Shannon Reid | Veritas | Team Parakeet (truthstold) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-07-13 19:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, shannon reid, valeska protz |
WHO: Shannon Reid and Val Protz
WHAT: Two friends not saying goodbye.
WHEN: Uh. Whatever day today is at IVI. Afternoonish.
WHERE: Val's room.
WARNINGS: None. I think.
STATUS: Complete
"I can't believe she's gone." Shannon said. She was sitting on Val's floor, knees drawn up to her chest. It was obvious who she was talking about, there were so many dead, but none had brought Shannon down as much as her best friend's. She thought she should be sad about Nolan, and she was, but her grief for him mixed with Lydie's and couldn't overpower it. There was a thought slightly more powerful than her grief, and that was freedom. They were free. Free to live, to love, to do whatever they wanted. At least until the next wave of people tried to make things difficult for them again. They'd fight them like they had IVI, and VR. They'd fight to remain free, and they were no longer children who could be pushed around. "We're free though." She said. "I can't quite believe that either." Val was on her stomach on her bed and looked at the other girl. So much had happened and so many people were dead. “I can’t believe she is gone either. And Mike too.” Someone had told her that they had died together, of course Mike hadn’t left her side. It was depressing and sad and awful and Val wished she could have been there to do something, but would she have been able to save either of them? Probably not, she would be dead too. “What are you going to do?” Freedom was strange to Val, she hadn’t been free for years, not really. First the German school and now IVI. What did you do when you were no longer imprisoned for being a Vol? She could finally attend university at least. Shannon nodded. She'd asked him to look after her, the last time she'd seen the two of them together, but she'd known he'd have done it anyway. Like Stephen would for her, and she would for him. Protecting the people you love wasn't a question, if she'd been with Lydie, she'd have stayed. She'd have done whatever she could for her, and might've died too. She'd been angry with Mike for letting her die when she heard, but the anger had faded quickly, leaving nothing but sadness behind. "Travel. With Stephen." Shannon said. "We've been talking about it for months, what we'd do if we ever got out. He wants to see Italy, and I want to see the world. We'll come to Germany too. I promise." Val smiled at the other girl. “You must, I will show you Hamburg and we can dump Stephen in a trash can and run off together.” It was a joke, but Val loved Shannon as much as you could love another person. While her best friend was technically Doria, the two Parakeet girls had become closer and closer as the year had wore on and now she was a sister to her. “But I will introduce you to my family and we will go see everything and I will never let you leave me. You will not want to leave either, Hamburg is beautiful.” It still hadn’t dawned on Val that she was going home and would be able to go to her old bedroom and go out and see her friends from before. Before Leo had found her, before they had sent her away. Shannon smiled, and almost laughed at the idea of leaving Stephen and running off with Val. She'd arrived at IVI with very little family, a father she couldn't connect with anymore and a mother she didn't want anything to do with, and she'd gained sisters, a brother, and Stephen. IVI had taken so much away from all of them, their freedom, their lives, and too many of their friends, but it had given Shannon a family too. "I'd like that." She said. It was difficult to think of a life without Val in it every day, but she knew that even if they ended up on opposite sides of the world, she would always be there at the end of the phone. Just like Shannon would be there for her. "Don't worry, I'll send Stephen to an art gallery and he can spend hours looking at paintings while we have fun together. We'll need to go shopping, and dancing!" “It has been so long since I went out to clubs, we will go,” Val said, her blue eyes sparkling. It was nicer to talk about the fun things they would do than talk about the people who had died. There were parts of all of them that would never heal and never be the same, but at least for a second and for the first time in a very long time, they could plan for their futures. Their futures that were brighter as they had ever been since their arrival on Australian soil. “I am not that far from the North Sea either, we will go, it’s beautiful.” "Are there beaches there?" Shannon asked. There was a long list in the back of her mind, of the things she wanted to see. Beaches, art, cafe's in the sunlight, cities by night, she wanted to experience things, and she wanted to live. A full life, a proper life, and have happy stories she could one day (far into the future) tell her children. These were the things she wanted to think about, to dwell on, and to plan. "Is there anywhere else in Germany we should go? I could make Stephen pay, and you could come with us for a while. Even if it's just a week or two." “There are beaches,” Val said, nodding her head. “And depending on when you come we can go to Oktoberfest or do anything. There are so many places we can go and things we can do.” She was excited about the prospect of Shannon visiting and them spending time together, she could show her home. “We can make Stephen take us to an expensive restaurant and we can get too drunk to do anything but laugh.” It was a nice future, a nice thing to plan. Shannon smiled, the future for all of them was so uncertain, but there were tiny bright spots forming and growing, enough to make her smile and think positively about how things would turn out. "We'll do it all." Shannon promised. The drunk laughter in a restaurant, walks along the beach, dancing in nightclubs, and shopping for new clothes. There was nothing to stop them now, no IVI, no law making them go to school or stay in one place. They were finally free. Val moved onto the floor and rested her head on Shannon’s back, hugging her from behind. “I want to see Ireland too, you will have to take me.” She smiled. “Stephen will really start to worry that we’re going to run off and get married.” She was so glad that the two girls had wound up on the same team and so close. “I will miss Shin a little, I think I might take up Tai Chi when we get home. He would be so proud.” Shannon nodded and leaned back into the hug, "I will. Once we've travelled a bit and seen what we want to see, then you can come and stay. I don't think my dad will mind. And if he does, we'll sort something out." She grinned. "And if Stephen worries then he'll just have to hurry up and propose himself then, won't he?" They'd talked about it, getting married and settling down, and it was something that Shannon wanted, but she needed time first. To mourn, to see the world, and to find out who she was after all of this. "That man is going to be on my Christmas card list forever." Shannon promised. "He didn't need to speak for us, but he did. I'll miss him too." Maybe she'd take up Tai Chi, or boxing, once she'd settled in one place. Or maybe she'd use her power to help people, he might like that. “My parents probably owe me a holiday,” Val said, with a grin that Shannon couldn’t see. “I’ve missed too many, so we’ll make it work and you can show me your favorite things there. It will happen no matter what we have to do.” It was so much nicer than thinking about the terrible things that had happened here, all the sadness that permeated the campus, they would be able to get up and move and even though they would be apart, well Val knew she always had Shannon and Shannon always had her. “I’ll miss him and in a strange way I’ll miss the garden too.” "We're all going to have the best gardens when we have our own places." Shannon said, and remembered all the other random chores Shin had made them do over the past year. "And the best fences." She joked, and began to laugh, "Oh God, when Sadie made that ravine I was so worried for her, and then so pissed off when we had to build a bloody fence around the damn thing. Like people wouldn't notice the giant hole in the ground!" “Ugh I know,” Val agreed. “That was the worst, it was so awful and I won’t miss Shin telling us that we are responsible for everyone else’s bad behavior either.” Their team leader had been firm but fair and encouraged, no expected them to watch out for one another. That had been exhausting, each time one of them had wound up in solitary, the others were scolded. “I won’t miss that sort of thing. Or all day training.” "God no, I'm looking forward to not having to run at all for a while." Shannon said, and then laughed. "Or having to deal with Raph at his most ridiculous, although very few things can make me laugh that much." She was going to miss all of them, Jess, Lottie, Sadie, the boys, and Shin. "It's going to be strange not to see you all every day." “I might miss Raph in a few...years,” Val said with a laugh. But the truth was the same for Val, she was going to miss her fellow Parakeets and part of her would be sad not to roll in and see them every morning in their training clothes, getting ready to do chores or Tai Chi or grumbling about kneeling in the dirt. But part of her was excited to finally go home, no German school, no IVI, she knew she could always keep in touch with the people she wanted to see after IVI. “Well, we will just have to plan a Parakeet reunion.” "We will. Maybe in a few years." Shannon smiled and turned around to hug her friend - no, her sister - properly. "No matter where I am, or what I'm doing, you only have to call me and I'll be there. On the end of the phone for a chat, or I can get on a plane, or whatever. No matter what happens. You're my family." It wasn't goodbye, it was just a promise that Shannon intended to keep. “You’re mine too,” Val said, holding the other girl as tightly as she could so that their faces were smashed together. Even if they weren’t together physically, Shannon was one of the people that Val intended to cling tightly to and never let go of after IVI. She kissed her cheek after a second of holding her. “I will always be here for you, no matter when or why. You are stuck with me until forever.” Shannon nodded. She'd lost Lydie, and that was a pain she couldn't imagine ever going away, but she still had Val and so many other friends. People she could rely on, and who would always be part of her life. "Good. You're stuck with me too." |