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Lady Argentum Draconis Vice Captain
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 Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 10:07 pm
 Cary climbed very slowly out of the shower. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had one. Things always blurred in her memory, days, weeks, months....even years. She took several deep breaths and tried to calm herself before she started panicking again. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the ghostly voices of her AIs that haunted her. "Just go away..." she whispered.
She shook her head to clear her mind and grabbed a towel drying herself off. Her body was covered in scars, some of them trailing across inches of her flesh, some were large...burn marks from plasma grenades she'd stuck to herself in her desperate attempts to make her AI stop talking to her. She shuddered and quickly grabbed the dress she'd round in York's daughter's room and pulled it on covering the worst of the marked flesh.
She then picked up a brush and drug it through her blonde hair and bothered even to stylize it a bit so that it fell in soft ringlets around her face. She smiled at herself for a moment, the scars on her cheeks softening...and for a moment you could see the NCO she'd once been. Cary shuddered again and dropped the brush as she heard the voices again. She stared at it for a minute before turning and leaving the bathroom to find York. York would make them stop...he always did...
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Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 10:30 pm
 York cradled his head in his paws, his helmet abandoned on the floor beside him. The memories were coming crashing back at him. In a vain attempt to hold back the flood, he stared at the familiar surroundings; the fridge, the doors with their complex locks that only he, D, and his daughters knew how to open, the windows with their force fields that D had helped to install. York sighed. That D was not there was a blessing. If Carolina--he shied away from using her first name, that hated name--had come here and D was here, she would have gone in a panic attack and matters would only have deteriorated further from there.
She was just so frightened. York couldn't forget that, nor could he shove away her horrendous habit of self-mutilation in an attempt to tame the forces within her head. No one should have had that happen to them. What possessed Command to ruin her like that? By the time he had been blinded and they were partnered up, she had already gone mad. The next several months would only be hard on both of them, as a half-blind locksmith attempted to pull the weight of a fighter with a three-way split personality. There were moments--horrible moments--when he had just wanted to put her out of her misery. It had gotten that bad.
All at once, the memories of the project overwhelmed York. He remembered the ill-fated duel with Tex and the heart-pounding escape with D, arguing all the way. He also remembered the day that Cary was finally taken aside to have the tenants in her head removed. York reached out his paws and thrust them at the table, levering himself up. He had to get moving. He had to get up and about. Cary...what would D think? As soon as she feels ready to leave, she'll leave. He refused to admit that she might not want to leave...ever.
He turned at the sound of Cary coming in from the bathroom.
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Lady Argentum Draconis Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 10:40 pm
Cary stood in the door way of the bedroom. She fiddled absently with the wood to the frame of the door for a moment before dropping her paw and brushing down the front of the dress. She smiled very hesitantly at York and twisted slightly. "What do you think?" she asked almost like a child seeking approval. "I found it in the other bedroom. Is it alright that I wear it?" she asked reaching up and running a paw through her curls. She instantly dropped her paw again and stared at the floor.
"I don't want you to see me..." she said quietly. She shifted her weight from foot to foot and glanced around. "You have a nice apartment." she said absently. She moved again and resisted the urge to bash her head into a wall. The voices were getting louder, and much harder to ignore. She glanced around before her eye caught an old picture of York and D. She let out a low moan that slowly started to escalate as she was unable to look away from the picture.
"York!!!!!!!!" she called out dropping to the floor and cradling her head.
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 4:19 pm
York nodded. "Our daughters have moved out; anything that's still here is probably fair game." He peered closer at the dress. "Looks like one of Kyna's. She hates dresses." He had to admit, Cary looked rather nice in it, and she looked even better with her hair clean. "Why not?" he asked. He began to tense when she started moving, and thus he was ready when she fell to the floor.
He leapt to his feet, knocking over the chair as he did. He rushed to her side, kneeling beside her. "Cary, Cary, what's wrong?!" He wrapped his arms around her and looked around desperately for the source of her distress. His brown eyes saw boxes, the table, the counter with a few clean dishes he needed to put away. However, it were the shelves that held the answer; a photograph of York and D looking at each other. Dimly York remembered the day that he and D had pulled it out of the photo album it had resided in for so long and slipped it into a frame; that had been the day that Yvette and Kyna had emerged. "Oh," he said softly. He reached out and put the photo face down.
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Lady Argentum Draconis Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 4:33 pm
Cary sobbed and clung to her former partner. "I can hear them...Ayin...Rho...they just won't...won't stop...They...they whisper to me when I'm asleep, they yell at me when I'm awake...always together...always up to something...always...always always..." she shook violently at the memories her AIs. "Talking, arguing, caressing each other...caressing me...making me part of their sport..." she moaned and buried her head in York's chest and cried. "Why won't they leave me alone, Robert? Why won't they stop...? I...I...I can't take it anymore!!" she suddenly flung herself from York and stumbled to her feet taking several steps backwards.
She looked around the room a mad light in her almost purple eyes. She needed to hurt herself, and hurt herself badly...they'd stop once she was bleeding...they always stopped when she gave them blood. She tittered at the thought of watching herself bleed and looked around before stumbling towards the table where she saw some tool from one of York's lock kits. It wasn't sharp but it would do the trick.
She got to the table and snatched it up. Her eyes glinting dangerously. York completely forgotten as she pondered where to start inflicting the cuts that would silence the voices in her head.
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 5:48 pm
"They've been removed, Cary. They're gone," York said soothingly. "They told me that when they took you away; they said that they would take Rho and Ayin away to prevent you going mad." Suddenly he began to wonder. Command had a long track record of lying; what if this was just another lie to trick York into not worrying about his partner? He gazed fixedly at the wall as Cary clung to him, thinking about it. There had to be some truth. There had to be an answer. Suddenly, he felt Cary thrust herself away from him.
"What?!" York asked, bewildered. Parts of his memory and forgotten reflexes long blissfully abandoned sprang up, and he practically flew to the table to wrap his arms around hers, pinning them in place before she could do harm to herself. "Put...my stuff...down," he said slowly. "You're not going to hurt yourself here, Cary. There's no need for that." He frantically tried to remember what he used to do when Cary would go into her masochistic rages. With a sinking feeling, he remembered that he would just let it pass--hence the scars he could see even on the parts of her left uncovered from the plasma grenades. Dear god, what am I going to do?!
"It's okay, Cary, I'm here," he said as soothingly as possible. He tried to think of something, anything to talk about. "So...what have you been doing lately?" he asked, realizing as he said it that it was probably the wrong thing to say.
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Lady Argentum Draconis Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 6:23 pm
Cary felt the tool drop from her suddenly numb paw as York grabbed her pinning her arms to her side. At the clatter of the tool on the floor she felt part of herself come back. She blinked to clear the haze from her mind and looked up at York. "What...what did I do...?" she asked slightly dazed. She realized he was holding her and flushed a bit putting her head against his chest and wrapping her arms around him. "I'm sorry..." she whispered quietly.
She paused and then nodded slightly. "Yes...Rho and Ayin are gone...but...but they did something to me...before...before they were removed..." she shook her head against his chest. "I don't know what...They did something to themselves as well...Although...I don't think it hurt them as much as they hurt me..." she trailed off and nuzzled against York. He was warm...comforting, he made her feel safe. She idly flicked her tail around him and nuzzled closer. "I escaped you know...they took me somewhere...somewhere away from all the other Freelancers...And I...I escaped one day...I don't know what they were doing to me...but I had to get away."
She tightened her hold on York looked up at him eyes innocent. "I missed you, Robert..." she then gently leaned up and kissed him on the mouth shifting her position to better hold herself against him.
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 7:58 pm
"You tried to hurt yourself...again." York sighed. "Someday, you'll have to tell me why you keep trying to hurt yourself." York closed his eyes, trying to shut out the warm pressure against his chest. D. He had to think of D, not of the beautiful woman in his arms. He tried to concentrate on the story she told, not bothering to suppress his anger and rage at the people who had harmed Cary. Harmed his partner. When she had left, York had lost those last feelings of resentment, of having been assigned to the insane freelancer because he was a cripple himself. Before he could say anything, she looked up at him with innocent eyes and kissed him.
York froze. A thousand emotions ran through his mind, each one worse than the last. He tried desperately to do something, to pull away so that he could speak rationally, but his nerves would not respond properly. They only leaned forward, the dark red light washing across his vision, swamping all feelings. Some part of the back of his mind screamed at the unholy light, but there was nothing he could do until the shock wore off. "Cary," he whispered. "Please...don't do that again..."
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Lady Argentum Draconis Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 8:07 pm
Cary swallowed and looked up at York hurt and confused. "But...Robert..." she stared up at him nearly in tears before she turned away. "Why won't you call me by my name? You keep using that nickname? Why won't you call me Melissa...or Mel, or Lissa or something besides that name!" she broke herself away from him and rubbed her arms.
"Why...Why do I hurt myself? Because...because it was the only way to make them stop! Blood...blood is the only thing that kept them appeased...when it wasn't the blood of others it was mine!" she buried her face in her paws. "Oh, Robert..." she made her way back to him and buried herself in his chest again. "I could use that drink now..." she whispered.
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 8:20 pm
York couldn't get up quick enough. "All right," he said evenly. If he hadn't said it so flatly...he didn't know what he would have done. The hurt look in Cary's eyes was almost more than he could bear. Before he realized what was happening, he was getting her a drink and saying in a dead, flat voice, "After we left the project, I met a woman named Melissa. An interior designer. We started going out. She wanted to marry me, she said. She didn't want me to keep D. She didn't realize how important he was to me." York swallowed, biting his tongue to hold back the terrible fury and empty disappointment of betrayal. "That's what I thought. Divide and conquer. If she could divide me from D, she could all the more easily hand me over to Command on a platter. She...died. In a car crash. I found her letters to Command later." He handed Cary her drink. "So now I have bad associations with the name. Associations you don't deserve, Cary. You aren't her. She wasn't you." York sat down on the floor next to her, cradling her drink.
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Lady Argentum Draconis Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 8:43 pm
Cary stared at the drink in her paws. "I'm sorry Robert...." she said quietly. She took a big swing letting the alcohol quiet the noise in her head. She polished it off and then handed the glass back to York. "Another please..." she said quietly. She watched him finish his own and then go back to the kitchen for more. "May as well bring the bottle..." she said absently.
She shifted slightly and fiddled with the hem of the dress she was wearing. She looked up as York came back with the bottle and sat down next to her pouring more into the glasses. "Thank you." she said before downing it.
~~~
The bottle was over half gone. Cary hadn't had all that much. Just enough to cut the voices in her head. York on the other hand might have had just one to many. Cary glanced over at him, watching him. He was still just as attractive as he'd been during the program. So his hair was a little messier, and maybe his age was telling a bit more...but he was still gorgeous...at least to her anyway.
Cary shifted slightly. She could hear the faint strains of Ayin's voice in her head. Telling her to move forward and claim what she wanted. No...he has...someone... she thought to herself. And still the other female insisted for her to take.
Cary moved closer to the male, feeling as if her entire body was on fire. She needed him...no matter what, she needed someone to love her. And she needed it now. "Robert..." she whispered, before leaning up and wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him passionately. "Take me..." she muttered against his mouth.
D quietly opened the door to the apartment. "Yo-" he began to call out quietly before he stopped and stared. She was here...in their apartment...with him, and worse...his ears quirked as he heard what she said, as she kissed his partner and moved against him. D felt himself go cold. "York..." he whispered so quietly that only he could hear himself. "York..." he mouthed his partners name. His eyes blurred and his body drooped. He gave the unknowing York one last look and quietly left the apartment silently closing the door behind him.
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:03 pm
Later, when the alcohol had burned off and the headache had rumbled away, York would kick himself and throw out every drop of alcohol in the house. He would later curse everything, from wily women named Melissa to his own stupidity. But nothing slicks the slope easier than a bottle. And thus it was that night.
The bottle was mostly empty. Was it? Wasn't it? He struggled to focus through the haze of alcohol. His left eye screamed in anguish as he struggled to focus. He was barely aware that Cary had moved closer to him until she was against him, and by that point he lacked the inclination and the ability to do anything but wrap his arms around her. He wasn't sure why; it just seemed like the right thing to do. He couldn't say anything, either. All he could do was kiss Cary back before picking her up and taking her away...she was pretty. Very pretty. Despite her scars, she was curved and her golden hair framed a lovely face. It had been a long time since he saw her, and time and stress had left their mark, but it wasn't that big a mark. She was still the beautiful woman he went on missions with. Nothing much could change that as York carried her away...
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Lady Argentum Draconis Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:12 pm
Later
Cary curled herself around York. The fire that had consumed her mind was slowly dying down. She'd found it odd that she'd actually for once not stopped someone in mid act screaming her head off at what she was doing.
And that had felt good. She curled herself tighter against the male and nuzzled his back and nipped at him, letting golden curls spill into his line of sight. She hummed contentedly and hugged him tight.
"Robert...?" she asked quietly.
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:37 pm
A warm presence made itself known behind York as he slowly woke up later. He smiled to himself through his headache. His eye hurt. Normally that was a bad sign, a signal to stay in bed and rest his vision, but a warm body was behind him, and he was inclined to stay blissfully put. Until blond hair fell into his vision on his right. Golden hair...that wasn't right...
With a groan, York sat up. Cary was lying beside him...his old partner, Carolina...His memories caught up with him and York cradled his head in his paws. "Melissa..." he moaned softly, trying not to aggravate the headache. "Just how much did I have to drink?" He felt a strong desire to smash something--preferably something attached to himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid! What if D found out? He had promised to love D forever...What have I done? I've slept with someone else! D will have every right to distrust me until the day I die...
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Lady Argentum Draconis Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 9:46 pm
Cary moved closer to York and slide up wrapping her arms around him, She shrugged in answer to the question about the alcohol. "You said my name..." she said smiling leaning up and kissing his cheek shifting slightly settling herself in his lap. "Does it really matter?" she asked innocently. She ran her paws over his chest and settled against him. "Hold me..." she said content to stay against him.
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