tanja (sparky) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-01-02 20:34:00 |
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Tanja had never really known anyone die before. A goldfish, perhaps, but not a person. Certainly never a person that she’d known. Providence had been part of her team, part of the Student Council too, and therefore one of the people that Tanja had seen every day. It was strange and unfamiliar, as she tried to think through the Eagles and where they were. Were they all safe? She would count through the names on her fingers, and hesitated when her stomach churned at the thought of Providence. Initially she’d cried; unable to do anything but feel desperately sad for the girl they’d all known. Now she was throwing herself into volunteer work, keen to do anything to help and distract herself at the same time. She had done the morning’s helping work, mainly consisting of running and fetching things for those who were working on a rescue operation, and now she was flitting from person to person with a long list of coffee orders. While some might have begrudged such a task, Tanja was willing to help and accepting of the fact that she hadn’t enough control over her own powers to try and help out with a rescue operation. After delivering coffee to people, and checking up and making sure that everyone was okay (or as okay as they could be, she reasoned) she was back and ready to work on the next round of coffee. She clutched her own cup of tea, fingers clinging to the cardboard cup for dear life, as she waited for an appropriate moment to start on her rounds. But instead she saw a friendly face, and she made a little wave to try and get her attention. “Enely!” she called out, still not her usual chirpy self but more determined and solemn. She approached her friend quickly, concerned about her wellbeing more than she was worried about many of the others. They’d all been together when the IVI staff had taken them away to somewhere safer, and Tanja knew of Enely’s horrible experience shortly before she’d arrived at IVI. While Enely Must was never one to be chirpy, her time spent in Prague with Tanja had elicited a few smiles throughout the week and a half but now, at the safehouse, they were nowhere to be found. She had a thing to focus on, work to do that she knew she could do well, and though she didn't know any of the students taken very well aside from her teammate Myra, she was compelled to help them. Compelled was a strong word, actually, since there was no pull on her heartstrings or tug at her conscious. She'd been scared at first when the men in IVF uniforms showed up to usher herself and Tanja, philodendron in hand, to the safehouse. She spent the plane ride from Prague willing her body not to overflow with powers and burn every other person in the plane (except for Petr, whose leaves were immune) until their skin cooked and boiled, but once that immediate threat was over (if it had ever been there), she found new emotions. Anger. Control. Yet not any sort of overly-emotional pull, just the quiet acceptance that she would do anything she could to help out Vols who were going through something she had been lucky enough to be able to get out of herself. She would have volunteered for rescue ops, except that she knew too well she wasn't ready. The weird sense of control she felt as she held onto her anger was new and she didn't trust it. She still had little stamina, unused to the months of training others had endured. She could burn, and probably well if she really tried, but against people with guns she knew it wasn't enough. Still, she'd ended up working on computers, being trained on systems she had only imagined after she left gymnasium and went to a university, well before the manifestation of her Vol abilities had shattered any semblance of plans for the future she had. It was while on a break from these that she found Tanja. "Hiya," she greeted, realizing that since arriving she'd barely seen the girl that she'd spent nearly every waking hour with while in Prague. And Petr. Two familiar faces she realized she had been missing. Tanja was drinking tea, which seemed like a much better idea than all the coffee Enely herself had been drinking. "I should cut down on the coffee," she told Tanja, holding out her arm to show the other girl how jittery she was. "I think I'm drinking a bit too much." Her eyes flicked up from her arm to Tanja. "How are you doing?" Tanja looked to Enely’s arm as she held it out, eyes widening in concern. “That’s awful,” she told her. Tanja had little idea of how long Enely had been awake, but she was aware of how many cups of coffee had been going in and out of the kitchens. It looked as though Enely had received her share of them. “Have you had sleep yet? When did you last sleep?” she asked. Being concerned and trying to help was something that she could do, and she frowned at Enely. “Do you need me to tell them that you need a rest?” Tanja asked Enely, that frown growing a little deeper as she thought about it. “I’m sure they can let you, and I’ll find some tea.” Enely shook her head. "I'm fine," she assured her friend. "Though I'll try to switch the coffee out for tea." There was a spread of snacks on the table, probably prepared by other Vols, and Enely helped herself to some vegetables and a few crackers. She'd have eaten all crackers if she could, but she knew she needed the vitamins, especially with the work ahead of her. It was too easy to sit in front of a computer and pig out on junk food, but that didn't make her alert or productive. Admittedly, she could only be alert and productive to an extent. "I can't really sleep well anyway, so I'd rather just keep working." She'd gotten five hours the night before, though she'd been in bed for eight. Sleep was fitful, filled with memories even when in the waking world she felt more in control than she had since that awful day in October when her powers manifested. Still, his was probably what college was like. Too much coffee and a bit too little sleep. "I wake up every hour or so." Tanja seemed deeply troubled by the idea of waking up every hour, but she followed Enely’s lead and picked up a couple of sticks of carrot for herself. She wanted to ask how things were going, if they had any information on the kidnapped students yet, but instead held the thoughts back. It was difficult not to ask, and Tanja bit her tongue to stop herself from nervously asking for updates. “So what do you do with the computer?” she decided upon a slightly more neutral question. “Researching?” brow furrowed still, Tanja bit into one of the carrot sticks after finishing her question, and then placed her cup of tea down on the table. "It's..." Enely scrunched up her face as she tried to figure out how to describe it. There was a number of aspects to it she wasn't supposed to talk about, but it wasn't too hard to talk around that. The basic design wasn't anything too secret. "It's a computer program that calculates odds of potential hideouts in a bunch of different locations in different countries. I don't really understand the logarithm, but I just have to watch it and look for abnormalities." She munched on a cucumber. "If Petr can hear while he's a plant, he probably knows all about it by now." Enely had been talking to him whenever the boy was sitting on her desk as a philodendron. Tanja nodded slowly. Computers weren’t her strong suit, despite being quite enamoured of the internet and online gossip, so she was thankful that Enely seemed to be keeping the explanation to a simpler level. She munched on the piece of carrot, nodding once more. “It sounds tiring,” she admitted, silently wondering if the work was helping Enely in any way. It seemed rude to pry about Enely’s own kidnapping experience, but the Latvian was curious as to whether being busy had helped Enely in the way that it helped her. Her stomach lurched a little as she thought of it again, how her team had been broken up and Providence was dead. She clutched at the cup once again, picking it up from the side, and took a nervous sip of her tea. “D’you think he hears much when he’s a plant?” she asked Enely, shifting to an easier topic. “He could be a super spy or something.” Enely's mouth curved into a very faint smirk at the thought. "I guess we could ask him when we see him. Well, boy-him." She felt a little bad for Petr that he spent so much time as a plant since they had received news about the kidnappings, but on another level she knew that if she had the ability to simply turn into a plant and avoid all the other feelings going around, she might take it. It was funny, too, how she was around him so much but felt like she hadn't seen him in ages — the side effects of being a philodendron. "I'm sorry our vacation got cut short," she added, reminded suddenly of how many things they had planned to still do in Prague but hadn't gotten the chance. "It was a lot of fun with you and Petr— oh and Mo too." She looked down. "I hate that this happened." Tanja nodded slowly, taking the time while Enely spoke to have another cautious sip of tea. There were so many questions on the tip of her tongue, and she was struggling to think of what might happen if more people died. No - she wouldn’t let herself even imagine the possibility. She looked at Enely, trying to gauge what the girl’s reaction might be to a difficult question. “Enely, are you okay? With, you know-” Tanja hesitated, glancing around herself before she said anything and dropping her voice to a whisper. “You know. Kidnapping?” she asked her, worried about what the response might be. The question didn't surprise her. Enely was under no assumption that people had forgotten about her own tale. She didn't expect it to be on the forefront of anyone's mind (nor did she want it there), but she realized when the documentary came out how much so many of her fellow Vols had gone through and how, while it was never forgotten, it didn't take them over. She still saw Mimir as her quiet but kind teammate; she didn't dwell on his story every time she talked to him. She figured that was how others saw her as well. And unlike what a certain Mr. Bissoondath had once said, accusing her of wanting special snowflake status, she was fine with that. So when Tanja mentioned it, she didn't even blink. "No, not really." How could she be? She thought about all the time, it kept her up at night. She stared at her hands as she spoke, knowing she could talk about it but not while looking Tanja in the eye. "I know what they're feeling. I know it's worse for them, but I still know every thought that goes through your head when you realize someone else is in control and you're just a pawn." She let out a slow breath. "But somehow I'm channeling it. Otherwise you'd be burning up where you sit right now." “That’s good,” Tanja told her, trying to give Enely a little encouragement. Not burning was especially good, but Tanja attempted to not linger upon the slightly more unpleasant part of what Enely had said. “That’s so good,” she gave Enely a little bit of a smile. “We’ve got a watch over your back,” she told her, attempting to use another phrase learned from Meena. Unaware that she’d mangled two idioms into one, Tanja picked up another carrot stick. “Petr and I, I promise,” she told Enely firmly. While Enely found the phrase funny, she also was aware that she didn't know every idiom in the English language, so she said nothing about it. Instead she looked at Tanja, not even really sure how she'd managed to find a friend so quickly. Most of Enely's friendships had happened slowly, people needing time to get around her cold attitude. Not that she was complaining. Not at all. "Thank you," she said softly, then looked down at her lap and -- OH! The time. "No, my break is over," she said quickly, grabbing another few cucumber slices and getting to her feet. "I have to go." Tanja nodded quickly, unwilling to leave Enely but always concerned about the project at hand and finding their kidnapped classmates. “You take care, I’ll bring Petr over to keep you company,” she promised her friend with a little hint of a smile. “I think he likes keeping you company,” Tanja told Enely, unable to resist trying to kindle what she thought could be a little bit of romance between her friends. A little bit of happiness amongst the long and trying days wouldn’t go amiss. “I’ll see you later,” Tanja told Enely, picking up her cup of tea and giving Enely a little wave of her hand in farewell. |