crumpled comic books and books in disarray on the floor. The joke- a tiny one even in the best of times- flew right over her head. "I just-"

She glanced over at the bookshelf, which had filled itself with something new - science books. Oh, God. Why is this doing this to me? The book in front of her fingers was Origin of Inertia: Extended Mach's Principle and Cosmological Consequences, and for all that she wished that she could take it and burn it, that she could just pull it off the shelf and never see it again, she didn't take it off the shelf ( ... )

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notwithmyhand November 5 2009, 01:47:44 UTC
The look on her face as she registered him was truly all he needed. He crossed the room to stand by her. "It's alright," he assured her. "Truly Nita." He could see the panic still in her face and in the way she kept looking back at the bookshelf. Something had gotten to her. He'd seen that same look on Ilse's face the day the painting appeared on the wall.

"Nita," he said softly, but with a hint of command in his voice. He wanted her to look at him. "Calm down. And when you're calm, tell me," he said.

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wizard_alive November 5 2009, 02:37:10 UTC
She stared up at him, and the moment stretched from one second to two to fifteen; finally, after who knows how long, she exhaled slowly. She hadn't relaxed- far from it, her entire body still seemed posed between fight and flight. Still, she could talk to him, the way Kit had made her get past her own brain to just finally tell him sometimes.

"I was trying not to think about it," she said, her voice as tight as everything else. "It was two years ago yesterday, so I was trying not to think about it, and everything here- it's like I'm not allowed to forget." Like you would have been able to forget, anyway. Not really your area of expertise."This," Nita said, grabbing one of the half crumpled comics by her feet. "This is him. His name's Inertia or something, and-" and the jukebox was playing and the bookshelf was a sea of the word, again and again and again ( ... )

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wizard_errant November 4 2009, 11:03:55 UTC
"They're not out to get you." Dairine reaches over her shoulder to pluck the comics out of their hand. "Some of these aren't even any good."

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wizard_alive November 4 2009, 14:41:14 UTC
"I don't care that they're not good, Dairine." Her tone was completely at odds from the situation, and she stared down at the wreckage of books and comics at her feet. "Please do not tell me you're going to read that."

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wizard_errant November 4 2009, 16:14:32 UTC
Dairine tosses the whole lot into a pile and shakes her head. "What's the point? It's not exactly escapism by this point, is it?"

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wizard_alive November 4 2009, 16:21:20 UTC
"No, Dairine. It's not escapism." Somehow, Nita's torn between wanting to strangle her sister and just leaving, She probably doesn't even know. She knew that, too, but it didn't stop that irrational anger, the one that somehow hated this place and that it was mocking her.

Hate was a powerful thing. One that she knew was in herself, and that even the thought of that made her sick. She knew that realising that no, things weren't alright was a good step, but that if she went home tomorrow she would need to have a long, long talk with Tom and Carl.

Long.

The bookshelf was populating itself with Physics texts, with theoretical papers on the aspects of inertia even as the jukebox started paying Black Heart Inertia.

"I get it, okay?!" Nita snapped - not to Dairine, but to the room in general. Which, of course, makes you seem even more nuts.

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