Bam!
Cassie flinched from her seated position.
Her eyes so easily traveled to where the sound had resonated, just past where Gerald stood. She hunched over slightly and peered from the space between Gerald's legs to observe Ajax. Although... A rather atrocious looking knot his belt had been twisted into, evidently being the only thing holding his pants up, demanded more attention than the hulking Blastoise going on a small rampage behind him. At least, in her book. Brows furrowed, Cassie was just about to touch upon the matter when the sound of heavy, rapidly approaching footsteps easily ricocheted her attention back on Ajax, now coming right at them.
Instinctively, Cassie had straightened her back, the way she used to in the face of a much larger, taller counterpart. It'd been about pride then. Now, perhaps it was simply about not looking so fragile. And small. Despite that being exactly what she was.
But he suddenly stopped.
Ajax had simply stood there, looming over Gerald while his amber eyes bored down at her. For a moment, she stared back at him blankly, not quite sure what it was he was trying to accomplish. And then, he simply brushed the man aside, like pushing a leaf out of your path, and she watched the massive turtle wink in response to the redhead's disgruntled exclaim, and plop down right beside her with carefree abandon. The impact of his weight on the ground flung her small frame a few inches into the air, but the girl remained with her dumbfounded expression.
He winked, yet again, and this time, at her, but the anger behind the notion made it very hard for her to restrain the small smile tugging at her lips, the way her expression melted into one of gentleness, comprehension, and light amusement. 'Does he even know what he's doing winking like that?' Cassie wondered, but moments later, she found she was satisfied when the answer came to her on its own. 'No. I suppose not. Considering who his trainer is, I suppose he was merely mimicking him.'
Chuckling quietly to herself, she lifted a hand to place over the back of Ajax's neck, slipping it easily beneath the ridge of his shell to firmly rub and scratch that one spot a Blastoise could never reach themselves, and a spot not many trainers knew about either.
"Uh, anyways, Cassie, what I was asking was..." Her attention returned to Gerald, but his eyes were not focused on her. No, they were focused on her hands. She could feel his brown eyes, so soft and gentle, tracing the surface of scarred skin. She found her eyes wandering there as well, to her free left hand, resting atop her lap. Turning it over, trying to find it what it was that was so strange about it, Cassie furrowed her brows.
He's seen her scars before, hasn't he?
Her eyes returned to his face, observing closely how his mouth remained agape, as if trying to form words that could never leave his lips. How his brows furrowed, his eyes searched, the little twitches in his cheeks. And then came the clarity, the faint panic painted from his raised eyebrows, and the twitches of his lips. 'He'll change the subject.' "Uh, sorry, I mean...What I was saying was...How have you been faring since...the thing on route 15?"
"Route 15?"
Her thoughts stumbled, and crashed. Her eyes blinked slowly, and her mind ticked silently, a sound only she could hear, as it struggled to extract memories of the horrific incident, and the memories before it. Nothing. "I'm..."
The void. It took everything, consumed it all. The thoughts that'd ran through her brain, the emotions storming in her chest. They were all gone, and all she had left were the images. The sounds. The motions. But none of the sensations, nor the experience. Like flipping through an album of photos. And she found that was okay. That was how she'd been holding on, and carrying on. Detached, once again, but this time, for the greater good. The projectiles were outside her bubble and they couldn't hurt her anymore.
"I'm fine, actually."
The void, it had saved her. It had absorbed all the pain and emotion and it kept her from tipping off the edge. It was a new page, a blank slate. And she needed to stop running away from the change. She needed to let go.
A breath left her that she hadn't realized existed. It was the weight, the pressure and stress her heart held, that she let escape from her bubble along with all the clutter that dirtied it. Her muscles unwinded further, as if they had finally received permission to do so. As if those three words had finally set them free. Set her free.
Her bubble had burst.
"I'm okay." 'But I'm not going down that easily.'
A small smile, pulling at her lips, wider and wider until she grinned a grin that was gleeful and free. Her hand rubbed Ajax's neck firmly, giving a small pat as the energy, the restoration of her being pulsed through her veins. "I got my house back thanks to all that treasure we found."
A reboot, after a long period of crashing and glitching, restoring anew the beautiful flow of thoughts she'd long missed. Everything upgraded, in perfect rhythm, synchronization, and harmony with just those three words. That admittance she needed to hear only from herself. Oh, she felt so perfectly incomplete. But it was just the way it should be.
When you fall down a bottomless pit and hit unspeakable lows, you'd eventually find you've drifted back up the way you came. And that pit would still be there, waiting for you to fall again, but she wasn't afraid anymore. After she'd been through? The horrors of Route 15 and everything else before it? She had nothing left to fear. Not even death. "And, oh, Thomas got fired. He's working in a grocery store now, paying monthly rent to stay at my house."
She laughs. No, she wasn't done yet. There were still so many miles to run and so many cliffs to climb and mountains to conquer. There was still Nine, and Peridot to come home to, and her name to clear and her worth to be proven. But most of all, there was still her team to find, because she knew they were waiting for her. And she found herself thanking her mother, for battering her and raising her the way she had been. For surely she would've been dead without it. Cassie couldn't help the soft hum of a giggle that left her, "Lady still thinks she's a Purrloin. Sorry about your belt."
Or perhaps, she'd already gone so far off the deep end that she actually thinks she's sane.
Nah.
And so, her free left hand so accurately and grasped Gerald's left. She tugged him down sharply, watching his stumble, counting the moments for him to fall forward, and then swiftly pulling his hand towards her, which crossed his arm across his torso to twirl him with his own momentum, leaving him to fall backwards just inches from the palm tree.
She felt the thud of his back hitting the bark, inciting another string of amused laughter when she felt his arm against her's, as they squeezed together to fit around the tree's perimeter. And then, looking over, she leaned into his ear to whisper,
"But, that's not what you really wanted to ask about, is it?"
There was a knowing, mischievous glint in her eyes. One that stated blatantly just how easily she'd seen through his facade and read his inner thoughts. But that was just a sheen over a swift river of thoughts. Eyes that seemed always thinking.
Cassie proceeded to pull one leg toward her, the other still draped lazily over its partner in support. She moved it casually, contemplatively, up and down while her eyes wondered to the top of the palm tree, where the leaves moved lazily with the upper canopy breeze.
"I wonder..."
Like a calm lake, undisturbed by the chaos happening around it. She toyed with the puzzle currently on hand; Gerald's original topic of conversation. He was just talking about ribbons with Salem earlier. The memory was still fresh, pre-recorded in her mind. Their casual banter tuning down to conservative whispering. What had there been to hide? Cassie leaned her head back, ready by all means to voice the questions that had been building inside her, but instead, she stopped herself. She's got this.
She was back.
So when Cassie looked back at him and pulled a cheeky grin on her lips, the answer was already in her clutches. Wrapped around her finger, or rather, wrist. She raised her left hand, flaunting the answer; the strip of black that was wrapped snugly around her wrist. "Could it be this little thing?"
An eyebrow raised, she relished the feeling of amusement that danced in her chest. It was one of the few emotions she welcomed among the others that had been severed. And she moved her right hand from Ajax's neck in order to touch the black ribbon, to trace her finger curiously along it. "But honestly, I have no idea."
Cassie recalled the conversation she shouldn't have heard, and would prefer to keep it that way. "That guy is so weird, isn't he?" And she said this with a gentle chuckle, nudging Ajax at the same time as if to imply him as well.
But then again, she was just as strange.
