[MINGLE] PLOT: Siren's Call

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Anywhere
WHEN: August 25-26
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Mental manipulation, drowning, death
NOTES: Details here. This post is for EVERYONE, not just the affected. Please make sure and note if your thread is locked for plot purposes.

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It began slowly.

A wisp of song or familiar sound on the breeze swept in from the lake. No source to be found, only the uneasy feeling it had been heard before as it coiled itself steadily inside the minds of the chosen. The sound was a mantra, pulsing soft at first and then louder, growing over days until it seemed to fill the skull, relentless. Come here, the lake whispered, cajoled, shouted. It is cool and quiet beneath the waves.

Come here, it presses now in time with the melody until there is nothing but to blindly follow. The water is calling.

Comments

[majorlyugh]

Major won't make the first move, if there are any moves to be made. He's unattached, free as the wind. She's the one with the romantic obligations, and he won't be the one to force her to abandon them. The temptation is still there, of course, whether he closes the gap between them or not, but he wills himself to stay put, stay still.

He can feel her breath on his face, he can feel the warmth radiating off of her through the cold of the water still lingering on them.

And when she does what he expects her to do, his gaze flitters to the ground with resigned understanding and agreement. She's done the right thing, he knows that. He does his best to ignore the sinking disappointment that froths in his heart at the distance she's put between them.

Arms back down at his sides, he raises his gaze to scan her face.

"It'd be just like us, wouldn't it? That we'd be both be dragged here, able to be together, and yet .. not be able to be together? We must've pissed off a hell of a lot of people in our past lives or something."

[living_proof]

The way he's phrased that remark is telling — As if it's some kind of cosmic force making this choice for both of us, as if it's beyond either of our control when really it's just beyond his. I have a choice. I made it when I first stumbled across Major in the woods and again now, and knowing the two of us, I'll probably have to make it again. But I made it: I could have broken it off with Bucky and I didn't. Can't, because I love him.

...oh crap.

Yep, didn't really realize that until this moment right here. If you would like to know whether it's painful being a bad romance novel cliche, the answer is yes.

"We've always made it work, even when we were just friends," I point out, because I just don't have the heart to shatter the little illusion he's got going there. Ravi would probably tell me I should, and he'd be right, but... It's Major. I can't explain it any better than that. He falls under a different set of rules.

[majorlyugh]

"Yeah," Major agrees, though the lingering disappointment in his voice is more telling than what he manages to say. The truth of the matter is that, as he is right now and with the memories he still carries around in his head, he'd be at her side at the first hint of her wanting him there. As friends, as more, as something in between. It didn't really matter to him. She'd been too big a part of his life for him to ever be willing to let it go, or not fight for it, if it ever came to that.

But he's also not going to push her to the kind of resolution he wants deep down. He's not that type of guy. Still, if she ever sent out his Bat Signal, there'd be no question of whether he'd answer it.

"Yeah, you're right," he finally tacks on, this time sound a bit more bolstered by the thought. "Even if we weren't in such a tiny village, it'd be pret-ty hard to get rid of me."

[living_proof]

"You're like a bad penny," I allow with a soft smile, grateful for the decided change in tone even if I know Major well enough to know it's forced. I hate this; I've always hated this, every time it's happened. But it is what it is. What we are.

He's not really wrong. We never manage to stay away from each other even when we know we have to be apart.

"I should go," I say, glancing down the shoreline. "Some of these people might need medical help."

It's true, the evidence laid out plainly in the people retching and crying against the sand. And if it's an excuse, too, it's not one either of us didn't see coming.