clara llewellyn set fire to the rain. (claraty) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-01-04 11:40:00 |
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I'm not a princess, this ain't a fairy tale. I'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet, lead her up the stairwell... This was the phrase that repeated throughout Mikael's head that day. All day he heard Taylor Swift's "White Horse" playing from Clara's end and all day he had that stupid chain of notes stuck in his head. He caught himself humming it at random, odd moments throughout the day. It was whiny. It was annoying to him. But it was Clara's song, and Clara was a romantic, and thought it romantic, so he didn't say a word. Maybe that was how she dealt with sadness, by listening to whiny songs composed and sung by whiny teenagers. Mikael couldn't complain; he had his own method of dealing with things, and nobody could say that it was particularly constructive, either. But by early evening sometime after a rigorous training session, and after being caught humming it in the showers, Mikael had had enough. He approached Clara after a lot of internal debating. He said, his voice plaintive and his eyes pleading, "Clara. I have this song stuck in my head. Please stop." "Oh. Oh, I'm sorry," she replied and quickly hit the stop button so that Mikael didn't have to put up with it even longer. Clara didn't know why she turned to Taylor Swift so much, but it helped soothe the melancholy within, the lyrics seemingly speaking right to the heart of her own experiences of life. Well, not quite but, close enough. So when it came to a day like today it was only inevitable that she would place the song on a loop, letting it start and restart again and again, losing count of how many times she'd heard it by now. "You don't have to say sorry," Mikael said, his tone a bit more blunt than it might have been were he not so tired. But seeing how miserable she looked, Mikael instantly felt a bit badly for his sharp tone. He debated leaving then, his mission complete and successful, but he hesitated and remained there, standing before her. He wanted to ask her if it was only the deaths that had her so sad, or if she was also sad about this fight that she and Mike were apparently having, the details of which he didn't know beyond the fact that Mike was ignoring or avoiding her. He didn't get it, and maybe he was a little curious, but Mikael had not asked Mike as the other boy had made it very apparent that he wasn't supposed to get involved in that sort of thing. And Mikael was not certain he wanted to address it. What if she cried? Instead he settled for mumbling, "Are you going to bed soon?" "No. I can't sleep," she managed. Without Taylor Swift and her twanging guitar, the air was filled with an uncomfortable silence between Mikael's words and her own. Finally, with nothing to distract her and evoke images in her imagination of something other than the gritty reality and the pain that came with it, Clara felt like crying. "Okay," replied Mikael, who continued to stand there awkwardly, unwitting to Clara's current need to cry right then and there. He didn't want to retreat to his own room, and toss and turn in his bed while he tried to fall asleep, until he inevitably gave in and ended up dreaming terrible nightmares like he had begun to have every once in awhile since the George Cooper nightmares. He could easily guess what sort of nightmares he could have tonight. Mikael shoved his hands deep within his pockets. "Mind if I stay with you for a bit, then?" She nodded weakly and made room for him on the couch, still attempting to remain stoic. She knew Mikael didn't like it when she was upset and didn't want to make him feel worse. He'd lost a teammate too, after all. "Of course." With a nod, Mikael stepped forward and sat down on the edge of her sofa, hands clasped over his knees. He seemed to relax then, not having to stand awkwardly and imposing, but there was still quite a bit of tension to Mikael's body. He sighed but otherwise remained quiet. Soon he began to tap his fingers against his left knee to some unheard beat. When Mikael realized what he was doing, he stopped and sighed, now sounding a bit exasperated. "What are we doing?" He asked, finally. He made no indication as to whether he meant him and Clara then, or all of them within the safehouse but it still was the most serious and direct thing he had said since he heard about the two more deaths. Clara had a feeling that he wasn't referring to this very present moment, and almost considered answering as though he was, just so that she could have an excuse to think about something other than Alyosha, Erik and the hundreds of people who'd just died. But she couldn't quite bring herself to it, so instead she turned a pair of mournful eyes towards him and sighed. "I don't know." At the sight of her sad, blue eyes, Mikael looked away; at the floor, at his hands, at his scuffed-up shoes with the untied laces that were caked with drying mud. He fidgeted for a moment, as though some great internal debate had him physically moving back and forth between his options. Then he reached over and took Clara's hand, squeezing it, as though reminding himself she was still here or perhaps making sure she stayed there. "Okay," he acquiesced, though it wasn't apparent what he was agreeing to. |