Description: In the aftermath of the ordeal they've endured, Stasya and Shurui touch base. They discuss what's happened to them, what might come next, and make some resolutions and promises with which to meet their uncertain futures.
It's only been a few days, but for Stasya, it feels like it's been forever.
The fallout from her days of imprisonment had been immense. That she feels a crushing guilt over what had come of her ill-fated decision, made what feels like so long ago, is to put it mildly. Her parents had been by turns furious, relieved, and even more furious; she had told them, that night, that all she was doing was going to meet a friend, and when she hadn't come home they had gone crazy, doing all they could to find her short of calling the authorities (the uselessness of which was well known to Aleksandr). The one good thing that had come of this all was that when her teammates brought her safely home, they fully exonerated themselves of whatever shortcomings Stasya's parents might initially have attributed to them. She would never be frowned at over hanging with them again.
She knew, however, that it would be a little while before she could convince her father to let her back into official fighting... but she was sure she could make the argument that this misfortune made it even more imperative she get stronger... more able to defend herself against the malicious forces of the world.
Despite how horrible she feels, the Russian girl knows her path is clear now. To find out more about this power that made her such a conspicuous target. To avoid ever being taken in like that again. To get stronger so she wouldn't have to rely on her friends to save her and thereby put themselves at risk. No, she couldn't bear the thought of ever bringing them into danger by her carelessness like that, ever again.
That brings her to the subject of Tenma.
It had not been hard for her, of all people, to notice that something about the entire affair had affected him in particular quite deeply... and she was worried and guilty over him. She had got him into this mess, and because of her he'd had to lead his team into danger and kill another moving, thinking being. It doesn't matter how much the death was deserved, or how inhuman the creature was... she knows it's affected him anyway, and she wishes like hell she'd never put him in that position.
The other thing that's bothering her is Shurui. Would the other girl ever have been targeted if Stasya hadn't told her about the whole thing? Perhaps she would have been taken anyway for her powers, even if Stasya hadn't said a word... but nonetheless, Stasya is a master of making herself feel guilty about everything that goes wrong. She had tried to put on a brave face for the both of them, while they were imprisoned, but she hadn't been able to do more. And it eats at her.
Stuck in her own gloomy thoughts, Stasya's been sitting up here on the roof a while, dressed warmly in a white hoodie and jeans, hugging her knees to her chest against the chill dusk air and hoping Tenma'll show up to their favored haunt with his familiar swagger and insouciance. But so far, she's had no luck. The only company she's had, all this time, has been the lonely thermos sitting at a slight tilt at her side.
A few days, but it's been a few days where Shurui has had to start from ground zero to build herself up. And she's still building, even as fate seems fit to keep making it fall back down. Her body, meanwhile, has made a miraculous recovery- muscle and fat are beginning to overtake the parts that had wasted due to a week's worth of barely any food and forced stasis. The former lasted longer than her stay at the casino: images of a demon woman's aura and the whole idea of 'eating' something overwhelmed Shurui. It took a rough man's urging for ravenous hunger to kick in, finally.
Shurui has to. For everyone's sake. If she died, Marise would win a little, and everyone else would lose a little. Demons should stay dead, not live in people's memories and deaths.
Training followed, but not much. Her body still aches, and the wounds still haven't fully scarred over and healed. Sometimes, they've been made worse by the girl's relentless training. However, this is also something she must do. Because she can't get kidnapped again. She will be no one's doll. ..... this claim cannot be made if she can't fight for the freedom she enjoyed.
Thoughts have returned to Stasya, her companion in those last few days. The Russian managed to keep the girl's sanity somewhat in check, where logic failed and hope, no matter how transparent, seemed to be the only thing that her mind could understand. Having no found her in her dorm room, Shurui takes to the rumored gathering spot for the Guardian Kings in general: the roof. There, she finds Stasya, looking.... maybe a little better than before, but not much.
It seems they both have had a rocky road to recovery. ".... Stasya." Dressed in a secondhand baggy sweater and pants and still without her shades, Shurui looks.... like someone else.
Stasya has been marginally slower to return to training... if only because she's got parents watching her like a hawk and frowning at her every attempt to do anything that isn't school. It's only in the past day or so she's gotten back to daily routines and kata, going slowly but determinedly through movements that had been so much easier prior to the extensive injuries she'd sustained. She hasn't wasted as much as Shurui, not having been captive as long, but she still looks like hell, having spent much of the time she was captured being needled and cut apart.
She senses Shurui before the other speaks. It's the familiar prickle of that guarded emotional signature that alerts her. Stasya looks over her shoulder tiredly, blonde hair sliding over her back, and for a moment she seems too ashamed to meet the other girl's eyes straight.
When finally she manages to pick her gaze properly up to Shurui's eyes, the look in them is carefully controlled to be fairly neutral. Stasya has a talent for compartmentalizing emotion when necessary. "...You look better," the girl eventually offers, her Japanese finally having become fluent enough she's rid herself of most of the grammatical mishaps she might earlier have made. "But not by much. How are you feeling?"
In a way, focusing on somebody else and their feelings helps Stasya. It sure makes it easier for her to ignore her own dreary thoughts and emotions. But it's not a complete bar to them, as evidenced when Stasya kind of curls in on herself a little. Her gaze drops away. "I needed to tell you, also-- I am sorry."
That's the one advantage of having no real family- you make your own decisions, no matter how misguided. Stasya's decision to not move her head, evidenced by the energy shape her body creates in Shurui's vision, is noted, further added evidence towards Shurui's assumption of what Stasya's mental state is.
Marise certainly made sure Stasya got her share of abuse. Shurui never had her tongue pierced through- she was never able to stab through the Devil of Koga's skin like Stasya.
Then Stasya says those words. 'I am sorry.' Looking at the blonde now, Shurui's lips thin. Quiet anger courses through her emotional signature, bright and licking like a sudden forest fire. Shurui's fingers tense. "I'd slap you if I had the nerve." Fingers relax. The fire just as quickly exhausts itself into a certain bit of melancholy that reflects itself in the clone's face. "You kept me sane. You also brought the Guardian Kings right to us. No one knew where the hell I went, and by the time anyone would've sent a search party, I would have been dead. Or worse." Collapsing down to sit by Stasya while mantaining a comfortable amount of distance, Shurui closes her eyes wearily.
"You know what she wanted to do to you, right? You were practice. She wanted my eyes, or, specifically, the ability she thought was in them. Since there was just one of me, you were to be her warm-up. If your friends hadn't of come when they did... you would have had no eyes to speak of. No sight. And then, who knows what she would've done with you." Silence creeps in after this one point, Shurui pursing pink lips together as she thinks of how to word her next point.
"It was a lie. My eyes have nothing to do with my physic vision. She wouldn't have found any difference when she got to me. And I was..." Her body shakes. "I wanted to do the right thing and make her go with me first, when she talked about you. But I was.... I was...." She chokes back a sob. "Even of she wouldn't have, I didn't want to die.... I didn't want her to start carving into my *brain*...."
Stasya makes no move either towards or away from Shurui when the other girl joins her. She just rests her chin on her pulled-in knees, hugging them a little tighter, and considers the rooftops of Southtown in silence. She doesn't really need to look at Shurui to judge her moods, anyway, not like normal people do. She knows them as they come... if they're strong enough to register.
And that sudden anger is certainly strong enough. Startled, Stasya looks at the other girl; and then that surprise softens into a sad look. "I was just thinking... I hoped that it wasn't my fault they found out about you. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have told you about it." She looks back forward with a little sigh, her head tilting with a melancholic pensiveness.
Shurui's explanation, at first, is met largely with silence. The girl's head tips down a little, her lips lost in that little dip between her knees, her grey eyes still terminally sad. She didn't really explain specifics to me. All I knew was I was the expendable one. A hurt little sound stutters out of her, something halfway between a sigh and a laugh. So after she finished, she said, she would kill me for what I said to her.
Stasya shrugs. "But I still would not take back what I did say. And I will not be sorry that she is dead. She was not human anymore. The only person I am feeling any sort of sorry for is Ayame, and then only because what she is is pitiable."
But as Shurui explains what it was Marise wanted out of her, she slowly looks at the other girl. There isn't room around the immense tiredness in her gaze for any anger or accusation, meaning that whether there IS any is anyone's guess. "You let her think it was in your eyes? That if she took them she would get something? ...hn, I guess it doesn't matter. Even if you told her where it really was, she would still have practiced on me." A derisive snort, as Stasya looks back forwards. "Just in different place."
"They found me through SNF, I think," Shurui admits quietly. "I don't think it has anything to do with you at all, with the way things happened. It wouldn't have mattered whether or not you told me. I was too sure I could take on anything, even if I was the one who told you to be careful."
Stasya's words wash over Shurui, and a complex emotion, unsure of anything aside from its intensity, wells us in Shurui's stomach. Expendable. Shurui's body sinks with a weight that threatens to crush bones. Marise's words sound through her mind. Patchwork beast. Fake human. A doll. "... We were all expendable to her." Shurui's face tightens in a frown. "To her, I wasn't a real human. She said so. I was just a doll. You, on the other hand...." She lets out a long sigh. "You were too human for her to bare. You braved everything. Watching you and hearing your voice in my head... While I hate the fact that you had to go through all that, you made sure there was a me to rescue. When I found myself too weak to escape, I had nothing to cling to for hope but you."
"I wouldn't." Take back what Stasya said, whatever it was. "Her aura wasn't human at all. Just pieces of it that she's stolen from other people." Shurui's small body shutters again. "Did you see that too? Or felt it? Ayame was.... was nothing like that. She could change her body energy's patterns, but... overall, I got the feeling that all she wanted to do was survive. To be on top."
"You can survive with no eyes. You can't survive with a brain. Me not being able to see at all... it isn't much different from right now. But still, I wouldn't want to lose what sight I do have, as bad as it is." Shurui stays quiet. "..... YOur friends. Have you spoken with any of them? Are they doing okay?"
Stasya curls miserably in her corner of the roof. She can't help but still feel a little sting of betrayal at Shurui's admission she was too afraid to stand against Marise's plan for Stasya. She knows it's utterly -irrational-, and she's trying to quell it. It's just too unreasonable to ask anyone to be sane or self-sacrificing when faced with terrible pain and death.
God knows Stasya herself was terrified. Terrified enough she sometimes felt things grotesque and awful, ugly things any human would do when faced with the choices 'screw everyone else' or 'die.' "...I can't be angry at you for being too afraid. I was afraid too. There were times I regretted so much what I said to her, I wished I could take it back. It is easy now to say I wouldn't, but then... I would almost have taken it back to her face if she would let me live for it."
Stasya sighs a long breath. "So. I was not as brave as you are saying. Not at all. To try to be calm was all I could do to hold back how much I wanted to break down. I know how to control my emotions. I learned long ago. It was all I could do to push them down then. No, it was not brave. Just necessary."
She turns off the topic with some relief, not really wanting to discuss it. Shurui's description of Marise's aura draws a shudder, the skin-crawling revulsion distracting her from her earlier thoughts. "I saw nothing, but I felt it. I felt thousands of emotions from her... but the only one which was her own was hatred. She hated everything. She wanted everyone suffering or dead. It was so complete I could not even feel the reason anymore-- just the hate. Ayame... I could not read her, but I talked to her. She is someone who has suffered and now thinks it entitles her to take what she wants. It is dangerous... but pitiable."
Her friends, however... at the mention of them, Stasya falls silent. "I haven't spoken a lot to Hakuya or Kenji," she admits finally. "I want to... I want to make sure they are okay. Because I can already tell there is something bothering Tenma." Upon finally saying it aloud, Stasya finally cracks. A suspicious sheen threatens her eyes before Stasya can stop herself and forcibly rein her emotions back in to that structured calm. "And it is my fault. If I had not been foolish, if I had not gone with Ayame, he would not have had to do this."
Silence. If Stasya hadn't gone with Ayama, hadn't gotten kidnapped.... something between hysterical fear, sadness, and a nausea stirs in Shurui's emotional signature, swirling from one to the next with a strange fierceness of a child. Somewhere between her face and these emotions, however, there's a delayed, distant connection, and the emotions don't truly register on the clone's face. Anger. Fear. Melancholy. Loneliness, or, at least, the fear of it rather than the evidence of it.
Shurui knows she isn't alone right now. But back then... she was alone only because no one knew where she was.
"I lost sight of what was neccessary." Emotions quell into something more solid. Something resolute, rock-hard. "Stasya.... I may have not been able to help you then, but.... I can no longer be afraid of anything. And I will not be a coward like I was there. If you ever need something from me... call. The Guardian Kings will not be your only allies here, and, if something happens, I wouldn't be adverse to helping one of them, either." Her eyes narrow. Someone made her feel like she wasn't alone, even if he couldn't do much to help her and, admittedly, the interest might have been selfish in nature.
She's selfish too. She wanted to live above all else. Only, she feels guilty. So guilty she admitted it to Stasya. Who knows what the Russian's feeling right now? "Never hesitate. Unless there is something just as pressing keeping me back.... I will help you. If I have to face a demon woman.... I'll do it. Preferably with allies, but I'm sure I could rally up some contacts." She's not above manuvering people's interests to help her save someone else.
The topic changes, and Tenma's energy signature comes to mind as Stasya mentions him. He was the one who told them that they had killed Marise. Could he...? "... The people in your team... none of them have ever had to kill someone, have they?" Shurui turns her head to face Stasya's downcast one. "Could it be that? Even if it was someone like the demon woman..." She sighs. "And Hakuya and Kenji. Those two." Hakuya's heartbeat as he ran with her in his arms. Kenji's coat, warm and human as it covered her. Tenma's words.
It just becomes overwhelming. ".... I don't know what I could do to pay any of them back."
Shurui's resolutions have a curious effect on Stasya. The girl opens up a little, uncurling from her defensive posture, her head turning to regard Shurui quietly. It's Shurui's cross to overcome the selfishness and childlike perspective her life has instilled in her. It'll be Stasya's cross to get past her doubts, her emotional isolation, and her tendency to take all guilt and blame into herself. "I know my team will not be my only ally. Because you -did- help me, as well. You kept me sane. Gave me someone to talk to, to focus on."
She knows, also: it took a lot of resolution for Shurui to admit that to her. And that convinces her the girl's sentiments are all genuine, even without the help of her empathy.
At that question, however, Stasya falls silent. She shakes her head distractedly, blonde hair falling across her shoulders. "I don't know. I don't think so. I can't tell very much without talking to him... and Tenma is not an open sort." She obviously feels the problem will be hers to bear and hers alone, however, for she quiets soon after, and does not return to the topic.
Instead, she focuses on Shurui's wondering rumination. The Russian eventually forces a wan, but genuine smile. "Take care of yourself, that is what. They worked very hard to protect these lives of ours. We cannot waste that." But behind those words, the girl feels equally at a loss as to how to make things up to her teammates... because for her, the question is not of debt, but of a wrong she has done them.
Everyone has their cross to bear. Marise just made the cross of everyone involved so much heavier, straining the psychological foundations of at least two. Shurui, for instance, was reduced to the state that she was on her first day of freedom- fear, hope, suspucion, and hate. Those her hurt her she hated and wanted to hurt, those who were kind she wanted to be around.
But it was the ones who were kind that were the ones to be feared, and thus, Shurui began a sort of education that, for better or worse, made her into a girl skeptical of the world and all the many masks it can put on. Fend for yourself. Those who seem trustworthy, you note and hold close to your memory. Fear the person with the biggest smile. (...Of course, then you meet Alma, and you're forced to bypass weird prejudices just to remain in his presence for longer than twenty minutes. Anyway.)
Stasya's admittance comes as a surprise to Shurui. "..." She's quiet a while, still shocked by Stasya's statement, that warm line of comfort taking its time to wind itself from the well of her emotions to her brain. Then, she sighs, a small, open-mouthed smile on her lips. "... I'm glad to hear that." Relief floods her nerves briefly. ".... She never counted on that, did she? That we'd connect like that and keep each other sane. Even so close to the end..."
Take care of herself. "... You should take your own advice, too." Brown eyes divert themselves to the concrete floor. "Be there for them." Especially Tenma, if Stasya's worries prove true, whatever they may be. "They need you, your friends. Just as much as you need them. I can't give them what you can; I'm not you. I am Shurui, not Stasya." A small, rare smile lights on Shurui's lips. "Enter the tournaments that come in the future. Win. Maybe you be against me and a bunch of others. Do your best, and go on. That's what I'll do."
She'll do that, even if she's certain times are about to get a lot harder.
Log created on 21:33:13 04/04/2008 by Stasya, and last modified on 00:54:34 04/06/2008.