Nives Gagliardi (disintegrates) wrote in at_the_gates, @ 2012-03-20 10:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | maria-nives gagliardi, ophelia ziegler |
Close Watch
Who: Nives Gagliardi & Ophelia Ziegler.
What: Post Traumatic Cuddling.
When: [Backdated] February 16th; Evening
Where: Haven. Ophelia's Room.
In those days after the nightmares were made real (she had since learned that some people's most fantastic dreams also manifested in the chaos, but she'd seen so little of that as to be completely negligible in her mind) Nives's activity fluctuated rather dramatically. Even after all the time she spent in bed recovering from Vaughn's treatment for what could actually be fixed (after she woke up with a tangle of bed sheets between her legs and only the foggiest memories of utterly disgracing herself) there were plenty of times spent alone in that bed again, holed up in her bedroom in a sort of depressed silence, doing nothing more than staring up at the ceiling, trying to summon up phantom limb pain just so she could pretend to herself that her left hand was still attached to her body and none of the bad things in the past week had actually happened. But, of course, that exercise was entirely futile and boring, besides. So inevitably, after a few hours worth of the solitary self-pity sessions nearly every day, Nives would pop out of her room again, positively shaking with stored up excess energy, eagerly asking what she could do to help with the cleaning and rebuilding efforts-- and the surviving residents of Haven didn't turn her away and for once nobody chastised her for being lazy and spending hours in bed earlier, either. The troubled, freshly traumatized denizens of that freshly violated safe space all seemed to quietly understand the need for occasional isolation from everything and everyone. In fact, quiet understanding seemed to be the general mood of the group as a whole (with, perhaps, a hefty helping of anxiety and willingness to throw themselves into the work that needed doing as well) since nobody seemed to want to talk about what happened or really anything else for that matter.
So it took a while before anyone mentioned Ophelia in Nives's hearing and set off the inevitable chain of events-- Nives defending her friend with a single fist and a long loud string of aggressively colorful language, Nives being pulled away and ordered to cool off, Nives sitting alone in her room some more-- only this time wondering how Ophelia was doing and why she hadn’t thought of her best friend’s welfare before now. The answer was terribly obvious, of course. It was because Nives was ultimately selfish and a shit friend all around. But that could be remedied, couldn’t it? Barely twenty minutes after she’d been more-or-less sent to her room, Nives crept out-- feeling every bit like she did back when she was in school and living at home, sneaking out of her bedroom late at night to get a few more hours worth of studying in-- and headed right for Ophelia’s room without knowing for certain if the other girl was even there or awake or willing to take a visitor. It all hardly mattered to Nives. She was too overwhelmed with tender, protective feeling for the friend so many other Havenites were keen to blame for the massacre-- and also guilt-- to let any of that stop her. Nives brought her right hand to Ophelia’s door, gently rapping at it with her knuckles, but didn’t wait for a response before opening the door and quietly calling out, “Ophelia? It’s Nives. Can I come in?”
Of course, Nives was already two steps over the threshold when she asked that and subconsciously slipped the handless stub of her left arm out of sight and into the front pocket of her hoodie.