Caught in between all I wish for and all I need

Geneva Stockholm · 04-23-2010, 04:28 PM

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ooc talk

Geneva had taken refuge in her old room, the one she used to sleep in before she had Jefferson began to share a bed. They had not shared one since her fall. He had hovered, something so unlike him, for days after he had brought her back from AniWaya and Dawali Amara's healing touch. But she had turned away from him, as best she could physically in her condition. She would face the wall and lie prone, or stare at the ceiling listlessly. She didn't want to talk. She didn't want him to see her like this. She didn't want to see herself like this, but she had nothing left to give to him, or to anyone, right now.

But when the sunlight spilled in through the yellowed-lace curtains of her bedroom and washed the wall with pale light, she forced herself to sit up stiffly. She had confined herself to this room for two reasons. She did not want to deal with anything - to confront the looks of surprise and sympathy from her packmates as they gazed upon her uneven, broken face - and she did not want to see what this had done to Jefferson. She was not certain what had happened, but there had been a change, a rift. Something in him had shattered, as certainly as she had. And she didn't know what to do.

It was early still, and she crept as quietly as she was able. Her movements were halted and slow, punctuated by deep exhalations of discomfort and pain. It was hard for her to move and shift her upper body. She had stayed in Optime form since she had fallen nearly two weeks before and had not really moved much, letting her bones reknit as she remained in her daze and her self-impose imprisonment and isolation. She was glad that she had not encountered anyone, and she was fairly sure that Jefferson would still be in their old room, perhaps still asleep, if his routine was still the same. Geneva had always been prone to rising before him.

There was something that she could not keep to herself anymore - a small, hard, sharp bit of pain from this experience that did not belong completely to her. And while she did not want to hurt him, Geneva knew that this was not just her cross to bear. With some uncertainty, she raised the hand of the uninjured shoulder and knocked softly on the door. "Jefferson?" she intoned, with a voice that was rusty from days of disuse.

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Jefferson Soul · 04-23-2010, 04:53 PM

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He had tried to be patient with her. By now, she must have known that she probably would not have survived without him or the mad dash he had made to AniWaya for the help of Dawali and Ember. She hadn't spoken to him, but Jefferson sensed she had a very strong grip on reality--what she had lost, and what had almost lost in addition. Jefferson didn't hold it against her that she wouldn't speak to him. He knew she was silent not because of something he had personally done--if anything, he was completely innocent--but she still did not speak, and he guessed it was only natural. The brute himself had never been the most talkative, instead withdrawing to his thoughts and musings rather than social interaction due to the the dark nature of his inner thoughts. He supposed that after such a shock, it would have been stranger if Geneva had not done the same.

Surprisingly, Jefferson had already been awake that morning, but had yet to emerge from behind closed doors. He had taken to staring out the window as a way to pass time when his thoughts became engrossing, and that morning had been no different. Tattered ears flicked to attention at the sound--she had not gone as far as to speak his name in recent weeks, let alone go out of her way to get his attention. It took all restraint from running to the window and throwing the door open in excitement; instead his saunter was calmed and his hold on the doorknob at the utmost cautiousness. He didn't want to scare her off, after all, if that was still a possibility.

"Geneva," the cyclops said quietly, a small smile at his scarred lips. He stepped back, motioning his hand. His stomach twisted, looking at her disfigurement finally eye-to-eye. It was a gruesome sight, and though he hid the surprise, his stomach plunged and ached. It was a tragic sight, and he hated to know she was in such pain, but the small smile persisted. "...Come in."

Geneva Stockholm · 04-23-2010, 05:51 PM

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ooc talk
The door opened. Geneva swallowed a lump in her throat, keeping her eyes downcast. She saw his feet first, and knew then that he was standing in front of her. She felt rather than saw his one-eyed gaze on her face. She did not know what she looked like; she had not had much chance to spy herself within a reflective surface. But with tentative, finger-tip touches she had explored the tender, cracked planes of her face. She knew that she was disfigured now. Her features were no longer symmetrical. One side of her face, where her cheek bone had broken, stuck out strangely, startling and stretched the skin of her face in an odd way. She had been avoiding this, but she supposed it was inevitable. So gritting her teeth, which caused some pain to shoot through her recently reset jaw, she raised her eyes to meet his gaze.

She walked into the room stiffly, taking care to keep her eyes straight ahead. She did not want to look out the familiar window, or see familiar shadows cast against the walls that had once housed them both. Geneva concentrated on the sharp, dark pain in the core of her stomach, and that lent her clarity. She did not want to get lost in memory, did not want to get lost in trying to recapture the way things used to be. She wanted to go back desperately, but she knew that she couldn't. And she knew that she didn't know how to live this new life; she was trapped in this hellacious limbo.

Clearing her throat once more, she found her mouth dry. She turned uncertainly, clasping her hands together and standing close to a corner of the room. "There is something I need to talk to you about. I think you should sit down," she said, her eyes on the corner of the bed.

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Jefferson Soul · 04-25-2010, 01:14 PM

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There was wariness in her step, her tone, her presence; he could sense the uneasiness even before he'd opened the door, but had not commented on it. To look her in the eyes was devastating, as in her behavior now she already seemed like a hollow shell of her former self, and Jefferson could only wonder if and when she would ever make a full recovery--of her mind, not her body. He concerned himself more with worries that the Geneva he'd learned so much about would be lost from him forever, taken so suddenly that the cyclops could already see the changes happening in himself as well--for once he forced smiles, which he'd never even bothered to do when so much bitterness sizzled inside him before. Jefferson could feel himself finding that old hole he'd known so well, peering into its vast darkness, its endless bottom, and wondering what would happen if he were to fall in again. Would his walls be rebuilt? Would there be someone to break through them again, as she had?

She pushed past him and subtly directed him to the bed. Jefferson remained stiff at the door, hand still at its knob, and simply watched her in silence--he moved only after a long pause, and said nothing as he collapsed down on the corner of the mattress. The Patriarch could only imagine the number of things she wanted to talk about, amongst the number of things he had wanted so much to ask--why had she been up there in the first place? Had she slipped, or was it on purpose? Had he done something he hadn't known about that offended her? Where did she want to go from here?

But Jefferson simply sat there, silent. Green rune glowed at her, sad and sympathetic, and awaited her next words.

Geneva Stockholm · 04-26-2010, 12:24 PM

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It seemed that she had what she wanted now. She hadn’t been entirely certain of herself as her eyes paced the ceiling of her room, as she mulled over the fact that this was not entirely hers to bear. But looking at him now, his knees apparent in her peripheral vision as she studiously trained her eyes on some minute, insignificant detail just off to the side, she no longer wanted to share. Her mouth was drawn in a tight line of discomfort as she realized that she would have to follow through with this decision. Her eyes rolled to the door longingly before she finally looked at him, drawing in a deep breath before her eyes met his face.

There was no easy way to do this; there could be no easy way to do this now. She had built it up inside of her mind, inside of her heart like the single stone that was holding back the tide of this pain. She looked at him with some measure of emotion, for the first time in weeks. In the previous days, she had simply ignored him or grimaced at his presence, although he had suffered her silence and tried to smile and share some particle of comfort with his words. But those had been a lie, too, a lie born of his love for her.

He loved her. He loved her. She had hoped for it before, had worked to see it in the smallest ways that he looked at her, in the ways that he changed. But he had never said it before. She had wondered, although she knew that he held some sort of mote of affection for her. Now, there was no doubt. She could hardly remember anything in the hours and days after the fall – but her first bright, coherent memory was of him. And it was plain on his face and in his soft, coaxing words, the way he moved with a gentle ease that was tense with an undercurrent of worry underneath.

That was what made this so hard for Geneva. There was an answering love that unfurled an entirely new ache in her chest. She wanted to spare him this, but she couldn’t. This knowledge did not belong to her entirely, not really. It had taken the both of them to love, and the both of them to suffer this loss. She wished that she could shield him with the blessing of ignorance, but there was no backing out now, not when he looked at her with that sad expectancy.

She didn’t know how to begin this. Was there any proper way to do it, really? Geneva wanted to reach out, to take his hand as she told him this. She didn’t want him to be alone – because she had isolated herself so perfectly in the last two weeks that it truly felt as if they were miles away from one another. But she didn’t know if she could. She didn’t know if she had the strength to bend and not break. She loved him, but some bit of self preservation, a private bit of shame, kept her rooted to the floor as her lime green eyes glowed with longing and derision.

There was no easy way to do this, and so she began without further preamble. “Before the fall…” she said, her voice flat and colorless as new parchment. “Before I fell, I was pregnant.”

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Jefferson Soul · 05-02-2010, 03:36 PM

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Sorry for the wait, love. It's been a bad week.

He waited there, eye glancing at her only sometimes; his gaze was pressuring in and of itself, and he could clearly see she was struggling to speak her mind. Thousands of possibilities occurred to him, and he could only wonder what of the countless things she could say was so prevalent in her mind. Would she explain how she'd gotten up there, why she'd done such a thing in the rain and storm? Would she thank him for his help? Would she say she was leaving, all of a sudden, and never to come back?

No. His ears flicked back immediately, green eye wide. Pregnant? Before, and not after? His stomach lurched and his shoulders sank. Slowly, the Patriarch's gaze lowered to the floor, mouth agape, body stiff. He didn't know how to respond. He didn't know how to feel, above all else. Jefferson had barely ever thought of children with Geneva--the concept had simply never occurred to him--and now that he knew that possibility was gone, the hybrid's scarred body ached and pained. He felt heavy. Heaving a long, choking sigh, the cyclops could only bring his good hand to his eyes and rub at them, trying to sort through the many thoughts in his head.

Still taking more time to pause and breathe, the cyclops finally spoke, stressed eye still on the floor. "What happened, Geneva?" That was all he wanted to know. For some reason he couldn't get up, couldn't comfort her, couldn't touch her. He needed to know whose fault this was first.

Geneva Stockholm · 05-05-2010, 08:26 PM

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It was a simple enough question he posed. But those three words were enough to knock her off kilter, enough to scatter her carefully won composure. The uneven line of her jaw hardened as she clenched her teeth, and lime green eyes glinted with a steely light as she looked at him now. She hadn't known what he would say; she hadn't even had certain expectations formed in her mind. But the further questioning just set something off inside of her, like a ticking bomb. “You were there for some of it, if you recall,” she said, a thread of venomous steel in her words. They had shared together in that act of creation, but it had been her carrying the weight of the loss until that moment. How did he expect her to respond? “But I'll give you the blow by blow recap if you really need it.” Her words were acerbic and her tone was acidic.

What did he mean, what had happened? She didn't want to cycle backward through memory. She wanted to forge a way forward; she wanted to get out of the here and now, and go further into the future where this did not hurt so much or so deeply. The simple truth was that she had lost a child, children - she couldn't be certain if they had been many or few. It had been too soon in her pregnancy to judge that. But the fact of the matter was that there had been life inside her, dependent on her, and she had failed in safeguarding that gift. It was a bitter failure to swallow twice in one lifetime.

There was anger, so much anger welling up inside of her. She didn't know who to direct at it. None of this was Jefferson's fault, and she knew that. In fact, if he hadn't found her when he had, she might have slipped away for good. Still, she couldn't handle her situation; she had woken up changed, a stranger in unrecognizable skin with an unrecognizable face.

Geneva looked away from him now, her eyes settling on an unremarkable spot on the wall. Her voice settled, the edge of anger dying down to leave her voice flat again. “When you left to stay in AniWaya, I had begun to feel a little strange, a little off and too emotional. I went to confer with Naniko a few days into your stay, and she confirmed that I was pregnant.” Was. No longer did she house budding life inside of her. She felt an emptiness below her heart, where she should still be carrying that life, an emptiness that echoed that new chasm in her heart.

She looked back at him again, her features unreadable now. They didn't soften as she looked at him, not exactly. But some of the hard edge was gone and replaced by something distorted and twisted by sadness and self directed rage. “I didn't know how to tell you, once you were back. I didn't know what you'd think - we never talked about it. And I was thinking of Addison, and how you loved her. And I was just so sick of being afraid, of what you'd think, of if I'd fail in this again...Of every damn thing that ever kept me from doing what I wanted...and I fell.”

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Jefferson Soul · 05-13-2010, 03:16 PM

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He sat with his head in his hand, balanced atop his knee as he sat at the edge of the bed. Mind still whirling with questions of all kinds, the bitter words she threw back at him barely bit at the surface. He had been gentle with her, understanding up until now, and there was no reason he wasn't going to continue as such. This was big news, she had to understand. The only children he'd ever sired had been born out of sin and regret; they hated him down to his core now. Jefferson had struggled with the concept of being a father, and the fact that the opportunity had been so quickly given and removed from his power threw him for a loop. He and Geneva, their children would have been raised happily. They would not have grown into another Heath... and yet they were gone now, no better than that Cour des Miracles boy in the end.

Geneva had been okay with the idea of the switch between he and Dawali. It had been quick and sudden, but she'd been willing to work with it. Upon returning, however, there was a tension between he and the girl that wasn't expected or natural; Jefferson knew immediately that his absence had taken a toll on her somehow, or that something new was suddenly troubling her. He now knew what that thing was, as she spoke of Naniko, but didn't understand why she had struggled so terribly. "Why?" he said, eye still surrendered to the darkness of his palm. "Why couldn't you have trusted me? It wouldn't be like last time." She had told him decently enough about Jordan and their daughter, but the Patriarch knew enough to be aware that these circumstances were nothing like what she was used to.

He sighed. Somehow, he was the reason for her fall, one way or another. "What if I hadn't gone," he mumbled beneath his breath, mostly to himself. "If I'd just stayed here, none of this shit would've happened. It's my fucking fault."

Geneva Stockholm · 05-14-2010, 11:08 PM

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327.

The infinite sadness that enveloped her heart rode on the waves of a well honed madness. That madness had been born from fear and compounded by failure and every doubt to ever plague her. Rage rose from within her, spilling out of her mouth as her lips formed around harsh words. It was impossible to keep this rush inside, especially when Jefferson spoke of such absurdities. His fault? How could this be anyone's fault? Who would want this? Who would want her after this had reshaped her so crudely?

“This isn't about you." Her quietness now wasn't her characteristic whisper-soft voice. Instead there was something banked there, fury waiting to break her open. She felt it pulsing with every beat of her heart, expanding, waiting to break free, to crack through her ribs and chest, to spill out of her mouth and burn her tongue along the way. She balled her hands into fists, and the tenseness in her body made her shoulder ache dully, but she could tolerate it. She had endure greater pains - the pain that twisted inside her propelled her forward now. “This isn't even about me; this is bigger than us." Her voice was rising. Frustration twisting like a tornado inside of her, heartache, pain, disbelief, disillusionment...she couldn't pick out a single emotion, thought, or feeling and direct it into an appropriate action.

She reached the edge of the bed and trembled; she hadn't been this close to him in what seemed like forever. But now, she wasn't certain if she wanted to throw her arms around him to embrace or strangle him. And she didn't trust herself to follow any kind of impulse. This. This right here is why I didn't approach you." Her breath hissed out between clenched teeth. She seized a hank of his hair and pulled it while her slender fingers curled roughly around his shoulder and she shook. “Look at me, god damn it. Look. At. Me.."

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Jefferson Soul · 05-20-2010, 02:02 PM

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Emotions began to rise, as they were bound to do on such grim subject matter; his green eye never left the floor, but the Patriarch sensed the increasingly burning gaze of his mate on his body, scathing with a rising fury as time went on. Nothing he said seemed to dampen her mood—even the blame turned on himself made matters worse, and for once the cyclops felt powerless. What happened inside her body had been because of him, but what she had done to it, she believed to be her own fault. This is bigger than both of us. The cyclops froze on those words; what were they supposed to mean? The children had been theirs, their creations, and the accident that had stolen them away along with Geneva's innocence and beauty was no fault of a higher power. Jefferson did not believe in fate, and at that his green eye finally rose, only to meet with her enraged olives just inches away.

He began to pull back in surprise, but she hissed and grabbed at his hair. In his face she scolded him, pleaded with him, shrieked at him all at once; the green of his eye did not leave hers once, refusing to look over the disfigurement she so desperately needed him to acknowledge. Jefferson found no words of comfort, no sympathy rise in him, even as the girl he'd once loved so terribly got into his face. Her body trembled, claws digging into the skin of his shoulder, and sharp pains shot through his head as she yanked at his hair. His heart pounded. His teeth clamped together and grinded.

Jefferson rose to his feet all too suddenly, forcing her hand from his head as he towered over her. "Geneva!" his voice boomed, filling the room and trembling the walls. The scars of his face grimaced, a bitter darkness present in the raged glow of his eye, staring undauntedly down at her. She did not scare him, not once, and he would not allow her to snap like this. At his side was a fist, and across his chest was another.

Geneva Stockholm · 05-26-2010, 12:01 PM

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Geneva couldn't stop herself. She felt as though she was hurtling toward a dead-end with this, but there was no other way for her to go. The figurative walls of her own pain and anger and sadness were closing in on her, and the only way to escape was to let that dread energy break through the surface and come crashing into whatever stood in its way. She didn't know what she hoped to accomplish with this; but there was no hope in her mind, no way of fixing things. Just damaging them beyond their current condition. Geneva didn't feel like a force of creation, didn't feel like something with the ability to create and give life, whether to the children lost between them, their failing relationship, or to the twisted caricature of the creature she had once been. She felt like a black hole; she felt like destruction.

Her out-of-character actions were not met by paralyzing shock. No, she had known even as she had shot toward him that he would not take this lying down. That was something she loved about him...something she had loved about him, at least. She couldn't be certain what she felt now, aside from shame. She could not put a name to the amalgam of ugly emotion that swirled inside of her, a vortex of pain that swallowed every other thing. There was something achingly familiar about this completely unrecognizable mess they were in. There was something that resonated with looking into his enraged emerald gaze, and feeling the booming echo of his voice on the rise. Maybe it was the way he felt under her hands - concrete, solid, real, an affirmation that she had not simply dreamed of loving him before waking to this nightmare. The reverberation of her love from a time before remained in her memory. If it existed now, she couldn't find it; she could only feel the pale presence of its ghost.

That wasn't enough to completely quiet the confusing surge of the broken pieces of her old life, trying to find a way to re-situate themselves amidst the chaos in her mind. But it was enough to make her drops her hands to her sides. Wide-eyed, she let her arms hang loosely, hands open and fingers slack as the violent energy that had possessed her before left her empty. Her ears folded back against her skull and her shoulders rounded. Geneva stared at him as though she was trying to look away, but she couldn't. It wasn't shock necessarily that had done this to her, or even shame. But they both had a hand in her quiet now. When she couldn't bear the few seconds that passed between them, she widened the distance between them, one backward step at a time, until her back rested against the door.

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