Baba Yaga (allsystemsgo) wrote in superbabies, @ 2013-05-15 19:06:00 |
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Most days it didn’t bother her.
No, that wasn’t it.
Most days she’d managed to not think about it. Because thinking became dwelling and dwelling became an unmanageable downswing into grief. She’d been a professional for too long to let feelings infectiously pollute her day-to-day schedule. When she’d returned from Manitoba, she’d had her breakdown. Her tears. Her misery. But she’d pulled herself back together, repressed those aches and those horrific memories, and had moved on. That was the job.
But she was human. Faulty. And suddenly fully aware of the gravitas of her conscience. Yuriko had known. And that was why she let her suddenly humanized daughter murder her mother. It had been unequivocally cruel and despite Yoko’s best efforts to lock it away, internal demons couldn’t be killed. They could only be staved off.
Mother’s Day was a joke. Buying mothers flowers and stupid singing cards? What the hell did people need one day out of the year to do that for? It hadn’t helped that through the week with the love spell that Yoko learned Pella was pregnant. As another woman who had a career which in many ways paralleled hers and as a woman Yoko thought couldn’t get pregnant, it was a kick in the gut. Half of her grieved that it wasn’t fair. And the other thought was furious at Pella, wondering if she felt she deserved to give life after causing death. When Yoko was a child and had asked about why her mother had taken away her chance, the woman had simply said, “We can’t have you making the same mistakes I did.”
And then Giti, this woman who’d called her a slut, who had defended a sister who had been Ian’s ex-girlfriend for years now, had a daughter? It wasn’t even that which surprised her most; it was that her daughter lived with the father. Yoko genuinely didn’t understand. And when she’d asked, Vincent had come tearing in with some attempt to set her straight. Another kick, another step back.
Confused and grasping in vain for normality, she spoke with Miu, who had in turn asked about Yuriko. Yoko had thought maybe that this would be her chance, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The child herself was confused. Why would you not miss your own mother? It was like some language barrier, Yoko surmised. Further proof that in this aspect, she could not, nor would ever be able to, relate. Another kick, this time a stumble.
By that night, Yoko had no choice but to acknowledge that she’d been pushed all the way back into the box of secrets she’d stashed in her mind. Curled up next to the ache, she had nowhere to go. An offhand conversation with Ian unveiled that she hadn’t ever powered up her implant after the incident with Flint. She was immediately mortified, sick to her stomach, and had raised her shields. For a moment she tried, she really tried, to talk about her mother to him, even returned to powering down the implant for a full thirty seconds.
But her hands started to shake. She felt - sick, unbalanced, dizzy, and frantically short on breath. If he responded to it, she didn’t look. The implant powered up and she left the computer, left her apartment, left the building.
She needed safety. Henry was gone. Ian was working on Mark about Bethany. Besides, having Yoko collapse in his doorway because of a laughable holiday when she knew that given ten minutes she’d be out of that box and fine again wasn’t going to do anyone any good. Stability. That was what she represented. But she was a glass house on quicksand at this very moment and in order to be stable she needed to find stable.
Darting over to the main building, she entered its basements, walking rigidly and quickly to the Blackbird Hangar. Inside it was her jet, tucked in the corner away from the other handful of ships and aircrafts. Used to moving in darkness, she didn’t turn on the lights to seek it out; she felt, she sensed, and her fingers eventually brushed against the cool metal of one of the external fuel tanks. For the first time in days she cracked a smile, climbing into the cockpit and relaxing as it locked in place, sealing the cabin.
In here she felt safe. Protected. In all her years of working as a ghost, a deadly shade, she’d never had anything that was hers. This jet, her child, was the first thing she had ever in her life actively laid claim to and determined that she’d wanted for herself. She was her rock. And right now, that rock brought stability.
Yoko knew this wasn’t how you dealt with issues. She was far more aware of some things, even if other things escaped her. In many ways, she was like a child clinging to its stuffed toy. Did it make her feel safe? Did it take away her anxiety? Yes. But it was a temporary reprieve and not a solution.
But for now she was tired. Ineffably sad. Should have cried or at least let herself feel the wake of her anxiety attack. But she was a machine. And she’d made it this far. She’d be back on her feet tomorrow. That was always the mantra.
“It’s a stupid holiday anyway.” She muttered to herself, eyes gazing at some dark corner of the console with some faraway melancholy. Yoko closed her eyes and like a computer in sleep mode, shut down her emotions and continued to process.Next: Flint