to be your everything [ mary ]

[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]TO BE YOUR[break]EVERYTHING

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING; SAY THE WORD, BABY, I'LL STAY FOREVER

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD WILL BE WAITING LIKE ME

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Death had been waiting for him the last time he had stepped into an establishment such as this, and it came as a surprise to all, himself included, that he found himself stepping through those doors at all.[break][break]

Long was the list of things that Nikki refused to let himself go near. Most were biproducts of a past he longed to let loose into the passage of lost time, things that only served of dark reminders of things better left forgotten. Others were things that others would find inconsequential, avoided only to prevent a panick. They could be anything from the mention and usage of drugs, for obvious reasons, to something as simple as a kitchen knife (like a blade through his skin, words carved bloodily on a canvas of his flesh) or a tan trenchcoat in a clothing store (that rainy night in Seattle spent covered in his own blood, protected from the storm only by the coat on his shoulders and the savior above his head). Coffee, as the source of a problem that he could correctly assume most people simply could not relate to, should have been high on this list of things that he avoided like a pyrophobe steered away from an open flame. All he'd sought was to purchase a simple cup of black coffee for his over-worked partner, and what he had ended up with was a broken nose and a cup, crushed and bleeding its own brown liquid all over the filthy pavement. There was some amount of fear associated with any coffee selling establishment, not just the one that he'd been lured out of and attacked near, prior to the attack, largely caused by the irrational fear that stepping foot in one would result in him getting dragged into another back alley and beaten to a bloody pulp once more. Those fears didn't find themselves so much in the fact that he was afraid that the strange man would make good on his threat of killing him, though. Dying just... didn't hold the same amount of terror that it used to, and he was fairly confident in his ability to walk away alive, what with how he'd managed to leave their last encounter with nothing worse than a misaligned nose dribbling out crimson. His fear was listening to more of that senseless rabble, words of high praise spoken of the Doctor and demonizing terminology used to describe he, himself. He wasn't the traitor here – and even if he knew that, that didn't mean his fragile psyche could stand to hear it come out of another's mouth.[break][break]

Coffee, though, was an inevitability. The hitman rarely drank it himself, but if he were to ever “fix” himself the way he so desired, the first step was conquering some of these (numerous) irrational fears of him. Best to start of small. With a coffee shop, at least, he could go somewhere that he knew he wouldn't be followed into. He'd nearly spat out his drink, in fact, the first time that he'd learned of the existance of this particular store, tucked away into the deeper corners of the shopping district, and hadn't believed it actually existed until he'd seen it with his own two chocolate eyes. Back then, he'd sworn never to step foot in there. Now that his belly craved only the flavor that glorified dirty water could provide, he had no choice but to suck it up and pull up his big boy pants. The rogue revolutionist wouldn't follow him in here, he knew; even a man still playing dog to the evil Doctor X wouldn't catch themselves dead in a sports cafe.[break][break]

Stepping inside (attempting not shudder at the very idea that he was actually doing this as he did so), the raven-haired man was surprised to find the place populated by actual breathing people. Or, at least, he assumed they were breathing? One could never be sure on the island. There was a line forming in front of the front counter, although from the looks of it, it wasn't caused so much by a staggering number of customers so much as the one over-worked cashier behind said counter, running back and forth with their head tilted downward like a bee whipped by its queen. Sure enough, that was a sports cap atop the poor worker's head, and had he been capable of laughter, he may have burst into it at the sight alone. But this was fine – he'd get his coffee, ridiculous concept of the shop aside, and that would be the end of it. He was just about to leave it at that, in fact, and take his place in the line like a good, calm, law-abiding citizen when movement up front caught his attention and held it in its iron grip. The cashier looked up, a long strand of bouncing blonde curls falling from the ridiculous-looking cap at the sudden movement, and that one second alone was all it took for a bullet to shoot its way through his heart. Patrons paused, breathing ceased leaving his lungs, and even time seemed to pause with him to look upon the very sight that had stopped him in his tracks:[break][break]

Sister Mary Fairchild, in the flesh, standing behind the counter of the cafe. Breathing. Alive.[break][break]

It took him four seconds to cross the checkered floor, pushing past all those he had to to cut his way to the front, his heart beating all the louder with each rapid step it took, because there she was. There was no bullet in her head, nor was there a pool of blood beneath her still, cold body, and words could not describe what, exactly, the emotion flood through his system was. All at once he wanted to choke, to laugh, to cry, to vomit. Experience taught him that there was a higher chance of this not being his, but love was blind and it had blinded him just the same. It didn't matter. It didn't matter. She was Mary, and he loved her, and she was here. “Mary,” Nikki shouted, pushing the man at the front of the line out of the way so that he and he alone had her eye contact. “It's – oh, God, it's you, I – Am I dreaming? Are... are you really here?”

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/md3nb30hoigqu85/Unruly%20Child%20-%20To%20Be%20Your%20Everything.mp3?dl=0[/music]

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

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 1057 WORDS

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

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i'll have to put in the actual song later, i don't have the mp3 on this computer. OH MY GOSH, THOUGH, THE REUNION. let them be happy this time, please...

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Mary had never pegged the sports-themed café to be the kind of hotspot for the city's population, almost all of which seemed addicted to caffeine in one form or another. She'd chosen it because it seemed like a stress-free, risk-free establishment -- a little building made of white brick tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the shopping district (because let's face it, she'd much rather be behind the counter than working the streets). She'd heard of sports themed bars and sports themed grills, but never a similarly themed coffee shop. She'd been drawn to it's aura of calm, the slow trickle of customers.

The past few weeks, however, had been an absolute nightmare. The coffee shop (affectionately named Home Run Coffee — our coffee always knocks it out of the park!) had picked up speed by the public presence in Tomodachi. Mary had been used to serving ten or eleven customers an hour, working as the sole barista behind the counter fashioned to look like a dugout. Now, she hauled around, mixing creamers and espresso shots to a crowd that wrapped around the little establishment. Patrons waited at tables with legs made of hockey sticks, sat at booths reminiscent of the seats in a race car. Televisions blared nearly every local game currently playing, and even a few reruns of games long since passed. Even Mary herself was dressed the part, in a loose baseball shirt and a black cotton cap with a curved bill, declaring her a Home Run Hitter!

Mary kept herself moving through sheer skill and willpower — she'd been working overtime shifts for nearly two weeks now, and her manager had yet to hire a second barista. She sometimes wondered if she should just ask him if she could take over the business (because he hardly did anything to begin with), but then she would think about the repercussions, the responsibility. She'd never gotten much responsibility under Father William, and that was saying quite a lot, considering the responsibilities she did have. (But then, she thought, almost dreamily, I would have never met him.) She was fine with her job, and despite the newfound exhaustion that came with the growing public presence, she was happy.

People murmured to one another, impressed with their quick service and the reasonable prices, so Mary didn't bother to look up when the chatter in the line swelled to a crescendo, almost as if the line were growing agitated, unhappy. She kept her head down, as she often did, keeping her eyes on the mixers and the spoons and the stirring sticks shaped like tiny baseball bats. She rang people up, took cash, swiped cards, and a thin sheen of sweat broke out on the back of her neck as her next customer stepped up to the counter.

"Welcome to Home Run Coffee," she began, eyes low. She kept her voice just cheerful enough that she didn't sound scripted and continued, "How can i help you t-"

And then everything -- everything skidded to a halt. It was as if someone had dumped her in a vat of syrup, a drop of amber. The chatter of the customers faded, the low snore of her manager from the back room quieted, the whir and grind of the coffee machines fell to a simple buzz as her heartbeat, hot and loud in her ears, drowned out the bustle around her. Her world stilled, tilted, slowed to a halt.

"Mary?"

Her eyes, green as ever, found the rich brown of the man at the counter. She'd recognize those eyes anywhere -- hell, she'd recognize him anywhere. But before she got a word in edgewise, he continued.

"It's – oh, God, it's you, I – Am I dreaming? Are... are you really here?”

She opened her mouth, closed it. She felt unabashedly embarrassed, her cheeks were hot, and he was holding up the line. She wanted to slap herself. The line isn't important, idiot, she told her own anxious subconscious.

"Nikki," she finally choked, and her voice was quiet, raspy, like she hadn't spoken in many years. To her surprise, tears sprung to her eyes and rolled in fat droplets down her cheeks, salt stinging her chapped lips. "Yeah," she said. "It's - it's me. I can't, uh - hold on, let me -" she stuttered, tripping over her own words like they're runner's hurdles. She slammed her hand down on the bell behind the counter, and the snoring behind her abruptly stopped. A huge oaf of a man lumbered from the back office, grunting, and without breaking eye contact with him, she told her manager, "I'm taking my break now."

And then she swooped around the counter like a hawk, tossing away her apron, and took him -- Nikki -- by the arm. Pulling him away from the line, she folded herself into his familiar frame, the steady stream of tears and — regrettably — snot leaking onto his shirt. It wasn't until moments later that she realized her entire body was shaking, trembling, and she braced a hand against the counter to keep herself from falling.

"Nikki," she said again, because his name is all she can think to say. And then — "I love you."

She'd waited almost thirty years to tell him that, and she wasn't about to miss her opportunity again.

Nikki ;; SLAMS FISTS ON TABLE

[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]TO BE YOUR[break]EVERYTHING

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING; SAY THE WORD, BABY, I'LL STAY FOREVER

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD WILL BE WAITING LIKE ME

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There are tears in her eyes.[break][break]

The circumstances they had found themselves in had never been what he could have labeled as ideal. His own revolved around the slaughtering of others, lives he thought all corrupt (those he would later learn to be innocent) lost to the gun in his hand and the revolution on his mind. A man who spoke in tongues weaved from lies and a cause that sent him spiraling to his own demise. But for all of this – even the broken family that came before it, comprised of an angry father, an absent mother, and son who found himself a bit too fond of the needle's end – he'd still found himself inclined to believe that Mary had always had it worse. Her story was no mystery to him; it had taken months, yes, to drag it out of her, but there came a point in their lives where the only secrets they'd allow themselves to keep from each other were the ones that they absolutely could not say by word of the master they were forced to serve. From one broken household to the next, only to be spat out onto the unforgiving streets. At least when Nikki had found himself there, it had been of his own accord, caused by his own final act of rebellion. Mary? She'd never even had the choice. And yet through all of the abuse, the violence, the dehumanization, and the blackmail, she still stood taller than all those around her, still radiated a light that could be matched only by the blinding sun in the sky. Kindness never left her mind, even when pitted against those without a drop of it in their black, black hearts. Sister Mary Fairchild was a stronger woman than any he'd ever met and any he would ever come to meet, powerful enough in heart and mind to rival and exceed even those that history showered in praise and heroism. Duties placed on her head were faced head on, regardless of what they entailed (carrying packages of powder forbade by the law, following a man who hadn't wanted her around like a dog, laying herself bare for any and all who saw her only for the flesh that made her human), but never once had he seen her cry over them or the cruel fate that had brought them about. In truth, he'd started to believe that she couldn't. Heroes didn't have tears to drip down their faces miserably – and she was certainly his.[break][break]

He sees them on her face now, however, prompted seemingly only by his arrival at the counter that keeps them apart, the one that has his hands gripping the stained tiled with a grip that could crush concrete rather than letting them pull her into him, away from those that would take her away from him again. If the sight of her had been a salve on a cracked heart, the sight of her crying shatters it into pieces uncountable, millions of shards imbedding themselves into his lungs, his stomach, his very soul, painful enough to nearly make him keel over then and there. “Nikki,” she says, and a fear he hadn't even known he'd had is suddenly resolved. She knows him. Must know him as he knows her. He's spent three years of hearing that voice whispered in his ear, only to turn to find their speaker gone in a puff of spoke. How long had it been since he'd given up on hearing it from the lips of its rightful owner? How long ago had he resigned himself to a fate of incurable misery? “Yeah. It's – It's me. I can't, uh – hold on, let me –” she continues, disjointedly, and he nods with a fervor, mind barely even registering the broken phrases she spits out into the air. Distantly, he can hear the agitated voice of the man he'd so rudely shoved aside; the words don't reach him, though. How could they? She's here, before his very eyes, speaking words that can be heard outside of his own warped mind, and nothing short of the untimely apocalypse could tear his attention away from that. They stare at each other, equal parts amazed and dumbstruck, even as she slams her hand down on the counter's bell forcefully enough to awake a green-skinned (odd) man behind her and announce that it's time, despite the crowd amassed behind him, to take her break. And just like that, she's off, twisting herself around the counter and pulling him aside and away from the rest. By no means does she drag him off to anywhere private – in fact, he can still hear the confused chatter of the patrons behind his back, vaguely feel their eyes watching them as she pressed herself flush against his awaiting chest, open arms – but they may as well be a galaxy away for all he cares. Let them see, the hitman thinks. Let them know that, for all his bloodshed and hate, all he has ever really wanted is the woman he loved at his side.[break][break]

“Nikki,” Mary says through the wet mess in his shirt, trembling like a leave shaken by the wind. All of his is sucked out of him with nothing by the three words she says to him next: “I love you.”[break][break]

Three years. Three years. (To him, it's been more than an eternity.) Nikki has heard these words before, spoken from that very same mouth, in that very same tone. He'd held her in a death grip with tears in his eyes on that night, fearful of what it was that was being asked of him by his God. Now, he holds her in a death grip just the same, a sob of his own pulled from unsuspecting lungs, a torrent of his own hot tears clawing their way down the sides of his face. Fear does not find him because of what he's being expected to do now – it finds him because of what he had become. The last time she had spoken those words to him, she'd died before the sun had even risen over the rainy city of Seattle. Died, even, because of them. Whoever pulled that trigger ultimately doesn't matter, really, does it? All that does is that she'd perished because he had held her life above that of the cause. If only he'd kept his distance, he thinks to himself miserably, pushed her away to an arm's length at best until the very end, the only one who would have suffered would have been himself. (How many more innocents, he doesn't think, would have died that way? How many more times would Father William have pushed her down against that alter and given her a reason to wish for the death she ultimately received?) I love you. And he loves her back – oh, God, how he loves her, more than anything in the vast, beautiful world around them – but she doesn't deserve someone like he and the death he heralds. He wants to do nothing more than tell her that he feels the same, would give anything and everything for her, but how can he? Doctor X wasn't here, but death followed him as it always had, and he couldn't bring it to her now. (Not again. He doesn't think he'll survive if he finds her frigid corpse one more time.) Instead, he chokes – he sobs – he whines into the crook of her neck:[break][break]

“Fuck, Mary, I – I'm sorry. I'm sorry! It's - , God it's all my fault, I – I didn't mean for you to –” Die. He can't say it. He sobs even harder at the thought alone, and his mouth can't form the word without tearing him in two. “... I'm so sorry...”

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/md3nb30hoigqu85/Unruly%20Child%20-%20To%20Be%20Your%20Everything.mp3?dl=0[/music]

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

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 1312 WORDS

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

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oops, sorry, this was supposed to be a happy thread?

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MARKS OF BATTLE

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THEY STILL FEEL RAW[break]
A MILLION PIECES OF ME ON THE FLOOR

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When Mary had been a little girl, before she'd lost everything to the unforgiving streets of Seattle, she'd dreamt of becoming a writer. Spinning words into tapestries had given her a reprieve from her alcoholic mother — a home away from home. She'd dreamed up hundreds of worlds, mutliverses beyond comprehension, far too advanced for a little girl to have written on her own. A wild imagination, her teachers would claim. She's far too different from her classmates. Mary had spent her afternoons drawing, little crayons clenched in her tiny fists, and had spent her mornings reading, soaking up words and letters like she was a thirsty hitchhiker and they were the water she'd craved for so long. Writing and reading and creating had become her escape, and she'd become quite good at it over the years before she fell out of the habit. But nobody, she thinks, could have ever dreamt up someone quite like Nikki. She almost believes that he's only a figment of her fevered, exhausted mind -- the delirious creation of her own subconscious, a product of the rush hour stress and the agitation her manager always seemed to inevitably inflict upon her. But then her fingers find the fabric of his coat, the soft brown curls that skim his collar, and she startles herself into reality. He's here. He's breathing. He's alive. [break][break]

For a very short moment, the barista is content to listen to his heartbeat, thudding like a drum under her ear. But then, like someone's flipped a switch, his chest begins to jerk, his nose dips into the crook of her neck, and little sobs begin to escape him. She can feel the rapid blasts of his breath against her neck as he begins to stammer something, an apology, and she finally — finally — pulls away, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. Once again taking his arm, she leads him past the counter, nearly tripping on her own feet as she pulls him into the privacy of the back office. Then she turns to him, eyes rimmed with red, and asks softly, "Why are you sorry?" But then — she thinks — because she knows him — that maybe he's worried about her disappearance. Maybe he's worried that he drove her off somehow, that she ran away because of him. So she takes charge, locking the office door for the moment. [break][break]

"Hey," she says, her voice still shaky, and she's speaking with a timbre she hasn't felt in years, "I'm okay. I didn't run away from you, okay?" Because that's what he's so upset about. She lifts her hands, taking his face between her smooth palms. She can feel the grit of his stubble, the salt in his tears. She brushes his wet cheeks with her thumbs, feeling a new round of her own tears spring to the corners of her eyes. "I - I didn't go anywhere, honest. I was - I was packing. So we could get away. And then I just - " she lifts her eyes, finally meeting his gaze. Mary can feel her hands trembling again, but she doesn't remove them from his face. She wants to memorize every inch of him, every broken curve and sharp angle and slanted bone. Her thumbs brush lightly across his cheekbones, and she blinks hard, trying to rid herself of the buildup of salt in her eyes. "I fell asleep," she finally says. "I laid down on - on my floor. And fell asleep. And - woke up later. A lot later. And I was here." Mary has always been a woman of her word, clinging to absolute truths when they were all she had left. When she had been packing, she'd been unswervingly serious about fleeing Seattle, about fleeing the revolution. If he thought she'd betrayed him — practically dropping off the face of the planet after they'd finally opened up to one another — she could only imagine how horrible he must feel, only imagine how much he must hate her. [break][break]

If anything, she's the one who should be apologizing. She drops her hands, taking a tentative step back. She knew she shouldn't have told him her feelings, at least — not right away. So she braces her hands against the messy, cluttered desk behind her, and sinks back onto her hips, leaning fully on the worn wood for support. "Oh, God," she chokes, because she left him, all alone, under the reign of that horrible Doctor X. It had been out of her hands, a force out of her own control, and yet — she feels as though a hole the size of a foot has been punched through her chest. "I left - I left you," she stammers, a new wave of hot tears falling like rivers down the sides of her face. "I didn't even think - " she begins, barely able to meet his eyes. "Nikki, don't apologize. It's my fault."

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FOR Nikki

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[attr="class","leapcred"]Pharaoh Leap codes

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[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]TO BE YOUR[break]EVERYTHING

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING; SAY THE WORD, BABY, I'LL STAY FOREVER

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD WILL BE WAITING LIKE ME

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He's a mess – a sobbing, wracking, wailing mess of a man, unfurled in the arms of a ghost given flesh and put on display for all of the confused patrons of a sports cafe of all places to see, and for a man who spends so much of his life caught up in what other's may be thinking, what others might be saying of him or planning to do about him, there's a miserable sense of freedom that comes from this. Because he's a mess, but he doesn't care. It takes him back to days spent chained down to his bed, the handcuffs more of a formality than anything considering his more often than not docile state, and the waves of anguish that would rush over him each and every time it dawned on him by he was there in the first place. Nothing matters in the face of Sister Mary Fairchild, nor does anything matter in the face of the grief she had unwillingly brought upon him. Let the coffee addicts see, let the nurses scowl at him from the safety of the door frame, let the evil Doctor laugh away. He doesn't care, he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't. Apologies fall from his lips like water over the face of a cliff, cascading down and over her until she has the wise decision to pull him along somewhere where his breakdown won't be made so embarrassingly public. (Not that it matters, nor will it ever. All he'll think about once this is done and over is the sound of her voice, the look of her pristine features, the way that she moved under his touch rather than evaporating into the familiar puff of smoke. Not a dream. The real Sister Mary.) Her tears are wiped away by her own hands, and had he not been so preoccupied with his two minutes of self-hate, he might have scolded himself for leaving her, once again, to pick up her own pieces. He's – He's a man, one who should be able to handle himself, but even here, in the smallest of situations, he can't do anything for her. What good is he, then? How can he call her his closest friend when he leaves her to cry. (Leaves her to die.) “Why are you sorry?” she asks, closing the door behind them, and she asks it so simply, like there aren't a thousand answers he could give her. A better question might have been what he wasn't sorry for in this terrible living he'd made out of the one life he had been given. An existence that persists only at the cost of others' demises; no one like that has any real right to live. (What he doesn't consider is that she asks because she genuinely does not know. Perhaps she doesn't understand why he's torn up over her death if she's alive now, he thinks, but not once does he pause to wonder if the reason for her life is that she never actually died at all.)[break][break]

Nikki chokes and stutters for a moment in a futile attempt to gather his thoughts long enough to answer. There are too many possibilities that he can't even begin to fathom what to start with. The largest reason is the most obvious one, yes, but it's also the one he cannot physically bring himself to say, sickened by the thought alone and wracked with a fresh wave of uncontrollable weeping every time he tries. So he doesn't answer – and in the time that he doesn't, Mary appears to draw her own inaccurate conclusions. “Hey. I'm okay. I didn't run away from you, okay? I – I didn't go anywhere, honest.” … What? O-of course not, of course she didn't “run away,” why would he even consider it? Her body was in the same place where he had left here nearly to the inch, left bloodied and broken on the church floor where they had... well. “I was – I was packing. So we could get away. And then I just –” Oh. Oh no. God, he didn't want to hear this story; not how she had wanted to leave with him, not how she had gone back to the church for one reason or another only to find herself at the end of a barrel. (Who's barrel, though? Who did it?) She must be thinking of it herself, what with the way he can see the tears building up in her own eyes. But, like always, she has restraint that he can never compare with. She is stone and strength where he is unstable and fragile. If their roles had been reversed, she would have fled from Seattle just fine, would have been able to make a real life for herself, not end up some slave to her own psyche, trapped as much in mind as she was by the hospital walls around her. But her story isn't over, he finds, and the words she speaks next rock him to his core. “I fell asleep. I laid down on – on my floor. And I fell asleep. And – woke up later. A lot later. And I was here.”[break][break]

… What?[break][break]

No, no, that wasn't – that wasn't right. Nikki had seen her body, held her limp frame in his bloody hands, cradled her lifeless head to his own and – and she'd died. There was no “falling asleep” asleep involved. Maybe he could have convinced himself that that is what the bullet through her brain had felt like, too quick and too precise to be painful at all, but she'd fallen asleep in her room, she'd said. Not the church. Not where she had been so cruelly taken from him. This wasn't his Mary.[break][break]

And just like that, he was tearing himself away from her, staring at her with eyes filled with horror through the water glass of the tears that still fell freely. The woman speaks, crying anew herself, hit by some mind-crushing revelation of her own, but he doesn't hear the words. None of them matter. (Not his Mary, not his Mary.) “You -” he starts feebly, but he stops because he doesn't know what else to say. What can he say? It's like he's looking at a different person now, a person-shaped mirror reflecting his face back at her. (But she's a Mary, and any Mary will do. Does it matter? Does it really?) “You're... You're lying,” he says instead, hands clenched into fists at his side. She's never lied to him before, but even angels fall eventually, and there can't be another explanation. “You're lying! You never went back home! You couldn't have, 'cause – 'cause I found you in the fucking church, and you were already – you had already –” A break. A sob. Nikki presses a fist to his eye and wishes it would press through to his own brain, sweet release, kiss of death. He'd wanted this for so long, dreamt of it in daydreams and nightmares, but oh, how typical of him to fuck it all up. “... You died, Mary,” he whispers. “You died, and it was... it was all my fault.”

[attr="class","nikkipostbot"]

[attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/md3nb30hoigqu85/Unruly%20Child%20-%20To%20Be%20Your%20Everything.mp3?dl=0[/music]

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

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 1203 WORDS

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

[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"]

[attr="class","nikkipostbot5"]

my picture is officially too happy for the post content. .__.

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MARKS OF BATTLE

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THEY STILL FEEL RAW[break]
A MILLION PIECES OF ME ON THE FLOOR

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She'd been twelve years old when her mother had taken a sledgehammer to the fractured remnants of her good reputation, beating her own trustworthiness into submission with her fists and her tight clothes and her snakelike tongue. Even in school — what little school she did attend — she was treated as the girl without a family or the girl with moth-holes in her clothes. Her good reputation had been her only comfort in her younger years, the weather-beaten blanket she could hold when the night got too dark and the air got too cold. It was her pet project, her own personal mandate. Because she was good. Despite what everyone said, she was kind. She was generous. She was honest. When her mother had pulled her into prostitution, she'd lost her innocence, had played the part of a desensitized, submissive little girl. (Will you be a good girl for me? her clients had asked her. And she would reply, Yes. Because she was good. Despite everything, she was good.) In some parts, it was why she had been drawn to Father William and his institution. "Come with me, and you'll know peace," he had said. "You will find your honor." He'd tucked an arm around her shoulders and he'd stuffed her into a habit and had cleared her name — to the public, at least. Sweet Sister Mary, Nikki had once called her. [break][break]

She had found redemption and honor in the dark-haired hitman when the streets of Seattle served as a battleground for those who killed for money and preached destruction. And now, he spits, "You're lying!" Her skin chills, tingles, fills with gooseflesh. Mary blinks hard, clenches her fists, tilts her head back. Because here is the man who saved her from herself. Here is the man who had poured her Lucky Charms, who had seen past the habit and the rosary and the steepled church. Here is the man who she was ready and willing to die for. Calling her a liar. Tears fill her eyes and cascade down her cheeks in torrents. This is not the slow trickle that had gripped her earlier -- this is a flood, a hurricane, a downpour as she grips the desk, taking in gasping breaths and bone-rattling sobs. He may as well be Father William, choking her with her own rosary. His next words blur in and out, something about dying and churches and lying, lying, lying. It's only when she sinks to her knees (because screw self control, screw dignity) that she realizes how hard she's been shaking, because even the man who she had waited for — for nearly thirty years — saw her as a liar. A stain. A roach to be stepped on. And here she kneels before him, a sinner to a pulpit, weeping. Torn.[break][break]

She knows he won't understand her frustration, her tears, her anger. Finally, she says, between gasps, "Nikki." Her voice breaks, trembles. It's nothing like the confidence she'd once spoken with, the timbre of her voice unwavering. "When have I ever lied to you?" She looks up at him (pathetic in her mourning), and tries to scrub the tears from her eyes with her knuckles. And then she sees it — finally — the look of absolute misery. If she had been rational, if she had bothered to look past her own selfish interests, she might have considered the fact that his truth may have varied from her truth. She knows full-well what Tomodachi is capable of — how many infinite universes and realities it's hooked its claws into. But her grief blinds her, her tears blur her vision. So she keeps on staring, a sinner in the hands of an angry god.

[attr="class","justsleep8"]

FOR Nikki

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[attr="class","justsleep10"]

[attr="class","leapcred"]Pharaoh Leap codes

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[googlefont=Roboto Condensed:400,700]
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[Nikki]

[nospaces]

[attr="class","nikkipost"]

[attr="class","nikkiposttop"]

[attr="class","nikkipostimg"]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]TO BE YOUR[break]EVERYTHING

[attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"]

[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING; SAY THE WORD, BABY, I'LL STAY FOREVER

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD WILL BE WAITING LIKE ME

[attr="class","nikkipostmid"]



He's made a horrible mistake.[break][break]

He sees it immediately in the way she seems to freeze at the sound of his accusation, struck by an anger he's never spoken to her with before. Even in those early days, full of needles breaking through veins and irritation at her filthy church, he'd never spoken to her with anything aside from classic, bitter rudeness. She had not been welcome, and he had been certain to make her sure of that, but even he understood on some level that she had little choice in the matter, herself. Slay not the messenger, so they said. Was it fair, though, to compare those days to this very moment? Back then, she had meant nothing to him. Nothing at all. If she keeled over dead, it would have only mattered to him because he would have been begging and sweating and bleeding for the heroin she had failed to deliver. Now, though, she is his everything. The memory of her in his mind, the reminder that somewhere out there, across time and space, someone had cared that he has lived at all, was more, often than not, the only thing that had enabled him to keep going on his holy quest of “saving the world” from itself. To hear that she is not the same woman who had kept his very soul alive would have broken him (is breaking him now, a chisel to breaks in his mind, in his heart that had been hastily, poorly mended out of nothing but necessity). It's better to call her a liar than to accept the sad, sad truth. He wants Mary, his Mary, the one that had stroked his hair and held his hand and told him that she loved him just as much as he loved her, oh, how he loves her, how he would gladly set his world ablaze if only it would call her soul back to him -[break][break]

But he can never have “his Mary”. “His Mary” is buried six feet under the dirt, and no replica, no matter how close, could ever be her.[break][break]

She crumples, and so does his ego. It's a revelation that shakes him more than the reminder that her blood is on his hands, and he feels as helpless as she looks there, fallen to her knees, a sinner begging to her god. But Nikki is no god, and he knows far too much about worshiping at the shrine of a false deity to let her do it, herself. A moth to flame, an insect caught in a lamp – no concept of glass, no way out. She falls to her knees, and he rushes as if to catch her, to keep her from falling again, again. The floor never meets her face, though, and it leaves him to hover miserably at her side. His hand won't touch her because he fears it will burn; he won't let himself reach out because he's afraid she'll shattered in his grasp if he does. (It's only been minutes since he'd clung to her like his lifeline. What has changed?) “Nikki,” Mary whispers, an afterimage of herself, the tremble of a wall shaken by a cacophony in the room adjacent. “When have I ever lied to you?”[break][break]

“Never,” he chokes. It's immediate, the words of a starved man, he forgiveness the only thing that will quell the ache in his belly. All he's ever wished for was her well being, her happiness, but all he knows how to do with his own hands is break, kill, destroy, destroy, destroy. “You've never lied to me. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I swear, you're – you're perfect. Perfect, Mary. Please don't cry.” Not because of me, he wants to say, but the unspoken words hang there all the same. When had she ever been hurt by anything else, after all? Oh, yes, the world was cruel, and she was only one of its many victims – an outcome of the disease, a pawn played in sick men's games of chess, but she knew better than to let that get to her by now. The only times it hurt was when she never expected it to. The only times it hurt were when the injuries were delivered by the one person she never expected them to come from. (This was his warped perception. Guilt unfathomable, self-hatred stacked upon self-hatred. How could she ever love a man like him?) Even now, he had lashed out at her, afraid of the possibility that she was not exactly who he had wished her to be – but she looked like “her”. Sounded like “her”. Spoken, acted, remembered like “her”. The only difference was that the woman before him had never known the cruel fate of death, not firsthand. If he was wishing for “his Mary”, he was wishing upon her her death. How selfish was he to think, even if only for a second, that his self-interested desires were more than the safety of the woman he loved? Was it not enough to get to hold her mirror image in his arms again? To know that, at least in some reality, she had not had to perish in order to set him free from the wicked Doctor?[break][break]

“I love you,” Nikki tells her again. He'll tell her a thousand times if he has to, but he doesn't think the words will ever measure up to the feeling that's tearing his heart in half now. He takes the hand that she rubs so furiously against her crying eyes and holds it as carefully as one would an ancient heirloom, too old to repair, too precious to replace. All he can do is break her down, but he'll change. He has changed. He won't think her death worth it, even in passing, anymore. “I still do, after – after all this time. I never stopped thinking about you. … But –” But. Things aren't the same anymore. No longer is he shackled to his “god”, nor is she shackled to her's; and, of course, the elephant in the room. Has she even realized yet? “– I'm not... I'm not the Nikki you knew. I mean, I don't – I don't think. A-and even if I was, I mean... Mary, you died. They put me in a hospital, Mary, you – you don't just walk away from that. I-I mean, he wouldn't have... wouldn't have snapped at you.” A breath. “... S-sorry. Again.”[break][break]

His eyes are dry, cried of all the tears they can, and all he can feel now is the shuddering exhaustion that follows the misery of an emotional high. Her hand is still in his, but he won't meet her eyes. (Unworthy.) “... Fuck. I used to picture this in my head all the fucking time. It – it was going to be perfect. And I fucked it up, j-just like always.”

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/md3nb30hoigqu85/Unruly%20Child%20-%20To%20Be%20Your%20Everything.mp3?dl=0[/music]

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

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 1155 WORDS

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

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*imagine dragons voice* wheeeeeeeeeeere do we goooooo froooooom heeeeeeeeeeeeeere?

[Deleted]

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MARKS OF BATTLE

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THEY STILL FEEL RAW[break]
A MILLION PIECES OF ME ON THE FLOOR

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There are two things Mary knows to be true: the cruelty of man is unparalleled, and the love of man is unmistakable. Cruelty, in essence, knows no bounds. Men take their fists to their wives and their belts to their children. Children take rocks to squirrels and plastic pellet guns to birds. In the wake of disaster, family members are left to die because they simply can't keep up; even those who have vowed to protect and serve use their guns as an extension of their own arm, taking the lives of those who have no crime to their name. In the sleepless streets of Seattle, Mary had been a witness to the crime and cruelty of man. She'd holed up in motel rooms, in abandoned apartment buildings, where rats became her posterity and the absence of filth became a discomfort. Here she was, the woman who had paraded as a faithful nun for a tyrannical church when other women would go out, each Halloween, and dress in the skimpiest habit, the veils of lace and faux cotton. Sexy nun, they'd called it. (If only they knew.) She'd looked long into the abyss, and the abyss had looked right back at her — that is, if the abyss had been dressed in robes of black and a neckpiece of white. She'd learned the movements of a man who hated himself and sought distraction, or a man who was ashamed of being with her in the first place. She knew so many different looks of guilt, she would need years to replicate each and every dismal expression of a man who'd just paid to take her to bed. She knows the cruelty of man, the weakness of man, like the back of her own hand. [break][break]

And often, the love of man looks unerringly similar. And she sees it now, blinking up at Nikki through her tears. The look of absolute misery on his face, the terror in his eyes. His drying cheeks, the sloping set of his shoulders, the uncertain stance of his feet; parts of him that betray his stuttering words, yet punctuate them all the same. She feels his hand, distantly, like a door shutting in a room across the house. She feels his fingers slide between her own, and she notices, more than anything else, how gentle he is, holding her fingers like she's made of glass. His voice echoes in her mind. "You're perfect, Mary." And then, rumbling like a thunderstorm, "I love you." [break][break]

And she knows, without a sliver of doubt in her shrinking heart, that he's telling the truth. Her fevered mind kicks back into motion, like a horse that's been slapped on the rear. All at once, she remembers something her father had once told her, her adoptive father, in the few days before he left their family behind. "Keep your eyes on the stars, kiddo," he said, "and your feet on the ground." Her eyes water, but her tears stop. She glances at Nikki, uncertain, and then the last of her sobs choke into nothingness, fading like a distant memory. She doesn't stop crying because he asked her to — she stops crying because who is she to be upset when he spent the last thirty years thinking she was dead? Suddenly, her problems don't seem so large. A great, roaring urge swells in her chest, and she rises from her knees, a sunset peeking over the crest of a cliff. [break][break]

She grips Nikki's hand with a distinct fervor, feeling each bone and knuckle and scar and callous etched beneath her palm. He speaks, his words gobbling up the silence like a starving wolf. He mentions a hospital, some kind of alternate Nikki from a different world. His words are frantic, broken, rushed. It's almost as if he's worried she's not real, that he's going to lose her again just as fast as he found her. So she swallows her pride, blinks back the exhaustion that's laced her narrow frame with thousand pound weights, and takes his face in her hands. Once she's certain he's finished speaking, she pulls him towards her (finally, finally) and captures his chin with her left hand. He's got to look her in the eyes, or she's never going to be brave enough. She has to know. "Nikki, look at me. Please look at me." [break][break]

"You and I need a break, okay? I love you," she says, because she needs to say it again, needs to feel those unfamiliar words roll past her lips. "But we're both exhausted. This conversation — " She gestures between them with her free hand. "It's not going to go anywhere if we're both so tired." She bites her lip, tosses him a firm look that says I won't take no for an answer, and smooths the collar of his shirt with her palm. "We're going to go back to my place, okay? And then - and then we can talk about this." She eyes the cluttered desk next to her. "Ganon can handle the store for a day. He needs the exercise." [break][break]

And then — for good measure — Mary takes the collar of Nikki's shirt and pulls him towards her. She captures his mouth with her own, her eyes squeezing shut. The kiss is no more than a chaste peck, a brush of the lips at the most, but her heart still drones like a bumblebee in her chest. "Let's go home, okay?"

[attr="class","justsleep8"]

FOR Nikki

[attr="class","justsleep9"]

[attr="class","justsleep10"]

[attr="class","leapcred"]Pharaoh Leap codes

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[googlefont=Roboto Condensed:400,700]
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[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]TO BE YOUR[break]EVERYTHING

[attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"]

[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING; SAY THE WORD, BABY, I'LL STAY FOREVER

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD WILL BE WAITING LIKE ME

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He should know better – just as he should have known better than to think that the Doctor really care, or to think that screaming her name in the rainy streets would really bring her back to life, or to think that society would ever change at the whim of a misguided man and the gun in his hand – but his mind is warped, twisted, the way it's only but, just a little more, and he's waiting for the moment she leaves. Gone again, only with her life in her hands but a hatred for him in her heart. It's not Mary, not how he knews her, but it is what that self deprecating voice that's plagued the back of his mind for years and years likes to tell him. He's yelled at her, snapped at her like any of this mess could have conceivably been her fault. What kind of monster would do such a thing? The kind not worthy of the woman he holds so faintly. The kind that deserves every bit of isolation that's been handed to him. The life she deserves is one devoid of churches, of sleazy men. No more playing the doormat, no more playing servant to the revolution. No more playing servant to its hitman. If she goes, he won't blame her. (He'd do the same in her shoes.)[break][break]

But that's the difference between them, isn't it? Nikki's the sort who would abandon someone to a cruel fate without any shred of regret. Mary, though – Mary is different. She is kindness; she is forgiveness. He holds her hand limply in her's, and she grabs his back like a child clings to its favorite toy. (Stupid, stupid. How could he ever think she might break? She's been the stronger of the two from the day she was born. He's the one who's going to shatter. He's the one who's been shattered before, over and over and over -) “Nikki,” she says. “Look at me. Please look at me.” She holds his chin in his hand, guides his eyes to stare at her helplessly, but it's all formality. All she has to do is ask, and he's certain to obey. Malleable, obedient. Maybe that's what made him a target all those years ago.[break][break]

“You and I need a break, okay? I love you. But we're both exhausted. This conversation – It's not going to go anywhere if we're both so tired.” I love you the blonde says, still, despite it all, and despite the comfort that's supposed to come with those words, it feels like another knife through his stomach. How many will he take before his organs come tumbling out once and for all? “We're going to go back to my place, okay? And then – and then we can talk about this.” About what? he asks her silently, desperately. What is there left to say? He's not her's, she's not his. She was kidnapped, only to spare her from her murder at his hands. She takes so much grief, balls it up in her hands where it can't get the best of her, but sometimes, he can't help but think that she can be so stupid. (Leave him, leave him to die. No one's safe, not when he's around. He's doomed to kill everything and everyone he loves.) And yet, for all his raving - “Let's go home, okay?” - he can't help but relent: “... O-okay. Yeah, okay. Let's... Let's go to your place.”

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/md3nb30hoigqu85/Unruly%20Child%20-%20To%20Be%20Your%20Everything.mp3?dl=0[/music]

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

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] NOT ENOUGH WORDS

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

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this wasn't even two thirds a page in open office, why is this post so bad.

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MARKS OF BATTLE

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THEY STILL FEEL RAW[break]
A MILLION PIECES OF ME ON THE FLOOR

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Ganon owes Mary a day off. She’s worked endlessly under his management for almost as long as she’s been a resident of Tomodachi, and not once has she asked for a vacation. Like a dog pulling a sled, she’s known herself to work until she can barely stand, until her eyes are glued shut and her head drops limp against her chest. Ganon tends to sit around, to agitate customers, and drop unnecessary workloads onto Mary if he’s feeling in any particular need for a nap. Not once has she complained. Not once has she disobeyed him. But now, letting her thumbs drift against the lines around Nikki’s mouth, she decides against her own personal vendetta towards Ganon and his tendency to sleep all day. “Come on,” she says firmly, and as she leads Nikki from the office, she drops her badge on the dugout-counter and waves goodbye to her manager without a word. [break][break]

The short walk home offers Mary time to think about her circumstances. She says little else, only to give Nikki directions, and in the silence between their interactions she finally comes to terms with Tmoodachi’s tendency towards separate universes. Of the few acquaintances she’s made, several of them have told her of transportation just before death, of a rescue from a hard situation, of an unplanned exit from a perfectly normal universe. She thinks, gripping Nikki’s hand, about his own story — about how she died. He never specified how, or why. Only that she was in the church, and before he’d even found her body, she’d been dead. Dead. The thought itself was like a slap in the face. In some other universe, in some other reality — she’d died. But in this one — in this one — she’d escaped. She’d lived, despite the circumstances that had caused her death in some other dimension. Some tiny, twisted part of her wondered — only wondered — how, who, why? And what had happened to convince this strange island to save her life in the end?[break][break]

But another question, perhaps even more pressing —[break][break]

Who is the man walking beside her? Comet block looms, and Mary opts to take the stairs to her apartment. She needs more time to think, to register. If he’s not from her own timeline, the one where she’d lived, then who’s to say that he’s still the same Nikki she once knew? Suddenly his hand feels too cold, too heavy. She drops it gently, wipes her sweaty palm against her jeans. Who’s to say that this is the Nikki who offered her Fruit Loops on a rainy night? Who’s to say that this is the Nikki who made her feel human after so many years of being treated like an animal? [break][break]

Coming to a stop in front of her apartment, she pulls her keys from her pockets and fumbles with them, her fingers slipping across the chilled metal. When she finally gets the door open, she wedges into it with her foot, kicking it into the small living room. A small yellow cat meows and leaps down from its place on the arm of the couch, immediately sidling up to — Nikki. Mary laughs nervously, the laugh itself almost coming out as a high-pitched squeak. “Sorry,” she says, leaning down to scoop up the cat. He’s young, a tomcat she’d rescued from an alley. [break][break]

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FOR Nikki

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[attr="class","leapcred"]Pharaoh Leap codes

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