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Februray Vignette - Love Is a Many Splendored Thing


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Too old for Toys, not old enough for Boys

(Argonaut - March 2015)

 

There was no ticker tape parade.  No fireworks in the sky.  Not so much as a raise.  AEGIS didn't celebrate successful missions with more than a small standing ovation.  Even suicide mission with a ragtag group of heroes who had never worked together before.  And Yves wouldn't have it any other way.

 

It hadn’t been long since the freed drone returned from the depths of space.  Her mission a rousing success, their crazed gecko themed pilot proving more than capable of bringing them back home in one piece.  The Communion’s forces were pushed back by the coalition’s forces.  And Yves…well she had to live with the fact that she agreed to activate the nanite enhancements in her body before going to space. 

 

 

Giving up another piece of herself just to avoid seeing another home burn.  Control freak that she was Yves was planning to set aside time to silently deal with her change by quietly examining the bottom of an empty wine bottle.  A task that would prove difficult with her enhanced constitution.  At least that was the plan.

And yet somehow, her first full day back Argonaut found herself waiting outside of one of Nicholson’s counselor’s office.  Her youngest daughter sitting right next to her.  Neither party saying a word.

 

“Mrs. Brison will have you now.”  An overly perky assistant called out.  Sophia hadn’t exactly been forthcoming as to what the meeting was about.  Only that she had gotten into some sort of trouble. 

 

Keely Brison was a heavy set African American woman in her early 50s.  Her office an eccentric tribute to paperwork and sticky notes.  The computer in the corner appearing to serve solely as decoration.  The setting was a far cry from Yves youth in which all learning was done through hypnopedia based learning software install into the mattresses of the Lor-Zul.

 

“Mrs Zermeño, I trust you know why I called you here?”  Keely asked.  Yves continued to say nothing.  Instead, she simply tilted her head and stared at Sophia.  Her eleven year old daughter attempted to hold the gaze until finally she broke her silence.

 

“Mama, it’s not my fault.  Jenny K, told Keke that Marisol tried to kiss Matt F and Keke has such a crush on her.  But, eso es una mentira.  Jenny K is just mad that Marisol had her birthday party the same night of Jenny F’s play because Jenny K was gonna be the star.  Keke hit Mari, and I hit her.”

 

“Did you win?”  Yves asked rather calmly.

 

“Mrs. Zermeño!”  The counselor called out in protest.  “I do not think you understand the gravity the situation.  All the parents are outraged.  This is an educational facility not a dark alley.  The administration has no choice but to suspend Sophia for seven days.”

 

“I apologize Mrs. Brison.  But, it seems to me that you should take umbrage with the duplicitous Jennifer K.”  It was at that point the conversation turned into a lecture intended not solely for young girl, but for the adult woman who was proving far too indifferent an ally in the counselor’s cause.  One both mother and child were satisfactorily lectured Yves and Sophia were sent on their way with a week’s worth of homework.  Before entering Yves’ sedan, the girl pulled on the back of her mother’s shirt

 

“Are you mad, mama?”

 

“That depends are you going to tell me what really happened?”

 

“I did, mama.”  Sophia protested.  Her tone wavering.

 

“I couldn’t push Marisol if I was using my car, I sincerely doubt a preteen girl whose ability is creating bubbles out of thin air pushed Mari.”  Yves stated.  Revealing at least a modicum of effort in memorizing the information parents shared in those awful PTA missions.

 

“Keke didn’t push Mari.  She called me a stupid teeb to get back at Mari for not kissing Matt and Mari punched her.”

 

Yves stopped to process the information.  And once satisfied opened up her the passenger door.  Her expression remaining apathetic, but not so apathetic that Sophia was not able to catch the small signs of smile wishing to form out of the corner of her mother's lips.  “I always liked Mari.  You should invite her over more.”    

 

“Are you going to tell papa?”

 

“Not today.”

 

“Am I in trouble?”

 

“Not today.”  Yves repeated.

 

“And tomorrow?”

 

“Tomorrow you’re grounded.  Today we’re having pizza.”  And just like that Yves had forgotten about the time she would have spent wasting moping around about her activated enhancements.  Some things were just worth any bit of relosing humanity (or Lormanity as it were).

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Things Left Unsaid

(Nighthawk: February Vignette)

 

The little girl was sprawled on the floor of her bedroom, toys strewn around as she lay on her stomach. 

 

“Don’t worry, miss, I’ll save you,” Robin said, pitching her childlike tones deliberately low to mimic Darkstar. She swooped the clear black figure into knock over her stuffed teddy bear. “Fwoooosh! Take that, Captain Knievel!”

 

“Robin, honey, we’re going out now…” Her grey eyes flicked up to the door and she scrambled gracelessly to her feet to pelt out after her parents. She laughed - the high pitched, carefree laughter of a child who knew she was loved unquestioningly - as her father scooped her up in a wide circle. “Be good, baby. I love you.”

 

“I love you too, Daddy! I love you!”

—————————————————————————————

 

The whole ‘L’ word thing hadn’t come up again since the incident in the Fens but it was there, lurking at the edge of conversations. Robin could feel it, catching in the back of her throat when Riley glanced up at her over lunch, smiling that quick sharp smile as he tightened the mechanism of his crossbow. 

 

I love you.

 

It went unsaid. Instead Robin offered one of her own rare smiles, tight around the edges from the tension she always seemed to carry but one that warmed her usually cool, grey eyes.

 

When Riley bumped her shoulder when they passed in the hall, communicating without words that there was time in his schedule to meet on the tree in the quad, Robin said nothing but she bumped his shoulder back in tacit agreement. 

 

Gestures were easier for her. Motion was clean, simple and she could trace fingertips along the archer’s bicep or touch the back of his hand when words would catch in her throat, leaving it tight and aching. Sometimes, Robin put the effort in to at least try - turning her usually relaxed mannerisms into short, staccato bursts of fragmented sentences that only increased her tension over the next attempt. 

 

Late at night, when the nightmares of gunshots in twisted back alleys blurred into shattered teeth and hungry chants for human flesh, Robin found herself yet again fleeing her room for the cold, moonlit rooftops of Claremont’s Academy. Without thought, she raced from pitch to peak, her feet silent and her muscles pumping as if she could out run the nightmares. 

 

She wasn’t surprised, really, to catch sight of a familiar silhouette against the dorm’s chimney. Relieved, perhaps. Without thought, she altered course to land on light, sneakered feet next to Riley.

 

“I…” Robin’s breath caught, a faint hiccup that could easily have been attributed to the way her breath came in short, sharp pants. “…I’m glad you’re here.”

Edited by alderwitch
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Hurry up and Halt.

Errant, on any rainy night, pick one.

 

“Halt Evildoers!”  It was a roar from the masked Errant.  It was not him, not in the slightest.  And that didn’t sink in with him, not immediately at least.  Yet there he was emerging out of the shadow like he was some sort of knight like the name he went by.  

 

As a point of fact, they did not halt.  Or even slow, in all honesty.  They did attack him immediately, opening fire with their weapons, a bit of incredulity of the image of a guy in a hoodie with a hockey mask calling them evildoers.

 

Errant did not stop to pause, to consider.  He just proceeded ahead, an arm raised up, their gunshots hitting against the telekinetic bursts he used to parry attacks.  The effect was noticeable as it was fueled by his anger.  “Such temerity, villains.  But you have been measured, and found wanting!”

 

He gave in the anger that bubbled up.  Anger that wasn’t his, not entirely.  He had taken it from his friends, from Thaelia, when they were trapped.  It surrounded and flowed over him like fire, like waves.  Rather than his normal efforts on constraint, of throttling it down under his control, he let it rise, let it swell and he went with it’s momentum.  As his own sense of helplessness, that he couldn’t be a friend, or more, to the people he cared about.

 

That anger took a palpable force, it became manifest.  The wave of it slammed forward in glorious catharsis.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


 

Sometime later he was sitting on the roof, watch Freedom’s finest pulled the criminals he attacked off the ground and into squad cars and wagons.  His thoughts weren’t with that… they were elsewhere.

 

It was worse now.  Without them in his mind, without him trying his best to eat all their pain, their anguish.  This was why he didn’t like using his powers, it made things blurry, where other people ended and he began.  It was hard to keep his emotions from leaking out from them.  They were his friends, so at the time he didn’t care about the risk, even the chance of his confused feelings towards Thaelia coming out.  And they were still there, conspicuous by their absence, seeming exerting their will over his sense of self.

 

It wasn’t the first time such a battle cry came from his lips.  That her righteous fury rankled in his thoughts and his mind.  Sometimes at him for being a coward, for letting her slip back to where she came from without at least saying he liked her, that she confused him, that she…

 

That she…

 

Then he remembered something he had read once about how the exhaust from cars were damaging the buildings in Rome.  The marble and alabaster sullied.  It was a fitting metaphor for them, her upright, earnest behavior, and him living sidelong and askance.

 

He had a hard time reconciling friends, let alone romantic impulses.  Or relationships that weren’t built on selfish need for what use the other person had for you.  Maybe he was a coward, really.  Terrified of the possibility of the loss of self, of control.  Yet it was happening, wasn’t it?  Even if he knew it was probably something stupid, and juvenile, and fueled by adolescent hormones.  Or some other self-examination based lie he told himself.


Errant’s introspection was cut short by a scream that wasn’t physical, and he got up, and ran towards the next conflict.  Or away from his.

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Trying to regain level.

Asad.

 

 

It was bad.   It was Frank Sinatra, ‘In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,’ bad.  Bad enough for him to take off to where she was having a concert, to not take his jet, but fly under his own power over the Atlantic, fueled by regret, bad coffee, and more scotch than was probably healthy.  It was bleary and dark.

 

Bad enough to pick a ticket from a scalper for the cheap seats and sliding on into the back of the venue to lean against the pillar that was right in front of him, because of course it was.  His forehead against the concrete, as he closed his eyes and just… listened.  Too exhausted for sleep, or anything else.

 

She had been polite, turning him down.  She had her reasons, he understood them.  He had objections too, but… well… Well, shit.  He didn’t have anything to really to counterpoint.

 

Still, it was bad enough for him to end up sitting in the parking lot after the concert, until some idiot punks decided that the scruffy looking Amir was a good enough target to rough up.  Bad enough for him to let them do it.  Though, honestly it was almost funny to see them try to hurt him, until his phone rang, and he knew who it was.  So with a sigh, he shrugged them off, cuffing them casually so as to not really hurt them too much.

 

In the air he answered the call, “Hello.”  Sounding as beleaguered as he was distracted.

 

“Oh, finally you answer, you goddamn twit, I have every right to have your mental status called into question!”  Came the sharp bark of Ana in his earpiece.  “You are not a stupid teenager!  This, this right here is why she probably said no.  Grow up Amir!”

 

He didn’t respond right away, he knew what face she was making, the gestures as her composure was lost, and waving wildly, agitatedly.  “I am allowed to mope, I’ve never proposed before, so I never got turned down before, so… yeah.  I wanted to see her again, and given I don’t normally get moody, I figure that once a decade or so is acceptable.  Your concern, however is noted.”

 

“I swear you are just a colossal child.”

 

He snorted in response to that, “Possibly.  Anyway, I guess I am done, so I will head back.  The board meeting is still on schedule.  I need you to go talk to the governor about what we discussed a couple weeks back.  And I need a numbers on those franchises in the city.  I think I want them.”

 

“Yes master!”  Came the sarcastic reply in the best Barbara Eden impersonation from Ms. van Cleef..  “Fine, I will do that, please don’t look like a mess, I’ll get something scheduled for when you get in.  Just shower before getting in.  And no more dating twenty something.“

 

“Cute, way to date yourself Ana.  Next you’ll be wearing Zubaz’s and a fanny pack.  Why don’t you go find yourself a nice thirty year old French kickboxer named Serge.  Or get us a thirty year old bottle of scotch and we can cry about being lonely, miserable, and beautiful people together.”  He chuckled a little bit, “Seriously, get a bottle, we need to be looking at numbers for the next couple quarters and see how that side project I am doing with Fleur is working for projections, because I don’t like being that conservative, and I’d like to slam down and get us a couple years ahead of schedule.”

 

She snorted back, “I’ll get my acid wash denim coat and my Tiger Beats out.  Fine.  Take care you idiot.  I’ll have some numbers when you get back.  No more popstars.”

 

“Right… clearly I haven’t had starlet in awhile… Are there any single villainesses?”  The banter helped, even if he was still feeling like crap it was a comfortable groove to settle back into.  “I’ll be in town in six hours or so, barring some earth shattering emergency.  Like a volcano, or a monster, or a mad scientist, or that Sky Lord guy’s airship…  Yanno, Tuesday type stuff.”  It got a short bark of laughter, and he hung up, before turning west, and starting to build up speed away from the empty venue, and towards the long flight back home.

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