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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 12:08 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 12:11 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 12:18 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 12:26 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 12:31 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 12:40 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 12:51 pm
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Orion sat at her customary dinner seat, her knees hugged close to her chest. He had never showed up. Smith had told her that he would be coming over, at least for a little bit, if only to tell them that the deal wouldn't work. But he'd not even bothered to refuse the offer. He'd just... ignored them entirely.
Orion did not scream, rage, or go on the warpath when she was distraught. She did so frequently when angry, but depression drew her into herself. She was, at the moment, so deep within her own mind that she didn't even notice Smith entering the room. She didn't notice his hand waving in front of her face, and only registered his presence - dimly - when he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She came just far enough out of her head to process for the millionth time that the boy she'd been hoping to save. Her posture and expression did not change as she sank back into her head, thoughts running in circles as tears began to run down her cheeks. The one living being she'd ever cared about had, with his absence, dismissed her existence as irrelevant.
Smith stared for several minutes at Orion as she cried silently. It was, for him, a profoundly disturbing experience. He'd known the girl for almost as long as he'd been in the Arena, and she'd never shown her emotions like this before. It almost reminded him of the way his - no, Carlyle's - older sister had been after her fiancee had died in an accident with a band saw at his workplace. She was... devastated. Smith's lips, normally so calm and expressionless, curved downward into a scowl. He gently moved Orion off the chair and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, which she clutched at without conscious thought. Leaving her sitting up against the wall, Smith wrote a short note and pinned it to the blanket before gathering the younger Mutate in his arms and flitting them both to the front door of the house where he had been just yesterday. He gently placed her down so she was leaning up against the wall, visible to anyone that cracked the door open, and smiled gently at her. "Be calm, little star. Help will come. Soon. If not now, in a day."
His face reassumed its normal one of calm control, and he knocked three times on the front door, very loudly. Anyone inside would surely hear it. Before the echo could fade from his knocks he was gone, leaving Orion alone on the front porch for whomever opened the door. They would see the note.
Adrian
Congratulations. This is the first time she's ever cried.
This is your fault, and your responsibility. Deal with it, or else.
Smith
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:32 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:34 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:36 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:41 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:46 pm
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:55 pm
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Orion heard the first half of Adrian's words, and didn't stay coherent long enough to hear his justification. She just... slipped. Her body clutched his leg as if it were a life preserver in the middle of the ocean, and her breath hitched as she began to cry, but Orion's mind went to a place where all the attention in the world wouldn't bring her back up. As she sank, Orion held on to the rational bit of her brain and thought about her own emotional response. She'd never had real parents, not in the emotional sense, and nothing really romantic or friendly among the Mons. Smith was the closest thing she had to a friend, and she really thought of him as more of a co-worker. She realized with some surprise, as she withdrew enough to be no longer aware of her body, that she had developed exactly one emotional commitment in her life, and had just been informed that it was utterly one-sided.
As she realized that, she discarded her last reason for remaining rational and gave herself over to the loneliness.
((I really like writing angst too much for my own good.))
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Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 2:01 pm
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