Description: After her violent encounter with the mysterious father of Preston Alistair Wellington II, Marisol is left to fend for herself in the broken dorm, and word carries fast. Catching wind of the news, Pás hurries to her friend's side, and learns more on the strange things unfolding at Pacific High for their team...
It's a goddamned mess.
The Boys' Dormitory at Pacific High is alive with energy, despite the god-awful hour that approaches. Freshmen to senior, the young men of the dormitory fill the hallway, a nervous buzz hovering about. What happened? Not everyone seems to know, and the facts are minimal. All they know for certain is that there is a girl in Preston's now-broken and utterly destroyed room, and she's bloody, barely conscious and beaten up.
They know her name - they've seen her around. Marisol. That damned O'Connell girl.
Some think she got what's coming to her, finally. But was Preston the culprit? He isn't present, after all. And who the hell would be, after brutalizing a young woman so?
"Maybe she finally bitched at him too much?" a young man says, earning a laugh from his nearby friend.
"Probably. She has a damn mouth on her, that stupid Mexican girl."
"Idiot, Mexicans don't have red hair--"
"--neither do Spaniards! ...I think?"
"Who cares. Bitch is finally shut up! Ha ha ha! What the hell was she doin' here, anyway?"
Left to wonder, a group of young men - three of them - stand nervously by the Pacific Resistance member's dorm room, fidgeting and occasionally glancing in at Ground Zero. Chad, the leader of the three, sports a nasty welt on his face, having clearly taken a punch to his mug. He gingerly rubs it, chatting amongst his buddies, who seem equally spooked by the entire situation.
"D...do you think that guy left?" Chad wonders. "That damn girl hits hard, but...damn. Did you SEE what he did?" Pausing, his eyes drift to an anxious blonde kid, who shrugs his shoulders, before he replies. "I think so. Hasn't anyone called faculty yet? Or a doctor..?"
It was a peaceful night. Pás was determined to celebrate it the best way she knows how: being lazy.
She decided to take a night off of her usual activity, spending it languishing around her dorm room and sprawled over her bed, taking all the time in the world to tune the acoustic guitar she has draped over her lap. The girls' dorm is peaceful save for the sounds of quiet voices around her, and the steady bossa nova she's fingerpicking out on her instrument. Finally, she kills the music with a yawn, leaning decidedly over her bed and opening the drawer on her night table, wanting her flatpick to switch to a melody.
Pás finds both that and the picture of her mother she keeps stored away. The old photograph smiles up at her. She just stares back down. And that's when she hears someone race past her open door. A couple girls are breathlessly telling others in the hall about a fight, a really bad one, going on in the boys' dorm. Someone was hurt bad. Do you think someone died?!
The Brazilian is all ears.
And minutes later, she's striding down the hall, trying to navigate the building crowd as students stand around their doorways and pack into groups, talking excitedly with each other. Some have already pulled out their cell phone cameras in a reflex conditioned by years of YouTubing.
Approaching the three boys sharking around Preston's room, two of them get a dangerously chummy arm thrown around their shoulders, as Pás squeezes in between. "Ola, pretties," she intones, her brilliant smile not seeming quite right, flaring way too many of her teeth. Her innocent question takes a dangerous edge. "What are you sillies talkings abou--"
Pás peers around them. Her face goes strangely blank. Then, less playful and more dismissive, she tries to push them aside to allow herself a way in.
It's Marisol. It's Marisol's blood. It's everywhere.
The Brazilian steps quietly into the dorm -- Preston's dorm, she knows it is -- debris crunching underfoot as her eyes take in entire scene. It seems to hit her all at once, like a dunk in a hypothermic tank. She feels cold. She can't even think. She can only stare.
Without warning, she turns a sudden, sharp look back over her shoulder, her dark eyes fixed on the three boys. In a different voice now, one that sounds clear and crisp and commanding, she demands harshly, "Get a doctor!"
Forcing herself through the confusion, Pás sobers and dashes quickly for the redheaded girl heaped among the mess, crouching at her side and reaching to gently lay her hands on either sides of her friend's face. "Marisol? Marisol?! Are you awake? Look at me."
The three guys react almost instantly, turning their nervous gaze onto the Brazilian that wedges her way into their flock. The blonde guy blushes fiercely - he can feel Pás' boob brushing against his arm! But he, like the Brazilian, sobers up a split-second later.
"That," the other boy remarks, thumbing a large hand toward the remains of Preston's dorm.
"It's a mess, and if you know what's good for you, you probably wanna stay out of--"
He notes the expression, and a moment later his eyes turn to their 'leader,' Chad. He shakes his head, shrugs, and gestures lightly with his fingers. Three, two, one...
And she's off.
"Told ya," Chad remarks, as Pás breezes past the threshold and into the room. Turning his wounded face away, the bulky football 'star' just 'tch's softly and glares down the hall toward the massive throng of people huddled around, squawking with obvious interest.
But just as they begin to softly talk amongst themselves, the Brazilian girl barks an order at them. 'Get a doctor!' she yells, earning her a dumbfounded expression from all three. Slowly they look to one another, before Chad shrugs.
"O-okay," the blonde nervously obliges, bowing his head in a brief nod before he turns and pads off toward his dorm. Chad looks dumbfounded, but scoffs again, rolling his eyes. "Don't need no doc," he mutters.
Marisol, meanwhile, remains on the floor, sprawled like a forgotten doll bruised and bloodied. Coppery red locks are a mess and matted with blood, her wrecked body caked with a fine layer of dust from shattered drywall. Fortunately, the girl breathes shallow breaths.
That's a good sign, at least.
When Pás' hands make contact with the girl's face, an incoherent mutter escapes her bloodied lips, eyes pinching shut and slowly drifting behind closed lids. Dazed and most definitely confused, the half-Spaniard appears to at least recognize the voice, offering a weak 'pás' under her breath. A minute later, one eye tries to open.
"o-oh, hey, th-thought so," she murmurs, sporting a tiny and definitely weak smile.
Then her eye snaps wide, the girl attempting to sit up, her body shivering and fighting against her protests. It's on its proverbial last leg, and the girl inwardly curses herself. Weak!
"s-suited g-guy...man. ...he was here - i-is he gone??" she asks, that one gray eye looking to her friend, before that eye turns to the massive hole open at the end of the room, where a harsh rain pours outside in the dark of night.
Pás' entire world seems to narrow down to a pin point. She can barely see the faces of surprised onlookers as they watch on, much less hear their whispered asides. Chad's particularly scornful remarks are met by deaf ears.
But don't think the Brazilian won't be remembering it for later.
Kneeling down at the half-Spaniard's side, Pás tilts her head and leans in close, as if trying to hear for any breathing. It's hard to. All she can hear is her own blood in her ears, like her heartbeat's taken new residence inside her head. Looking down at Marisol, or that mess what used to be Marisol, she only feels vaguely dizzy and more than a little confused. Both of them are fighters. It's not the first time she's ever seen blood, and certainly not seeing blood on Marisol. They're both fighters. This is what they do. This is what they enjoy.
So, why is it when Pás stares down at Marisol, all she can think about is her mother?
Her jaw tight, her eyes searching, the girl almost sighs in relief when her friend stirs. That wet, awful sound she makes may be the best thing Pás has heard all day. "Marisol," she repeats, unable to say anything else but her friend's name, too crippled by her confusion to even think. The smile goes unreturned, the Brazilian's face strangely, eerily blank.
But as Marisol begins to sit up, her spirit unhindered by all those injuries on her body, Pás seems to snap back to life, reaching quickly to support her friend up, trying to be so very careful of her injuries as she steadies the redhead by her shoulders. She blinks her eyes as she watches on, staring a little closely and carefully, despite the way her eyes keep blurring over. Her breathing slowly shallows. What's happening? Why is she...?
"I think so," Pás replies, in this new, strange, direct voice of hers, following Marisol's only working eye to look through the hole in the wall. She stares dumbly at it. She looks like she doesn't know where she is, or who she is. "What happened? Who did this? Where's Preston?"
For the first time in what has felt like hours, someone is there, worried and concerned.
It makes the girl feel awful.
Stirring at the sound of Pás' familiar voice, the half-Spaniard opens her eye and regards the other girl with a sheepish, rather shy grin. How embarrassing, to be beat up like she was. How could she not outlast that man, she wonders beneath the pain that wracks her body. Maybe she is really as weak as he perceived her to be.
"s-sorry," the girl stammers quietly, as her weight shifts. Already she feels like a burden to her friend, making her worry as she clearly does. It draws a frown across her busted lips, brows gently knit before she pinches her eye shut. "it is good to s-see you though, pás." She manages a tiny grin, before issuing a weak cough.
Her concerns rise when she becomes a touch more coherent, the fate of their British teammate uncertain. It's a struggle and a considerable endeavor, but with the Brazilian girl's help, the redhead is pulled upright. Lifting one arm, she rubs at her bloodied face, trying to smear away the blood, while mindful of the wicked welt forming on her cheek.
"h-he is? Fuck!" Biting gingerly at her bottom lip, the girl's expression sobers, before she just gets angry, gray eyes hooding sharply as she glares at the hole. What happened, Pás asks. Marisol immediately frowns, eyes slowly drifting back to her lap, before they drift to the wounded arm limp at her side.
"P...preston's gone. For now, anyway," the girl explains. "A g-guy, his dad...he was here. He's the r-reason the room is like this." Pausing, the girl holds her breath, long fingers on her good hand curling tightly before she gently relaxes them.
"I found him. His father. I wasn't good enough to . ..beat him. To t-tell me where Preston is." Glancing up, gray eyes drift once more, looking to Pás with a sizeable frown on her full lips. One look is all Pás needs to see how worried the half-Spaniard is for her friend.
"He said he was going to take him back. But...why? ...rgh, my arm. I'm p-pretty sure...he broke it. That douche father of P-preston's."
"His father?" Pás echoes, listening as she patiently counts the wounds on Marisol's body. Her left hand tremors momentarily against Marisol's shoulder, but she forces it to stop. Propping up her friend, she lets one hand go and reaches in, almost in a gentle, maternal way, to wipe a road of blood away from running into the redhead's eye.
The next words make her stop.
Her mischevious eyes darken. Her jaw tightens visibly, and she looks away for a moment as a side of her mouth twitches outward. When she glances back at Marisol, it is a quiet look. Finally, for the first time upon finding her friend, the Brazilian smiles. "...Don't worry about him, Marisol," she says at last, and though her expression is easy, there seems to be a certain darkness about her happy-go-lucky demeanor. "He, on other hand, is going to have lots to worry about."
Pás thinks she knows what that strange feeling is. The one that's making it so hard to think. To focus. To breathe. The one that keeps making her eyes bleary and her head spin. It's something she's not felt in a long, long time. It's been so long that's nearly forgotten what it was.
Rage.
Her smile widens so very minutely, but it doesn't reach her eyes. Pás takes in all that information Marisol has to say, even if she looks like she's not really hearing, distractedly staring at her best friend's broken arm. Someone hurt her friend. Left her there on the ground like she was nothing. Walked away like she was already dead. The last time this happened, she did nothing. She let someone she loved get taken away.
This time will be different. She promises herself this now. This is why Pás fights. This is why she gets strong. It is for the fear she felt, seeing her best friend's body strewn across the ground, and rage she feels for the man who did it.
"Shhh," Pás soothes, strangely solemn, her voice very hushed. Her eyes fix on her friend's battered face. "It is OK, Marisolas. I will find him, and I will bring him back."
"Y-yeah," the girl manages, clenching her teeth as her eyes wander toward the hole in the boy's wall once more. "I w-wouldn't 've noticed." Exhaling softly, her jaw slacks, lips parting as she lets the air in her lungs slip past her busted lip. "Fuckin'...jerk." Angry, at the Briton's father and at herself, the half-Spaniard lets a soft 'tch' escape her as she snaps her eye shut.
But the soft, maternal touch of Pás' hand causes the girl to chuckle weakly, her good shoulder to sag as she relaxes. "H-hey," Looking up, she meets her friend's dark gaze, sporting a tiny, sheepish grin. "Th...thanks for coming. I mean it." Even if she beat the Brazilian girl up the last time they met.
Something is off, though. Pás is different, her demeanor not the same, happy-go-lucky one she's used to. Is it her fault, then? Is it her fault the Brazilian girl is so somber? Frowning lightly, the girl sighs, eyes looking up from beneath her bruised lids. Don't worry, the girl assures her. Beneath that, there's something else.
"Pás," she says, words soft. But can she really stop an angry Brazilian girl? No, she can't.
The girl frowns, looking away from Pás, her features sad.
"If you're doin' ...what I think you might...p-please. Be careful."
Eyes swivel back up, gray depths locking on the dark face of the Brazilian girl. "He has no...problems...with hurting someone - anyone. I'm w-worried...I don't even want to know what may have happened to Preston..."
The 'shh' draws a strange look from the girl, eyes blinking slowly before she offers a tiny grin. "I know, Pás. I just...I don't want you to go alone." The grin drops into a frown, eyes pitiful, weak. "He's our f-friend, you know? But...what can I do with this?"
The girl gestures to her broken arm.
"Nothin'. I barely withstood the shit he threw at me."
The Brazilian girl tilts her head, her eyes glancing up, drawn when she hears her name spoken. Or at least she thinks she did. She acts like she can't hear much of anything right now.
Still, she stares sightlessly at Marisol, her expression turning grave when the wounded girl makes her implication.
Pás is totally doing what Marisol thinks she's going to be doing. She lives her entire life concealing herself from the rest of the world, but she can't conceal this; the truth is burned into the Brazilian's placid face. All she can see is blood.
After a long time, during which Pás looks as though she's paying the entire world, Marisol and all, little attention, she snaps back to life, Marisol's caution finally pulling an expression out of her. Her eyebrows knot. Her mouth purses. She's not sure how to answer her best friend, who is injured enough, broken enough, and needs no further worry layered upon the pain she must be feeling. So Pás does what she does best.
She acts like it's nothing.
"Shiu, Marisol. It will be good. There is no worry from you, yea? You," she continues affectionately, reaching to tuck a lock of red hair behind Marisol's ear, "did more than enough. You jes heal because we are going to needs you."
It's at that moment, the campus physician and an attending nurse have arrived on the scene, pushing through the gathered students and rushing into the destroyed dorm room. The man, who works at a school composed of fighters and has seen it all, still pales when he gets his first glimpse of Marisol. He quickly kneels at her side, and soon enough, the mysterious Brazilian girl becomes replaced by medical help. She backs off carefully, rising to her feet, Marisol's blood streaking her clothes.
And through the frantic, machinegunned questions the physician aims at Marisol -- can she hear him, can she move her arms and legs, does she feel cold -- Pás steps back, lingering as she watches her friend. She winks one eye at her, and through the questions, wordlessly mouths, 'It will be OK.'
Finally, the girl leaves. When her back turns on her best friend, Pás' expression immediately sours. Homicide spreads across her eyes. Her mouth twists into an angry scowl. Barely-contained violence esconces her every movement. Within a moment, she disappears into the watching crowd.
She also trips Chad on the way out.
Log created on 16:44:38 01/06/2008 by Marisol, and last modified on 22:41:57 01/08/2008.