in daylights, in sunsets

[Deleted]

It had been nearly three days since Aggie had last slept, and fatigue, an old friend of hers, had not yet caught on to the idea that she was absolutely spent, both physically and mentally. She liked to imagine her own exhaustion as a separate entity, a slender gentleman with bulging eyes and a wagging tongue and a cackling laugh. He often stared her down, his fist cocked and quivering but never delivering that final blow that would send her into a blissful sleep.

And here he stood, nearly three hours past midnight, his grimy fist poised but never moving. And Aggie, slumped like an old dog against the cushions of her unmade bed, stared him down, trying to drown out that hideous laugh and that lolling tongue in best way she knew — music.

After all, music was the one thing she had been able to bring with her from Sanctum. The one thing that kept her sane despite it all, despite the separation and the fear and the skepticism. Even her new apartment seemed like a stranger, looming and foreign and empty — a stranger with his fist cocked, side by side with her own fatigue. She'd gotten word of a potential roommate, a person to share the loneliness with; but it wouldn't be the same, it never would. Even though she knew — she knew — he was gone for good. She would emerge from her threadbare bedroom and expect to see him lounging on the couch, using his coat as a blanket, or staring absently out the balcony window, as if lost in some fantasy.

But he never was. Aggie's mind raced, the music thumped loud and heavy against her eardrums, and she worked to remember who she'd been before the apartment. Before the shining city, the bustling people, the people who had some semblance of hope gleaming in their eyes, rather than the weight of an ever-present doom pressing like a thundercloud against their shoulders. Her music wasn't nearly loud enough to alarm the entire complex, but she had a small feeling she'd get some complaints from her immediate neighbors. Good, she thought bitterly. Let them come over here. Lord knows I need to socialize.

Aggie tossed an arm over her eyes and huffed a breath past her lips, her chest heavy. All night long, crooned Lionel Richie and her dusty old radio. She nearly laughed at the irony.


Nikki ;; finally. yes. finally.

[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]SLEEPWALKING TO THE GALLOWS

[attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"]

[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]I MISS THE WARM EMBRACE I FELT THE FIRST TIME YOU TOUCHED ME

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]SECURE & SAFE IN OPEN ARMS, SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU'D CRUSH ME

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Sleep had always been his enemy, much in the way that corrupt, evil-doers, and the infamous Doctor X were. Many nights, it would allude him altogether, leaving weight to pull down at his eyes, at his limbs, but never dropping in to give him the rest he truly desired. Always fatigued, but never tired. Always groggy, but never able to fall to slumber. How long had it been since he'd stopped trying altogether? Five years, perhaps? Shorter, longer – he'd never been one to keep track. All he knew was that his only chance of rest was working until he could no longer, running until his feet gave out beneath him and his mind was flooded with inky darkness. It'd happened once before in his line of work, thankfully only during a stakeout and not a hit, and he'd been fortunate enough to have another Omega Five member at his side to drag him back to safety before his unconsciousness compromised his (and, by extension, the rest of the team's) safety. The aftermath, though, had been worse than the actually loss of consciousness; he wasn't use to having to explain his usefulness to those who wanted other people, namely ne'er-do-wells dead running around like free birds, and repeating himself over and over about how he wasn't going to become a hazard to future missions was about the only time that he'd found himself seriously considering punching a known island official right out of their chair. It would have been worth it, had there not been a good chance they would have blown his brains out immediately afterward for it.[break][break]

Tonight, however, Nikki's listlessness was of a different breed, a different nature. Homura was either in bed already or off running her own late night missions (he had his own qualms about them running her around like that, seeing as how young she still was, but he was coming to realize that he complained more about it than she did) by the time he sauntered through the door, and for the first time in what was maybe months, he told himself that tonight was the night. Tonight, he would lay down voluntarily on his ratty old mattress, and tonight, he would finally get some true, genuine sleep. First to come off was his gloves, blood-stained, then his shoes, also blood-stained, and his coat, all articles tossed carelessly into the nearest corner and landing anywhere they pleased. A mess that could be cleaned up in the morning. For now, his mind was only on making it to the one place in this darned apartment where he wouldn't kill his neck from sleeping on overnight. His room was as empty as ever, populated only by that aforementioned mattress on the floor, the chair by his window, and a few odd pieces of trash he'd never gone back to clean up, but his presence in this room, this apartment, this island was hardly necessary, and he refused to put anymore effort into something borrowed than necessary. He didn't go in here nearly enough to warrant a remodel, anyway. “Comfortable” wasn't exactly the word that came to mind when he threw himself at the white mass in the back corner, but it was better than the floor beneath it. Already, tendrils of shadows were creeping in on his vision, gravity was tugging just a little more on his eyelids, and if he laid like still like this just long enough, maybe, just maybe -[break][break]

Oh no.[break][break]

Buried under the scuffle of his own haphazard undressing and the screech of old springs perishing beneath his weight had been a noise clawing its way through the walls, tapping at his walls without mercy and seeming to shake the very foundation of his home. It must have existed the whole time, perhaps even longer than when he'd walked through his front door, but he hadn't noticed it until now, not until he needed peace and quiet so badly. For a moment, the hitman tried to fool himself into thinking that he could still manage to catch those elusive “z”s even though the pollutant, but five, ten, twenty minutes passed, and his ability to sleep fled further and further away from him with each minute that the clock in the living room ticked off. Something primal tickled at the back of his mind with the realization that his once in a lifetime opportunity had been missed. No, no, wait, not missed. Stolen. Ripped raw out of his hands by someone playing their music too loudly at what had to have been three in the morning. On another day, maybe he would have groaned through it and gone to clean his arsenal of guns in frustration, hoping the whole time that the menial activity could distract him from the aggravation brought on by the careless around him. Right then, though, the only thing his mind called for was retribution. Justice. Whoever the culprit of this heinous crime was would pay dearly for it, and he would make sure that it was seen to personally.[break][break]

Back on went the gloves, the shoes, the coat, blood stains covered to look like oil, holes patched to look like they hadn't been dug out of someone else's trash. Not that it mattered much to him now. He stalked the hallway with all the fiery rage of an inferno, and he made sure his pounding on his neighbor's door was louder than the infernal music they'd stolen his chance for sleep with. “Hey, fucker! Wanna tell me why you're keeping everyone in the goddamned building up at three in the fucking morning?”

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bgpwn9ilzsj2h11/05%20Poison%20Was%20the%20Cure.mp3?dl=0[/music]

[attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 937 WORDS

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] @agnespollock

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doth have incurred the wrath of sleepy boi, please pardon his swearing. IT'S TIME, THOUGH, LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD!

[Deleted]

After the last refrain of Lionel Richie's All Night Long, Aggie managed to pull herself to her feet and shuffle listlessly to her kitchen like a woman on autopilot. It's like the lights are on, her mother would say, but nobody's home. She moved slowly, feet scraping the tiles, dodging unpacked boxes of movies and clothes and aging alcohol. She'd lived in the apartment for upwards of a week, now, and not once had she met her neighbors, nor had she caught wind of a prospective roommate. The second bedroom stood empty as she passed it on her way to the kitchen, and when she finally lurched into her destination, she eagerly pulled open the fridge and plucked up a water bottle. She was fed up with her sleeplessness, the ever-present figure with his fist cocked high.

Leaning onto her tip-toes, Aggie rummaged around in her far cabinet until she found the bottle of sleeping pills she had been looking for. Lionel Richie faded to a whisper in her living room, and his low, easy voice was replaced by the soft cadence of Billy Joel and his piano. But under that — faint, almost too faint — the soft snick of a door opening, and then shutting once more. For a split moment, Aggie wrote it off as her neighbor simply heading down to the complex's vending machine for a midnight snack. But the steps outside the wall were loud, soft, precise. A beat passed — and then a fist, pounding on her door, snatched her out of her trancelike reverie. Aggie's mind raced, keeping a steady pace with the beat of her heart. She set the pill bottle on top of the counter and tucked the water bottle under her arm as she ducked into her room, quickly locating a pair of shorts to shimmy up her legs. Once she was thoroughly dressed, she practically pranced back into her living room, only to catch the final moments of an irate chastising " — three in the fucking morning?"

If she had been more sentient, she might have gone to the door at that instant. Instead, she followed the lilt of Billy Joel's voice to her radio and twisted the little gray knob atop the plastic CD compartment. His voice faded, quieting, and the apartment practically gave a shudder, the silence settling in like an unwanted fog. Aggie ground her teeth and shook her head, finally making the short journey to the front door. She unlocked the doorknob, slid back the deadbolt, and cracked the door open. She hadn't yet opened it enough to see her late night visitor, only the toes of their boots and the hem of a coat. "You sure this is the best way to make a good first impression, neighbor?" She asked through the crack in the door, laying her old Alabamian accent on thick. "I would have gone with a muffin basket. Hell, even a casserole would have been nice."

Still looking at her own feet, she pulled the door open farther, smothering a small smile. And then — it was as if she had been shoved headfirst into a fishbowl, one of the round ones she had always seen on TV. She recognized that coat, that gritty voice. A voice like two stones being rubbed together, or a young wolf growling as he stands defending his prey. Her world swelled to maximum, then shrunk to a pinpoint. Her gaze shot upwards, and the water bottle slipped from her hands and splashed onto the floor, exploding onto their feet. Aggie was never one to be at a loss for words, and yet, when she opened her mouth to speak, all she could produce was a rather unceremonious, "Uhhh."

Aggie blanched, eyed the visitor, then took a step back. And finally, "You're fuckin' with me, aren't 'ya?" She clapped her hands together and threw herself forwards, head swiveling up and down the apartment hallway. "Joke's on me, ha-ha. You got me. MTV's Pranked, or whatever. Piss off."

And then she stepped back and shut the door. It was entirely possible that she had been hallucinating, the figure of fatigue with his wagging tongue and his gobbling laugh finally taking the shape of an old friend, a friend who might finally lead Aggie into the sweet abyss of sleep. But he'd seemed so real, so human, almost as if —

Aggie couldn't bear it. It had been less than twenty seconds before she turned around and yanked the door open again, praying he still stood on the other side. "Nikki?" She finally managed, hands trembling against the doorknob. "Is that really you?"




Nikki ;; you just got [mtv voice] prankedt!!!!

[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]SLEEPWALKING TO THE GALLOWS

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]I MISS THE WARM EMBRACE I FELT THE FIRST TIME YOU TOUCHED ME

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]SECURE & SAFE IN OPEN ARMS, SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU'D CRUSH ME

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Unbelievable. Unbelievable! The culprit of it all, a woman, by the sound of her voice, had a lot of nerve thinking that she could respond to his anger, completely justified, with sarcasm and snark. Next, she'd start telling him that the one being a bother to the general populace here was him and not herself, complaining loud and proud about his knocking and cursing like she hadn't done a single thing wrong in these last twenty some minutes. Insufferable, the whole lot of them. He'd be lucky if he could count the number of people that didn't make him want to tear out his hand on this island on a single hand. “You sure this is the best way to make a good first impression, neighbor? I would have gone with a muffin basket. Hell, even a casserole would would have been nice.” Oh, yes, ha ha, how witty and charming. Her words were infuriating in part because they communicated a lack of caring, but mostly because he never had a proper response to these kinds of words, this kind of person. He never had, thinking about it now, not since he'd let X run circles around him with his tongue and his lips. The best he'd ever been able to muster was a quick, sharp shut up, but its effectiveness varied between person with some taking the hint and others only proceeding to laugh in his face. Very, truly insufferable. He was all prepped and ready to tell her just that, however, (albeit with a great deal less of eloquence) when she opened the door even wider, revealing her form to him even when her own eyes were trained quite firmly on her feet. Immediate impressions made him think of Mary, a jolt of shock that caught him off guard at the sight of someone of the same similar build and the same curly blonde hair, but it couldn't have actually been her, considering her voice and her mannerisms. If that Emilio fellow had taught him anything, it was to expect familiar people or faces with stark differences between them, but even he supposed a line had to be drawn in the sand to determine where one person ended and another began in the multi-verse. And this woman? She didn't even stand close.[break][break]

What did manage to catch him off guard and could not be proven false was that, vague visual similarities to Mary or no, she really did look familiar. While his default assumption then should have been that she, too, would attack him with the intent of getting his blood on her hands like the last person to instill in him a sense of deja vu had done, something in his gut was telling him differently. He knew her from... somewhere, that much was for certain, but fatigue and the remnants of his not-yet-abated anger were making it hard to place exactly where or when that could have been. All that was left to do was hope that some sort of (non-violent) recognition hit her, as well, and the confusion could be cleared up for him without all of the difficult thinking – but, as usual, even that small wonder was too much to ask for. Instead, she stared, she stepped back, and she spoke with incredulity seasoning her voice like pepper: “You're fuckin' with me, aren't ya'?” Well, that certainly answered quite a number of questions. (If only.) There was no doubt now, though, that the look of him alone was familiar to her as well, and while he was grateful for the fact that she didn't immediately make for his throat, he'd be lying if he said the way she was staring at him was necessarily ideal. Worse, still, she made a show of poking her head out past him to look up and down the empty hallway, muttered something about getting pranked, told him to “piss off”, and oh so politely slammed the door in his face. He would have focused more on the pain had it not been for the obscurity of it all – and then, he would have focused more on that had he not suddenly come to the realization of where, exactly, he knew her from.[break][break]

The dreams.[break][break]

As a man who did not sleep with any semblance of frequency, the hitman's dreams had always been far and few. During his stay at the hospital, he'd slept more, hence he had dreamt more, but they'd always been memories of various distortion looped over and over again, serving only to remind him of his past failures and of the guilt that ate at his core to this very day. When he's arrived on the island, the images of a dead nun, the rancid stench of gun fire in his nose, and the chorus of accusatory screaming had all vanished into a puff of smoke, replaced, instead, by nightmares of a different kind. It was always the same city, cornered on all side by massive walls and stuffed full of people and creatures of all kind, not unlike Tomodachi Island itself, all fearful of creatures he'd never seen lurking outside of the city limits, but knew enough of to know he should have been very afraid of them. Another staple had always been the girl at his side, in his home, in nearly all of his conversation. She was the only one who had managed to pull a smile out of him, lopsided and rare as they still were. In some alternate universe, he may have even called her his friend.[break][break]

And yet here she was, by some twisted miracle, tangible and real, and behind the door she'd slammed in his face.[break][break]

He'd have knocked again had she not opened it before he had the chance, but when he looked at her now, it was in a new light, decorated with less confusion, but confusion of a different kind all the same. “Nikki?” she said this time, quieter, almost hesitant, and she knew his name. How did she know his name? “Is that really you?”[break][break]

“Yeah,” he said dumbstruck, unsure of what else he possibly could. “It's me. And you're – ” Fuck. He couldn't recall her name. Had he ever even heard it? “ – you're from those dreams I've been having. Hey, what – what the hell is up with that? Who even are you, anyway?”

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bgpwn9ilzsj2h11/05%20Poison%20Was%20the%20Cure.mp3?dl=0[/music]

[attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 1066 WORDS

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] @agnespollock

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i'm ready for pain. ouo *dons construction cap*

[Deleted]

Aggie blanched; once, twice, a third time. She was sure she looked somewhat like a fish, her mouth hanging open, pupils blown wide with surprise. It was one thing for him to up and leave her — poof! — without so much as a warning or a goodbye, but it was another for him to show up in the dead of night at her brand new doorstep, looking more-or-less like himself, albeit from a completely different world. He looked relatively fine, by his own standards, but the purple circles framing his eyes told her that she'd inadvertently interrupted the sleep he often so desperately needed.

She gripped the doorknob with white knuckles as she fell silent, each piston in her mind firing at a thousand miles an hour. How could he be here? How could she be here? What were the chances they'd become neighbors, in a city so wide and accommodating as Tomodachi? After a long, painfully quiet moment, she finally forced her eyes upwards, meeting the eyes she'd grown so accustomed to in the time they'd been friends. A white-hot whip of anger lashed in her stomach, however, and it took almost all of her remaining energy to keep from tackling him to the ground, demanding why, why, why had he left her.

But, the rational part of her brain tried to protest, He looks just as confused as you feel. And if the confusion hadn't already been etched onto her face, it certainly wrote itself into position when he mentioned dreams, a place in which Aggie had only ever been a figment of his fatigued imagination. A tiny crease marched up between her eyebrows and her mouth tightened, only momentarily, as she processed, and then -- "Who even are you, anyway?"

Five words, a simple question, spoken with a certain surety that quite literally sent her staggering backwards, like he'd taken a fist to her jaw. She stumbled, planting a foot on the ground behind her, and braced her hand on the front table, fighting to get her fevered thoughts in order. "You don't remember me?" She asked, and her voice was smaller than she'd ever heard it. "You aren't joshin' me? You really don't know me?" The silence of her apartment suddenly seemed deafening, and she almost found herself looking over her shoulder, if only to make sure she wasn't being watched, that this Nikki lookalike hadn't hidden cameras, as if this were some kind of sick joke.

But there he was, looking as real as ever, as solid and as sturdy as her own two hands. As if shocked with a livewire, her limbs snapped into motion and she beckoned towards him, backing away from the door as she invited him inside, gooseflesh rising along the lengths of her arms. "Come in," she found herself saying, because despite all her inhibitions, she couldn't take the chance that he was real, that she wasn't suddenly alone in this new stretch of her life. "Siddown in the living room, I'll get you a water."

And then, as if she'd been slapped between the shoulders, she hauled towards the kitchen, where she swiftly retrieved a second water bottle. Swiping the bottle of sleeping pills and pocketing them, she returned to the living room, hands wound tightly around the cold plastic. "Is there any reason for this that ain't bullshit?"


Nikki ;; finally, time for the Angst

[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]SLEEPWALKING TO THE GALLOWS

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]I MISS THE WARM EMBRACE I FELT THE FIRST TIME YOU TOUCHED ME

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]SECURE & SAFE IN OPEN ARMS, SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU'D CRUSH ME

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Tomodachi Island was notorious for its enigmatic ways. No one knew how it drew people in, and no one know how it kept people there. No one knew it's mechanisms for picking and choosing from what had been to be revealed to be a near endless multi-verse, and no one would ever know the extent of just how far that multi-verse reached out. What were some of the creatures that it spat out onto its shores? How could beings from places that existed under such drastically different laws exist in the same place? From Nikki's perspective, ignorant of the true nature of the dreams that had been plaguing them, the island had given life to a figment of his imagination, one that was birthed shortly after his own arrival on the sandy beaches. How that was possible at all was beyond him entirely. Comparable to seeing the monster that hunted you down at night in a place where you could not flee coming into form right before your very eyes; a start contrast to the nightmares of his waking world plaguing him, too, even in his rest. And she knew him – she had to, what with that look etched on her face and the way she'd said his name without any form of prompting. How must this have looked from her end? Did her memory extend only so far as what he had dreamed? That, unfortunately, would have left her with very little. Fortunately for her, in some twisted way, he knew all about getting on without memories. So long as she was willing to answer his questions, he'd be willing to return the favor. When she spoke to him, however, voice just an inch above a whisper, she didn't seem to care much for his confusion over how a nightly image had become tangible bones, blood, and flesh. Instead, her concern laid elsewhere entirely:[break][break]

“You don't remember me?”[break][break]

There was something heartbreaking in those words, and Nikki cursed his bleeding heart and every beat it pounded out for aching over them. Should he have? He remembered her from the only medium from which he could, and he'd already communicated that to her, but from the way she spoke of it now with such incredulity and sullenness, he couldn't help but wonder if he was meant to know her beyond that. Had she existed out there, somewhere, outside his dream scape? Where had she really come from, then, he wondered, and why had she plagued his thoughts when sleep finally, finally overcame him? “... No,” he said, swallowing, uncharacteristically nervous to admit the fact. This was so far out of his element that he didn't even have it in him to keep up his bark. “... Should I?” (He thought back to the man who had tried to kill him outside the coffee shop and the words he had spoken them. Emilio had known him well enough to wish him dead for his “betrayal” despite his own failure to recall the other existing at all in his Seattle, Washington. But Emilio had never expected him to know him back – or, at least, had never made any indication. It had been because Nikki had not known him that he'd managed to lure him away from watching eyes in the first place. What made these two different, then?) He'd thought that he'd regained all of his memories before, even, he had left the psychiatric ward nearly a year prior. Now, he was beginning to wonder if that was truly the case.[break][break]

“Come in. Siddown in the living room, I'll get you a water,” she said, and twice in the last month, he willingly entered the domain of a person he was unfamiliar with. Three years ago, he would have thought himself insane. One year ago, he'd know himself to be insane, and would've pegged himself a dead man. Robin had not killed him in his moment of weakness, though, and every instinct that would usually call for weariness beyond warrant had been rightfully silenced. The expressions she had donned could not be faked – not to that level, anyway. For all of the looks the heinous Doctor had shot his way, he'd never even attempted anything like that. His dreams, as well, told him that this was a woman that he could trust. This was a woman he – he'd almost even liked, odd as that was to think of. When she told him to sit, he sat. For once in his life, no inner voice condemned him for his obedience. “Is there any reason for this,” she said, returning to the living room with an unopened bottle of water in her near white-knuckled grip, “that ain't bullshit?”[break][break]

“Knowing my luck, no.” If he was being entirely honest, though, he wasn't even sure what “this” was even supposed to be. Tomodachi Island worked in enigmatic ways, but it seemed that even here, fate liked playing him cruel and bewildering hands. But they both knew their side of the story, even if it didn't necessarily overlap; even if they didn't, he would take her tale of some alternate, far off dimension over the uncertainty, and the only way to get that was to ask for it. “So, I'm... supposed to know you... and I don't. But you know me? How the hell is that? Definitely wasn't anyone like you back where I was from.” Had there been, for better or worse, he had the feeling he would have a hard time forgetting her.

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bgpwn9ilzsj2h11/05%20Poison%20Was%20the%20Cure.mp3?dl=0[/music]

[attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 922 WORDS

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] @agnespollock

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story time, story time!

[Deleted]

Aggie, for once in her miserable life, was truly at a loss for words. The plastic bottle crinkled in her hand as she set it on the coffee table in front of Nikki, and when she pulled her fingers away, she could see that her whole hand was shaking; wrist to fingertip, her hands trembled, jittering like children after too much sugar. Seating herself at a safe distance, she pulled her legs onto the couch and crossed them in front of her, drawing her knees to her chest. As strange as this was, as strange as all of this was, she couldn't quite seem to see past the steadily growing fog that had Nikki's name written all over it. In the short year she'd known him, she'd grown to love him (because there really was no other word for it) like a brother, like a friend. He was the piece of wax to plug up the holes that checkered her heart, and he'd been the one good thing she hadn't quite messed up yet (because he'd been messed up long before he'd first showed up on her doorstep, dripping rainwater onto her floor).

And now, here he was, that familiar blank look on his face, like he was some kind of robot who'd been momentarily shut down. Aggie's chest clenched, like someone had reached behind her ribcage and taken her heart in their fist. He didn't remember her. Nikki was not a good liar, at least — not to her. She'd gotten to know every habit, every tic, every tell that gave away his true intentions, and she'd once been proud of her innate ability to guess his moods, no matter how volcanic or unpredictable. And now, looking him in the eye (something he'd never quite been able to do, now that she thought about it), it was easier than ever — like reading a book in broad daylight — to tell that he was honest to goodness confused. Dumbfounded. Absolutely flabbergasted.

And while it should have confused Aggie in return, a sick feeling settled first in her stomach and spread to her toes, causing a new round of gooseflesh to claim the skin of her arms. She'd known — she'd known — somehow, that he wouldn't come back to her the same. It was like wearing down an old book over years of use and abuse and then buying a new copy — it was the same book, had the same contents between the pages, but without any familiarity. It didn't fold the same way between your hands. It didn't even look the same. And somehow she'd known, which scared her more than anything — and looking at him now, that blank look dulling his features, Aggie's stomach coiled into a knot of fear. She didn't recognize him. At least not this version of him.

"Sanctum City," she finally blurted. "You and I met in Sanctum City. Before -- before this. I tricked you into breaking me out of jail." And despite everything, an easy feeling of calm trickled down her spine at the memory. "We were best friends." A hard lump formed in her throat at that. "We roomed together. For a year and a half." Against her own will, her eyes slid shut. "And then you disappeared. Just -- poof. Gone. One day I came home and you didn't."

She'd never forget that feeling, the utter hysteria that had overcome her as she had torn apart their home, nearly breaking her own fingers in her frantic search. "I thought you'd left me. For good. I thought the demons had gotten you. I begged the Vanguard to start a search, but they wouldn't -- they couldn't." She shook her head. "You weren't worthy of their cause. You didn't -- you didn't matter to them." And then, as if urged on by some unseen force, she added, "But you mattered to me."

Nikki ;; [adele voice] hello

[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]SLEEPWALKING TO THE GALLOWS

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]I MISS THE WARM EMBRACE I FELT THE FIRST TIME YOU TOUCHED ME

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]SECURE & SAFE IN OPEN ARMS, SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU'D CRUSH ME

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“Sanctum City.”[break][break]

A slap in the face, as tangible and painful as one delivered with the palm of the hand rather than the sharp sting of words. She blurted it out into the air like a bullet from the barrel, and the name alone had his heart aching for reasons unknown. He recognized the sound of its, though, could have tasted it like blood on his tongue if he tried to replicate with his own pressurized lips. Sanctum, Sanctum. A safe haven, a sanctuary, one of the only strongholds in a world over-ran by... something. Monsters. The Devil himself, maybe. Was it one of many, though, or was it the only one to have survived the fall of mankind? He couldn't recall; it wasn't his past to recall at all, after all. Another Nikki – a product of an overactive mind so fond of creating images out of nothing. Typically, they took the form of nightmares he had already been forced to live through, but it appeared that his mind had some shred of creativity, previously untapped and stored away to be used for reoccurring dreams so vivid as to spit out a woman of many dimensions and a world with lore of its own. Perhaps he could even run with this strange plot his mind had managed to conjure – Unknown Honesty, he could call it, or A Cryptic Truth – but if it resulted in the untimely arrival of its characters, having been given life by the magic of the island, he wasn't sure it was worth it. A dragon man he had shot by mistake – a vampire who had saved his life – a red-haired man who doted on him like a mother. The blonde woman before him telling him things he already knew, instinctively, words carved into bones that his brain only resonated with on the level of an echo. “You and I met in Sanctum City. Before – before this. I tricked you into breaking me out of jail.”[break][break]

“You – made me get you a Dr. Pepper,” he recalled allowed, some of the furrow escaping from the harsh line of his brow. What a simple thing to remember – yet he did, and while he wasn't a man who smiled easily, it certainly took a fraction of the razor's edge that had become his expression. And his coat. She'd asked him for his coat in order to hide the orange that screamed to the rest of the city “prisoner,” and he'd spat at her like she'd suggested she wear his skin, instead. Why, though? It was just a coat. The coat that that man had given him, to boot. If there was anything fanatical about these visions, it wasn't the hellish creatures that threatened to devour any and all who stood in their path, but instead his near unhealthy to an article of clothing that would have fit better in a dumpster than an apparel display. “We were best friends. We roomed together. For a year and a half. And then you disappeared. Just – poof. Gone. One day, I came home, and you didn't.” … Oh. She'd closed her eyes to him, blocked him out of her vision, but at the same time, he felt as though his own eyes had been miraculously opened to the emotions that must have been stirring behind her baffled, wounded gaze. Staring into the face of a loved one, only to learn that they had forgotten your existence entirely was something he would never be able to relate to. Forgetting was his specialty, not that of the incredibly few people he chose to surround himself with, and by the time he had gone and truly forgotten those which he cared for (along with all other aspects of his dark, black past at the same time), his only loved one had already past on to another world where he could not be affected be his loss of memory. Returning home, expecting to find company and comfort only to learn that the person they were waiting for had left them, however – that, he understood. Death, disappearances; different on the surface, perhaps, but oh-so-similar in their repercussions. Missing persons nearly always ended up with a body washed up on some foreign shore, anyway – a lollipop for the media, a three minute candy to suck the life out of before the loss of life was forgotten by the reporters who covered it in monotone and the strangers who skipped from one news title tragedy to the next.[break][break]

“I thought you'd left me. For good. I thought the demons had gotten you. I begged the Vanguard to start a search, but they wouldn't – they couldn't. You weren't worthy of their cause. You didn't – you didn't matter to them.”[break][break]

Of course not. Had he ever mattered? To them? To his family? To his stand-in father? To anyone? Another world, another Nikki; but anger bubbled like tar in his stomach all the same, and suddenly it was him who couldn't bring himself to look at her. No one would ever miss a menace to society. He understood. She must have, herself. And yet, impossibly, she told him: “... But you mattered to me.”[break][break]

“Aggie.”[break][break]

It fell from his lips, unbidden, and Nikki started at the sound of her name formed with his own voice. Yes, yes. Aggie. Agnes Pollock. That was her name. Just moments earlier, he could have searched and searched, but it would have been in vain – but now that he'd spoken it aloud, he felt as though it was something he couldn't forget, a name with too much weight to ever raise above his lead-ridden mind. (But what did it matter, in the end? The rebel was nothing more than a figment of his shattered psyche, another illusion whipped up that differed only in the fact that her origin was in his dreams rather than the waking world. His heart ached for her, but ultimately, he had to make her understand that the loss of that Nikki meant nothing. The disappearance of a nobody impacted no one. It was a miracle she was here at all.) “I... I'm... sorry. I guess. I mean, it wasn't – me, and he... probably didn't do it on purpose, but... It sucks. That much, I get.” Silence, then, for a moment, for his thoughts. How was he supposed to break this to her? He, a man so notoriously terrible with stringing his words together? He, a man who could not explain what the word “tact” meant if it was asked of him? He, who was known for ruining the lives of all those he interacted with? “Would it, uh... Would it make you feel better if I, um, told you that none of that actually happened?”

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bgpwn9ilzsj2h11/05%20Poison%20Was%20the%20Cure.mp3?dl=0[/music]

[attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 1137 WORDS

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] @agnespollock

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don't sweat, like, replying to this fast if you're not super up for posting still. i just figured i'd made the aggie, the lady of my dreams, wait too long for nikki to verbally sucker punch her in the face. c':

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There had never been a time in which the hitman had been unfamiliar to Aggie — even when they were strangers in a prison cell, she'd been drawn to his grumpy demeanor, the bad posture and the mismatched features. She'd pick him out in a crowd, discern that gritty, rock-filled voice in a room full of chatter. But now, looking at him, Aggie knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is truly — a stranger. His selective memory acts as a backhand to her pride, to her carefully constructed mask of dignity. She knows Tomodachi has claws in every alternate universe and galaxy and time continuum known to man, so it shouldn't be so hard for her to accept that this Nikki isn't her Nikki, that this Nikki isn't the man she convinced to wear crocs, that he isn't the one who complained every time she sat him down to give him a haircut or an eyebrow waxing or a much-needed shave. But it is hard. He's the same, broken, misbehaved Nikki. But he's not hers.

She stares at him, quietly, for a very long time. The silence is deafening, nearly infuriating, before she unclenches her hands. And then - and then - "You made me buy you a Dr. Pepper." The statement is like a kick to the gut, a memory plucked from thin air. And despite everything, Aggie's mouth ticks upwards. "Yeah," she says quietly. "It was a good one." The memory is warm, bathed in a cool amber light. One of her fondest. She's wobbling on a knife's edge, caught between utter devastation and reluctant acceptance. This Nikki is a dream. Another man from another time, plucked from a revolution and dropped into the lap of an island that thought it humorous to steal people from their homes. Her Nikki was lost in the transfer; a corrupted file. One line of binary code away from the original.

She falls silent again, thinking. He doesn't remember her as a part of his life, only as a dream, a nightmare given flesh. He thinks she's fake, that her universe is fake, that she's some kind of pipe dream, that every memory they had shared was a product of fevered hysteria. She blinks. Once, twice.

And then she crumples. In nearly seven years, she hasn't cried in the presence of anyone other than herself: but now, curled like a conch shell on her couch, she breaks, snapping like sandpaper. She isn't an ugly crier, and she doesn't contort her face into a scowl. Instead, her eyes burn and tears roll, unobstructed, down her cheeks. Aggie cries silently, breathing hard, her eyes fixed on a spot just above Nikki's heart. Because he's her best friend.

"Okay," she finally says, because it's all she can think to say. "Okay."




Nikki ;; sorry this took so long :')