Ilia Amitola is color coded for your convenience (amitola) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-09-28 07:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, blake belladonna, ilia amitola |
Who: Reading Rainbow
What: Having a much needed talk about the goings-on of their dreams.
When: 28 September 2018, morning
Where: Logan’s Home For Faunus
Warnings: References to abuse
Blake had known for quite a while that eventually, she and Ilia needed to sit down and talk about some events of their dreams. The only thing was that Blake wasn’t entirely certain where Ilia was in them, and didn’t want to bring something up in the event Ilia hadn’t dreamt it yet. It was slightly awkward, but Blake knew it would need to happen sooner or later. After all, Blake knew she needed to explain to Ilia why she’d left the White Fang, and why she hadn’t come back for Ilia. And she well knew Ilia most likely had things to say to her about that particular decision.
However, it never seemed to be the right time to ask Ilia about the dreams. After the whole incident with Ilia being kidnapped and brainwashed, Blake had decided to not bring up the dreams until she felt Ilia was okay enough to have the conversation with her.
Or the dreams could have a mind of their own and force the issue. Which tended to be how things went. There never was a ‘right time’ for anything, but the dream she’d just had made it all the more imperative she at least find out where Ilia was in hers. Ilia had betrayed her and her family to the White Fang. Oh she’d heard Ilia’s warning, but she hadn’t heeded it. After all, she needed to make up for past mistakes, most important of all was having left Ilia behind.
After showering, which gave her enough time to sort her own head out on the matter, Blake dressed, then went to see if Ilia was in her room and she knocked.
Okay was a relative term. Was Ilia okay? Well, she would say she was. She had at least reached out to Bucky after fighting demons and the undead had brought her face to face with the man she’d killed in Russia as part of a test. Of finding herself falling easily into the motions and losing time and it scaring her. But she instead would focus on Chloe and trying to get her life a semblance of normal.
The last dream she’d had had been when she had interrupted Blake before she could speak to the gathered faunus. She had kept trying to get her friend to leave because she knew that if Blake stayed, eventually they would have to actually fight and no matter how betrayed she had felt when the other girl had left, no matter how much her anger was being used to ensure she stayed loyal to a cause that she sometimes was uncertain about the methods used….. She didn’t want to fight Blake. They were supposed to fight side by side and now they were on opposing sides.
So Ilia had ignored it. She and Blake were fine here and that was all that mattered. But then she had another dream. Where she was told about the assassination of Sienna Khan. A move she wasn’t happy about, but sometimes sacrifice was necessary. The Albains had another mission for her though. Kill the Belladonnas but because they knew about her closeness to Blake, she was only to capture her so she could be returned to Adam.
With her orders given, Ilia pushed down any reservations she had because it was for the greater good of getting the faunus the respect they deserved, to prove that they weren’t a subcategory to humans, the teen set the trap. But Blake just didn’t get it. She said that this wasn’t who she was, as if she knew her. What a laugh and so she told her about her feelings, to prove that Blake didn’t know her as well as she seemed to think. That despite her feelings, she still felt this was the way forward.
She pushed down the clench in her heart at Blake’s panicked expression when she heard where she was to be sent. Adam was angry but he wouldn’t hurt her. She had to believe that. But she had another mission to fulfill.
Upon waking, Ilia just held her head. She was all too familiar with the parallels between dreams and real life, so while she wasn’t positive about the relationship of Blake and Adam in them, she had a feeling that it was abusive and in letting the Albains twist her anger to their need, she was doing something she’d never forgive herself for.
What did that even make her? They had used her here and they continued in the dreams, and the Russians and….
Shaking her head in an attempt to clear up her thoughts, Ilia decided that she would just get dressed and head to the train tracks. Maybe call Chloe, but mostly she needed to get her head on straight. She just finished getting ready when she heard the knock on her door. Wary, she went to the door and opened it, blinking as she saw Blake.
“Um...hey…”
Yeah, this wasn’t awkward at all. Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal, but after the dream she’d just had….well. It was awkward.
Blake was definitely not okay with the whole being handed over to Adam thing. The worst thing was knowing that Adam most likely wouldn’t kill her, he’d simply torture her into compliance. He’d make her beg for death, and then not give it to her. It was a fear, and it was one that was pushing her panic buttons, but she was trying to stay calm. Adam didn’t exist in this life, though her abusive ex certainly did. She’d definitely be looking over her shoulder a lot more often just to make sure he wasn’t there.
Instead, she kept herself focused on Ilia and talking things out with her. She hoped they could talk things out here and everything would be fine. Because here, they were fine. There wasn’t the added baggage of Blake having left without a word. But she didn’t want this development in the dreams to hang between them and cause a rift. She didn’t need a rift between them in this life as well.
“Hey,” she greeted when Ilia opened the door. Her cat ears were kind of drooped. “I uh, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
Like Blake, the last thing Ilia wanted was for something in the dreams to make things bad here. Because in the dreams she didn’t know. But she still knew how bad it was what she’d done. She still questioned herself (though there was a lot to unpack with that particular issue thanks to….well, everything) so she wanted one of the few good and steady things in her life to remain as such.
Which was why she was immediately aware of the way Blake’s ears were drooped. That was definitely not a good sign.
“No, you’re not. Come in.”
Might as well see what it was Blake wanted to say and hope that it wasn’t her getting kicked out because she’d had the same dream and didn’t want Ilia around her anymore. It would be just her luck if that were what was going to be the case.
Blake kept her breathing even, something to keep herself as calm as possible. She didn’t want to start freaking out about Adam or her ex. Devolving into a ball of anxiety was not how she wanted to spend her day. And she didn’t want to put that on Ilia to deal with either.
Nodding a bit, she moved into Ilia’s room, though she didn’t move to sit. She turned, putting her back to a wall, an unconscious move so no one could come up behind her (not that anyone else was there to do that, but she was a little paranoid at the moment).
“I had another Dream, and I wanted to know where you were in them. Because we need to talk about it, but it wouldn’t do any good if you haven’t dreamed about what happened in Menagerie after I came back.” At the very least, if Ilia hadn’t dreamt about it yet, this would let her know that Blake did want to talk when she did. And if she had dreamt it, hopefully it wasn’t so vague so that Ilia wouldn’t be able to figure out what exactly she was referencing.
Ilia wasn’t stupid. Between the way that Blake was holding herself, the way she was focused on her breathing, the way she kept her back to the wall….. Something Ilia herself was prone to do now thanks to the Red Room…. She knew it had to be the same dream she’d had. Or something after that. Because none of their confrontations that had happened in Menagerie would cause that sort of reaction.
“The trap I set and heading to your home after betraying your misguided trust in me.”
Blake might be trying to be vague but Ilia was blunt. Even so, her own body language betrayed her feelings. Holding her arm and rubbing it, shifting awkwardly. Just because she was (mostly) sure in her actions in the Dreams, she’d been acting on what she’d been told, only knowing or at least feeling that it was the right thing for their people. She didn’t know what had happened with Adam. But here she could hazard a guess and so she was not happy.
She didn’t change colors, that wasn’t a thing here, and she didn’t have ears that were expressive, but it didn’t make it any less obvious how Ilia herself felt about what had happened.
“Yes. Though I suppose I simply prefer to see the best in everyone.” Sometimes that was easier than seeing the reality of the situation. “I was so convinced that I could save you.” It was why she’d stayed in Menagerie and ignored Ilia’s various warnings. She wanted to save her from what Adam was doing to the White Fang and to her friend.
Even if Ilia didn’t consider them friends anymore in the dreams, Blake still did. She wanted to make her mistake right. But now it seemed she’d never get that chance. Instead she’d be handed over to Adam and suffer at his hands. There was little doubt in her mind that he would make her wish she was dead and instead keep her alive and miserable.
“I never should have left you behind like I did.” Now that they both were on the same page of where they were in the dreams, Blake was no longer being vague.
Ilia had never been given the luxury to see the best in people, here or the dreams. She had always admired that about Blake, but it was also a fault because people rarely were as good or had the potential she seemed to want them to. Look at her. She was so full of anger, so ready to fight…
“I’m too angry to be saved.” And that was all there was to it. Blake’s lofty pleas to her better side or whatever were wasted on the likes of her. And because of said anger, of it being manipulated… and all her common sense and feelings of ill ease at what was asked of her were ignored for what she foolishly was believing to be the only way.
“...I would have gone with you, you know.” And she would have. Especially if her theories about what actually happened with Adam were accurate. If Blake had just told her, she would have left with her. Instead she’d been left behind and her anger nurtured into a garden of thorns.
Sometimes Blake wondered if she shouldn’t be harder than she was, to let go of some of the false hope she held onto that there was a better world out there somewhere. That there were kind people in it. But even though she had every reason to be bitter and cold, she never could be that. Adam could never kill that part of her. Her ex in this world hadn’t been able to kill it either.
“I still had to try. If I didn’t…” Blake just let the thought trail off, but she silently finished it with the thought ‘he’d win.’ If Blake couldn’t save any of her friends, then what good was she? Adam would’ve been right about her all along, and she’d remain powerless against him. And she didn’t want to be powerless, and she wanted to help her friends, not watch them be destroyed.
Blake’s cat ears drooped and she lowered her head. “I should have gone back for you. But I knew if I did, I never would have been able to leave.” Part of her was convinced that Adam would’ve killed her. Even if he didn’t actually kill her, he would have killed her spirit and turned her into something she never wanted to be.
Ilia could only nod some. She knew that she was beyond saving. Or no….there was always that lingering sense of doubt in the Dreams. The doubt she pushed aside because it would make her question the only thing she had, the only family she’d had after the mining accident that killed her parents. And if she lost that, then what? Her conscience clear while she was left alone all over again?
“Adam.”
It wasn’t a question.
“If I had known, I would have killed him myself.” Because she didn’t need Blake to say what it was that he did. She had already been half convinced the parallels existed for Blake as well. And then her reactions, the things that weren’t said…. It wasn’t hard for Ilia at all to know why Blake had been afraid.
But that was also what it came down to. Ilia hadn’t known. She instead was only able to respond to what limited information she had, information twisted and manipulated by the Albain brothers, her anger constantly stoked. Especially if she ever seemed to question even slightly.
Blake’s initial response to Ilia’s statement was one she stopped herself from saying because it was the response that Adam and her ex had programed into her. It wasn’t the truth of the matter. Blake took a slow breath. “I was too scared of what he would do if I said anything. I didn’t want him to hurt you or anyone else I cared about. And then he still managed to do that anyways.”
There was a note of bitterness in her voice. Adam had hurt Yang because Blake hadn’t been strong enough to face him herself. She realized here that she simply hadn’t been ready to stand up to him, that she’d played right into his hands like she always had.
“There was a lot I should have done differently, but I wasn’t ready to stand up to him then.” And at that point of the dreams, Blake wasn’t sure that she could stand up to Adam yet. “I know it doesn’t make up for it, but I am sorry I left you in the dreams. I’m probably going about it wrong in the dreams, but I am trying to right the mistake I made by trying to save you. And I’m trying to stop Adam from perverting the White Fang more than he already has.”
Ilia quirked a brow at the comment about how Adam had still hurt someone she cared about. Because even if it hadn’t been Blake’s intentions, she had hurt Ilia by not trusting her and just leaving as she did. Did she understand it? Here she did, sure. But that didn’t make it any less true. But she and Blake had gone over how hiding away or running away could hurt people who cared no matter your intention so there was no need to go into all of that again.
“I get that. Here I mean. But then again, I’m pretty sure that’s the so called joys of the dream bullshit. Seeing how much we fuck up in them even if we might understand the why.”
Which was basically her own admission that she really didn’t agree with her actions in the dreams, or at least not all of them.
“I wish I knew what to tell you. All I know is my anger is easily manipulated and I feel like there’s no other option, the White Fang is the only family I’ve known since my parents…. But…. I don’t like it. Even if my anger is being used against me, I think in some way you’re getting through. Or at least planting a seed.” It was hard to tell given the fact she was heading to the Belladonna manor in the dreams. But she knew that she’d wavered in other dreams whenever facing Blake, the questioning on if there was another way and then pushing it aside.
They had gone into the whole running away or hiding away still hurt people regardless of intentions. And Blake knew leaving her team the way she had had hurt them, but her worst fear had come true and her response to that was to run. Ironically, that was what had caused her to return to Menagerie, to see her parents again after so long. She had hoped she’d see Ilia again as well, but she hadn’t counted on it actually happening.
“Yeah, being on the outside looking at the dreams, it easy to see where the mistakes we make happen.” They just couldn’t do anything to stop them from happening. Though oddly, Blake felt like she was where she was supposed to be in the dreams. Even if she was afraid her parents weren’t going to survive and she’d be handed over to Adam in them.
“I know. And the White Fang is important and we need it. What we don’t need is how Adam is weaponizing it. Being terrorists and hurting everyone who gets in the way isn’t the answer.” Really, Blake hated that her parents had relinquished leading the White Fang so that Adam could help twist it into a terrorist organization. He had made it exactly what people feared the Faunus were: terrorists and people to fear.
“But I hope that I’m getting through to you. At least that means I’m doing something right.”
Ilia nodded some. She had so much anger that the frustration of not being able to change the course of the Dreams just added to it. But she also remembered the raid on the Schnee factory with Adam and Sienna, the disquiet that she had felt watching them kill. But it was something they had told her was necessary and she had believed them because not to? Well that was terrifying.
“Wish I got that in the Dreams, or well...actually acknowledged it instead of pushing it aside but...like you said, we can’t really do much about it there.”
She just wish she knew what they were trying to show her.
“You are, at least I’m pretty sure you are. Even if I’m trying to ignore it.”
As much as Adam was a sore spot for her, it was good that she had someone to talk to about him. Because Blake needed to talk about him, and Ilia was the only person who knew him. And the only person who could talk about him without her eyes turning red at the mere mention of him. Yes, Adam deserved anger being directed towards him, but that wasn’t productive for Blake. She had complicated emotions bound up in him that she needed to unknot, and talking helped unknot them.
“Sadly we can’t, no matter how much we may wish we could do something about it here. All we can really do is learn from the dreams.” Blake thought she understood what her dreams were trying to show her. She’d gone back to Menagerie because it was the only place she had to go after Beacon had fallen and her worst fear coming true had pressed all of her buttons and put her into the fight-or-flight mode. But in this life, Blake thought she was supposed to be in Menagerie to learn lessons that she needed to learn. To work through some of her issues and become stronger.
“Ignoring it or not, if I am doing something it’ll undoubtedly come out sooner or later. Everything that bubbles under the surface always inevitably comes out.”
Sometimes it was necessary to talk about these things, even if Ilia failed at putting things into words for the most part. It was something Russian Josh Groban tried to get her to do and she was at least trying to. So far she was just failing at it. But she knew that if anyone would understand things about the White Fang, it would be Blake. So there was that.
“You sound like Russian Josh Groban.” Because why call him by his name? It was just very accurate. Still, that was something else he had mentioned given how frustrated she got with the dreams and feeling like she was always someone’s weapon. They couldn’t change the dreams but they could learn from them, “Though you both do have a point.” She just didn’t know what she was supposed to learn.
“Probably. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later though.”
Just as Ilia didn’t always know how to put things into words, there was also the fact that there just weren’t words to describe some things. Some emotions or situations were just too complex to put into words for others to understand. Sometimes they just needed to find the best way to convey such things that worked for them.
“I know it’s not the best answer, but it’s true when I say that sometimes we don’t understand the lessons until later on.” Blake shrugged a little. She was starting to see what she was supposed to learn from her dreams, or so she thought at any rate. But she would wait and see where her dreams took her.
“I hope it will be sooner rather later as well.”
There really weren’t always words to be able to describe things. Especially emotions. There was some ‘if you can’t name it, you can’t tame it’ type saying about emotions and the like but there weren’t always words and people could just shove it with that. Or so Ilia thought.
“I’ll have to take your word on it then.” Which...was actually saying a lot. Ilia had trust issues, so even if it seemed a flippant comment, she was still putting value on what Blake said and held her opinion in high esteem. So if Blake said it might take time but it would be clear, then Ilia would just have to accept it.
“No kidding.”
Blake definitely agreed with Ilia that people who thought that if you couldn’t name it, you couldn’t tame it was completely bullshit. Emotions were far more complex than language ever could be. And there were things that Blake felt that she wouldn’t ever be able to put into words, but she knew exactly what they were. And she was starting to learn how to try and deal with them.
Most people might have taken that statement as being flippant, but not Blake. She understood Ilia’s trust issues, and knew the weight that those words carried. Her cat ears perked up a bit and she gave Ilia a little smile.
“Whatever comes in the dreams, we’re together in this life. I’m here for you, and I’m not going anywhere.” And that was also saying something. Blake had had plenty of opportunities to run away or leave, but she hadn’t. She was still there.