trans_9 | Taken by Nargles? [Closed]

Tavros glances up from his book pad in surprise. Were they expecting visitors? He glances at Alex, then decides to just get the door himself. Poor guy's still mopey since the crazy shadow incident, though things had gotten better. They were back to playing card games and everything.

He wheels over and opens the door, expecting Katara or Renne, or maybe some random friendly mook. Anyone except the pretty blonde from Alice's thoughts.

So when that turns out to be exactly who's on the other side of the door, he stares openmouthed for a second before saying the first thing that comes to mind.

"Uhhh. Are you... Luna?"

She blinks down at the large-horned one, her head tilting to one side.

"Oh, hello," she says dreamily, smiling one of her vague and somehow brilliant smiles. "Yes, I'm Luna. That's quite an interesting chair. I saw a picture of a chair like that in a Muggle book once. Have you seen Alex?"

Wait, wasn't she podded? There was this whole thing where Kanaya got smacked around and he got punched in the face and everything. Was there some kind of mistake?

Then he realizes he's just being rude.

"Uh, hey... Alex?"

He wheels out of this strange girl's way and raises his soft voice a bit.

"There's, um. Someone at the door."

Alex's head shot up in shock. Was that? It was. He vaulted over the desk in a shocking display of athletics and darted in front of Tavros, pulling Luna into his arms with tears in her eyes.

"L-Luna! Y-You're... Y-you're! I-I!" He gave up on speaking and sobbed, pulling her tighter.

He had thought that he wouldn't get to see her again. It didn't seem to be all that common that people came out of the pods a second time.

Luna looks beyond Tavros just in time to see Alex performing an Olympics-worthy vault over his desk, and is barely prepared for the force of his embrace. The way he ends up holding her, arms around her waist, she's caught half-standing on her toes, and very unbalanced. She is momentarily caught up in hoping that they don't fall over, awkward as their pose is, but her train of thought is derailed when she realizes that he's crying.

Gently, she rolls further onto her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around his neck. She pats at his hair, frowning slightly over his shoulder at Tavros. She wants to ask what happened, how long she's been gone, but she's torn between worrying about the blond boy crushing her ribcage and her reflex to let crying people cry their tears out.

Okay, the athletic leap ~~off the deep end~~ over the desk isn't something Tavros ever expected to see Alex do. He and Luna briefly lock eyes before he looks away, a little embarrassed by the display. He backs away quietly and retrieves his pad again.

If they weren't standing in the doorway he would have absconded and given them some proper privacy, but the best he can do is pretend to be reading.

Alex releases her and steps back from the door, but only enough so that he can see he face. He's smiling, but at the same time he looked hurt. He had been sure that the ship had taken her away for good. But she was back.

Maybe Stacy wasn't so bad after all. At the very least, she hadn't been out to get him.

He was shaking ever so slightly as he spoke, "You're... y-you're r-really here, r-right?"

Luna stares up at him for a span of time rather longer than usual, her expression bordering on blank. A small smile grows eventually, though.

"Well, I think I'm really here, because I can feel the floor under my feet, and I have a fairly clear memory of walking over here, but Memory Charms are quite powerful things, I could very well have been put here by a powerful wizard. Then again, your mind's far too Wrackspurt-riddled to handle a Memory Charm." She pauses, glances at Tavros, and moves out of the doorway, stepping past Alex into the room. "Anyway, if he can see me--" She gestures to Tavros. "--then I think I'm real."

"She, uh, has a good point, basically, I think," and as he fumbles the conversation, Tavros makes a break for the open doorway. Poor guy is just not smooth. "Listen, Alex, I think I left, uh, something in the..." he jerks his thumb in the general direction of the Media Center, "so I'm just, gonna..."

And there he goes. Alex and Luna, the room's all yours.

Alex was smiling at Tavros as he moved out. Tavros could have called him any insult or done any manner of horrible thing, and Alex would still be smiling. If Alex's father walked through the door, he would probably still be smiling.

Luna was back.

Luna was okay.

And the way she went on about Wrackspurts and magic, he couldn't imagine any AI being capable of mimicking her so well.

As Tavros left Alex tried smiling a bit more in fairwell, but he really didn't have much more room to smile. He looked back down to Luna and put a and around her waist and the other over her shoulder so that his hand was cradling her head and he pulled her into him again, still shaking and crying with happiness and relief.

"I-I missed y-you, y-you h-have no idea..."

The shifting of positions caused Alex's jacket to slide off his shoulder, revealing a white bandage covering a part of his arm. He hadn't needed it really, but the sight of the cuts whenever he looked down had been making his stomach churn. The sight of the bandage was only somewhat less distressing.

Luna is quite unused to this much hugging, from Alex or anybody, so she blinks in a baffled manner as she is again embraced, her cheeks turning pink in the slightest of ways at the abrupt feeling of his arm around her waist. She's distracted, though, by his continued weeping, and the feel of something gauzy brushing against her arm as she wraps her arms around him, pressing the side of her face into his chest. She ignores the gauzy thing for a moment.

"How long was I gone?" she asks, sounding more than a little curious. Stacy hadn't informed her when she woke up, and Luna hadn't thought to ask, having more important things--like getting clean and finding clothes and her wand--on her mind.

Of course, then his coat falls off, and she becomes much more concerned with staring at the large bandage on his upper arm.

"Alex, what..." She trails off, pulling back just enough to touch the gauze carefully. There is a frown on her face.

For all that he jumped when he was touched unexpectedly, he took comfort from holding- and being held by- someone he cared for. Someone he knew he could trust.

He went a little red when she asked how long she had been gone. Really, now he felt rather stupid for getting so worked up over her leaving. She hadn't been gone long at all, and yet he had been so upset over it.

He probably could have handled it better if he hadn't turned on Katara and Tavros because of his lack of self control.

Between that thought, and Luna's frown as she asked about the bandage, his own smile faded into guilt. He looked away and let Luna go. He pulled the shoulder of the jacket back onto it's proper place and looked away from Luna in shame while biting at his lower lip.

"I... I-it..." he sat back onto his bed and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. "It r-really hasn' been th-that long s-since y-you g-got re-p-podded, b-but GLaDOS h-had you before that... An'.. It just... I..." He couldn't seem to get past that.

How could he admit that he had attacked his two closest friends, and then unwittingly hurt himself as well? He couldn't let Luna think it was her fault. None of it had been her fault. It wasn't like she actually did anything. She just was a victim of the ship's whims.

She watches him stutter and fidget, her expression unreadable. His prevarication doesn't go unnoticed, but she feels fairly comfortable in the knowledge that if he doesn't want to talk about it, he won't.

So she gives him his vagueness for the moment, fully intending to ask Katara about it later, choosing instead to sit beside him on the bed, reaching one hand out to almost, but not quite, touch the gauze again.

"If you have this wrapped up, I'm assuming Katara hasn't gotten to it yet," she says. "Can I look at it?"

Alex bit his lower lip and nodded, sliding his jacket off his shoulder and pulled out his arm. He began carefully undoing the bandage to reveal scabbed scratches from his own fingers digging into his skin.

"I-I'm s-sorry... I... d-didn' r-realize that I w-was...

"I... Did... A-a lot w-worse though... I-I'm s-sorry..."

Alice crawled from the desk to the bed and nested next to Luna, happy to see her again, but not wanting to interrupt the moment.

"Apologizing," she says dreamily, shaking her head. There's a slight curve to her lips to let him know that she doesn't recognize the scratches as his own doing, despite the implications of the phrase "I didn't realize that I was...". Of course, her lack of knowledge on topics of self-harm may have more than a little to do with that.

She takes his hand with one of hers, using it to turn his arm so she can get a better look at the scratches. After a moment, she pulls her wand from behind her ear and, adjusting her grip on it, she opens her mouth to speak some spell or other when she realizes that doing magic off-the-cuff might make him shifty, considering his general skittishness.

Twirling her wand in her hand, she says, "I know a few healing spells, and I could make these so they won't scar. You have quite enough of those, after all." Obviously (or not), she is asking for permission.

He gently chewed at his lip even more. He had been doing so much of it that his lower lip was chapped and cracked and uncomfortable, but he didn't even think to stop himself from chewing at it more.

Before she did something like heal him, he felt like he had to make sure that she wouldn't hate him for what he had done. He didn't want her to regret healing him or something like that.

He nodded his permission feebly, but then rushed, "I-I needta c-c-confess something f-first..."

He pulled his legs up onto the bed and wrapped his arms around himself. He went to squeeze at his shoulders again, fingers over just the spots of the cuts, but the feel of the gauze under the sleeve and of the scabs caused him to stop and slide his hands down to his elbows.

He didn't want to, but he had to tell Luna the truth. He couldn't let himself dance around it. Luna deserved to know.

She notices the lip chewing, and would stop him if she could think of a way of doing it without touching his mouth. It would appear that there are some nervous habits about which she can do nothing.

Hearing his stuttering prologue to confession, she settles a bit more comfortably beside him. She folds her hands in her lap, wand clasped between them, gaze intent as she waits for him to say what he needs to say.

"I... I s-sorta l-lost myself... a-after I f-found out y-you g-got repodded... I-I e-ended up a-attacking K-Katara and T-Tavros..." He choked down a sob and tried to blink back the tears in his eyes. He couldn't bring himself to look up at Luna. She would surely hate him for that, right?

"I-I a-attacked th-the pod c-caverns, a-an' u-used a sh-shadow p-power... A-and th-then..." He put his hands over his head, entwining his fingers with his hair. He couldn't hold himself back any more. The whole incident had been weighing heavily on his heart despite that both Katara and Tavros said they forgave him. He had been fearing needing to tell Luna, imagining her disappointed frown as he admitted to hurting her friend. What if she didn't want to talk to him after hearing this? It would be like losing her all over again.

Not to mention how badly he had reacted to the whole thing, thinking he would never get to see her again, and that if he did, that it would be years later, not even knowing if she would age at all during that time.

Yet she was back, so soon after. His reaction seemed totally unwarranted now. It seemed far too extreme.

Luna stays silent for a long moment, though if Alex would look up, he would see that there's nothing even nearing hatred or disapproval on her face. The expression she's wearing is something more along the lines of shock, blue eyes blown wide.

"You were that upset?" The thought is incomprehensible to her. Flattering, but incomprehensible--for most of her life, she's had only one person in the world who would even bat an eyelash if she were to drop off the face of the Earth, and that had been her father.

Then she drops her head on his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him.

"I'm sorry."

Alex looked up in shock, "Y-you... wha?"

Why was she sorry? She had nothing to be sorry for. She didn't hurt anyone. She didn't attack anyone. "L-Luna... You haven't done a-anything to b-be sorry for..."

This... This wasn't right... She wasn't the one who was supposed to apologize.

He took her hand, staring in disbelief. "I-I attacked Katara and Tavros... Y-you're... you're n-not mad? Y-you... don't h-hate me?"

"I know I haven't," she says, blinking at him. "I'm apologizing because I'm sad that you had to go through that. I know you didn't mean for it to happen, and it looked like Tavros is fine, so I'm assuming Katara's the same. Besides, she can take care of herself."

"Anyway, I think hating you is out of the question," she adds with a smile.

He sighed with relief. He was still confused, but at the very least Luna didn't seem mad at all. His worst fear of this situation had just been relieved. He didn't feel any less guilty about having attacked his friends.

He smiled, though he still looked a little pained, "Th-thank you, Luna." His smile faded a bit more, "I-I... well, I w-was stupid... I tried getting into the p-pod caverns... an'... w-well, I u-used one o-of my shadow powers, a-an' it t-took me over... I-I didn' wanna, b-but..." He sighed, "I... d-didn't think I-I'd g-get to see you again..."

But here she was. "I-I f-feel s-so stupid for c-creating such a m-mess..."

Her smile widens.

"I've made bigger messes with paint and misplaced charms, Alex," she says, shaking her head.

She pauses, looking down at their hands. After a moment, she picks his hand up in her free one, turns it over, and traces the lines on his palm.

"If I'd ever paid attention in Divination, I'd be able to look at your hands and tell you that you're a good person. You really ought to stop doubting yourself."

He still twitches nervously as his hand is taken unexpectedly, though he had been doing better with Luna than he did with anyone else. Still, her finger tickles, and he ends up pulling away with a giggle.

His smile fades a bit as he says, "I'm j-just... afraid of m-my shadows..."

He smiles brightly again, "b-but S-Sam's gonna r-reverse wh-what they did! S-so I won't havta w-worry about a-any of that any more! S-since I c-can't r-really c-control my emotions w-well an' am dangerous when I c-can't."

"We're all afraid of shadows," she says. "But when you think about it, we wouldn't know what light actually looked like if there weren't shadows, so it ends up being worthwhile eventually."

Luna blinks, peering at him owlishly.

"Well, that's good, I suppose."

"I just... I c-can't stand it, that my sh-shadows c-can hurt people..."

He sighs heavily, but then smiles at Luna, "but n-now that you're h-here..." He felt like he really didn't need to finish that sentence. Her being here finished it for him.

She returns his smile, patting his knee lightly.

"You'll be fine. And so will everyone else. We've all suffered worse than a few agitated shadows."

Alex looked at Luna, lower lip quivering. He gripped with his free hand at the rough denim of his pants, trying to choke back his emotions with no luck. He began crying again, though he was trying hard not to.

He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, "I-I'm s-sorry. I'm h-happy you're b-back. I sh-shouldn't b-be c-crying..."

How was she always so understanding? So open and accepting? "H-how c-can you always b-be so c-compassionate."

She lets him cry for a moment, humming softly as she tugs her wand from behind her ear. Giving it a flick, a handkerchief pops into existence, floating down into her hand.

"It's not a matter of compassion," she says, handing the hankie to him. "I just tend to acknowledge that all of us are human, or some variation on the humanoid concept, and that implies that we're prone to mistakes, as well as prone to thinking that our little emotional missteps are major crimes against humanity." She pauses, slips her wand back behind her ear. "Plus, Daddy always said that good things happen when you cry in public. Lavender Brown actually gave my shoes back when I started crying once. She didn't seem to mind that I was crying over my Transfiguration exam--she just handed them back and rolled her eyes. Of course, she may have just eaten too many carrots."

He took the handkerchief and wiped his eyes with it, but he couldn't help but to break into a fit of laughter the way she described Lavender Brown. He couldn't see how carrots really had anything to do with anything, but then again he didn't often understand how a lot of what Luna said.

He sniffed and wiped away his tears a bit more while still smiling from the laughter. "What do c-carrot hafta do with that?"

Her eyes widen (if that's possible, considering how wide they usually are).

"Oh! Everyone knows that if you eat too many carrots, your eyes get stiff! They cause a condition called Optiavolia," she says sagely. "In Daddy's opinion, it's one of the most common problems a teenager can have, as evidenced by the amount of eye-rolling we do."

He laughs a bit more, thinking that was absolutely ridiculous. He knew plenty of people in the program who never ate normal food, let alone carrots, who did more than their share of eye-rolling. He didn't have any desire to disagree and risk a fight- he rarely did- so he held his tongue on that matter, settling for, "I've m-missed you s-so much."

He was wiping the last of his tears from his eyes, smiling at the blond girl.

Even if he'd disagreed, she wouldn't have minded--by this point in time, she's pretty aware that a fair amount of what her father says is far from the truth.

"Well, I'd say that I missed you, too, but the last thing I remember is waking up in the middle of the night to GLaDOS, having a hard time breathing, and then I woke up in the Pod Caverns again, so I didn't really have much time to miss anyone," she says with a smile. After a moment, though, the smile fades, replaced by a look of what could pass for horror and a very serious blush.

Alex bit his lip and put his hand on top of hers. He wondered if he would ever meet GLaDOS, but he knew enough about her to know that it could not have been pleasant. And he knew too well how it felt to be missing time. Parts of the last few days for him were fuzzy, if he could remember them at all, but he at least knew that it was his own mind's defence against pain.

He gently squeezed her hand, "Y-you're s-safe now though." He forced a smile in hopes of comforting her. "Y-You're back."

If Alex pays her much attention in the next thirty seconds, he'll notice that her eyes are distinctly focused on anything that isn't him, that she is frowning the tiniest bit, and that the pinkness in her cheeks darkened and spread when he touched her.

Well, this is special.

Luna's mind, as it turns out, has become abruptly, mortifyingly, explicitly focused on the dream she had been having just before she woke up with ineffective breathing patterns and an AI's voice in her ear. Fortunately, the dream wasn't...anything "bad", else she would have fled the room entirely and hidden herself in some obscure corner of the ship until she could reassert her mental correctness, but her subconscious had run amok, and Luna isn't quite sure what to do with the vague, fuzzy, warm recollection of that particular R.E.M. cycle.

"Yes, well," she says after a good minute-long pause. "I ought to let Katara know I'm back, as well..."

Alex does notice, since he couldn't take his eyes off of her- at least until he realizes that he's touching her her hand and that she had turned red. He promptly turned red himself and pulled his hands back. He hadn't been so familiar with her before, had he?

He looks away as well, his ears turning bright red. "Y-y-yeah... P-probably... Y-you didn't see her yet?"

She swallows, dredging a smile up from somewhere in her reserve of calmness.

"I haven't, no. I came to see you first," she says, reversing the situation by touching his hand gently.

He jumps a little, turning a even deeper shade of red. "R-really?" She came to see him? "B-before y-your best f-friend?" He sounded amazed and humbled, even if the words on their own would have sounded judgemental. "I..." He trailed off, wanting to say how honoured he was, but unable to find anything that might have resembled a word to express his feelings.

Taken by Nargles? [Closed]

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[pretending those two comments were properly sequential...]

[looks around innocently] no idea what you're even talkin about

[I have not fallen into a black hole]

x3

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I can never tell when you're online. >_<'

That's 'cause I'm rarely on. e___e

T_T

>>;

it happens?

Que verdad.

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you live! ^_^