aterat | Return of the Queen

Entry tags:

Return of the Queen

Who;Illyana + You
What; Network + Log of her return
Where;
When;Night on May 2nd
Warnings; Talk of death

I. Network

I found Athony. Turns out he has his own pocket dimension. Aspect of death and all that. Looks like they've at least mastered using the portals to go from here to there. Good for them.

Anyone visited the Academy while I've been gone. Been told recently that we could all do with a few lessons.

II. Wandering the streets

After what had happened before Illyana probably should have learned her lesson. Too bad she'd never been that great of a student. Sure, she picked up on things unusually fast, but she'd always been too headstrong to make a perfect student. Besides, she'd just gotten back and she wasn't really sure if she actually wanted to see anyone. Her head was a jumbled mess of memories of death from her home.

Memories of a small child slowly wasting away from a virus her own brother gave her. The memory felt more like watching a movie, as though it weren't actually her own memory. I hope to act like it does, if nothing else.

Was that all she was doing here? Acting like a real girl? For the first time she felt the full pang of missing her brother. She wished he was here. Big simple Piotr who only ever saw his little sister as the Snowflake she once was. She missed him, just like she missed Kitty and every one of the New Mutants. Tears welled up in her eyes, tears that she'd insist mainly came from frustration.

A portal appeared around her feet and engulfed her body only for her to remain exactly where she was.

"How dare you," she muttered as she wiped the tears away from her face. A series of curses in Russian escaped her lips and she pulled the hood of her jacket up.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

With reports of the creatures wandering around the city, Jagger knew he shouldn't be out, but he needed answers. It had been five days since Mono had found her sword, and if he knew one thing about Illyana (more now than he'd ever anticipated) he knew she wouldn't have simply misplaced it. He'd been smart, keeping to more common areas, places he'd found her before, but had come up with nothing.

It was only when rounding a corner, making his way back toward the fountain square, to head to bed and out of danger, that he heard her voice. It was pained, small, but he followed it and caught a wisp of blond hair as she raised her hood.

"Illyana? Is that you?" It wasn't shouted, but the streets were nearly empty with the curfew in place and his voice echoed over the flagstones.

Despite the voice not belonging to one of the people from home she'd been specifically thinking about, Illyana still found a strange emotion stirring inside of her. Her voice caught in her throat as she turned around to face Jagger. The hood didn't do the the best job of hiding the fresh wet streaks that had fallen down her face and she tried to look down to hide it more.

Except she couldn't just keep looking down. She found herself walking towards him, closing the distance between them with more enthusiasm than she understood. Why did she want to see him? Was she...happy...to see him? That's what this feeling was, wasn't it? Relief and happiness. How strange. The strangeness didn't end there though. No, once the distance was closed she did the strangest thing of all: she threw her arms around him. It was brief before her mind caught up with her actions and she quickly recoiled from her own display.

"You shouldn't be out here," she said in a small voice. "Those things aren't gone. Athony was clear on that." With his stupid chastising warning about how she should be more careful. She was plenty careful. It wasn't her fault there'd been four or five of those stupid little things. Or that they'd all brought their dread crashing down on her at once. She was going to destroy them when she found them. Once everything returned to her she was going to find them.

Contact wasn't something Jagger took lightly. He rarely reached out to comfort, having so little control over his abilities it was often uncomfortable and frankly got in the way of what he was trying to accomplish. Though he and Illyana hadn't been studying long, he was starting to figure out ways to adapt her focus techniques on other aspects of his mind, though, and her lessons on creating mental barriers were also helping.

That didn't mean he'd been at all prepared for her rush him quite so quickly, or to throw her arms around him. He'd hardly had time to register what had happened before she was pulling away, but in that moment, he'd felt a rush of relief, and something else. He didn't know what he could do to possibly protect her, but for God's sake, he was going to try.

"I...well, yeah. I know I shouldn't, but I've been looking for you." He frowned, taking a step closer, re-closing that distance, because he wanted to reassure her, yes, but also to assure himself she was there. He'd actually found her, or at least he'd been in the right place when she was found. "What do you mean Athony was clear on that?"

"By yourself?" She frowned and shook her head. "Congratulations. You found me." Was it really an accomplishment though? It was more accurate to say they ran into each other by complete coincidence than he found her. At least it was nicer for her to say than her first instinct, which was just: idiot.

"He told me to be more careful this time, since those deformed monstrosities were still around." Not that she intended to follow those instructions. She hadn't realized there'd been so many around when she'd encountered the first. She also hadn't realized what they were fully capable of doing. Now though, now she'd be prepared and she'd find them.

"Yeah, by myself. There are curfews and it's best if only one person ends up paying for violating them." If there even was a punishment for violating curfew. He honestly didn't know.

"What happened?" He didn't try to keep the concern from his voice when he asked, either. She's tough. Nothing gentle happened to her.

"Punishment?" she let out a scoff as if the idea that the captain of the guard here could actually punish anyone was amusing. The guards here barely did anything, she sincerely doubted that they would actually punish anyone violating a curfew. Most cleanup seemed left to the people the dragged in here.

"I was out on the first day," before anyone really knew much about what was going on. Before people had begun coming in to describe the things that happened when you got too close to those creatures. "They attack psychically if you get too close," she tapped her head and gave a crooked smile. "It's hard to get into my head." Which, for once, had been disadvantageous to her. "I didn't notice until three more appeared from behind." All of them together? She looked down awkwardly, casting her eyes away from him in the hopes that he wouldn't notice just how much she was bothered by what had happened.

"I know their pain."

"I was thinking more along the lines of a fine, but yeah. Punishment." He realized Illyana probably didn't have to worry about things like that, but he ran a business in town and he at least needed to try to look like he cared about their rules. It wasn't much different from back home, really. He bent the rules a lot there, too, when he was on the trail of something.

He reached down, instead of pulling her close again, and took her hand, a reassuring but subtle gesture. "You know," he began, his concern and sympathy evident in his voice and his eyes even if he didn't voice them, "maybe we should get off the street, then, just in case."

"If you care about a fine, go home," she said with a shrug. It'd be better for him to just go and leave her be anyway. But at the same time she wasn't entirely sure if she wanted him to go. Why was that? Wasn't her unfortunate display of affection she'd just shown enough?

Her eyes widened for a second, but she didn't actually pull away. "Where do you want to go?"

He didn't care about a fine and he shook his head at the very idea of it. He honestly didn't even know what the punishment for violating a curfew would be in a place like this. He was surprised at her response though, and her willingness to go along with him, but he did his best not to show it.

"Haven't the foggiest, but I haven't seen any of them around here, so we might be able to make it back to the residences without a problem." And they could take it from there, her place or his.

Usually she'd offer to teleport them both somewhere, but for some reason she didn't. Right now teleporting her reminded her of her lack of access to Limbo. Which in turn reminded her of the fact that she'd been brought back wrong again, a topic she had no desire to think about. The last time she'd been brought back with something wrong it had lead to a series of very bad events and memories. Things she'd much prefer to not deal with.

"Does anyone know what they are?"

He shook his head in response to her question at first, and almost unconsciously put an arm around her waist, starting them off in the way of the residences. He was enjoying the contact as much as he was her lack of rebelling against it, making him feel as though there was something, however small, that he could do for her.

"We're working on it, but nothing definitive yet. A building appeared north of the city, an academy if everyone around town can be trusted, but I don't know that we've gotten eyes on it yet."

The gesture was entirely foreign, but she managed to not recoil. That didn't mean she managed to not tense up completely, but she felt like not recoiling was a pretty impressive accomplishment. Even if she did feel confused as to why she eventually settled into the way they were walking. Somehow it made her feel a bit...safer, almost like when Piotr was around.

"What were you doing that you haven't gotten more information on those things?"

He'd learned many things about her in the brief time he'd searched her sword for traces of what had happened to her, and one of those things was wanting to be normal, and he could treat her like the normal girl he saw her as, even if he new she was a lot of other things in addition to that.

"Avoiding them and looking for you, love. I was worried." And I should have been.

"There was no reason to look for me." Clearly she'd been dead, her sword had ended up with someone else after all. Not that she'd ever told anyone about how that worked, but it also wasn't like she thought of that particular fact.

"Worry about me is a waste of your time. You should have tried to find out about those things and the academy."

"I think I get to decide whether or not there was a reason." He shook his head.

"I'm not the only one here, love, and the Academy isn't going anywhere."

She stopped suddenly and turned to face him. "What was the reason?" What was his exact motivation? Frustration was mounting inside of her at just how confusing everything was, between her own death, memories of her previous death, and her confusion over everything that had happened both then and now.

"I didn't mean to be caught," like she had been. "There was only one when I saw it at first. They do something psychically." And her own mental blocks had protected her from it at first. In a way that'd worked against her because she hadn't noticed it until the others had shown up and overwhelmed her. "I wasn't brought back completely right."

"The reason for what, looking for you even though it was dangerous?" He breathed a sigh. He'd really thought he'd gotten the point across already. "You're important to me, Illyana. It was important to me to make sure you were safe, and that...you weren't alone when you came back." Because he remembered a former employee who'd died and come back, and he still recalled vividly the feelings he'd felt from her sword.

"Yeah...I know." He should tell her. "You...know how I find people, yeah?" But that could wait. "What do you mean by 'completely' right?"

"I was alone when I came back before." Had she been fine then? No, not at all. She also hadn't had a soul at the time and that'd ended up with some rather disastrous consequences. She put a hand up near her chest awkwardly and shook her head. I shouldn't be, was what she wanted to say, but she stopped herself. This was all more vulnerability than she had any interest in showing and yet for some reason he seemed to bring that out in her. A part of her really did hate that. The bigger part of her just didn't know what to do with it because the truth was, she didn't want to be alone. She never had, but it seemed like the better choice back home after how she'd changed.

She tilted her head at his question and nodded. "Your powers." Wait... "Did you touch something to try to find me?" She'd already forgotten about what she was thinking of telling him.

"Yeah, I did." He breathed a sigh. He didn't know how she was going to react when he told her, but he wasn't going to hide it from her, either. He probably couldn't have even if he'd tried.

"Mono found your sword." That should go to great lengths to explain the rest. "What did you mean about not coming back completely right?" That seemed important enough to ask again.

"You touched my sword...?" how...unfortunate. She glanced over to him with eyes that were slightly wide before she ducked her head back down. Did she really want an explanation? Perhaps it would just be easier to pretend it hadn't happened at all.

"What did you see?" she shook her head at his question before finally admitting: "I can't get into Limbo." Which, she realized, admitted that her first thought upon coming back had been to flee to Limbo.

"Yeah. Not really sure why I thought it'd help, but I did." He didn't know if she would pull away from him, but he reached out, putting an arm around her shoulder as he did so, pulling her close. He knew a lot more about her than he did before, and part of that was knowing she was a girl who needed a lot more affection than she let on.

"And...you're not as far from the girl you used to be as you think you are, love. I can promise you that. And...embracing her doesn't make you weak." He looked over to her, smiling fondly. He couldn't avoid it anymore, as dangerous as it probably was. "It makes you beautiful."

He frowned, because he understood that was her sanctuary as much as it was anything. She'd conquered that place, in more ways than one. "There's nothing to run from here."

She flinched at his touch but, surprisingly, she didn't actually pull away. How strange. There was no reason for her to not pull away and yet for some reason she was oddly...she wasn't certain what she felt. Oddly comforted...? Perhaps. She swallowed and cast her gaze down.

"Piotr would say the same. That I am still his snowflake deep down. Every time he said those words they hurt." Was that the first time she'd admitted why it made her so angry? Yes, it was also the first time she'd even acknowledged it herself. At the word beautiful though she looked at him with a confused expression. "Beautiful? I suppose even monsters can be beautiful," she smiled for a second before quickly dropping her head back down. "There's plenty to run from." You. "I would break you."

"Well, love, I've touched a piece of your soul and I'm not broken yet." He may not look like much, but even Jagger knew he was tougher than he looked. It took a strong will to keep one's mind their own when it was constantly bombarded with the memories and residual emotions of others, to keep your feelings and memories separate from theirs, and an even stronger one not to run from those abilities, but to try to use them to help people.

He wasn't great with them, but he was getting better, and he had her to thank for that. "Maybe...he and I can see things you've difficulty seeing yourself."

"You touched the good part of my soul." The only good part she had left really. Then again, that part would have also shown him...oh. "You saw Belasco." It really hadn't fully registered until now that he would have seen the red demon and his promises of power. He would have seen how he'd tried to appeal to the child, tried to corrupt her, and how he'd coveted everything about her and her precious innocence. He might have been able to see her fear and her loneliness, her desperation, and that ultimately the corruption had worked. She'd turned to dark arts and despite her age she'd killed her two teachers there. Of course, he'd forced her hand there, but there was still shame in the situation.

She looked down and wrapped her arms around herself. "Or maybe you two are just naïve."

"It's very good, and very much a part of you, love." He gave her shoulders another squeeze but didn't let go. He also knew she didn't enjoy showing this level of vulnerability, and the significance of her trusting him with it was not lost on him. He also knew this woman was capable of protecting herself against likely any physical and most psychic threats that could ever try to harm her, but emotional damage wasn't so easily avoided and she desperately needed a friend who didn't see her as a monster.

Even if that friend's sole purpose was to believe in the woman she was until Illyana was able to believe in her herself. Jagger wanted more than that, he knew that now, and he'd stay as long as she'd have him. "I also know that he is too, and everything he made you to be, but I also know you've taken it and made it your own. If that makes me naive, I'm alright with that."

Wandering the Streets

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject