InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "You take your left foot out!"

melinda harper isn't much of a lady (inelegant) wrote in flippedrpg,
@ 2013-03-17 03:36:00

Entry tags:

ch: xbwl: marek bobbin, ch: xbwl: melinda bobbin, p: annalisa, p: carley

Who: Melinda Harper and Marek Bobbin
Where: their unit in Zeta, in the pillow fort. Tis an epic pillow fort.
When: late evening, several hours after the flip
What: talking, getting out all those feelings
Warnings: feelings

"It was like..." Melinda sighed, trying to think how to put it. "I mean, I definitely knew who you were. You registered as my twin, but when I wasn't directly faced with your existence there was no...suggestion of you being there."

She was laying facedown in a pile of pillows, snuggled warmly in another pile of blankets with Oliver tucked securely under her arm. Marek was close enough that she could feel him there without having to reach out and touch him, although she occasionally did anyway, laying a hand on his arm or leg or back, or grabbing his hand and holding it for awhile with the arm that wasn't holding her teddy bear. The pillows muffled her voice, but the normally-quiet Melinda had been all but silent with the cure, and she needed to talk for awhile. It was funny; six months ago she had hated feelings, such a situation as this right now would have been absolutely appalling. She still didn't like or especially trust feelings, and liked to pretend or wish she didn't have any, but have them she definitely did, and after spending so long unable to have them, this was needed. Running around and screaming had done enough to make her coherent, at least.

"I don't know," she said. Her voice might be muffled, but she was confident Marek could understand her. "I mean, I keep wanting to say the real me was trying to get out, but she wasn't. She couldn't. There was no way to try." She turned her head so she could breathe and was less muffled, because the oxygen part had been getting difficult. "Basically like she was in a very thick lead box. She was there, and I was aware of something there, but anything she was trying to do had literally zero effect on the outside world. Outside world being my mind in this case, I guess."

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ex_intoxican930
2013-03-17 06:16 pm UTC (link)

Marek's emotions hadn't been taken away from him, at least not surgically, but the lack of feeling from his twin had almost been worse. It hadn't felt the same way it had when she'd disappeared back to their world, that emptiness, that nothing that he found whenever he reached out to her in his mind, but it had been very faint. As if she had been wrapped in cotton wool to shield her against it, which left a dull ache at the edge of his senses that refused to go away. Even when he'd been injured, he hadn't felt much of anything from her; usually he felt her panic at the pain, the worry, the reaching out to him as she came to find him. He wasn't always consciously aware of it when it was there, but he was overly aware of it now because of its absence.

The moment the flip happened, it had returned. He had been at her side since, even though running around hadn't been something he'd particularly felt like doing. He'd felt like holding onto his twin and never letting go; he was doing that mentally, even though he wasn't physically, feeling the part of her soul that had been missing entwine itself around his again.

If there was one thing this place had taught him, it was that the separation between them at Hogwarts had been nothing at all; at the compound he'd been completely separated, more like severed. But they also kept putting themselves back together again, and it felt like he could finally breathe properly again.

"Yeah," he said. "I could tell." He wasn't inclined to talk much, but he didn't mind listening; the sound of her voice was soothing. "I could barely feel you there."

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inelegant
2013-03-18 07:50 am UTC (link)

Melinda nodded, turning mostly toward the pillow again. "I'm not sure what would have happened if I'd been pressed about your existence, really. I mean, I think I wasn't supposed to know you, because I forgot about you as soon as you weren't in front of me. Journally speaking. Maybe I wouldn't have known you existed. Maybe it would have confused me because of conflicting information. Either way it seems like some part of...us, whatever, was stronger than whatever's behind the cure. Well, whatever magic they used to simulate it since I'm obviously not cured now. That's good, right?"

Melinda was happy enough to ramble on. She could feel that it was comforting to Marek, and she'd talk all night if it kept helping. She couldn't normally feel him so clearly unless he was injured or poisoning himself, but she supposed she was more strongly tuned in right now, after weeks of nothing.

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ex_intoxican930
2013-03-20 04:58 am UTC (link)

Right at the beginning, when she'd first been cured, Marek had tried to talk to her; he'd half intended to force her to acknowledge her existence as she'd done when they'd made her believe that she was actually the person she'd dressed up as for Halloween, but he hadn't pushed it far enough. Even now, he didn't quite know why. The best explanation he could come up with was that he'd almost been afraid to press deeper, lest the tiny flicker of his twin's presence disappeared entirely.

"I think so," he said. "Might have been different if we hadn't been separated." Of course, it might also have been worse, at least for him. He glanced over at her. "Did you feel it when I got hurt?" His arm still twinged from where he'd sprained his wrist and elbow when the bombing had made the ground shake enough for him to fall, and he'd hit his head as well; it hadn't been enough of an injury to worry about, but it had hurt enough that it ought to have alerted her. It would have done if she'd been herself, at the least.

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inelegant
2013-03-20 05:07 am UTC (link)

"Yeah." Melinda nodded. "I didn't really know what it was. You hurt your arm, yeah? And your head. My arm started hurting and I got a headache, and I felt sort of upset but I think I just decided it was because I was in pain and didn't know why and didn't really worry about feeling upset. I mean, as upset as you could ever feel with that...cure." She gave a powerful shudder and snuggled down further into the blankets and closer against Marek. The cure was a bone-deep kind of horror, a primal fear for her. The inability to feel. She might not like feelings, but what was she without them? Melinda had enough self-awareness to know she was pretty much a hurricane of emotions, with some hormones and opinions tossed in. Without all that, she was just...nothing.

A hand snaked out, grabbing Marek's again.

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ex_intoxican930
2013-03-20 05:56 am UTC (link)

That made Marek smile slightly, and he nodded in answer to her question. Pain wasn't exactly emotion, that was probably why it had been transmitted more easily than anything else. It was still bothersome that she hadn't realized why, but at least the connection had been there. That was far better than nothing at all.

He twined his fingers around hers and shifted to get more comfortable against her side, feeling closer to content than he'd been in a while. He felt her horror, too, but just the fact that he could feel it was a relief, so it was difficult to be bothered by it at all. Absently, rather than speak again, he pinched the skin on the back of her hand, as if to remind them both of her own reality.

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	inelegant 2013-03-20 06:32 am UTC (link)
	Melinda sighed, closing her eyes, and squeezed his hand a little when he pinched. It was comforting. Marek kept poking and pinching at her like he wanted to be sure she was real and it was comforting. Slightly annoying, yes, but being annoyed was even more comforting right now. It reassured her that she was alive and present and feeling. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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