Who:Jacques and Ofelia duh What:Making up after Robojacques invaded (Log/Completed) When: Saturday morning Rating:PG-13 for swears.
Jacques woke up on Saturday morning to a rush of emotions that left him curled up in his bed, trying to breathe and not change into a million things at once. They were leftovers from yesterday, remnants from the strange state he’d been in for the past twenty-four hours. He hadn’t felt anything all day. There had been no happiness, no anger, nothing. And surprisingly, he’d hated it. There had been nothing left of his personality except a blank slate; logical reactions and facts. He’d trained so long his entire body ached this morning and he wanted to stay in bed. But he had to see what damage he’d done. He remembered everything fully, but he needed to verify with his computer to make sure the exchange with Ofelia had actually taken place. It had. Well that was brilliant. He should have just stayed off the network and tried not to talk to anyone, in retrospect, but it was a bit too late for that.
Jacques put off going to Ofelia’s room to apologise, even though he knew he had to. He was a bit scared of what she’d say. What did she mean, that this wasn’t surprising? He hoped she didn’t think he’d do this normally. He never would. He wouldn’t ever trust a potion from her mentor either, but that was another issue. He had to say he was sorry before going to yell at Bok-Su. So after a few more moments of poking around his dorm room uselessly, he took the few steps down the hall and knocked softly. He thought perhaps he should be bearing gifts of something, but maybe that wouldn’t help anyway.
Ofelia had long ago become something of an expert of the subtle techniques of distraction. Perhaps related, or perhaps entirely separate from the exchange with Jacques, her night had been restless, giving up on sleep around five a.m. In order to give Liria time to sleep in -- it was, after all, a Saturday -- she’d slipped from her dorm and taken a long walk through campus to clear her head. Campus had turned to Boston and she returned to Victory Hall red-cheeked from the cold, arms loaded with bags of art supplies and new albums. Maybe if she turned her music on loud enough, she could keep her creeping thoughts at bay.
An hour later, Ofelia stood at her easel, a pair of over-large headphones clamped over her ears. Thoughts were impossible, disrupted by the cacophony of unintelligible music drumming itself into her brain. Her brush strokes, too, were anything but delicate and, after fifteen minutes of painting, she was becoming increasingly covered in red, blood-like splatters of paint, spreading across the black shorts she wore and the tattered tank covering her upper body. There was a war-like streak under one eye, but her hair was spared, piled on top of her head. These marking suggested that she’d managed to distract herself, that she was in the “zone” as it were; coupled with the music, she might have missed Jacques’ knock had she not moments before pulled one headphone down to listen for what she thought was her phone. Instead, she stepped over her bags and opened the door of her dorm. Seeing who it was, her face tightened and she felt herself flush, eyeing him with suspicion. “Yeah?” She really didn’t want him to explain. She just wanted to pretend like the last three weeks hadn’t happened.
When Ofelia opened the door and Jacques saw her in all her painted glory, the first smile in a full day crept up on his face. He thought there was something quite pretty about Ofelia like this. She was disheveled, a complete mess, but she looked genuinely passionate about the paint covering her body, like she’d just been at war with the easel inside. There was no denying there was something beautiful at work here. She was one of the most interesting people he’d met, and in this school, that was saying something. His smile, however, was wiped off his face as soon as she glanced at him with a look that told him yes, she really did think he was serious yesterday. He murmured a “Hi, Fe,” but he wasn’t exactly sure where to go from there. He coughed uncomfortably and looked at the floor. Jacques was not quite sure how he was supposed to apologise for something he was angry at someone else for.
“So yesterday,” he began haltingly, trying to see if he could think of a joke to pass this off as nothing more than an embarrassing occurence between friends. Of course, it was a little more severe than that. “Yesterday was pretty much a fucking disaster. And I’m sorry.” He didn’t want to launch into the potions story yet, because he was fairly certain that Ofelia would think of all of it as bullshit. It sounded like that even to himself, if he thought about it objectively.
When Jacques smiled at her, Ofelia felt her stomach lurch uncomfortably, and not in a good way. It seemed to confirm her suspicion that he was there to mock her for -- what? The cameras? Her eyes shot up and saw the red flashing light that reminded her they weren’t alone. She shook her head quickly, arms folded, leaning against the doorframe. “Can you -- just don’t, okay? It’s fine. I’m fine. It is what it is. Save your conscious clearing for the confession room.” The flush was creeping up her throat and burning in her cheeks now. She felt blotchy and uncomfortable and like she wanted to get out of the hall. Quickly. Worst still was the realization that she’d actually grown attached to their friendship. She didn’t want to concede that with a bunch of girls cheering on her mortification.
Jacques, for once, didn’t notice the camera. He was more concerned with Ofelia, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that she had thought yesterday’s behaviour was something real. He felt awful about that. Jacques never thought of himself as a particularly cruel person, and the fact that someone he liked this much could think that about him left him feeling even more guilty than he had before. He shook his head dismissively at her assertions that everything was all right. Of course it wasn’t. “No. I don’t think you get it. That shit...I didn’t mean it. It wasn’t actually me. Listen, can I just come in for a minute?...And I’ve never used the confession room, what the fuck.”
He had noticed the camera above them now, and ducked his head to hide this rather private conversation. He didn’t need to see this on television later if it went wrong. “I don’t actually want to stop talking to you.” He clarified in a lower voice than before. “Also your occult professor is a dick.” He didn’t really care if anyone heard that, though.
Ofelia had been keeping her gaze trained steadily on his feet, attempting to avoid meeting his gaze out of some sort of curious fear about what his expression would say. The “it wasn’t actually me” line did sound, in fairness, rather more believable than it would have normally, given the events of the day before, but it wasn’t until he explicitly stated he didn’t want to stop talking to her that she dared to glance up. Now she felt fairly certain that she knew where this conversation was going and she steeled herself for it. Eyeing Jacques’ face with suspicion, Ofelia shrugged lightly and sighed. “If you really feel the need to, sure. Come in.” And without saying anything else, she turned and stepped easily over her bags, resuming her position at her easel. If they were going to have to go through the discomfort of putting an end to part of their relationship, she at least wanted to have the security of her painting in front of her.
Jacques could see that she didn’t seem to understand his position here, which was completely fair as it was complicated and he had not explained it yet. But she at least let him into the room, which was a step in the right direction. He closed the door firmly behind him and began to pace three steps back and forth, trying to think where to start. “I asked a few of our mentors for help on my training,” he began after a few moments. “I wanted to control my emotions to help harness my powers. Professor Herrera and I have begun this martial arts course, I’ll tell you about it later, but Britannia said Bok-Su could help, and he gave me these potions. And when I was on them, I could only feel one emotion really, really strongly and I was pretty incredible, I’m not going to lie.”
Jacques shook his head, feeling himself getting a little off track. He had covered the training session rather well yesterday, after all. “But to get rid of them I had to take this emotion-eraser shit. It was weird. I thought it would take me back to how I normally am. But instead, I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t feel anything. I wasn’t happy or angry, it was blank. It was...” He trailed off, shrugging off the awful that he’d been about to throw out because he didn’t want to complain right now, “it was weird.” He concluded, finally stopping his walking about the room. “So when you talked to me, I didn’t see why you were getting upset. Since I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t anything. I don’t know what else to say, but I didn’t mean any of it. Okay?”
Ofelia didn’t notice the pacing at first. Her brush was flying rapidly over the no longer blank canvas ahead of her and her eyes flitted along with it, as if Jacques’ presence wasn’t even enough for her to notice. She chewed on her lip but stopped abruptly, setting her jaw in an attempt to appear non-chalant (should he catch her in profile) but listened. Quite well. And as he moved further into the story, she relented her paintbrush and, slowly, turned to watch him. When she saw he was pacing, her eyes narrowed and she tried to understand his body language. He looked genuinely anxious or upset and his words rang with a sincerity that she wanted to trust but couldn’t quite bring herself to. When he stopped, she let his question hang in the air for a few moments, folding her arms over her chest and fidgeting with her nails.
“I wasn’t upset,” Ofelia half-mumbled, still staring down at her forearms. It felt intensely important in that moment for him to not think that she was hurt, as she was finding it difficult to predict what, exactly, what going on -- and where the conversation was going. Clearing her throat, she tried again in a louder voice, this time managing to lift her gaze up to meet his again. “I wasn’t upset. And I’m not upset. I’m just kind of confused.” And sympathetic, only she couldn’t say that, either. She knew what it was like to have to take something to explore your powers. “Maybe the potions didn’t erase your feelings. Maybe they just showed you how you really felt about -- I don’t know, me, por exemplo. If this is just an elaborate story because you think you’ve hurt my feelings then -- don’t bother. I’ll survive.”
Jacques took the fact that she turned around and actually looked at him as a good sign. He began to calm down, then, still drumming his fingers instinctively, nervously. He did not know why this making him so anxious, but he chalked it up to the new sense of emotion after not having experienced it for an entire day. “Okay.” He conceded to her, nodding, “you weren’t upset. That’s fine. But if you had been, I wouldn’t have really picked up on it. I didn’t have anything to relate it to. It was the most bizarre thing.” Jacques sighed to clear the last vestiges of the day before out of his mind, at least for the moment. “It’s confusing,” he admitted with another shrug, “But I’m not lying. I swear. You can ask Professor Herrara if you don’t believe me, she knows. I’d say ask the other two but they’d probably just lie about it anyway, so don’t bother.”
He took the opportunity to look right at her, though he’d been gazing around before, as if he had some strange idea that eye contact would back his words. “And they did erase my feelings. I didn’t feel. Full stop, I didn’t feel emotion. I couldn’t laugh, nothing was sad. The only things that made sense were logical steps. So I trained and studied a lot. That isn’t how I really feel about you, because it wasn’t anything at all.”
Ofelia shrunk a little under Jacques’ returned gaze, but she managed to hold it, perhaps unsteadily, while he affirmed the veracity of his story. As he did, the suspicion softened the features on her face, and, slowly, her body spoke a general relaxing of the anxious tension it had been holding moments earlier. Unfolding her arms, she shifted her weight and nodded. “Alright.” The truth was, genuine or otherwise, Ofelia didn’t think she was owed much more of an explanation. Having Jacques’ friendship still seemed extraordinary. She might be short sometimes, but she wasn’t stupid enough to fuck with it by arguing with him.
Rubbing her hand up her forearm, she sighed again. “That’s really fucked up. I’m sorry you had to get...emptied out.” Tired of standing, she took a few steps and sat on the edge of her bed, stuffing her hands between her knees and looking up at him. “Are you going to take it again? I mean, is this going to be something regular? It’s fine if it is.” And then, offering the smallest of conspiratorial smiles, the kind that didn’t quite make it to her eyes, she pulled her knees up to her chest. “Or I could set some rotting corpses on them.”
As Ofelia’s body released, so did Jacques’. She seemed to believe him, finally, and at the very least she wasn’t telling him to go away. That was good. He had been afraid he would ruin this entire friendship just by taking a stupid potion. Had that been the case, his mentors would have received that much more of an earful. She sat on her bed, but he wasn’t sure he was quite welcome still, so Jacques just remained leaning on the wall near it, but it was all right. It was comfortable now, at least. He shrugged off her apology with one shoulder. He’d already shown her it bugged him a little too much. He didn’t want her to think it was something he couldn’t handle.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” He affirmed, but at her question, he hesitated for a moment. On the potions, he’d been remarkable. The best. He’d had complete control and for once the only thing he’d had to think about was his fatigue level. It would have been a rush had he been able to feel pleasure afterward. But it had cost him too much. He wasn’t willing to go around empty all the time. So Jacques shook his head. “I’m not taking it again. I’ll continue with Herrera. It’s a longer process, but I’m not willing to fuck over my entire life just for instant control.” He did return her smile, though his was more of a smirk. “You can set all your zombies on them. That might be for the best.”
It’s fine. I’m fine. The phrase seemed to be quickly becoming their sort of mantra, and just as suspicious as Jacques had been when she’d insisted, Ofelia too seemed aware that his words were empty assurances. Though she still felt on unsteady ground, not sure exactly how they were meant to act after yesterday’s debacle, she extracted a hand from her knees and patted the bed next to her, nodding for him to come over. She waited a few minutes, trying to think of how to word what she wanted to say -- knowing from personal experience that talking about your feelings wasn’t always the answer. “I can do that,” Ofelia said.
“And you know,” her tone changed and she stared down at her knees, shrugging. “If it’s not fine and if you’re not fine, that wouldn’t be fucked up. In fact, that’d be pretty fucking reasonable.” She cleared her throat, realizing she was a bad listener. But she knew what it was like to feel like the people around you were using you in ways you didn’t understand; were enabling your powers in the wrong ways and for the wrong reasons. “So I guess, you know. If you want to talk...” Her voice trailed off and she chanced a glance up at him.
If he could make it so that yesterday hadn’t occurred at all, he would have. He wanted to. But there was no getting around it; it had happened and it had been shit. There was nothing left to do but move forward, wherever that was. He did take a seat on her bed, not touching her.But that was usual. That was normal. He even laid back against the wall like he always did, but still looking at her. Jacques smiled again,only it was real, when she reassured him. “ It’s good enough. But thank you. I mean yeah. It was pretty fucked up. But it was something better to learn now rather than later, and now I’ll remember magical drugs aren’t the answer. Usually.”
Jacques sat up a little straighter and stretched his arm onto the bed in a contact-less extension of gratitude. “I really am sorry you had to deal with that shit though. I’m glad that wasn’t permanent, I was such a dick. I’ll admit that one.”
Ofelia moved back so that she too leaned against the wall and this time when she smiled, it reached her eyes, too. “Magical drugs are the answer for some of us. You know, ‘always pick C.’ But it’s different for you. You seem to actually have a shot in hell of winning this thing in four years.” Turning her head, she watched him with an earnest steadiness that suggested she really meant what she said. And that maybe she was kind of rooting for him, too.
She recognized the arm outstretched on the bed, though she wasn’t ever entirely sure what to make of it. Maybe it had something to do with Jacques not wanting to be the one who was responsible for whatever it was there were doing, or maybe it was because he was afraid to touch her. She liked to think of it as a sort of signal, one that she took, tentatively. Almost as if she didn’t mean to, Ofelia stretched her arm out next to his so that their skin touched and her fingers brushed against his palm. Arching her brows, she gave him a skeptical smirk. “You being a dick is kind of permanent with or without the spells, Jacques.”
Jacques hadn’t thought of his chances, really. Well. Of course he had to a certain extent. One of the first questions that passed his mind upon meeting any of his new classmates was how he could defeat them in the tournament. He had never really considered, however, the fact that maybe he could win the whole thing. Maybe. It was four long years away, and he hadn’t even had rankings yet. But somehow, it meant a lot that she thought that he could. Jacques smiled at her more fondly than he normally would, cupping his fingers over hers on the bed. “We’ll see what happens. Four years is a long time.” He didn’t want to ruin all his chances by being too anxious to prove himself now.
He did not really know what was going to happen in his school career. One thing seemed just as likely as the next. He tried to picture himself as a senior and couldn’t. Would he be the Omega president, the student body representative? He could, possibly, but it all seemed too far away and like far too much work. He was content right here, as a freshman. “Yeah well,” Jacques smirked, nudging her with an elbow, “at least I’m consistent.”