Voicemail
"Oh, hey! I was hoping you'd call. What's up?" There was a brief pause, a wait for an answer. "Oh, sweet. Yeah, I'm doing pretty good, too. Or... at least I was when I recorded this message. Because, yep, this is my voicemail. But leave me one and I'll call you back!"
[This should have gone up a while ago... oops?]
[This should have gone up a while ago... oops?]
He didn't answer, so he was probably asleep or his phone was charging or something. She remembered how much he'd worried the last time she'd called and not left a message, though, so when the beep happened... "Hi, Jaime. Sorry to call but... I just wanted to talk."
...
She sighed. "No, I need to, but I totally don't want to. So... if you get this message soon, can you call me back? I'm not hurt or anything, just..."
...
"Yeah. Thanks."
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So he was totally calling back as soon as he checked his messages.
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"Jaime?"
Please don't be Mila-chan, please don't be Mila-chan...
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"Thank you for calling me back," she lifted off the ground and flew to the top of a fairly tall tree, sitting on one of the branches. "I..." And now she had no idea where to start.
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There. She'd started. The hardest part was over....
Or was it? Would Jaime hang up on her? Was he going to say how horrible she was?
She didn't really think he would do either of those things, or she wouldn't have called him, but the fear was there. Mostly because she felt that way about herself - that she should be punished.
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Jaime took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts.
"Do you want me to book a portal out?" he finally asked.
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Did that make sense?
"This..." She took a breath. "We were out on a hunting and scouting party. Just a few of us. We got attacked by three men who had magic? We lost two of our guys." Lief... Joakim... She covered her eyes. "I was fighting one of them in a really tight space. He hit his head and it... He bled really bad. I tried to help him but he just kept bleeding."
Her hands are covered in blood as she braces herself against the alley wall, shrinking into the darkness of the shadows - run - run - they'll catch you - they know - the blood - run - the streets are empty but she can feel how close they are, how soon she will be found...
"I tried to help him," she repeated softly, shaking her head again, as she tried to push the remnants of her nightmare away.
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And he even understood her wanting to work through it on her own. But he had to do whatever he could. It wasn't the same as wrapping her up and holding her close, but it would have to do.
Very, very softly: "Could you have done anything differently?"
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She described the fight: the tightness of the space, trees breaking, brush on fire, her yo-yo useless and going for the hand to hand even as constant bursts of power were directed at her, finally landing a few blows in the hopes of knocking him out... Him falling and striking his head. All the injuries, his body not used to using all that power at once, the head wound...
"So. Okay, no. I guess not. He, he didn't give me any chance to do anything different. It just... went wrong. But it still feels like it. Even though I know he was trying to kill us. That he did help kill Lief and Joakim."
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"Just because he killed people, and you didn't have a choice, well... that's not going to make you feel any better." He really did want to pull her into a hug right then.
"But if you hadn't hit him, it sounds likely that he would have killed someone else."
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"That was his goal. It was an ambush. They stayed in hiding, didn't say anything... They killed Joakim before we even knew there was someone there. I... I didn't use excessive force. It just happened."
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She shook her head. "Sorry. I'm... I know that's not what happened. It's just, how I feel, you know?"
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