Edwin Seabeck is a killer in potentia (elusive_control) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-05-10 21:04:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ! log, edwin seabeck, harlow hart, nawal bechara |
WHO: Harlow Hart and Edwin Seabeck (with special guest star Nawal Bechara)
WHAT: Harlow joins the club
WHEN: Friday evening, 5/3
WHERE: Harlow’s Room
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: log complete
"What're you doing here?" Harlow asked, rubbing her sleeve over her eyes and sniffling, trying to make herself more presentable despite Edwin having seen her truly hungover and equally shitty looking, once before. Ugh, if only she could get drunk now and cuddle Edwin and Nawal on the couch. God, was it ever going to be safe for her to touch someone again? “Violet was concerned,” Edwin replied, the hand he’d knocked on the door with dropping to his side. “She didn’t go into detail but that you were. Well. Inconsolable,” he trailed off uncomfortably, still waiting at the threshold of the door. “What on earth happened? Nothing at home, I hope?” "Oh." Harlow knew he'd pushed Vi well past her comfort level of roommate emotional intimacy when she came back from baking Mariana a birthday cake and proceeded to get teary again, but she couldn't help herself. "No, I," she coughed, choking a little on the hurried kind of breaths that accompanied serious crying jags. "Home is fine. I just had a really bad day in training." She stepped back, letting Edwin follow her inside her room in case of anyone else coming through the hall and spotting her puffy face, asking what was wrong. He followed her in and closed the door behind him. It was a silly question, but he had to go through the propriety of it. “Oh?” This wasn’t the crying of someone who’d been insulted and he tossed away the idea that this had come from embarrassment. The first thing that did come to mind was Sol; not that Sol had done something in particular but that her faith in her own sense of self-protection had been similarly shaken. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked as he followed her over to her bed. Harlow scrunched into a little ball, hugging her legs to her chest atop her pillow and leaning against the wall, wary of having anyone touch her in case it happened again, by accident this time. "They got me a rabbit," she said, not meeting his eyes. "It panicked, and tried to get away, and I grabbed for it, but..." There wasn't any reason to detail the half-extracted circulatory system, and the thought of doing so made her feel ill again. "It died. I killed it." Edwin took a seat on the other end of the bed, giving Harlow her space. It was obvious that she wanted it and he couldn’t blame her in the slightest for retracting into herself. He also couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t her fault, though perhaps others would. No logic could override guilt felt that strongly; he knew that from experience. “You couldn’t have known, Harlow,” he said anyway, frowning in concern. She shook her head. She couldn't have known what would happen, but now that she did it felt as though she should have. Her imagination had extended so far as temporarily removing body parts, courtesy of Solomon, but making a grab for internal organs, the sudden carnage of it all... Harlow couldn't tell if she wished that she had an imagination capable of this, so that the whole event might have been avoided and the rabbit might still be alive, or if she wished for her own ignorance back, and a chance to scrub the image from her mind. "It was a horrible death," she managed to confess. "If I had known I could do that - I do know now. I'm never going to use them again unless I'm alone, just to make sure I don't have accidents like I used to." Edwin pursed his lips and folded one leg up onto the bed. “Harlow,” he started gently and then found that he didn’t really have something immediate to follow it up with. Because what he wanted to say was that she couldn’t afford to feel that way and that she wouldn’t feel that way as time went on. Even he thought that was probably the wrong thing to say. He wouldn’t want to hear it. But it left him a little adrift for how to comfort her. “You know. People aren’t panicky rabbits.” He rubbed the back of his neck and wondered where Nawal was. She’d have a better idea of what to say in the immediacy of the moment. "I do," Harlow agreed, though she bit her lip at that as well. She knew Edwin and Solomon were... well, if not friends to the exact letter then friendly, or at the least they were countrymen who'd shared the bond of a traumatic experience as well. "It's why I shouldn't keep going - what if someone tried to fight me, and I tried to fight them, and I did something even worse? I should've just stopped with houseplants, or better yet, with my phone." Things that were truly replaceable. It felt audacious in hindsight, to have tampered with living things. She didn't need to use her powers this way, regardless of Rudd's encouragement to keep pushing herself, and Hunter's assertions that she had barely uncovered half of her potential, if that. Maybe they were right, maybe there was even more yet to come. Maybe this was her own minor parallel journey, from discovering the earth was round, to the orbit of the solar system, to galaxies and the universe and dark matter; constantly facing the unknown in search of some real and finite limit to existence. The only difference was, Harlow wasn't sure she was brave enough to test the costs of exploration, anymore. Edwin’s fingertips rubbed against her bedspread as he hunched forward. “It’s. Harlow, it’s why you should keep going.” Now this did feel like the conversation that he had with Nathan, except Nathan came from a place of inevitability where as he could imagine that half of Harlow’s battle was the surprise of it all. “Pandora’s box. Once something is an option, it doesn’t stop being an option.” "Ugh." Harlow pulled her pillow out from under her bum and set it on her knees, arms folded atop, chin pouting as it rested on her arms. Why couldn't she be a kid again, and have someone else handle all the hardest parts of life? She wished she still had problems that her father could take care of or that her mother could soothe with a tea and stroking her hair. "It was always an option," she sighed. "We just didn't really know, until now. And now I have to think about what else I might not know, when all I want to do is find a way to not - to be - " The words wouldn't come out, even though her want for them was desperate. She wanted not to be evolved, she wanted to be normal, but with such things so far from her grasp, all that Harlow could bring herself to frame was "I want to be safe. Safe to be around, to touch, to -" She buried her face in the pillow. The only consolation was a strong sense that Edwin at least would understand her feelings, despite her inadequate articulation. "It's not fair," she finished, voice muffled by the fluffy down. “I know,” he said quietly. She was right, of course. He did understand her feelings intuitively because they were his own. More than 2000 nights of possibility and a small percentage of that filled with something resembling physical connection and he always had to be the hall monitor. Always had to be buttoned in and guarded. There were better lives to have, certainly, and it would have been nice to have gotten one... but wishing never made anything so. “It’s a hard thing to always be on guard. Not an impossible one, but...” Edwin set his hand on the pillow, about a comforting a weight as he dared at the moment with her eyes firmly fixed into the fabric. “But it’s not fair, I know. It’s just a moment but these moments are hard to get past.” The gesture was all she needed. Harlow slumped forward with a sigh, wishing it was her mother who would warmly return her pathetic attempt at a hug, instead of Edwin who topped the list of people she knew who had problems with physical displays of affection. "Don't fight it," she mumbled into his shoulder, tone sad but dry as she wrapped her arms loosely around his middle. "It could kill you." At that moment, there was a knock at the door. Nawal waited for a moment, making sure she didn't hear any moans and walk in on something she would rather not see from Harlow's roommate, before cracking open the door and poking her head in. "Harlow?" Seeing both of her friends there, she stepped in, closing the door behind her. She glanced at Edwin and smiled briefly, thankful for his presence. How many times had he talked her down, after all? Nawal drew closer to Harlow, gently laying a hand on her back. "I was worried." |