Room 223, Sunday Morning

[life_inshadow]

Tara couldn't remember when or how, but she must have fallen asleep at some point after she got back to the dorms. She woke up in a sticky ball on top of her covers, still dressed in the clothes she'd yanked on Thursday night.

She felt filthy, as if she were covered in Raven's blood and -- more. She felt as if her mind was no longer her own, and never would be again.

The first order of business was a long, hot shower that didn't seem to do much beyond removing some obvious grime from her skin. She dressed quickly, and put her hair back.

More grateful than usual for her lack of a roommate, Tara then laid a double line of salt at her doorstep and, after a quick chant to Astraea for her own purity, started methodically going through her spellbooks. She'd never taken special precautions against possession in the past, but there had to be a way to ensure no one would ever use her that way again.

The way she'd been used was bad enough already.

[OOC: Closed door, open post. Player will be on and off today.]

Comments

[brat-intraining.livejournal.com]

Kennedy had had some time to cool down last night. It helped, even though she still looked exhausted and miserable when she came and knocked on the door, and the coffee and bagel sandwiches she was carrying had been more something to do than a conciliatory gesture.

Well, only slightly. Still, it was enough to make the look in her eyes an uncharacteristically uncertain one.

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"Who is it?" Tara called, after a long moment in which she debated if she was up to talking to anyone at all. Normally she just opened the door, but she wasn't in that kind of mood.

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"It's me, babe." If Kennedy hesitated at all over that last word, it was only for a moment, and really, it was reflex by now. "I, um. I brought breakfast."

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"Come on in." Tara didn't think she'd be eating, but she knew brning food was another reflex of Kennedy's. "It's, uh ... there's salt on the floor."

Just in case Kennedy would think it had randomly snowed.

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Which she didn't, although she did give the salt a dubious look as she let herself in.

"This isn't gonna do something weird to me when I step over it, is it?"

Ouch, that came out more wary than she'd meant it to.

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"No," Tara said sadly, without much fire behind it. "It's a protection thing. I'm ... never mind."

It didn't seem worth the energy to finish the sentence.

"Are you okay?"

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"Oh, yeah, I'm just great," Kennedy muttered, and she'd kept most of the sarcasm out of her voice but kicked the door shut behind her harder than she'd meant to. "Sorry. That was... it's been a hell of a..."

She trailed off, laughing a little helplessly. "Did you realize it's Sunday?"

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"My computer told me," Tara said, after she managed not to jump too much at the sudden sound. "I .... kinda didn't even remember what day it was when we left. So."

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"Yeah." It was kind of pissing her off that this conversation was so awkward; it seemed like the stupidest thing in the world for them to not know how to talk to each other by now, but...

"You, um, kind of just took off last night." Kennedy started looking around for a place to set the food down-- she suspected neither of them was going to make much of a dent in it-- and took note of the spellbooks.

"Big magic research day again, huh?"

She... sounded a little cautious about that too, yes.

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"Didn't ... seem to be a lot I could do," Tara answered cautiously as she cleared a space on her desk. "I mean, I doubt a-anybody r-really wanted to talk to me."

Oh, god, the stutter was at its worst. Tara kept clearing far longer than she needed to, as if squaring the edges of her books would make everything all right. She knew she could say more, that she should explain the books, explain her horror at the idea something else had used her body. But the words stayed stuck in her throat.

"I guess it's a research day."

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"Well, you didn't really give anyone a chance to talk to you," Kennedy pointed out, though she hadn't exactly made a move to do so herself. She noticed the stutter-- hard not to, when it seemed to come out so rarely around her any more-- and tried her best to keep her tone as mild as she could.

She set the food down on the desk and went over to sit down on the edge of Tara's bed, but paused to look curiously at her before she actually sat.

"Researching anything in particular, or just a general study thing? I mean, is that really a great idea right now?"

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"There's a thousand years of hard work in these books," Tara answered, sitting on the empty bed across the room. "I -- I thought maybe somebody had figured out how n-not to get, get possessed."

She tilted her head, curious but still not meeting Kennedy's eyes. "If it bothers you I can -- I can do something else."

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Kennedy shrugged, awkwardly, then dropped down onto the edge of the bed. She was a little disappointed by the distance between them, but on the other hand... she wasn't really sure what she'd have done otherwise. She wasn't exactly in a touchy-feely mood here.

"It's just, well, you were kind of hitting the mojo super-hard there. The seance, um... kind of freaked me out." She clasped her hands in her lap and stared down at them, bouncing one knee in restless agitation.

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"It should have worked," Tara said dully, finger tracing a pattern on the simple blanket that covered the bed.. "Not -- not the way it did. But the whole idea ... it was good. It should have either gone right or done nothing, not ... what it did. It was just -- too big, and I w-was weak."

Too weak, too bad, too something, to be overwhelmed so easily by a little jewelry.

"I should have made Karla do it."

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"You're not weak," Kennedy said abruptly, and this wasn't something she even had to think about. "Don't even start with that. Karla's not the only witch around here. You're amazing. I just..."

She dug a hand into her hair in frustration; it wasn't like she knew how to explain the vagaries of magic, and trying to find the right words for something had never been one of her strengths.

"Babe, for a second there, your eyes went black."

Kennedy still wasn't sure what exactly that entailed, but putting it together with everything that had happened afterward, she didn't think it was good.

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"Black?" Tara blinked a bit, as if she must have misunderstood. "But that's --- oh. Um. That ... kind of explains why I went crazy."

Black eyes were bad. Black eyes meant ... she'd explain it for Kennedy's sake, though she had to say it softly.

"It means I wasn't in charge," she explained. "I mean, I know that was, um, obvious. But black eyes mean -- the magic is driving."

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"Oh," Kennedy said quietly, after several long, awkward moments. "You... told me about that, once. I'm guessing that's not good, but..."

She shook her head, trying to push past that to find something resembling a bright side.

"But that's kind of, um. It means it's not your fault, right?"

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"If I was stronger, Azar wouldn't have been able to find a way in," Tara said. She wasn't self-pitying: She just thought this was fact. "I have to find a way to make sure my mind stays mine. Maybe if I'd been able to do that, we ... we could have saved Raven."

She wasn't scared away from magic by the news. Rather, in fact, the opposite.

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Kennedy let out a tiny groan; she didn't think Tara had meant it that way, but the "if" sort of hit her own sense of failure a little hard.

"I'm not actually against that idea," she admitted. "Not exactly jumping for joy about someone using you to make us do all of that."

If she sounded a little bit more frustrated about this, well, feeling like there wasn't anything she could have done to prevent it didn't help.

"I should have known something was up. I knew you weren't acting like yourself, and..." She punched the mattress halfheartedly.

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Tara shook her head. "She would have just ... waved away anybody who tried to talk her out of what she was doing. Like n-none of you mattered. She and Trigon used all of us."

Unhappily, she added, "At least we made it back alive." Unlike Raven. That made her feel like punching things.

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"Yeah. Go, us." Kennedy really couldn't find it in herself to make that sound even remotely quippy right now. She stared down at her hands miserably; what she'd done with them was... not something she wanted to think about.

They'd never lost before. She'd been starting to think it was impossible.

And that wasn't something she wanted to say, so...

"Is there anything I can do?"

Focusing on what other people needed. That she could do; that it was the sort of thing Raven would do, too, didn't escape her. Ouch.

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"Big cheers," Tara said, echoing the sarcasm because she didn't know what else to do. She rubbed a fist along hr face, trying to think of a suggestion.

Instead, she blurted, "I -- haven't cried yet, unless I did when I was asleep. Have you?"

[brat-intraining.livejournal.com]

And that--

That had Kennedy starting across the room toward her, reaching out, and then pulling to a halt just in front of Tara with that same stupid irritating indecisiveness that felt like some bizarre role she had to play, and wasn't playing very well.

"When have you ever seen me do that?" she asked in a strangled voice that came close to breaking. "If you need to... I'm here. I'm not--"

She swallowed, and her throat was tight. Tighter than she liked to admit.

"Not going anywhere, if you need me."

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"H-haven't" -- Tara's voice was breaking -- "haven't seen a friend of ours get killed in front of our eyes before, either. Y-you wouldn't be weak to cry."

She groped for Kennedy's waist, trying to draw her closer. "I'm not leaving either. I just ... couldn't do anything, last night. I'm s-sorry."

[brat-intraining.livejournal.com]

Never mind any reservations she might have had now; Kennedy reached out to wrap her arms around Tara in a fierce, almost desperate hug.

"What were any of us gonna do?" And yes, she was actually crying now; it was unfamiliar, but it felt oddly... she wouldn't call it good. Just a relief. "God, Tara, she's-- we couldn't stop it. Should've been able to save her, and..."

[life_inshadow]

"We didn't," Tara said, clinging as tightly as she could. "We all kn-kn-knew something was wrong, And we should have --- she shut us out and we should have been able to get past that and we couldn't. She must have been so lonely."

[brat-intraining.livejournal.com]

They'd talked about it; they'd been worried, and tried to convince themselves they were worrying too much, and Kennedy should've been able to pester some information out of Raven sooner if she'd tried harder, because God knew she was an expert at getting what she wanted, but she hadn't.

"God, Raven," she muttered out of habit, affectionate and exasperated and miserable all at once, then choked out a tiny, half-hysterical laugh and buried her face in Tara's hair again. If she hadn't been hanging on so tightly, the drain of letting out everything she'd been bottling up might've just sent her toppling over onto the floor.

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Tara's giggle was equally hysterical. "Why is it, that with all the powers here, nobody can make time go backwards a week or two?" she asked. "It's the only thing that would help."

A certain librarian would argue with that strenuously, but Henry, mercifully, did not hang out in student's bedrooms.

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"Don't suppose you could learn how to do that," Kennedy offered, mostly joking, or trying to. Probably not her best joke ever, under the circumstances.

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"You have no idea how hard I wish I could," Tara said, but her face fell even further. "Even if we'd gone to find her instead of just worrying about her in the shop Thursday --"

She stopped there, paralyzed by the what ifs.

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"I know." Now Kennedy did pull back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and looking incredibly embarrassed about it; she slumped to her knees on the floor in front of Tara. "I spent all night going over everything we could've done differently and didn't. Like every little thing we could've done sooner, and then maybe we wouldn't have gotten played like we did, and Jesus Christ, Tara, we killed her."

Great. She'd thought she was done crying.

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"I know," Tara said, running a hand over Kennedy's hair. "I told you to kill her. I stood there and --"

She drew a jagged breath. "She couldn't hurt me. I could have done something to save her, if, if I'd just broke through that tiny little bit, and I couldn't."

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"I could have tried to get through to you more," added Kennedy, who seemed just as inclined to keep riding the what-if train for the moment. "God-- I knew something was off with you, and I didn't do anything to try and fix it, and... "

For the first time since they'd gotten back, she really looked at Tara, trying to get it into her head that this wasn't the being who'd possessed her any more, just her girl again. There were too many more images she couldn't shake: Sookie's unhinged fae rage, Karla and her whips of Sapphire energy, Jono letting loose with a wall of flame, the look on Emma's face, Raven's broken body... She needed something to displace a little of that horror, and this was her best bet.

"We all let her down," she murmured, finally. "But she tried to get us to kill you, too. I couldn't do that."

The rationalization wasn't nearly as comforting as she'd hoped.

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"I know," Tara said quietly, with many of the same images Kennedy had scene running through her mind. "And s-some crummy little part of me is even almost grateful."

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"I'm grateful for that," Kennedy said fiercely, scooting forward to rest her chin against Tara's knee. "It doesn't make this any better, but I wasn't gonna lose you too."

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"You didn't," Tara managed, if weakly. "S-s-strong like amazons, right? We'll ... put things back together. Somehow. Without her."

And then Tara was ready to cry again.

[OOC: Scene/seen confusion is special.]

[brat-intraining.livejournal.com]

"Right." Kennedy tried to muster a shaky smile for her, and halfway succeeded. "Put things back together-- baby, c'mere."

Damned if she was going to sit here and let Tara cry without at least offering a shoulder to cry on, right?

[[i like special. :D]]

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"I'm here," Tara said helplessly, as she slid off the bed and into Kennedy's arms. "I don't know how together I am. But I can be here."

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"That's all I need right now," Kennedy rasped, curling into her. "I'm not exactly together myself, y'know. Just... kinda need to be here. That okay with you?"

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Tara's fingers twisted into Kennedy's hair. "I can live with it. I promise."

She didn't feel good. She felt guilty and weak and sad. But knowing Kennedy wasn't angry with her made everything else a little easier.

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"Good. We'll start from there." Kennedy slid her arms around Tara's waist and just held on, still too tired and mentally exhausted to have anything encouraging to say; even if she did, she wasn't sure she could say it like she meant it. "Sorry I didn't come find you last night. Really am."

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"Don't be," Tara said, sounding exhausted. "I probably would have ... kicked you out, or not talked, or -- it would have been bad."

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"And I was in the kind of mood where I either would've let you, or stood outside the door and yelled," Kennedy said wryly. "So pretty much bad, either way."

She shook her head. "I missed you, though."

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"I missed you, too," Tara agreed. "Next time -- God forbid that there is a next time -- I'll wait for you."

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"This is one thing I can definitely stand to not have to go through again," Kennedy answered, turning to kiss her forehead. "God, I'm just damn glad you're you again."

And if she had to figure out a way to physically kick the ass of anything that tried to possess Tara again, she'd probably try to do it.