But How Hard Can I Go, Though?

Sarrain

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Rory went awkward at the thought of Basilio. She sat there considering something and shrugged. "Mostly I imagine he doesn't want to talk about it because he lost him. Jude lost his dad long before things went to shit.

"And Basilio was... well terrifying and intense and very, very angry inside. But he loved his son and he'd do anything for him. It was pretty admirable."

And Lorelai figured she'd leave the explanation there. Anything further was Jude's to tell. It was hard to say the intricacies that went on between two people behind closed doors, but Jude had never feared his dad. Jude loved his dad. And Basilio loved Jude.

"It's good to know we're not going to be locked up for any small thing for the rest of our lives, that's for sure. I always wondered what was going on in the Birdcage, everyone was terrified and no one ever knew what they were terrified of. It was just... darkness. Darkness guarded by a wall and a gate that opened once."
 

Romi

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It was one of those things that Angelo had really wanted to dig around with. The fact that he knew literally nothing about his own father didn't help things, either.

Considering Rory's explanation, Angelo wasn't sure if that was a bad thing or not.

"Jude's got a little statue - bust, I guess? - in his room. Seemed like a pretty scary guy."

Maybe he'd have to sit down and talk to Jude properly. Let him get out the good memories, at least. An idea of what he was missing.

"If you ever want to, and you're worried, I can take you to visit the islets. Professional courtesy, if you think it'd help. It's... honestly, really nice. I got used to narrow reality prison being a reality of life, and kind of expected to end up there myself. That was how I pictured the islets for... I don't know, years."
 

Sarrain

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Lorelai grimaced. "He was," she said. "probably should have been more afraid of him than I was, but." She shrugged.

"But yeah, I'd like to see the islets. I know everyone else seems to have come out running and they're getting all these friends and joining clubs and everything, but I just feel..." Rory rubbed at her arm, the vulnerability tying her tongue.

"I just feel lost, still."
 

Romi

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"I'll set things up. Might take a few days," Angelo said, leaving that at that.

But he could deal with the rest.

"I think the others feel more lost than you realize," Angelo said. "People don't come through that sort of thing without getting a bit screwed up. I've left the door open for therapy for Jude, and the same's true for you, but I'm not going to force you into it. People deal with grief in different ways. Some people withdraw. Other people become more outgoing, because it's easier than dealing with it. None of them is wrong."
 

Sarrain

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Adrastia (Rory! Rory) was quiet. She wished she could be more outgoing like Janelle, Kaiju, or Jude. In fact, they'd all taken stride in getting their lives together.

She wondered if their identities had been as tired into their superhero personas as Rory's had been. Probably not. Somewhere along the way, Rory became a mask for Adrastia and not the other way around.

Lorelai hummed at Angelo. "Yeah, I guess I'll consider it if things get to be too much." She threw a thumb over her shoulder toward the hallway. "Finally managed to unpack everything and set it all up."
 

Romi

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"That's good," Angelo said, reading very carefully between the lines. The silence. The fact that she was more withdrawn.

"What did you do back at home?" Angelo asked. It was an open, very general question--the kind lots of teenagers could run with, if they wanted to.
 

Sarrain

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"I used to do track when I was younger. Then I got into drama — backstage stuff. Mostly extracurricular activities to fill out a resume for college." She laughed. "Then I got into the superhero business and I still did those things, but I felt a lot less passionate about them."
 

Romi

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Hobbies. Angelo cracked a grin at those.

"Understand I'm not speaking out of my ass when I talk about the adjustment period. I went from locked in a single house twenty four hours a day to having a normal life on the island, and the adjustment was... pretty hard. I don't think I really even did anything the first year I was here. Wasn't till I hit college that I started getting friends, getting really used to things. For me, picking a career helped me sort things out. Gave me a goal to shoot for, something to spend my energy on. I could trick myself into doing things as long as I could rationalize why it would help my career, basically."
 

Sarrain

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That sounded promising. Rory had to remind herself she still had her people. She had her team and to a lesser extent Broen (who liked to make things difficult, but he was still part of Halcyon City and, ergo, her people).

"Yeah," she said in that sullen teenager way, but to her credit, Lorelei was trying to sound hopeful about it.

Lorelei wasn't sure she trusted Angelo. She sure as Hell didn't know him. But he was here and he was a bias third-party and in too many ways she didn't feel she could tell her team what she said next.

"I guess I don't feel like much without the mask. I gotta be Rory again... and Rory wasn't, hm, Rory was a good kid who did what her mom said and worked toward college and had all those normal goals. Adrastia was real and I don't know if I can be that real... without..."
 

Romi

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Oh, boy. Time for sharing secrets, wasn't it? Because that was a confession. Angelo could have asked do your friends know about this?, only it was patently obvious that no, no they did not. Jude and the others had no clue, and Rory was only confessing to him because he was an authority figure who was supposed to be responsible for, and because she had literally no one else to confess those feelings too.

"This is just between you and me now," Angelo said as he leaned forward slightly, "but I do know what that's like. Getting dropped from some... really awful situation into normality, and everyone just expects you to be normal again like it's a flip of a switch. Only you're sitting there wondering if you were ever normal at all, because the only thing that felt real was who you were before, when you weren't normal at all."

Angelo paused a moment, shifting a bit in his seat. It was dangerous ground, considering his own history.

"You have to fake it till you make it, as they say. You just... act normal. And eventually it sticks. Eventually it feels real and you start wondering when you swapped over."
 
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