capeandcowllogs | oh no notto this shitto again

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oh no notto this shitto again

WHO: Next on SOAPNET is the Terra and Zelgadis show...
WHERE: MAC
WHEN: Tonight is fine
WARNINGS: this shitto again
SUMMARY: nobody in this log can communicate in a sane and rational way that can alleviate confusion
FORMAT: screaming

Sometimes people remembered dreams, plain as that. Sometimes people remembered dreams...vividly...sometimes. Seers and such, sure. And maybe the occasional post-traumatic stress-induced nightmare. Logical. The mind sometimes did that, be it as an omen or just as an after-effect of...

What the hell effect of what and why?!

If Lina bothered to ask him what was eating him one more time, Zelgadis was liable to throw himself off the building. Instead, he'd stormed out in his not-unusual, over-dramatic huff for whenever something wasn't to his liking and he couldn't fix it. Straight to the roof. To throw himself off if need be, sure, but mostly just to get a clear head without any further prodding. Because it was just a stupid dream. Weird dreams weren't new around the City, after all, so...

So he had to try and rationalize that if it had been one of those weird dreams, either she was busy hiding out of sheer revulsion or she'd already gotten around to chucking herself off the roof. Possible. Morbid, but possible.

"Grrughh." He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, slowly dragging his hands down the sides of his face. Sleep wasn't easy anymore. Nothing was easy anymore. What the hell was up with that? It was as if the universe realized he'd gotten the one thing he'd longed for after so many years and decided that rather than let him live and be happy, he'd have to suffer sevenfold over matters entirely unrelated. It was one thing after the other, getting more and more...just...just...!

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"... Tripped."

That... was probably the most transparent lie Terra had ever heard. He'd been standing still, for one. For two through a hundred, it explained absolutely nothing. The concern momentarily ebbed back to show the full strength of her deadpan disbelief, but returned full force at the realization that he still looked awful.

"You look like you have something..." she offered tentatively, moving to press the flats of her knuckles against his forehead to gauge temperature.

Zelgadis wasn't exactly on the top of his game right then and there (obviously), and was slow to react to both her words and the incoming hand. When he did register said incoming hand, it was a little too late to do any dodging that didn't result in tumbling backwards or smacking his head against the door or otherwise making things entirely worse and more confusing on levels he couldn't begin to reckon for. Of course, there was absolutely no way he could allow said hand to succeed and pander to his entirely fictitious and overindulgent dreaming because that, too, opened up more outlets for confusion. On his part. And dammit, he was the one who had to live with himself!

So, emergency option. Zelgadis managed to lift up his hand fast enough for knuckles to graze his palm; he closed his hand over them and slowly lowered them, finding that his success wasn't exactly helping much, since his face was only redder for it. "N'it'sokay," he sputtered, a bit frantic. His mouth twitched, as if he was going to do something weird like smile it off, but his nature couldn't allow it and it just made him look even crazier. He didn't reflect on that much, however; he had to deal with the whole hand contact thing first, pushing her hand back to herself in an almost-not-quite fluid motion and releasing, fingers twitching and hovering in place for moments thereafter. Like they knew what the hell to do.

"I'm..." UH. "I'm just gonna...Gonna gHKK!" Rising to his feet was delayed by the uncomfortable CLANK of his head hitting the doorknob, sending him back down on his backside. "GAHGH! Dammit!" It hurt!

The more Zelgadis talked and reacted, the weirder and weirder the whole thing got. He was completely bonkers. It had long passed the point where he could deny something was wrong and have Terra believe him. Deflection did nothing more than one, confirm something was wrong, and two, refute her earlier idea that he'd been seeking her in the first place. Why had he come to the roof in the first place, she wondered, considering his condition.

CLANK and fall; Terra dropped the second knee to the ground, clamping one hand firmly on his shoulder to keep him from falling further (or backwards, down the staircase). Her other hand was aglow with power, and the hot pale light cast Zelgadis's red-painted and pain-skewed face into relief. Terra frowned, eyebrows knitting together.

"It's not okay." Her eyes and her stare were hard and unyielding, like stones condensed from pressure; unwavering.

Humiliated and mortified. Zelgadis wasn't doing very good at all in such a short period of time. Records were probably being broken that were better left to other inept teenagers. More and more, as Terra continued just being normal Terra, Zelgadis felt a fool. There was no way at all that he was the only one to dream up something like that, but he was probably the only one to have reacted and dealt with it so poorly. The fact that he'd never done so in his life wasn't an excuse, since never didn't really count. It was just...different than times before. Terrifyingly so.

He couldn't even look at her, grimacing miserably down at the ground as his head was gradually being freed from the dull throb of his stupidity-made-physical. The spell's effect did alleviate enough of his panic- and embarrassment-induced flush that he could actually think without having a minor meltdown, but he wasn't exactly mellowed out by any stretch. Just less partial to flailing.

"Thanks," he muttered, about as cheerful as a funeral.

With that done, Terra released his shoulder and pulled back, pressing both palms to the cold ground. Zelgadis didn't like being touched in general (or else couldn't stand it when it was her specifically), so she always felt guilty when situation forced it.

He seemed to have calmed down some, which was a relief. Less chance that he'd go tumbling down the stairwell, at least. But even cure hadn't wiped out whatever was causing his current inexplicable malady. As one of her only friends, strained though that status frequently was, she couldn't help but worry. It was heavy in her voice in her quiet "Sure," but beyond that she didn't say anything else. She wanted to know what was wrong, but... it seemed decreasingly likely that she'd get an honest answer.

The tone of her voice was another twenty-ton weight unceremoniously dropped on his shoulders, and Zelgadis visibly sagged with a sigh before beginning to get up again, much more aware of any overhead obstacles. "Sorry," was murmured on the way up.

Terra stayed put while Zelgadis climbed to his feet. Someone had to make sure he wouldn't just tumble back to the ground. At his apology though, Terra's expression changed; her eyebrows knitted down once again as she looked up. When he seemed to be standing fine on his own two feet, she went to push herself up.

"... why?"

Good question. After a few seconds of silence, Zelgadis shrugs, still averting his gaze elsewhere. "For interrupting something, I guess," he settles on, walking around her and folding his arms against the chill as he does so. No fair; he came up to get a cool head, not a frozen one. And it wasn't making him feel any better.

Hand against the door frame, Terra shook her head easily. "You didn't." She had a much higher tolerance to cold than Zelgadis did; even after that godawful party, she still didn't mind it much.

Even if he didn't feel it, he looked a little better. Terra continued to watch, just as confused as ever. He wasn't ever going to explain anything on his own, was he?

Corrected, he let the apology stand for itself (however futile) and continued pacing away, sucking in air through gritted teeth. At least he could stop feeling how hot his face was if it went numb. Maybe that would let him feel a bit normal, which would maybe let him seem a bit normal, because he was sure as hell aware of eyes following him and probably assuming he'd lost his damn mind. Maybe he had. Immature, stupid, ridiculous...

Edited 2011-01-07 20:41 (UTC)

The wordless quiet stretched between them as he paced, forward and back. There were no answers in his shuffled footfalls, nor in the hunch of his shoulders or the impending chatter of his teeth. Terra tried to let it go, but worry continued gnawing at her, tightening her throat and twisting her stomach around in anxious bends.

"... do you... want to talk about it?"

And cause another disaster? Probably not a good idea. His breath huffed out in a puff of steam, but his self-depreciating smirk was his alone at the direction he stood.

"It doesn't matter."

It wasn't exactly the answer she was expecting, and, if anything, just made things more confusing. Terra was going to need to cast cure on herself for the headache she was getting from all this.

"If it didn't matter, you wouldn't be... so......" Out of it, for one, and ... defensive? Terra crossed her arms over her chest, tucking cold fingers against her ribs, and shook her head.

"'So' what?" He turned his his head and looked back over at her, eyebrows lifted. Most of her opinions of him were just things he inferred, truth be told. If she said annoying or bothersome herself, then he had good reason to feel like a jackass instead of just assuming he did.

"... Out of it? Or..." She pulled out one hand to roll her wrist indicatively of something, though it wasn't entirely clear what. "Like you were sick and someone cast muddle on you." His relatively quick almost-recovery indicated it at the very least wasn't illness, but Zelgadis wasn't the type to just... fall over. Or stumble as badly over speaking as he'd been, or so clumsily hurt himself. If it had been muddle, the smack to the doorknob would have been enough to break it, though...

"Did something happen?"

So...deranged, then. Zelgadis grimaced a little before turning away, frozen in place now that simply moving about made him odd in her eyes.

"I'd been confused about something," he said at length, folding his arms tighter and shrugging his shoulders up higher. It was cold. "But I guess I'm not anymore. Or...that something doesn't really matter as much as I thought it did. Or something."

She didn't entirely believe him — how could she? the answer hardly made sense — but it seemed more honest than that whole trip story. If it had been the other way around, ... actually, she had no idea what would happen. Whether he'd push for answers or dismiss them as being nothing, that is. Terra tended to confess everything to Zelgadis eventually anyway; did she even have any secrets remaining? She didn't think so... but the realization of this in conjunction with how very little she truly knew about him was disheartening.

"... it must have been something big," she offered in return, though in her head the likelihood he'd actually explain seemed to hover around zero.

"I don't really know," he said, and that much was true. His stomach was still a mess of knots, uncomfortable and not altogether helpful for much of anything, especially when it came to trying to pin down his mood. Zelgadis wasn't really mad or annoyed or...much of anything he could default to without stepping out of his usual norms. Aside from embarrassed for himself, of course. He was kind of sad.

The silence lingered long enough to seem like the end of all discussion, but Zelgadis glanced back eventually with a pensive, somewhat-wary look, his mouth a thin line for a moment longer. "Remember when we were stuck down south?" he prompted, a bit more than uneasily by the time the last syllable was sounded out.

She hadn't been expecting him to continue, so with the sudden continuation and subject change, she was taken a little off guard. That was... pretty long ago, and completely out of nowhere. Right?

She didn't say anything, but she nodded in response. Yes, she remembered.

He nodded faintly in exchange, turning a third of the way in her direction. His face was numb. Good.

"Did you ever remember how we got there in the first place?"

A moment's pause, and a head shake. She remembered the before well enough, mundane as it was, and she remembered the after, confusing and inexplicable as that was, but everything in between may as well have never existed for her ability to remember it. Yet another chunk of her life lost; one night wasn't the same as an entire childhood and adolescence, no, but that didn't ease her frustration.

"Did you?"

He remained silent for a while longer, considering it. That was more or less confirmation for him - he'd made it all up. Rather, his subconscious had. His inquisitive expression waned to something resigned, shaking his head. "No." Apparently not.

Terra hadn't realized how tensed up she'd gotten until he spoke, but her back and shoulders sagged visibly. She supposed she should have expected it—it'd been months now, and he probably would have mentioned before if he did remember—but it was disappointment nonetheless.

"Oh..." But that was strange that he'd mention it now, wasn't it? Unless this was just him trying to change the subject away from... whatever the hell it was he was acting up about before. "... Why?"

"Thought I did." His head shook again, glancing outward and away again. "But I don't think so."

That was unexpected, and she tensed up immediately, stepping forward. "Why not? What do you remember?"

Sure, even if he thought he was wrong, what if he really did remember? If she'd done something horrible, painful though the revelation might be, she had to know. Her whole demeanor was a great deal more anxious now, curious and worried and a mix of twenty other feelings Terra couldn't name.

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WOW TENSES COME ON NOW

NO WE DON'T WANNA BE CONSISTENT

Reading about technical writing is ruining my creative writing *holds head

nooooo *holds your head*

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nooooo holds your head