Post by Aegle Vitus on Apr 4, 2019 15:05:30 GMT
"I done told you already," Roland drawled, "You were just too occupied feeling sorry for yourself that you didn't listen." She was still having trouble placing his accent which, while it was no less distinct than her own, was unlike any she'd heard on Mantle. She only really knew the highland accents and the Atlas City accents though, so that still left a whole lot of landmass the Ranger could hail from. If she was giving his vernacular undue attention, it was only because she didn't like what he was saying. She'd been accused, unfairly in her opinion, of feeling sorry for herself enough times to patently resent the suggestion. Just as she had been accused of it enough times to know the sort of person who would make such an accusation was unlikely to be swayed from it.
"I know your family," after a suitable pause Roland continued, head tipped back just enough that she could see he was watching her, "I practically raised your brothers. Stubborn as mules the lot of them, but smart as whips too. Some of the finest students I ever had."
That gave Aegle some pause. So he was a professor from Atlas Academy? He noted her expression and, with the slightest incline of his head, acknowledged the lack of recognition.
"You probably don't remember," He allowed, "But we met once before when Vulcan graduated, you were just a sprout though so I can't hold it against you."
Aegle thought back to the day, which might as well have been a lifetime past. She remembered standing on the parade grounds before the Academy, holding her father's hand. It was a fragment at best, that memory, so faded in her mind that it could almost have been someone else's. It didn't seem possible that she'd been so healthy, that her family had been so happy. She remembered Vulcan, accepting his honors in a pressed gray uniform. How he'd accepted the ceremonial invitation to join the Military as a specialist and how, as befit the ritual, he had respectfully declined. Despite training as a huntsman, his interests had never involved fighting. At least not personally. Then she remembered who had made the offer, and who he had respectfully declined. Aegle's eyes refocused on Roland, and went slightly wider.
Rolands blazing blue eyes were not the sort to miss such overt expression, "I'd hoped to raise you as well some day."
She wasn't just speaking with a high ranking officer, she was speaking with the headmaster general of Atlas Academy.
Pretending not to notice her sudden alarm, her sudden embarrassment, Roland forged ahead, "But you got a bee in your bonnet and scuttled on off to Beacon instead, and then picked a fight with the meanest deuce to ever ride through this town. Then you plain refuse to send so much as a smoke signal back to your folks, and near as I can tell your fingers ain't broke. So who do you reckon gave me a tearful earful as I am making ready to come on out to Vytal for the festival?"
A hand closed around Aegle's heart. A broiling maelstrom of emotion pressed down upon her, the civilian shame for her prior rudeness, the strange giddiness inherent to meeting someone so important and the idea that he even knew who she was, and the much more personal shame of his criticism, all served to steal away her voice.
"S'my life, innit?" She said finally, sounding more defiant than she felt. His words had struck home, and the trained need to defer to him made it hard to stand her ground, but she had done everything she'd done for her own reasons. Reasons she wasn't sure she could explain, true, but reasons that had satisfied her none the less.
She lowered her eyes, not from respect or shame, but because she just didn't want to meet that blue-bomber gaze anymore. She didn't want to see the tired acceptance in his eyes, the silent disapproval, and all the judgement such facets implied. She didn't want to look at another person looking at her, who saw little more than a directionless trainwreck of a life. Partly because she wasn't entirely certain that his opinion was not correct.
"What d'ya want me to tell 'em? S'alright, I'm alright, I didn't kill myself this time." She waved her fingers at him, unfolding them like a tired spider at her side, dismissing the thought.
"M'not alright though, am I? S'not a normal sorta thing that I did, is it? S'a crazy thing, innit?" Aegle shifted her gaze to the window, to the myriad lives beyond, and quietly sighed. Not sad, just resigned, just knowing exactly how untenable the whole situation was.
"I dunno what t'tell them," she felt tired just thinking about it, as if the whole ordeal were catching up with her. Not just the fight with Roland the night before, and the frivolous use of her semblance that had entailed, but everything. She tried to remember the last time she'd felt so alive as when she'd been fighting the Commander, the last time she'd felt so certain she was doing the right thing. She tried to remember the last time she'd been so happy...
"What can I tell 'em, that they'd understand? That I'm alright, that I've learned m'lesson, that I ain't never gonna do it again?" She shook her head minutely, "Don't wanna lie to 'em."
She looked at Roland briefly, but read nothing in his patient gaze except an invitation to continue. She grimaced, pulled a fist, and looked down at her own body, or the thing that passed for one. She'd learned something about herself during her fight with Solomon Moon, and it wasn't something she knew how to share.
"It hurt, y'know? He hurt me real bad," Aegle gestured at herself, as though it went without saying, "And the whole time I was thinkin' 'Y'don't have to do this. Y'can stop anytime y'want.'..." She grinned despite herself, but it wasn't an especially healthy expression.
"I wasn't sure I could take it; I knew he weren't gonna kill me, but I weren't sure I wouldn't die anyway. But y'know what?" Aegle fixed the ranger with a stare, "I wanted t'do it anyway. I wanted t'hurt. I wanted t'feel sure of myself, like what I did mattered. I wanted him to admit I weren't worth killin', no matter what he reckon's 'bout mercy and weakness. As pointless as it was, I wanted t'do it, without knowin' if I would pull through."
She looked away, looked back to the lives beyond the window, and the countless people living them.
"S'not alright," she said finally, admitting it to herself and to him, "Thinkin' that way, doin' somethin' like that... S'not alright, is it?"