Participants:
| Scene Title | And So It Goes |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | So I would choose to be with you / That's if the choice were mine to make / But you can make decisions too / And you can have this heart to break |
| Date | November 20, 2020 |
Seren Evans' Apartment, Employee Housing, Raytech Industries Campus
It's been another long day, but at least it was one spent at home instead of in the hospital.
Seren Evans can be glad for that. They didn't celebrate Thanksgiving this year, and they're uncertain they'll be spending the American one with anyone, so they'll just… take that where they can get it.
The best part about being home is they're not alone anymore. Baird has, not unexpectedly, been shunning them since they arrived back home. He's presently nested on the back of the couch several cushions down from where they sit, curled into a restful ball. Today he's decided he'd like to be a fox with dark owl wings. He's been excessively mouthy all day long as a result, fox calls through the apartment a constant, wide-mouthed standing of ground resulting from any attempt to get near him.
Always just out of arm's reach, but never out of eyesight. He's upset they were gone for so long, but he worried about them, too. He's got as many mixed emotions about the ordeal as Seren does, anxious that somehow things won't be the same anymore since they've parted.
And it really has been the longest they've been apart in ages. Since finishing school and coming to New York, barely has a day gone by where he's not been by their side.
It's also one of the longest periods that Nix and Seren have gone apart since the humanlike harpy came into Seren's life. Unlike Baird, she's curled up at Seren's side, warm and laying right against their arm, her head on their shoulder, glad to spend every possible moment close together to make up for all the ones spent apart. Eager to do anything to help ease the hurt in Seren's heart, even if she's not quite sure how.
When the latest episode of River Styx ends, they realize just how long they've been sitting here by virtue of how uncomfortable it is to shift their weight. They're sitting with their legs folded up on the couch— which by no means was a smart move to begin with— and attempting to move to a more natural position brings them to let out a hiss of pain.
Baird's ears flick up, eyes wide open. He turns to see better what he hears, keenly aware of Seren's hurt. Nix, too, suddenly is pulling back from Seren, wide eyes widening even further and her hands lifting up. "Sere, you okay?" she asks, worry in the trill of her voice.
"I'm— I'm fine," Seren insists, even though they're in clear discomfort. One hand paws the couch beside them until it finds the remote, buttons pressed until the time flashes on the screen. "Shit." They really had been sitting here a while. They were well overdue for another dose of the medication they'd brought home.
"What do you need?" Nix asks, quick to want to fix this. To help them. "What can I get for you?"
Seren shakes their head once, eyes narrowed. "I just need to stretch," they insist, hoping that's the end of it. When their socked feet slide to the floor with difficult discomfort, in a smaller voice they admit, "And maybe grab some more of that pain reliever…"
"I got it!" Nix is up to her feet quick as a flash, eager as ever. "Just stay right there!" That, too, brings a flash of pain to Seren which is visible only in their eye. Their hand balls up on the cushioning, and Baird sits unmoving even as Nix's clawed feet go scraping on the floor as she comes around the side of the couch to head for the kitchen. He doesn't stop in his observation of Seren, even as his head slowly lowers to rest on his tail again.
He can't help. And neither can Nix.
It brings Seren's eyes to water. They breathe in, but it catches, and Nix stops halfway to the kitchen having heard it. Her head swivels back, cautious and concerned. "Sere?"
The sound of her familiar voice, even modulated the way it is to be so distinctly Nix even though she uses the same name she did… Seren lets out a single, quiet sob, their gleaming eyes closing and spilling tears.
"Seren, don't worry," Nix says gently from the hallway. "I've got this."
It's with a tremor in their voice that Seren replies, "No." They take in a deep breath, one needed to grant them the strength to admit, "You don't."
Nix wasn't Rue. And in all the ways that her company, her friendship, had helped when Seren felt nothing but alone… for all the ways she still made them smile, she wasn't real. Not like Rue was. And it was time to stop pretending like she could be replaced— either by Nix, or by someone else real.
It was time for them to stop clinging to something which wasn't theirs to have anymore.
"Phoenix?" Seren asks through their tears. "Can you come here for a second?"
When the harpy returns to the couch to sit next to them, it's soundlessly. Part of the realness is already gone from having admitted to themself where Nix really came from— from their longing and sadness rather than from a truly chance encounter. She feels the change coming on, clear in the shift in expression on her face, the way her brows curve upward. She tries to speak— but she fails to find any words in her own defense, anything that should justify why she should stay, or why they should remain together.
Just like Rue.
"Sere, it's gonna be okay," Nix encourages them, leaning forward to lay one hand atop theirs.
Crying openly now, Seren nods. "I know," they sob. It hurts, and it'll continue to hurt, but it's what needs to happen. They turn, expression contorting for a moment with how it hurts their hip to twist the way it does, and they take Nix's other hand, looking her in the eye. They rub their thumb along the back of her hand. "I know. I—"
"I'm sorry for this. For—" For not knowing how to handle themself in the first place, and not knowing how to handle it now.
"We had some good times together, okay?" Nix sures her grip around Seren's hand, her smile a sad one as she dips her head, mauve-colored hair shifting. Her eyes are watering, too. "I'm glad we got to have what we did."
"I wish it didn't have to end," Seren says all the same. Because they need to, and now's the only chance to do so. Their eyes close, head dropping as they force the words out. "But you're not her. You can't be. You've been such a great friend, Nix, but you and I both know you're just a band-aid for something I need to move on and accept."
"I'm sorry," they repeat in a whisper, their eyes opening again.
Nix is looking down at their hands, hers warm in theirs. She's brushing her thumb over the back of their knuckles, and her lips press into a hard line. She starts to lift their hand, like she means to kiss the back of it, but ultimately she sets it back down on the couch and pulls her own back herself. She piles them onto her knee, posture perking up as she puts on a brave face.
"Don't you go missing me. All right? I'm not worth it. I'm— I'm just a moment. And maybe you hold onto all the good in that moment, or all the bad— whatever you need to to move forward. But you should go and be happy and find someone else to share just how great you are with. It's what I want— it's what she would want."
They both know the chances of that successfully happening are abysmally low, and it brings Seren to tears again. Nix is just a blur before them, one that begins to flurry away in flecks of gold light.
Never have they ever sent a friend away willingly before. They hardly knew what to do symbolize it, or how to otherwise handle it. She deserves a warmer sendoff than this, no matter how magical it appears to be. No matter how she smiles in understanding when she begins to fade.
"Take care, Seren," Nix wishes them, and then she shimmers into a dozen glowing lights the color of the fires of her namesake.
When she's gone, when they feel the darkening of the place she held in their mind as they begin to wall it off, they lose the last bits of the composure they'd been attempting for her sake. One hand covers their mouth to try and obscure the keening wail from carrying through the wall to their neighbors, one that's born of a pain that's pressurized inside them for months without proper release. Seren cries until they slowly begin to rock themself back and forth in a gesture of self-comfort, an attempt to regulate, and only aggravate their hip again in the process. Pain no matter what they do, apparently.
Baird noses his way under their arm and into their lap, chittering as he lays his head on their collar; first his chin rests there as he looks up at them, then he shifts to butts his forehead against their chest and heart in an attempt to ease their pain. Seren wraps their arms around their familiar and holds him close, stroking his soft fur until their sobs subside to sniffles. Their breathing suddenly comes harder than before, wet and filled with phlegm. "Fuck," they sigh, sniffling loud and trying to clear their nose. "I've got to get it together."
It was just them and Baird after all, no one else to look after them now. And Baird was there largely as emotional support only.
He shifts, crawling up onto their shoulders and curling around it, settling as a comforting, unobtrusive presence while they come back to their feet. Seren stumbles for a moment, but they find their footing just as they knew they would. Wiping their eyes, they head to the kitchen to find the bottles of medication they'd been sent home with to begin easing one kind of pain.
And maybe to find some ice cream to numb the other.