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Post by THADDEA ARYN MELANTHA on Jan 15, 2013 14:29:29 GMT -5
just may run away from you She hadn’t expected her tears, her surge of weakness. She stood, somewhat awkwardly, staring around the room but seeing nothing at all. In her mind’s eye, she saw the walls transform. She could see herself, clearly, sprawled on the bed with a book. Alisander lay curled under a blanket on her rug, flipping through some comic or another. He had his eyes screwed together, his brows knitted in confusion. She grabbed a pillow, flung it at him, pegged him directly in the head. She was snorting, Alisander was protesting. He insisted that someday he’d be and adult, he’d be a man. And she’d laughed, told him that he could be a man and she’d still be his elder sister.
The memory faded away, the walls blue, the bed empty but for Thomas. Alisander wasn’t sprawled on the floor. He wasn’t ten years old again. She wasn’t a teenager, wasn’t pegging him with pillows. She was halfway across the continent, almost as far away as she could get. And somewhere, miles and miles away, a seventeen-year old boy – more of a man now – visited his elder sister’s supposed grave. Without meaning to, without being able to hold it back anymore, the tears slipped down. They were silent, her lip trembling, but she couldn’t pull them back, couldn’t erase the memories.
She felt arms encircle her, soft, light. She recognized Thomas in some back distant portion of her mind. A part of her was screaming at her to flee, but the majority of her was too weak. There was something safe about him, something that made her feel secure. She melted into him, her head on his shoulder. She pressed her face into his neck, spilling tears on his atrocious Christmas sweater. Her arms came up, locking around his neck, holding him close. She could feel his chin, gentle on her head, the soothing noises he made. She snuggled deep into him, tried to envelop herself in that safeness, chase away the images of Alisander and an empty grave.
She sniffed, a quiet sound. Her cries were light breaths. She couldn’t let go of him, refused to let go. When she did, when she stepped away, she’d be forced to confront what she had done. She’d be forced to face the line she had crossed, that impossible line to hop back away from. And she wasn’t prepared to do that, didn’t know how to handle it. Instead she spoke, in a quiet breaking voice, into his neck. “He’d lay on my floor, under my comforter. Sometimes he spent all night there, would crawl into my bed when he got scared. I taught him to read, I took him to the zoo, we watched movies together every weekend.” The words came out in a nonsensical tumble, her face still pressed into the skin of his neck. He smelled sweet, like pine trees and vanilla.
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Post by THOMAS LULA ROTH on Jan 16, 2013 10:49:40 GMT -5
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth Thinking on it, he didn't have much experience with crying. Not when he didn't understand where the tears had come from and what they meant. If they were angry tears in a fight, he knew how to deal with those. He understood their origin. And he wasn't the sort of man that balked in the face of emotion like this, though one might have argue that setting had a lot to do with it, because he would not be having the same reactions were this one of his students or a stranger or some equally strange thing.
And there was the fact that this was not Thaddea behavior at all, which concerned him most. Once you go used to someone mannerisms and quirks, the way the spoke and the way they acted, any disparities became cause for worry. So he was silent as he felt her face against his necks and the wetness of her tears, arms up around his neck. His hand fell in soothing motions on her back, making sure that she felt comforted, though it was almost as if he were soothing a child.
Tom blinked as the woman stepped away, rolling his shoulders and shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks. "Who, Thaddea?" he questioned, since she gave no inclination of what she was speaking of, who she taught to read and who curled up with her at night. His thought was of a dog, and he wondered if that's what brought up the emotion. Perhaps she was homesick. She was far from home, after all, a very long way from Greece. He could understand how those emotions could be brought up, especially at a time like this. He had his family, his home, everything he needed right her in Maple Hollow. Never did he go to sleep at night wondering what his family were doing, and what when he was going to see them again, because all he had to do was call them up.
But was it really that simple or was he missing something? He honestly didn't know, but he had the sort of patience that came with age. Years ago, he might have been confused and even angry because he was young and he just didn't like things he didn't understand. Now he was willing to stay there and talk to Thaddea and ask her about what was going on, what was making her like this, because he was so concerned. And the only thing he wanted was for her to stop crying so he could see a smile on her face. That's all he really wanted from her, and it hurt, the way his heart was thundering in his chest with these thoughts.
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Post by THADDEA ARYN MELANTHA on Jan 17, 2013 13:08:50 GMT -5
just may run away from you She let herself be lost in him. It sounded cliché, but in a way it was easier. It was easier to simply be the woman in his arms, nameless, almost unconscious. She could let him hold her, envelop her, wipe away who and what she had been. She didn’t want another new name, a new story, a new life. She wanted it to end, to hide herself in this namelessness, in this utter simplicity. She could melt into him, forget she even really existed. Perhaps it was weak, spineless, cowardly. But at only twenty-eight years of age, she was exhausted. There was only so much she had to give.
She wasn’t suicidal. There was a pronounced difference between depression and exhaustion. And, simply put, Thaddea was exhausted. She felt like she could melt, perhaps evaporate into some vapor. It wasn’t death, exactly, more of a cessation of her very existence. Like one of those paranormal activity shows. Her business would be complete, her message passed, and she could finally sleep in the eternal life or whatever idea it was that those religious people held so closely. It was a nice idea, but entirely unrealistic. The pounding in her head and drying tear tracks made this all too real, all too alive.
She took a step back as his arms fell away. The moment, that one moment, had ended. She sniffed, straightening. She had broken for a moment, a mere moment. She had let herself come down. But that moment was gone now. He shoulders went back, her head high, her wobbling lips pressed into a thin line. She wiped at her eyes, sweeping carefully under her lid. She carefully cleaned away smeared makeup. She wouldn’t stoop to using her sleeve, to sniveling and wiping at herself. She had already stooped so low once, and wouldn’t do it again.
She cleared her voice, taking another step away from him. She ran a hand through her hair, self-consciously straightening her dress and wiping non-existent dust and wrinkles from the fabric. She shook herself. “No one,” She cleared her throat again, giving a final sniff. The old Thaddea had returned, the stiff distant woman, strong in her own right. Her eyes darted away from him, so she wouldn’t be forced to see him, to acknowledge that moment they had had. “Someone I knew a long time ago.” She glanced around, eager to move on, to leave it behind her. “I believe I hear your aunt searching for you below.” She could still hear the clatter and murmur of his family, of their laughing and drinking. She moved towards the doorway, eager to find some safety in the crowd. There was a certain safety in anonymity.
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Post by THOMAS LULA ROTH on Jan 18, 2013 9:55:07 GMT -5
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth Tom wouldn't push. That's one thing that could be known instantly. She gave him a shifty answer -- it was someone, from some time ago -- and she made it clear that she did not want to elaborate. If she did, wouldn't she have said more on the matter? The feeling that he had tread upon something very personal and intimate let him know that he shouldn't try and get anymore out of this, no matter how concerned he felt, and no matter what he thought about the situation. He left it at this: she just had a moment, a moment that should have been alone that occurred with him in her presence. That's it, and it wasn't his place to ask more or yearn to know more about this woman. No matter how he may have felt about her. No matter what he may have thought or how much this worried him. A strange kind of worry, as a matter of fact, that he didn't know he would have felt otherwise.
So he let her go. He let Thaddea regain her dignity, though he hadn't felt as if any had been lost. Crying wasn't a weakness in his eyes, it was an expression of emotion that society stigmatized as a weakness. And he simply adjusted the sleeves on his sweater, took in her words, let them go over and over in his mind He thought that perhaps someone may have caused her pain in the past, though he wasn't very sure on that matter. Maybe the past just wasn't that good a topic for her, like it wasn't for a few people. Some tended to be more open about that kind of stuff than others. Him, for instance. He felt that he had nothing to hide, and even though he had some things he'd rather forget, he'd always been the candid sort. He couldn't expect Thaddea to be the same.
Though he couldn't hear his aunt, he nodded in understanding. "If you need a moment, you can stay up here. No one'll bother you." The man couldn't exactly predict neither of his parents coming up, but he figured this would be the safest place considering that the party's center was downstairs with the food and the decorations and the presents and the little children running around. Suddenly, it felt cold in that room, like they had sequestered off a part of the home for something quite dark and perturbing. He couldn't shake that feeling, for some reason, he felt that he couldn't get rid of it.
Even though he felt that pervading sense of unease, all that really mattered was that Thaddea would be all right. He didn't want this night to be any worse for her than his sister most likely already made it. Though he dreaded going back downstairs without his friend (and god, it was becoming harder and harder to think of her as friend), he headed down the steps and back into the fold of his family who had missed him in his absence. The night had definitely been more pleasant with Thaddea by his side, but he was sure that she would return when she felt up to it. For now, he would eat some more food and refill his plate.
[fin?]
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