It is not June yet, okay? I'm still ahead of the deadline. This is going to be a lame post, but it's a post and it counts, okay? I also might have to go to work in forty minutes and have to eat, do my hair, brush my teeth, and finish getting my snack together. Short post.
Long story short, I'm in Alaska (again), I'm working 1-8pm, five days a week, our internet is not in our house yet, and I've been reading a lot of books.
Yeah. That's about it. It's been a busy few months of travel. Once again.
My writing scribbles have meandered all over story ideas, but I liked this scrawl best that I did over this last week. Hopefully you guys do too.
Original storyline, just by the way. Since it's so confusing with the four some different storylines and I get turned around every once in a while as well.
Sarris found herself wide awake despite not having slept in almost two days. The starliner thrummed around her, as soothing and constant as the sleepy warmth pressed to her front.
It felt like events had not stopped slipping past faster than she could almost comprehend. Two days ago she had been returning home to an empty apartment and an aching pain in the wake of visiting Tara—again.
Now she glanced down and wondered that the past forty-eight hours weren’t anything more than a dream. That she would wake up in an empty bed, reaching for the only constant in her life, only to find him gone.
Downy blond curls were stark against the gray of Sarris’ uniform jacket, softening the military edge in a way no smile could. Quiet breaths left the child in her arms as she slumbered.
At six months old, Ruusan was just beginning to take an interest in the world, and was sleeping through the night on a somewhat regular basis. Not that it would’ve made a difference.
The Warrior had been struck by the vivid blue of her eyes from that first moment on the side of the road after dragging the crying child from the burning wreck of her parents’ streamer.
Letting her head settle back, Sarris stared at the illume casting faint light over the rows of seats, the low setting telling that their destination, Sinjaro Kahn, was in the late hours of night. Sleeping now would be in the passengers’ best interest.
She hadn’t commed Novarr any details beyond asking him to meet her at home tomorrow, or the earliest he could get away from his current job.
This wasn’t something she would be able to talk about, could make a decision about, without being able to see him, to grip his hands with hers and see the truth of his own choice in his eyes.
Ruusan could and would change everything. Already had. Even if they didn’t keep her, even if they committed her as a ward of the bureau on Norsha’ac, Sarris knew there would be no going back now. Not after memorizing the weight of the child in her arms, the pitch of her cry, the gentle scent that clung to her hair and skin after a bath.
It was burned into her mind as deep as Gogam, as her time with the Force, as the people who meant everything to her.
No, there was no return from here. And Sarris didn’t care, as she laced her fingers together over Ruusan’s back, her eyes closing. She knew that she wouldn’t get much rest, but it was worth it to at least try. There was no telling when Ruusan would awaken. Or what the next few days would hold, for that matter. She would need every moment of respite she could manage.
//
Sarris knew that the only thing Novarr would read on her face and in her eyes would be strain, so she grabbed his hands, hoping the contact would help him understand.
“You’re really starting to freak me out here, Sar,” his voice was strained, brows at an odd angle as he attempted to keep at least a hint of a smile on his features. His fingers were tight around hers with rising tension.
The words stuck in her throat, as easy as they should’ve been, but she didn’t know what to say anymore.
Staring into the concern in his gaze, the Warrior struggled. She didn’t do well conversing even within normal parameters, let alone when it came to an issue of this magnitude.
“Her name is Ruusan,” Sarris murmured at last. Her name almost got stuck, came out as a whisper. “She’s six months old, Norsha’acite, and her parents are both dead. Killed in a streamer accident.”
Novarr was uncomprehending, a frown crowding out his failing attempt at a smile, and he rubbed agitated circles around her knuckles with his thumbs. “What about her, Sar? I need details here, babe.”
“Next of kin waived their claim, she was going straight to a bureau-operated home, Novarr.” Sarris was unfamiliar with the desperation crawling beneath her skin. It was wishful, devastating, craving, unthinkable, nothing like she’d ever known.
Her hunter, her Novarr, waited, knowing to give her time, to allow her to work past her barriers and speak, perhaps already thinking he knew where this was going.
“I—“ Sarris paused, closed her eyes. “She’s here. I brought her home with me. She’s asleep in our bed right now.”
It might have been amusing in any other situation, with any other circumstances. Novarr stopped functioning, frozen, staring at Sarris.
She let him process, her attention on their conversation, but every sense tuned to the small noises of their apartment. Waiting for that familiar cry to come.
It would be weeks before her usual sleeping schedule returned. Before her senses dulled again from razor sharp awareness, at a level she hadn’t seen in years.
Since her first years off Gogam, struggling with the blood that had soaked her.
“We… have a baby?” Novarr’s dawning comprehension made warmth spread through Sarris’ fingertips.
Drawing in a breath, she explained in low tones, “If that’s what we want. I have temporary custody because of my dual status as a Warrior that’s acknowledged by both Kahn and Uhric. It allows some space to maneuver legally.” Away from the emotion of the situation, her tongue loosened, thoughts flowing with more ease.
Not that it made a difference what she said now. Novarr wasn’t attending again, just smiling, a goofy expression she didn’t see on him often. His good humor was usually more focused, not an uncontrolled reaction like now.
“Her name is Ruusan?” He checked, squeezing her hands at odd intervals.
Sarris blinked at him. Nodded once. “Yes. Ruusan Armstrong.”
“And her family doesn’t want her?”
“No.” That was the part of this she couldn’t understand. How Ruusan’s grandparents had walked into that security station where Sarris had waited with their granddaughter, and had turned their backs on her. Had signed all the forms to give up their rights without looking at her twice.
It had made her burn with anger. That they were so willing, so eager, to be rid of Ruusan. Of her blue eyes and golden curls, her sweet giggles and priceless babbling.
Short but sweet, I hope. Unfinished, as with all my projects. But it hit me during church last week and I ran with it. This is a phase of their lives I never really got around to writing out, just put a mental marker in with an idea of events and moved on to bigger fish.
Baby Ruu is so. adorable. Just so you know. One of those babies that makes you think, "I wouldn't mind having kids after all" because she's just precious and a sweetheart and. Yeah.
I've gotta run now.
Thoughts?
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Showing posts with label original storyline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label original storyline. Show all posts
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Writing: Original -- Of Moving and Storms
I haven't a lot of time due to a baby sitting job in forty-five minutes and not even having gotten out of bed yet, but I wanted to post this real fast so as to reassure Trinity that every one is doing quite well. Well, in the original they are. We won't speak of the deviant.
This scrawl was one that just came out of no where last week and is a short amount of time after Jhidek, Ruusan, and their four children moved from Norsha'ac to Istilanda, the difference being, from grassy hills, to oceans and beaches.
Please note, also, that Gramma Ti-ti is Tara and Grampa Ar-ar is Nuridarr. Vivian did love her nicknames as a baby and a few have stuck.
It is almost one o'clock in the morning when the first crack of lightning illuimnates the bedroom and it is quickly followed by a boom of thunder, wakening Ruusan almost instantly.
Disoriented initially, her heart pounds in her chest as she lifts her head from her pillow then lightning flashes again and she realizes, belatedly, that a storm has blown in off the ocean and even now, the rain batters against the glass windows taking up the far wall of the room.
Rolling over and sitting up, Ruu pulls the comforter around herself, glancing at the empty space on the other side of the bed. A quiet sigh escapes her.
Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, he'd said when he'd called earlier. This job was turning out to be a bit more unpredictable than expected, stretching to three days, possibly four, but Ruu knows Jay has to make up for his absence while moving her and the kids to Istilanda.
There are still boxes scattered everywhere because she hasn't been able to find the energy to both unpack and mind her children. Vivian and Ellora's excitement over the new location is complete, but just as often, she has to wipe away tears because, yes, they're going to see Gramma Ti-ti and Auntie Merri and Grampa Ar-ar and Auntie Raina again.
That is one thing Ruusan hadn't considered entirely when she and Jhidek had decided to move; the relative solitude that she'd be placed in by the new location. Having lived his family for the past five years, not having someone popping in and out throughout the day or meandering over to Auntie Tara's house when the girls had too much energy was a foreign concept.
But the change is doing her a lot of good at the same time. The fresh start and new setting helps Ruu keep her head clearer, freer of thoughts that threaten to weigh her down.
A faint smile pulls at her mouth as she looks around she and Jay's new room, the large bay windows looking out over the ocean, the light wood flooring and white-painted walls.
Overall, the house has five separate bedrooms, four on the second story, one on the first floor, and there is a small basement that acts as a storm shelter in case of a typhoon. Vivian and Ellora have been installed down the hall in the other room that overlooks the beach and sea, much to their delight, and Connor will be across the hall from them in a couple more months. Ruu has already had to nurse more than one pair of bruised knees due to the slippery hardwood floors, but is finding she likes them much better than the carpet in the apartment on Norsha'ac, if only because they are far easier to clean.
Sleep having fled for the time being despite her exhaustion earlier that evening, the woman slides out of bed, not bothering with the robe pooled on the floor beside the bed. She goes to the tall windows and pushes the curtains out of the way so she can see out. Wind is whipping at the trees and the ocean rolls and tosses, crashing up on the beach only to subside again.
Thunder continues to boom as well, and she absently hopes it won't wake the kids as it had her.
Ruusan watches the effect of the storm, crossing her arms over her stomach. She doubts it will hamper Jhidek's return, but still worries a bit that it will.
She lingers over the view a few minutes longer, then goes to check on Connor. At seven months, he's just beginning to crawl and Ruu made quick work of installing gates on the stairs so that neither he nor Ellie will take a tumble down them. Leaning over the crib, she smiles softly, brushing her fingers over the baby's cheek.
As always, the curls are her own, but it's the sandy color that means her genes have finally had some influence. A small triumph, but after both Vivian and Ellora turned out looking much like their respective fathers,
having Connor bear some resemblance to herself made the back-aches worth it.
Of course, his eyes are still brown.
Oh well, Ruu muses, tucking the blanket closer around her son and straightening to go check on her daughters. Maybe next round.
As she pads across the floor to the bedroom door, a small frown pulls at Ruusan's mouth. Not being near Jhidek's family any longer means that, aside from her husband, who is constantly coming and going, she'll be devoid of an extra set of hands to help with the kids while she's pregnant, especially when she nears her due date.
Considering this problem a few moments later, Ruu decides to bring it up with Jay at some point and tucks the thought away as she goes to her daughters' room.
The nightlight casts a faint glow over the space, giving it a warm atmosphere that seems to ward off the severity of the storm. On the short table between the two little beds and their slumbering occupants, a small, lavender music player has a soft piano piece on, keeping the thunder at bay.
Ruusan gently pushes back Ellora's dark curls, feeling her warmth and hearing her little breaths and pulls up the light purple comforter before shifting across the space between Ell's and Vivi's bed to check on her oldest.
Vivian's leg is hanging over the side of the mattress, so she eases back under the covers and bends down to kiss the five-year-old's temple.
I have no idea what I ever did to deserve all this, Lord, she thinks, rising after a couple more moments and going to stand in the doorway.
She stays there, lost in thought, until a faint clatter from downstairs catches the mother's attention.
Hope causes her pulse to pick up.
Jhidek.
Closing the girls' door behind herself, Ruu makes her way downstairs, the gates opening soundlessly at her behest as she passes through them to reach the main floor.
The air is cooler on the first floor and she crosses her arms over her chest to ward off the chill that causes goosebumps to break out over her arms. There's another faint noise that draws her attention and guides her through the dark house towards the entry way.
Ruu wanders to the short hallway that leads to the front door and draws to a halt when she sees Jhidek there, leaning over to pull off his boots.
He looks up and she smiles.
There you have it. Right as rain.
And now, I must dash. Thank you for reading!
Also, I'm considering doing a short review on BBC's North & South. Would anyone be interested in that?
Thank you muchas for reading!
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
This scrawl was one that just came out of no where last week and is a short amount of time after Jhidek, Ruusan, and their four children moved from Norsha'ac to Istilanda, the difference being, from grassy hills, to oceans and beaches.
Please note, also, that Gramma Ti-ti is Tara and Grampa Ar-ar is Nuridarr. Vivian did love her nicknames as a baby and a few have stuck.
It is almost one o'clock in the morning when the first crack of lightning illuimnates the bedroom and it is quickly followed by a boom of thunder, wakening Ruusan almost instantly.
Disoriented initially, her heart pounds in her chest as she lifts her head from her pillow then lightning flashes again and she realizes, belatedly, that a storm has blown in off the ocean and even now, the rain batters against the glass windows taking up the far wall of the room.
Rolling over and sitting up, Ruu pulls the comforter around herself, glancing at the empty space on the other side of the bed. A quiet sigh escapes her.
Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, he'd said when he'd called earlier. This job was turning out to be a bit more unpredictable than expected, stretching to three days, possibly four, but Ruu knows Jay has to make up for his absence while moving her and the kids to Istilanda.
There are still boxes scattered everywhere because she hasn't been able to find the energy to both unpack and mind her children. Vivian and Ellora's excitement over the new location is complete, but just as often, she has to wipe away tears because, yes, they're going to see Gramma Ti-ti and Auntie Merri and Grampa Ar-ar and Auntie Raina again.
That is one thing Ruusan hadn't considered entirely when she and Jhidek had decided to move; the relative solitude that she'd be placed in by the new location. Having lived his family for the past five years, not having someone popping in and out throughout the day or meandering over to Auntie Tara's house when the girls had too much energy was a foreign concept.
But the change is doing her a lot of good at the same time. The fresh start and new setting helps Ruu keep her head clearer, freer of thoughts that threaten to weigh her down.
A faint smile pulls at her mouth as she looks around she and Jay's new room, the large bay windows looking out over the ocean, the light wood flooring and white-painted walls.
Overall, the house has five separate bedrooms, four on the second story, one on the first floor, and there is a small basement that acts as a storm shelter in case of a typhoon. Vivian and Ellora have been installed down the hall in the other room that overlooks the beach and sea, much to their delight, and Connor will be across the hall from them in a couple more months. Ruu has already had to nurse more than one pair of bruised knees due to the slippery hardwood floors, but is finding she likes them much better than the carpet in the apartment on Norsha'ac, if only because they are far easier to clean.
Sleep having fled for the time being despite her exhaustion earlier that evening, the woman slides out of bed, not bothering with the robe pooled on the floor beside the bed. She goes to the tall windows and pushes the curtains out of the way so she can see out. Wind is whipping at the trees and the ocean rolls and tosses, crashing up on the beach only to subside again.
Thunder continues to boom as well, and she absently hopes it won't wake the kids as it had her.
Ruusan watches the effect of the storm, crossing her arms over her stomach. She doubts it will hamper Jhidek's return, but still worries a bit that it will.
She lingers over the view a few minutes longer, then goes to check on Connor. At seven months, he's just beginning to crawl and Ruu made quick work of installing gates on the stairs so that neither he nor Ellie will take a tumble down them. Leaning over the crib, she smiles softly, brushing her fingers over the baby's cheek.
As always, the curls are her own, but it's the sandy color that means her genes have finally had some influence. A small triumph, but after both Vivian and Ellora turned out looking much like their respective fathers,
having Connor bear some resemblance to herself made the back-aches worth it.
Of course, his eyes are still brown.
Oh well, Ruu muses, tucking the blanket closer around her son and straightening to go check on her daughters. Maybe next round.
As she pads across the floor to the bedroom door, a small frown pulls at Ruusan's mouth. Not being near Jhidek's family any longer means that, aside from her husband, who is constantly coming and going, she'll be devoid of an extra set of hands to help with the kids while she's pregnant, especially when she nears her due date.
Considering this problem a few moments later, Ruu decides to bring it up with Jay at some point and tucks the thought away as she goes to her daughters' room.
The nightlight casts a faint glow over the space, giving it a warm atmosphere that seems to ward off the severity of the storm. On the short table between the two little beds and their slumbering occupants, a small, lavender music player has a soft piano piece on, keeping the thunder at bay.
Ruusan gently pushes back Ellora's dark curls, feeling her warmth and hearing her little breaths and pulls up the light purple comforter before shifting across the space between Ell's and Vivi's bed to check on her oldest.
Vivian's leg is hanging over the side of the mattress, so she eases back under the covers and bends down to kiss the five-year-old's temple.
I have no idea what I ever did to deserve all this, Lord, she thinks, rising after a couple more moments and going to stand in the doorway.
She stays there, lost in thought, until a faint clatter from downstairs catches the mother's attention.
Hope causes her pulse to pick up.
Jhidek.
Closing the girls' door behind herself, Ruu makes her way downstairs, the gates opening soundlessly at her behest as she passes through them to reach the main floor.
The air is cooler on the first floor and she crosses her arms over her chest to ward off the chill that causes goosebumps to break out over her arms. There's another faint noise that draws her attention and guides her through the dark house towards the entry way.
Ruu wanders to the short hallway that leads to the front door and draws to a halt when she sees Jhidek there, leaning over to pull off his boots.
He looks up and she smiles.
There you have it. Right as rain.
And now, I must dash. Thank you for reading!
Also, I'm considering doing a short review on BBC's North & South. Would anyone be interested in that?
Thank you muchas for reading!
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Writing: Original -- A Psycho from the Past (VOID)
I did not forget about the deviant Jade bits, don't worry, I just meant to put this before I went on to those ones.
The title explains most of what this bit is about. Original storyline Ruusan went back to Uhric with Connor, she and Jhidek's second child, after her mother was in an accident and ran into an old acquaintance who is a few fries short of a happy meal from her ERTP days.
Also, this scrawl -- or at least this version -- has been voided due to Jhidek's insistence that Ruusan take his younger brother, De'keth (fifteen or thereabouts, but a Vhander and thus not to be taken lightly) along with her.
I just thought it was an interesting look into some of the things Ruusan dealt with while she was an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, a borderline psychopath being one of them.
Ruu hummed to her son absently, glancing at the time on the spaceport’s display screen, the digits glowing blue in the warm morning light. Despite the hour – 0715 -- the port bustled with life.
There weren’t many families, the multitude being mostly made up of single business workers, suits almost seeming to glint in the sunlight. She sat in an otherwise empty row of seats near one of the large windows that gave an excellent view of Uhric’s capital city.
Their flight left in half an hour and she was ready to be home. After the past week with her parents, all that they’d talked about, Ruu felt drained. She wanted to be back with the rest with her family, to be able to actually see Jay as opposed to the visual communicator they’d been using for the past few days.
“Momma’s kind of pathetic without Daddy, isn’t she, sweetheart?” Ruusan murmured to the child who slept in the sling on her front, a bemused smile touching her features.
The hand that appeared on her shoulder made the woman jump because she hadn’t seen anyone in her vicinity for several minutes now, and the chances that anyone knew her here were slim.
A man swung into her vision and Ruu felt coldness wash through her.
“Ruusan! You haven’t changed in the slightest. Do you remember me?”
Delusional. Obsessive. Borderline psychotic.
She could remember every detail of the fateful day she got assigned the case that led to her save Patrick Wile’s life. He had scared her then and that hadn’t changed.
“Mr. Wile, what are you doing here?” Ruusan asked, telling herself to keep calm as she put her arms around her son protectively.
He took it badly if he knew you were unnerved by his presence. Don’t show fear. Remain serene.
“I came to get you!” The curly-haired man dropped into the seat at her side, resting his arms along the backs of the chairs. “They said I would find you here. I didn’t believe them at first, but now I do.”
"Mr. Wile, I’m leaving Uhric soon. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to catch up right now.”
It was as if her words went right through him. Patrick leaned over to look at the child in the sling, and Ruu leaned away out of instinct, her guts clenching at the thought of this man being near Connor. Right now, every fiber in her being was telling her to get far, far away from this man and to not look back.
The frown that appeared on his face due to her shift away from him made Ruu’s pulse speed up with fear.
Stay calm.
“Don’t be like that, Ruusan. I’m not going to hurt you. I just can’t let you get on that flight, you see.” His tone was matter-of-fact but she knew that could change in a heartbeat.
She could still see his face from all those years ago, the way it had been pleasant and then turned so very black when something didn’t go as he wanted it to. Her team had been informed that he’d been put away in a care center. Obviously, that hadn’t worked out.
“I have a husband now, Mr. Wile. This is our son. If I don’t get home on this flight, he will come and find me and you won’t like how he will take your presence.” Ruu’s mind went to every other antagonist who had appeared in their lives and she badly wished this was one of those moments, when she’d look over and Jay would be standing there, ready to protect her again.
But he was light years away, at home with the girls and waiting for her to come home to him.
Patrick was unbothered by her words. “They said he was wrong for you, Ruusan; that he doesn’t take care of you like he should.”
Anger bubbled through her fear in a moment, rising to the surface and bringing sharp words with it. “Jhidek has never done anything other than take care of me, Patrick Wile. Talk about him like that again and you’ll regret it dearly.”
His easy posture didn’t change but he slanted her a hard look that made Ruu want to run.
So she decided to do just that.
Collecting her tote bag and pulling it onto her shoulder, Ruusan stood up and took hold of the handle of her rolling suitcase. The light metal was cool beneath her hand as she made sure Connor was situated before starting to walk away.
Patrick was on his feet in a moment, striding after her and grabbing her wrist to wrench her around to face him again. Ruu was unable to help the gasp of surprise and she twisted her hand, yanking it away from his tight grasp. She used both her arms to support her child who still slumbered despite the proceedings. It would have been humorous in any other situation.
“I can’t let you leave, Ruusan. They said, no matter what, you can’t leave Uhric.” His green gaze was pleading as he reached for her again.
The Norsha’acite took a step back to avoid his touch, her throat tight. She wanted to be done with all this. She wanted to be home, with Jay, and Vivi, and Ellora, and blast anyone who tried to stop her at this point.
I’m an ERTP and I’m a Vhander. I’m stronger than this.
Her voice was uncompromising. “I don’t care, Patrick Wile, what they told you. If you touch me again, there are a dozen security guards within shouting distance so don’t you dare take another step.”
It was strange to Ruu, playing this role. The strong one, the one who employed the threats.
Jhidek usually covered this bit when it was needed.
Patrick’s gaze hardened in a way that spelled disaster. His hand disappeared into his jacket and returned with a gun clearly designed for stealth and secrecy. The cameras would be unable to pick it up, at that size.
“You see, the problem now, Ruu—“
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted before she could help herself, earning a dark look from Wile.
“Shut up. I’m talking now. Your turn is done. As I was saying, the problem is that I love you, and another man’s child doesn’t fit into that equation.”
Ruu stilled, heart racing with fear as it exploded through her. No, Lord, please, no. I can’t handle this. Please, Lord.
“I’m not the paramedic here, though. What do you think even a low-level stun round would do to a child his age, Ruusan?” The was a deceptive note of lightness that might’ve worked if the circumstances had been different.
If he hadn’t been talking about killing her son to force her into doing what he wanted. Because it would kill Connor. She knew too much about the effect weapons had on children to consider otherwise. She had too much experience to be able to think otherwise.
Ruusan’s hold on the baby sleeping against her chest tightened in an effort to protect him, at least in her mind. “He’s going to kill you, Patrick. You’re going to die if you don’t stop right now. So just leave us alone and maybe things will work out better for you.”
“But I’ve got friends, Ruu,” Patrick announced smugly. “Friends who can hide us away where no one will be able to find us! It’ll be perfect, I promise. You’ll love it. Away from all these people who—“
“No.” She bit out, taking an unsteady step backwards. “No. Patrick, no. I’m not leaving with you and even if you force me to, my husband will find me and then you’ll regret ever considering something like this, I can promise you that.”
“I don’t care about this husband of yours. He’s one man, while I have so many friends in the shadows who know how to hide things.”
“Jhidek Vhander specializes in finding things, as does his family and my parents too.” All her strength was bravado now. Trying to intimidate him into releasing her before any further harm could be done.
Patrick shot her a flat look. “We’re done here. You either come with me now, and your son might be okay, or you can continue to resist, and he won’t make it out of the spaceport. Am I making any sense here?”
Ruu wished her comm. weren’t buried at the bottom of her tote where she’d stuffed it in her hurry to leave that morning. She could feel the hot sting of tears at the corners of her eyes, but strove to ignore them.
Jay’s going to find us. He will. That’s what he’s good at. She repeated that to herself over and over as she took her suitcase by the handle and followed Patrick’s instructions, always aware of the weapon he still held discretely in one hand.
I may or may not like kidnapping Ruusan, although it never really got that far in the original while Penny and I were TGing, so it was probably an uneventful trip to and from Uhric with Connor and De'keth.
Now I shall move onto the Jade bits, although I may send an email first, so there will be a slight delay.
Thank you for reading!
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
The title explains most of what this bit is about. Original storyline Ruusan went back to Uhric with Connor, she and Jhidek's second child, after her mother was in an accident and ran into an old acquaintance who is a few fries short of a happy meal from her ERTP days.
Also, this scrawl -- or at least this version -- has been voided due to Jhidek's insistence that Ruusan take his younger brother, De'keth (fifteen or thereabouts, but a Vhander and thus not to be taken lightly) along with her.
I just thought it was an interesting look into some of the things Ruusan dealt with while she was an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, a borderline psychopath being one of them.
Ruu hummed to her son absently, glancing at the time on the spaceport’s display screen, the digits glowing blue in the warm morning light. Despite the hour – 0715 -- the port bustled with life.
There weren’t many families, the multitude being mostly made up of single business workers, suits almost seeming to glint in the sunlight. She sat in an otherwise empty row of seats near one of the large windows that gave an excellent view of Uhric’s capital city.
Their flight left in half an hour and she was ready to be home. After the past week with her parents, all that they’d talked about, Ruu felt drained. She wanted to be back with the rest with her family, to be able to actually see Jay as opposed to the visual communicator they’d been using for the past few days.
“Momma’s kind of pathetic without Daddy, isn’t she, sweetheart?” Ruusan murmured to the child who slept in the sling on her front, a bemused smile touching her features.
The hand that appeared on her shoulder made the woman jump because she hadn’t seen anyone in her vicinity for several minutes now, and the chances that anyone knew her here were slim.
A man swung into her vision and Ruu felt coldness wash through her.
“Ruusan! You haven’t changed in the slightest. Do you remember me?”
Delusional. Obsessive. Borderline psychotic.
She could remember every detail of the fateful day she got assigned the case that led to her save Patrick Wile’s life. He had scared her then and that hadn’t changed.
“Mr. Wile, what are you doing here?” Ruusan asked, telling herself to keep calm as she put her arms around her son protectively.
He took it badly if he knew you were unnerved by his presence. Don’t show fear. Remain serene.
“I came to get you!” The curly-haired man dropped into the seat at her side, resting his arms along the backs of the chairs. “They said I would find you here. I didn’t believe them at first, but now I do.”
"Mr. Wile, I’m leaving Uhric soon. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to catch up right now.”
It was as if her words went right through him. Patrick leaned over to look at the child in the sling, and Ruu leaned away out of instinct, her guts clenching at the thought of this man being near Connor. Right now, every fiber in her being was telling her to get far, far away from this man and to not look back.
The frown that appeared on his face due to her shift away from him made Ruu’s pulse speed up with fear.
Stay calm.
“Don’t be like that, Ruusan. I’m not going to hurt you. I just can’t let you get on that flight, you see.” His tone was matter-of-fact but she knew that could change in a heartbeat.
She could still see his face from all those years ago, the way it had been pleasant and then turned so very black when something didn’t go as he wanted it to. Her team had been informed that he’d been put away in a care center. Obviously, that hadn’t worked out.
“I have a husband now, Mr. Wile. This is our son. If I don’t get home on this flight, he will come and find me and you won’t like how he will take your presence.” Ruu’s mind went to every other antagonist who had appeared in their lives and she badly wished this was one of those moments, when she’d look over and Jay would be standing there, ready to protect her again.
But he was light years away, at home with the girls and waiting for her to come home to him.
Patrick was unbothered by her words. “They said he was wrong for you, Ruusan; that he doesn’t take care of you like he should.”
Anger bubbled through her fear in a moment, rising to the surface and bringing sharp words with it. “Jhidek has never done anything other than take care of me, Patrick Wile. Talk about him like that again and you’ll regret it dearly.”
His easy posture didn’t change but he slanted her a hard look that made Ruu want to run.
So she decided to do just that.
Collecting her tote bag and pulling it onto her shoulder, Ruusan stood up and took hold of the handle of her rolling suitcase. The light metal was cool beneath her hand as she made sure Connor was situated before starting to walk away.
Patrick was on his feet in a moment, striding after her and grabbing her wrist to wrench her around to face him again. Ruu was unable to help the gasp of surprise and she twisted her hand, yanking it away from his tight grasp. She used both her arms to support her child who still slumbered despite the proceedings. It would have been humorous in any other situation.
“I can’t let you leave, Ruusan. They said, no matter what, you can’t leave Uhric.” His green gaze was pleading as he reached for her again.
The Norsha’acite took a step back to avoid his touch, her throat tight. She wanted to be done with all this. She wanted to be home, with Jay, and Vivi, and Ellora, and blast anyone who tried to stop her at this point.
I’m an ERTP and I’m a Vhander. I’m stronger than this.
Her voice was uncompromising. “I don’t care, Patrick Wile, what they told you. If you touch me again, there are a dozen security guards within shouting distance so don’t you dare take another step.”
It was strange to Ruu, playing this role. The strong one, the one who employed the threats.
Jhidek usually covered this bit when it was needed.
Patrick’s gaze hardened in a way that spelled disaster. His hand disappeared into his jacket and returned with a gun clearly designed for stealth and secrecy. The cameras would be unable to pick it up, at that size.
“You see, the problem now, Ruu—“
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted before she could help herself, earning a dark look from Wile.
“Shut up. I’m talking now. Your turn is done. As I was saying, the problem is that I love you, and another man’s child doesn’t fit into that equation.”
Ruu stilled, heart racing with fear as it exploded through her. No, Lord, please, no. I can’t handle this. Please, Lord.
“I’m not the paramedic here, though. What do you think even a low-level stun round would do to a child his age, Ruusan?” The was a deceptive note of lightness that might’ve worked if the circumstances had been different.
If he hadn’t been talking about killing her son to force her into doing what he wanted. Because it would kill Connor. She knew too much about the effect weapons had on children to consider otherwise. She had too much experience to be able to think otherwise.
Ruusan’s hold on the baby sleeping against her chest tightened in an effort to protect him, at least in her mind. “He’s going to kill you, Patrick. You’re going to die if you don’t stop right now. So just leave us alone and maybe things will work out better for you.”
“But I’ve got friends, Ruu,” Patrick announced smugly. “Friends who can hide us away where no one will be able to find us! It’ll be perfect, I promise. You’ll love it. Away from all these people who—“
“No.” She bit out, taking an unsteady step backwards. “No. Patrick, no. I’m not leaving with you and even if you force me to, my husband will find me and then you’ll regret ever considering something like this, I can promise you that.”
“I don’t care about this husband of yours. He’s one man, while I have so many friends in the shadows who know how to hide things.”
“Jhidek Vhander specializes in finding things, as does his family and my parents too.” All her strength was bravado now. Trying to intimidate him into releasing her before any further harm could be done.
Patrick shot her a flat look. “We’re done here. You either come with me now, and your son might be okay, or you can continue to resist, and he won’t make it out of the spaceport. Am I making any sense here?”
Ruu wished her comm. weren’t buried at the bottom of her tote where she’d stuffed it in her hurry to leave that morning. She could feel the hot sting of tears at the corners of her eyes, but strove to ignore them.
Jay’s going to find us. He will. That’s what he’s good at. She repeated that to herself over and over as she took her suitcase by the handle and followed Patrick’s instructions, always aware of the weapon he still held discretely in one hand.
I may or may not like kidnapping Ruusan, although it never really got that far in the original while Penny and I were TGing, so it was probably an uneventful trip to and from Uhric with Connor and De'keth.
Now I shall move onto the Jade bits, although I may send an email first, so there will be a slight delay.
Thank you for reading!
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Writing: Original -- Ruusan, Vivi, and Life
Honestly, half the time I don't even know how to title these things because the contents are so hard to define in a few words.
But, the three original Ruu bits I have decided aren't too awful to look at take place about ten months apart, although the last two will require a bit of explaining. As does this first one, I suppose, though it needs less than the others.
The first scrawl takes place about a year after Ruusan and Jhidek are married in the original storyline, putting Vivian at three years old, as you will read. I am contemplating not explaining the reasons behind Ruu's odd physical health until the very end of this post, so you smart readers who figure it out can congratulate yourselves on not needing to be told what was going on.
Actually, you know what, I'm going to hold on and let you guys see if you can work it out, just for kicks. Also, as a warning, this one's a bit on the old side and probably needs a bit of cleaning, but I'm not in a current mindset to do so, so you'll have to wade through the un-edited-ness. My apologies.
Ruusan puttered through the apartment, humming along with whatever was coming through the radio. Jhidek was off-planet working, so she and Vivian had been left to their own devices for a few days.
The three year old was caught up in an alphabet video, and her vocabulary had been expanding by the day. Ruu had been surprised though, that her daughter didn’t ask a hundred million questions, preferring to observe and learn for herself what something did.
She picked up a pair of socks and added them to the laundry basket on her hip, pausing to watch Vivi’s video for a moment.
The animated characters on the screen were in the midst of singing the alphabet song, and Vivian’s brow was lowered in concentration.
Ruu continued her foray for dirty clothing, getting the towels from the kitchen and bathrooms then went to the washer. She started a load, bent retrieve the dry clothes, and reached out to steady herself when she straightened. The world went black for a moment, and Ruusan hurriedly sat down, fighting a sudden bout of nausea.
Her heart pounded as she tried to control the urge to throw up.
Ruu worked to rationalize. We haven’t been anywhere; I haven’t been exposed to anything. So what’s going on?
When her stomach settled enough so she could stand again, Ruusan left the laundry and went on unsteady legs to sit on the couch near Vivian.
Her daughter’s green eyes turned her way when she came back into view. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
“Mommy just feels funny,” Ruu said, smiling a bit to put the child’s worries to ease. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
Vivian watched her for a moment, and then came over to sit beside her on the couch. She didn’t comment further, drawn in once more by her video, but Ruusan reached out to smooth her curls that were going wild.
After a few minutes, the nausea and dizziness faded entirely, leaving Ruu wondering what had happened as she contemplated returning to her work.
“When’s Daddy going to be home?” Vivian asked, looking away from her show.
The woman tucked the child close and kissed her forehead. “He said tomorrow, but we can watch for him tonight as well.”
“At bedtime?” Vivi checked, brow furrowing.
“Yes, at bedtime,” Ruu said, getting to her feet and carrying the child with her. “Are you hungry?”
Vivian thought for a minute, gaze returning to her movie and Ruusan knew she’d lost her.
“Alright, you stay here; I’ll scrounge up something to eat. Mommy’s starving all of a sudden.”
She went to the kitchen, and began to go through the fridge, looking for something that seemed at least remotely edible. The music of the alphabet movie shut off and Vivian appeared in the doorway.
“Vivi, does something smell funny to you?” Ruusan questioned, wrinkling her nose as she took a whiff of a Tupperware in the fridge.
“No,” the three year old said simply, coming in to sit on one of the stools.
“Huh.” Ruu murmured, frowning. “I think your father brought home something the other day and decided to share it, Viv.”
“Share what, Mommy?”
The blue-eyed woman smiled, and held out an orange to her daughter. “A bug, sweetheart. Mommy feels kind of off.”
“You said you were okay,” Vivian said, seeming put out.
She ruffled the mop of curls and picked out a couple of apples.
Alright. That is that. Feel free to leave a comment if you figured out what's up before I revealed it at the end. :P
Oh, crud... I just realized that the next two bits are going to spoil my surprise. How very frustrating. Oh well. Kudos to you if you figured it out before getting down to these next scrawls.
They take place, again, after about ten months, and in that time, several things happened. Namely, Jhidek being in an accident with a chemical (I think...) called tefloidite that caused him to go blind, followed promptly by the birth of his and Ruusan's first daughter, Ellora, the following day. There was a bunch of drama around all that as well, considering Ruu came pretty close to dying and such, but she was fine in the end.
It takes a month to locate a doctor who (Ha. Anyone else see that?) can fix Jay's eyes, and two days after that, he's already gotten a job. To say the least, Ruusan was not pleased over that, but he distracted her pretty well after allaying her fears.
These bits take place during the week that Jhidek is gone working, one mid-week, the other the day before her gets back, although they seem a bit disoriented, in that, the first doesn't seem to have any effect on the second.
You'll see what I mean. But, on their own, I rather like both the bits and I hope you will as well.
The darkness poured in then and she couldn’t see anything, could barely breathe, and this couldn’t be happening, not again, not to her, please Lord don’t do this to me.
Ruusan woke to more darkness interrupted only by a pale splotch that was her mother’s face. That was the only thing that saved her from panicking.
The sheets were tangled tight around her legs, and her heart was pounding from her dream; no, her nightmare. Definitely a nightmare.
Ruu drew in a shaking breath and croaked, “Momma...” She sat up with Sarris’ help that came in an arm across her shoulders.
“You were... crying, Ruu,” she replied, voice hushed in the stillness of the room as the Warrior drew a cool hand across the younger woman’s forehead.
“Did either of the girls wake up?” Ruusan asked, wiping the evidence of tears from her cheeks with a trembling hand.
Focus on the girls, don’t think about it, she told herself.
“No. Ellora almost did but she fell back asleep.” Sarris informed her, easing down onto the bed at her daughter’s side. “Do you need your comlink?”
The reminder of Jay brought tears back to Ruu’s eyes, but she blinked them away and shook her head. “No, I’ll be okay.”
Silence reigned for a long moment before Sarris murmured, “You were screaming, Ruu. It was like someone was killing you.”
Years of learning this woman, her mother, had taught Ruusan how to read the hidden emotions in her voice and on her face and right now there was a tinge of pain to her words. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, leaning into the Warrior. “It was a nightmare about Jay and... and Cameron too.”
The details of it felt like they’d been etched into her mind; the blood, the distorted scream of pain – not her own – and then the silence that had been the part to truly terrify her. He’d been motionless, not responding, then Cameron had been there – she’d known it was him from the moment he took her arm in hand – dragging her away. He’d pulled Jay’s arm around his shoulders, dragging him way into the darkness and he didn’t look back once.
Ruu didn’t remember screaming in the nightmare, but she must have. Her skin prickled and she shook her head to try and dislodge the memories. Sarris rubbed her upper arm, resting her chin on the top of her daughter's head.
Some of her bubbling fear slid away at the soothing touch, and Ruusan slumped against her mother, exhaustion pouring into her. “Sorry about this, Mom... you should be sleeping since your flight is tomorrow, not dealing with a nightmare.”
“It’s fine. I can sleep on the way home.” The Warrior said dismissively.
Did I mention Sarris visited? Calling her "the Warrior" is a reference to her being a Uhrician Elite Force Warrior, just as a reminder, and I'll go more into Ruu's nightmares after the next bit.
The apartment was dark and quiet, moonlight peeking through the shades over the windows. Ruusan lay on the couch with Ellora sleeping on her chest. Vivian had been asleep in her room for hours already and she had no wish to know what the time was now.
All that she needed to know was that it was late – or early - and even though she felt weariness weighing her eyelids down, Ruu didn’t want to get up and go back into the bedroom and the empty bed to be found there.
Ruusan studied the pale light that illuminated the living room, noting how much larger it felt right now and wishing it didn’t appear that way.
He’ll be home soon, the woman reassured herself, rubbing El’s back absently, unperturbed by the small puddle of drool staining the tank-top of her pajamas.
Jay had said he would be back tomorrow afternoon, so she just had to hold out until then, but it felt like the time between now and then was a month, not a matter of hours.
Her attempts to hide how much his absence had affected her this time from Vivian had failed rather dismally. The four-year-old could be more than observant at times, and Ruusan had already fielded a question of, “Are you sick, Mommy? You’ve got black things under your eyes.”
A quiet sigh escaped her as blue eyes went to the roof, contemplative.
As much as she missed him while he was gone, Ruu knew Jay was happy. With the device implanted into his eyes to help him see again, he was back to flying. And she was here with Vivian and Ellora, waiting for him to come home.
That was the way it was supposed to be, right? That was how it had been since the beginning, and that was how it would continue to be.
Ruusan laid an arm across her eyes, her other hand on Ellora’s back. I miss him more than I thought I would. I guess I just got used to having him around after El was born. Now though... It hurt.
A quiet breath left her. The first year of Vivian’s life had been like this, only ten times as worse. There'd only been a sleeping child and a bed devoid of a warmth she needed to be there during the heavy hours of night.
Ruu knew Jay was all right. He was out there, doing his job, doing what he loved. But when she would be just waking up in the mornings, still between sleep and awareness, and she’d reach out to find him... feeling that emptiness where he should be made her heart stop. Then she would wake fully, and remember that he was fine, just working, you don't have to be afraid.
And that is that. What doest you all think?
I mentioned explaining Ruusan's nightmares, so allow me to digress briefly on the matter. For some reason, after Cameron's death in the Original and after a rather difficult situation with a very close family friend in the Deviant, Ruusan is often subjected to nightmares when she has a lot of negative emotions swirling around inside her.
For instance, with the second bit, she'd been majorly worried about how Jay was doing, adjusting to his eyes being functional again while working at the same time, and that translated over very strongly into her dreams. She dreamed he'd died and that Cameron had dragged him away.
Also affecting her at that point were the similarities between that week and basically any point after Cam died, before she married Jay. Having a small child and waking up alone in a bed when she'd been expecting to find her husband there with her. The reminders of the devastating days following Cameron's death weighed really heavily on her mind.
And those are just a couple of emotions that her subconscious can be affected by; stress can get to her, feeling alone, even though she knows she's not, general worry over things occurring in her life, etc.
I find it, personally, to be a very interesting trait of hers. Thus far, it has cropped up more in the Original than in the Deviant, although I believe that, with all this kidnapping business, her four months completely cut off from her family and Jhidek in difficult conditions are going to have some pretty bad aftereffects on her mental state.
(I absolutely cannot wait. #sadisticwriter)
And, with that, I am finished with this post. Next, I want to do those Jaydn and Jase scrawls that I mentioned, although I can't decide whether or not to split them up into two different posts, because the bits are of some length and there are at least four of them, possibly five.
At any rate, I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into another aspect of Ruusan and thank you for putting up with all this randomness! (And muchas gracias for reading, my amazing followers and random visitors. I adore you all to bits.)
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
P.S. This forgetful writer almost forgot to let you know what Ruu was suffering from in the first bit, although you all probably know due to the following two bits. It was that evening that, with a bit of help from Jay, Ruusan realized she was pregnant with their first child. It was all quite adorable, let me tell you.
But, the three original Ruu bits I have decided aren't too awful to look at take place about ten months apart, although the last two will require a bit of explaining. As does this first one, I suppose, though it needs less than the others.
The first scrawl takes place about a year after Ruusan and Jhidek are married in the original storyline, putting Vivian at three years old, as you will read. I am contemplating not explaining the reasons behind Ruu's odd physical health until the very end of this post, so you smart readers who figure it out can congratulate yourselves on not needing to be told what was going on.
Actually, you know what, I'm going to hold on and let you guys see if you can work it out, just for kicks. Also, as a warning, this one's a bit on the old side and probably needs a bit of cleaning, but I'm not in a current mindset to do so, so you'll have to wade through the un-edited-ness. My apologies.
Ruusan puttered through the apartment, humming along with whatever was coming through the radio. Jhidek was off-planet working, so she and Vivian had been left to their own devices for a few days.
The three year old was caught up in an alphabet video, and her vocabulary had been expanding by the day. Ruu had been surprised though, that her daughter didn’t ask a hundred million questions, preferring to observe and learn for herself what something did.
She picked up a pair of socks and added them to the laundry basket on her hip, pausing to watch Vivi’s video for a moment.
The animated characters on the screen were in the midst of singing the alphabet song, and Vivian’s brow was lowered in concentration.
Ruu continued her foray for dirty clothing, getting the towels from the kitchen and bathrooms then went to the washer. She started a load, bent retrieve the dry clothes, and reached out to steady herself when she straightened. The world went black for a moment, and Ruusan hurriedly sat down, fighting a sudden bout of nausea.
Her heart pounded as she tried to control the urge to throw up.
Ruu worked to rationalize. We haven’t been anywhere; I haven’t been exposed to anything. So what’s going on?
When her stomach settled enough so she could stand again, Ruusan left the laundry and went on unsteady legs to sit on the couch near Vivian.
Her daughter’s green eyes turned her way when she came back into view. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
“Mommy just feels funny,” Ruu said, smiling a bit to put the child’s worries to ease. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
Vivian watched her for a moment, and then came over to sit beside her on the couch. She didn’t comment further, drawn in once more by her video, but Ruusan reached out to smooth her curls that were going wild.
After a few minutes, the nausea and dizziness faded entirely, leaving Ruu wondering what had happened as she contemplated returning to her work.
“When’s Daddy going to be home?” Vivian asked, looking away from her show.
The woman tucked the child close and kissed her forehead. “He said tomorrow, but we can watch for him tonight as well.”
“At bedtime?” Vivi checked, brow furrowing.
“Yes, at bedtime,” Ruu said, getting to her feet and carrying the child with her. “Are you hungry?”
Vivian thought for a minute, gaze returning to her movie and Ruusan knew she’d lost her.
“Alright, you stay here; I’ll scrounge up something to eat. Mommy’s starving all of a sudden.”
She went to the kitchen, and began to go through the fridge, looking for something that seemed at least remotely edible. The music of the alphabet movie shut off and Vivian appeared in the doorway.
“Vivi, does something smell funny to you?” Ruusan questioned, wrinkling her nose as she took a whiff of a Tupperware in the fridge.
“No,” the three year old said simply, coming in to sit on one of the stools.
“Huh.” Ruu murmured, frowning. “I think your father brought home something the other day and decided to share it, Viv.”
“Share what, Mommy?”
The blue-eyed woman smiled, and held out an orange to her daughter. “A bug, sweetheart. Mommy feels kind of off.”
“You said you were okay,” Vivian said, seeming put out.
She ruffled the mop of curls and picked out a couple of apples.
Alright. That is that. Feel free to leave a comment if you figured out what's up before I revealed it at the end. :P
Oh, crud... I just realized that the next two bits are going to spoil my surprise. How very frustrating. Oh well. Kudos to you if you figured it out before getting down to these next scrawls.
They take place, again, after about ten months, and in that time, several things happened. Namely, Jhidek being in an accident with a chemical (I think...) called tefloidite that caused him to go blind, followed promptly by the birth of his and Ruusan's first daughter, Ellora, the following day. There was a bunch of drama around all that as well, considering Ruu came pretty close to dying and such, but she was fine in the end.
It takes a month to locate a doctor who (Ha. Anyone else see that?) can fix Jay's eyes, and two days after that, he's already gotten a job. To say the least, Ruusan was not pleased over that, but he distracted her pretty well after allaying her fears.
These bits take place during the week that Jhidek is gone working, one mid-week, the other the day before her gets back, although they seem a bit disoriented, in that, the first doesn't seem to have any effect on the second.
You'll see what I mean. But, on their own, I rather like both the bits and I hope you will as well.
The darkness poured in then and she couldn’t see anything, could barely breathe, and this couldn’t be happening, not again, not to her, please Lord don’t do this to me.
Ruusan woke to more darkness interrupted only by a pale splotch that was her mother’s face. That was the only thing that saved her from panicking.
The sheets were tangled tight around her legs, and her heart was pounding from her dream; no, her nightmare. Definitely a nightmare.
Ruu drew in a shaking breath and croaked, “Momma...” She sat up with Sarris’ help that came in an arm across her shoulders.
“You were... crying, Ruu,” she replied, voice hushed in the stillness of the room as the Warrior drew a cool hand across the younger woman’s forehead.
“Did either of the girls wake up?” Ruusan asked, wiping the evidence of tears from her cheeks with a trembling hand.
Focus on the girls, don’t think about it, she told herself.
“No. Ellora almost did but she fell back asleep.” Sarris informed her, easing down onto the bed at her daughter’s side. “Do you need your comlink?”
The reminder of Jay brought tears back to Ruu’s eyes, but she blinked them away and shook her head. “No, I’ll be okay.”
Silence reigned for a long moment before Sarris murmured, “You were screaming, Ruu. It was like someone was killing you.”
Years of learning this woman, her mother, had taught Ruusan how to read the hidden emotions in her voice and on her face and right now there was a tinge of pain to her words. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, leaning into the Warrior. “It was a nightmare about Jay and... and Cameron too.”
The details of it felt like they’d been etched into her mind; the blood, the distorted scream of pain – not her own – and then the silence that had been the part to truly terrify her. He’d been motionless, not responding, then Cameron had been there – she’d known it was him from the moment he took her arm in hand – dragging her away. He’d pulled Jay’s arm around his shoulders, dragging him way into the darkness and he didn’t look back once.
Ruu didn’t remember screaming in the nightmare, but she must have. Her skin prickled and she shook her head to try and dislodge the memories. Sarris rubbed her upper arm, resting her chin on the top of her daughter's head.
Some of her bubbling fear slid away at the soothing touch, and Ruusan slumped against her mother, exhaustion pouring into her. “Sorry about this, Mom... you should be sleeping since your flight is tomorrow, not dealing with a nightmare.”
“It’s fine. I can sleep on the way home.” The Warrior said dismissively.
Did I mention Sarris visited? Calling her "the Warrior" is a reference to her being a Uhrician Elite Force Warrior, just as a reminder, and I'll go more into Ruu's nightmares after the next bit.
The apartment was dark and quiet, moonlight peeking through the shades over the windows. Ruusan lay on the couch with Ellora sleeping on her chest. Vivian had been asleep in her room for hours already and she had no wish to know what the time was now.
All that she needed to know was that it was late – or early - and even though she felt weariness weighing her eyelids down, Ruu didn’t want to get up and go back into the bedroom and the empty bed to be found there.
Ruusan studied the pale light that illuminated the living room, noting how much larger it felt right now and wishing it didn’t appear that way.
He’ll be home soon, the woman reassured herself, rubbing El’s back absently, unperturbed by the small puddle of drool staining the tank-top of her pajamas.
Jay had said he would be back tomorrow afternoon, so she just had to hold out until then, but it felt like the time between now and then was a month, not a matter of hours.
Her attempts to hide how much his absence had affected her this time from Vivian had failed rather dismally. The four-year-old could be more than observant at times, and Ruusan had already fielded a question of, “Are you sick, Mommy? You’ve got black things under your eyes.”
A quiet sigh escaped her as blue eyes went to the roof, contemplative.
As much as she missed him while he was gone, Ruu knew Jay was happy. With the device implanted into his eyes to help him see again, he was back to flying. And she was here with Vivian and Ellora, waiting for him to come home.
That was the way it was supposed to be, right? That was how it had been since the beginning, and that was how it would continue to be.
Ruusan laid an arm across her eyes, her other hand on Ellora’s back. I miss him more than I thought I would. I guess I just got used to having him around after El was born. Now though... It hurt.
A quiet breath left her. The first year of Vivian’s life had been like this, only ten times as worse. There'd only been a sleeping child and a bed devoid of a warmth she needed to be there during the heavy hours of night.
Ruu knew Jay was all right. He was out there, doing his job, doing what he loved. But when she would be just waking up in the mornings, still between sleep and awareness, and she’d reach out to find him... feeling that emptiness where he should be made her heart stop. Then she would wake fully, and remember that he was fine, just working, you don't have to be afraid.
And that is that. What doest you all think?
I mentioned explaining Ruusan's nightmares, so allow me to digress briefly on the matter. For some reason, after Cameron's death in the Original and after a rather difficult situation with a very close family friend in the Deviant, Ruusan is often subjected to nightmares when she has a lot of negative emotions swirling around inside her.
For instance, with the second bit, she'd been majorly worried about how Jay was doing, adjusting to his eyes being functional again while working at the same time, and that translated over very strongly into her dreams. She dreamed he'd died and that Cameron had dragged him away.
Also affecting her at that point were the similarities between that week and basically any point after Cam died, before she married Jay. Having a small child and waking up alone in a bed when she'd been expecting to find her husband there with her. The reminders of the devastating days following Cameron's death weighed really heavily on her mind.
And those are just a couple of emotions that her subconscious can be affected by; stress can get to her, feeling alone, even though she knows she's not, general worry over things occurring in her life, etc.
I find it, personally, to be a very interesting trait of hers. Thus far, it has cropped up more in the Original than in the Deviant, although I believe that, with all this kidnapping business, her four months completely cut off from her family and Jhidek in difficult conditions are going to have some pretty bad aftereffects on her mental state.
(I absolutely cannot wait. #sadisticwriter)
And, with that, I am finished with this post. Next, I want to do those Jaydn and Jase scrawls that I mentioned, although I can't decide whether or not to split them up into two different posts, because the bits are of some length and there are at least four of them, possibly five.
At any rate, I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into another aspect of Ruusan and thank you for putting up with all this randomness! (And muchas gracias for reading, my amazing followers and random visitors. I adore you all to bits.)
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
P.S. This forgetful writer almost forgot to let you know what Ruu was suffering from in the first bit, although you all probably know due to the following two bits. It was that evening that, with a bit of help from Jay, Ruusan realized she was pregnant with their first child. It was all quite adorable, let me tell you.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
A Summary of Storylines
This post is going to be entirely dedicated to the explaining of three storylines that myself and my best friend, Penny Kearney, have developed over the past six years of our lives. Well, one of them is six years old; the other two are under one.
There is the Original Storyline, the Steampunk Storyline, and the most recent Deviant Storyline. I've give brief intros to how they each began before each summary.
Also, there is a great chance these will be really confusing to you guys and I'm incredibly sorry for it, but there were just a million things that went on during all that time, so please just leave a comment if you need clarification on something and I'll get back to you with something more understandable as soon as possible.
...And let me warn you that my "summaries", as you will soon see, might as well be novels. I am no good at summarizing, although, in my defense, I am summarizing 20+ years worth of multiple character's lives. At least for the Original Storyline.
One more thing to note: both the Original and Deviant storylines take place in the Zephron Galaxy, which includes several planets, among them Sinjaro Kahn, Uhric, Norsha'ac, Gogam, Karon, Tigersoon, Tiloon, and Klowdarr.
Original Storyline:
Began: Oh, heavens, years ago. Penny and I started talk-gaming (character developing? What do regular writers call that?) with a taciturn Uhrician Elite Force Warrior and a green-eyed intruder who are about as night and day as Penny and I are. I think Sarris and Tara are kind of a testament to our own friendship, in how highly unlikely it is and yet it still happened.
General Summary: Sarris Nadir (Gogamian, UEF Warrior) and Tara Benson (Norsha'acite, bounty hunter) met under rather unlikely circumstances and became dysfunctional friends, though Sarris didn't admit to it for years. Literally, years.
Tara met Nuridarr Vhander during a brief, accidental stint on Gogam, which he helped her get through alive and in one piece and then they both were rescued from the planet by Tara's brother, Luke Benson (bounty hunter as well). Immediately after, Tara, Nuridarr, and Luke took a sudden leave of absence from the galaxy for two years, during which time Sarris an acquaintance through Tara by the name of Novarr Schaefe. (My apologies for similarities between Novarr and Nuridarr's names. Mostly accidental, and you never get them mixed up once you know them.)
After that, Tara and Luke find three of their younger siblings. Their entire family has been missing for several years, and they do find them somewhere between finding Ron, Andro, and Mara and Luke 'dying'. Except he didn't actually die. (Don't ask me, not my characters, and I can't recall anyways.) Following Luke's death by a couple of months, Tara married Nuridarr. Sarris and Novarr are just... living during this time. Not a lot is going on for them.
Tara and Nur's first daughter, Raina, was born a handful of months later, followed closely by Sarris and Novarr's adopted, newborn daughter, Ruusan. And Jhidek/Jay (Tara and Nur's son) came along a bit after that. (Don't worry, that was the end of the baby boom for seven years.) Sarris, a Ronin in the Uhrician Elite Force's ranking system, went into "the reserves", in a way, during all this that way she could be at home to look after Ruusan.
There was another kind of blank seven years, where life just went on and the Vhanders and Schaefe's raised their respective children/child. Jaydn and Merri were adopted/born about the same time. Jaydn was five when Novarr whisked her away from an inevitably bad situation after her parents died/were killed. (The details are still kind of sketchy at that part.) In the following eight years, there were a passel more Vhander children, while the Schaefe household remained safely at two. The two families are far from strangers, to the point where the parents are all "aunties" and "uncles" to each other's offspring.
Jaydn follows in Novarr's footsteps, taking up bounty hunting and eventually turning into something of a loner, which is her downfall in the end. Ruusan, after being lost for a time, decides to become an Emergency Response Transport Paramedic, which means that she's in the ambulance, at the scene of the crash. She attends medical school and takes up a job as an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, where her parents live. It's in the hospital that she meets Cameron Armstrong, a fairly average guy who is dying from a non-contagious, but uncurable, disease. When he asks her to marry him, she does.
Cameron's death ten months later coincides with the birth of their daughter, Vivian. Two months pass, and Sarris works with Tara and Nuridarr to find an apartment near the Vhander home on Norsha'ac for Ruusan and Vivian. Staying on Kahn is only a constant reminder of Cameron for Ruu, and the vote is unaninmous that she needs some time away.
Over the course of two years and through a series of author-caused events to cause a little heart-pounding anxiety and to strengthen bonds, Ruusan falls in love with childhood friend and never-before-romantic-interest, Jhidek. And he falls in love with Vivi, and Ruu too. (What? Vivian's an angel. Anybody would fall in love with her first.)
So they get married, and Ellora, the first Ruu/Jay bundle of adorableness, is born fifteen months later. Jaydn dies from her injuries after her ship is shot down by space pirates, much to the trauma of her family.
Here, I shall end. (Though there is a lot of unaccounted drama, let me assure you.)
Steampunk Storyline:
Began: Sometime in early 2012, Penny and I had been curious as to how Jaydn and Nuridarr would get along, as they've both got the same blood running through their veins and all. We couldn't come up with plausible trouble for them to get into in the original storyline, so we picked them up and moved them to Penny's steampunk world (a city named Sanbourne) which she has with a friend of hers, Katana. It really only served to show Jade's true colors.
General Summary: Nuridarr, now Nathaniel, and Jaydn, shortened to Jade, meet when she's ten-ish and he's eighteen-ish and she's an orphan and he's thrown himself out of his Gogamian crime....syndicate/gang/tribe/thing. Ten years later, and the two of them have, quite successfully, made their living on bounty hunting. Life is good, Jade is happy, and I kind of want her radio that she's got.
Insert Natasha Bennet, a rather fiery woman they nab, who ends up biting Nathan ("Shikhan, should you take something for rabies?" "I've had worse.") before they take her to meet the person who hired them to find her. It turns out to be a Gogamian that Nathaniel knew back when he was still with them. Also a man that Nathan isn't going to hand Tasha over to, so he sends Jade and Tasha off while he faces their client and his goons.
To summarize the rest, because this was an incredibly difficult storyline to write and it's hard to capture everything that happens, Nathaniel falls in love with Tasha, and it doesn't go over well with Jade. She moves out, starts working on her own, and goes to great pains to avoid seeing Tasha.
A lot of things occur in the next year or two.
Jade locates Tasha's missing family with the help of her contact, Charles, and an ex-assassin-turned-bounty-hunter named Jase Drouais gets mixed up in everything through a former connection to the kidnapper and the disappearance of his brother, Markham. Unfortunately, Jade gets laid up with an injured leg and is out of commission for the actual rescue.
Later, there is the appearance of a government official bent on killing all lowlifes. He's sees them as a taint upon the clean-blooded people of higher society in Sanbourne. Jade, Nathan, and his daughter with Tasha, are on the hit-list due to their heritage. After a really close call which Jase, the ex-assassin who she now works with, saves her from, they go to make sure that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are safe and the three of them end up leaving town. Jade, Jase, and Tasha's brother, Lucas (Luke, originally) work together to try and locate, then bring down, the government official, Horace Scott. It is thought for a time that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina perish in a train wreck, which makes life difficult, to say the least.
After that, Penny and I never actually finished talk-gaming it. And I know it sounds like Jade's perfectly balanced through all those events, but she really isn't, and after it turns out that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are alive, she skips town for four years, staying away as long as she needs to so she can screw her head on straight again. A lot happens to her while she's gone, including a couple of near-death experiences, a semi-relationship with a guy named Sato, and a friendship with a woman named Kensey during her last year
who ends up dying from sickness. After that, she goes back to Sanbourne to see if she'll be welcomed back after practically abandoning the people there that cared about her. And while things were far from what they'd been years prior, Nathan and Tara were willing to let her back into their lives to start rebuilding what she'd crumbled.
Deviant Storyline:
Began: Back in August or thereabouts of 2012, with Penny's curiosity over what would've happened if Luke had been unable to locate Tara on Gogam and save her, and by extension, Nuridarr, from the planet. Initially, I was a spectator, interested in the idea for itself and the effect it would have on Sarris. I didn't really become involved until the characters got their revenge for Penny and I wondering if Jaydn might've been an antagonist all along that we'd been trying to make into a protagonist. The question came up of how Jade might've turned out different had she been raised up with good, strong morals while still on Gogam. If that hard setting that she was born for was where she needed to be in order to be instilled with a good heart. The idea caught on quickly, and thus it began.
General Summary:
Tara's transponder is damaged during her initial days on Gogam, so instead of being rescued by Luke, she and Nuridarr are forced to remain on the planet, living on the run from his tribe who've branded him a traitor. She has gives up hope of ever getting off Gogam quickly and they just survive for a year or so. They're negotiating for supplies with an tribe that's an enemy with Nuridarr's old tribe when the tribe is attacked. In the chaos, Tara rescues a three-year-old baby girl named Jaydn after her motherr is killed. (Please don't feel bad, her parents were a far cry from what parents should be.)
For a small amount of time, the plan is to drop her off with another tribe, but Tara falls in love pretty quickly and while Nur was initially opposed to the idea of keeping her, he gets attached as well and they adopt Jaydn as their own.
Over the course of the following six years which are spent constantly moving, fighting to survive against both the planet and other Gogamians, Jade is brought up included in every process, being given her own duties and responsibilities, and she's taught that they all protect each other. Not every man for himself, as the rest of Gogam does.
While Tara gave up on leaving, Jaydn's addition to their family gave Nuridarr a newfound motivation to get Tara and Jade off of Gogam and to a better life out in the rest of Zephron. And he does, joining a pirate gang in order to get them passage on a ship headed off Gogam.
Jade is nine years old when the time to leave comes, and they realize that Tara is pregnant either while on the ship, or shortly after they escape into the rest of the galaxy.
While all this has been happening on Gogam, Sarris has spent the six years searching the galaxy for Tara, not even having a place to start, but refusing to quit until she finds Tara, living or dead. Novarr, only an acquaintance at this point, keeps in touch with her and does some of his own searching, while Luke, unable to get to Tara on Gogam, breaks off his efforts early on to continue looking for their missing family.
After this point, events get fairly fuzzy, as Penny and I haven't even talk-gamed their leaving. But Raina and Jhidek are both born within a couple of years of their getting of Gogam and Jade settles into her role as Imo's (Daddy's) wing mate and big sister with
ease, much to our relief.
Merri follows seven years after Jhidek, when Jade is seventeen, Raina eight, and Jay seven.
In the deviant, their focus as hunters is trained much more on the Gogamians who leave their home planet to terrorize the rest of Zephron and either turning them back or finishing them off. The effect on them as a family is a much more trained, orderly, and possibly an even tighter and closer dynamic than the original. They protect each other and carry out their missions together once Raina and Jhidek get older. (Not sure how they worked the Merri angle when she showed up later.)
Meanwhile, Sarris and Novarr slowly drifted toward each other, Tara's return to their worlds drawing them back together. He's there to help support Sarris as she deals with the guilt she feels over not finding Tara sooner, but eventually it turns to something more.
Ruusan does not go forgotten either. Sarris helped rescue her from a hostage situation on Sinjaro Kahn when Ruusan was ten and on her way back to Norsha'ac following a failed adoption attempt. Always a decisive thinker, Sarris decided that she didn't want to let Ruu go back to the orphanage and worked with the social service system on Kahn to legally adopt her. I'm not sure what her relationship status was with Novarr at the time, but they might've been on the edge of getting married when Sarris picked up Ruu and that was the turning point.
For a few years, the Vhander and Schaefe households would get together, so Ruusan wasn't strangers with Raina, Jhidek, and Merri, but when they got older, the visits dropped off some, possibly because the Vhanders, now with the kids of a safer age to aid in the fight, got busier with missions. Not positive on that account either.
Ruusan headed to med-school on Sinjaro Kahn from Uhric at eighteen, taking a more intensive course and finishing in four and a half years to return to Uhric where her parents and Jensen lived.
(Sarris became a Grandmaster while Tara was gone, which equates to a general or some such, and Jensen is a Ronin [equivalent = colonel] who works as her aide and was with her when she helped to rescue Ruusan. He started as a trusted aide and friend and was basically adopted into the family after a couple of years. Ruu sees him as an older brother and close confidante.)
The unintended silence between the two families came to a rather abrupt end when Jhidek, injured in an explosion while he and Raina were on a mission, dropped in, quite literally, to Ruusan's apartment. Things were touch-and-go, but she saved his life and
things just take off from there. I won't bore you with those details, but suffice it to say, after a couple of spontaneous visits, a close encounter with the bad sort of Gogamian for Ruu, a few months of silence to protect her on Jay's part, a tought fight that ended with a "missing, perhaps dead" news report on the Vhanders, and a conniving Tara, Ruusan and Jhidek worked out what they both wanted. Not without a bit of drama, of course, but they were married just under a month later.
And the rest of the story, as they say, has yet to be told.
And that's all of it! For the moment, at least. The only really "finished" storyline is the Steampunk storyline. The other two kind of go through stop-again-go-again expanding. Currently, Penny and I are caught up in the Deviant again, although we're at the tail end,
instead of the beginning.
To clarify that, we're talk-gaming at two points in the storyline. The first point is with Nuridarr, Tara, and Jaydn on Gogam and Jade is currently seven. The second point is twenty-five-some years down the road, with Ruusan and Jhidek, although I don't think we
truly intended to pick it up as agressively as we have. (It's only mostly my fault; I was curious if Ruu and Jay would work out in the Deviant as they did in the Original.)
Once again, please feel entirely free to either leave a comment here with questions or on my OYAN profile, where I can be found as PenWielder62. These storylines are ones that Penny and I have invested a lot of time and thought into, and they're actually quite
important to me, so I would greatly enjoy helping you clear up whatever it is that I've confused you with.
And thank you so much, as always, for reading. Knowing that there are people who actually enjoy what I write means a great deal to me.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
There is the Original Storyline, the Steampunk Storyline, and the most recent Deviant Storyline. I've give brief intros to how they each began before each summary.
Also, there is a great chance these will be really confusing to you guys and I'm incredibly sorry for it, but there were just a million things that went on during all that time, so please just leave a comment if you need clarification on something and I'll get back to you with something more understandable as soon as possible.
...And let me warn you that my "summaries", as you will soon see, might as well be novels. I am no good at summarizing, although, in my defense, I am summarizing 20+ years worth of multiple character's lives. At least for the Original Storyline.
One more thing to note: both the Original and Deviant storylines take place in the Zephron Galaxy, which includes several planets, among them Sinjaro Kahn, Uhric, Norsha'ac, Gogam, Karon, Tigersoon, Tiloon, and Klowdarr.
Original Storyline:
Began: Oh, heavens, years ago. Penny and I started talk-gaming (character developing? What do regular writers call that?) with a taciturn Uhrician Elite Force Warrior and a green-eyed intruder who are about as night and day as Penny and I are. I think Sarris and Tara are kind of a testament to our own friendship, in how highly unlikely it is and yet it still happened.
General Summary: Sarris Nadir (Gogamian, UEF Warrior) and Tara Benson (Norsha'acite, bounty hunter) met under rather unlikely circumstances and became dysfunctional friends, though Sarris didn't admit to it for years. Literally, years.
Tara met Nuridarr Vhander during a brief, accidental stint on Gogam, which he helped her get through alive and in one piece and then they both were rescued from the planet by Tara's brother, Luke Benson (bounty hunter as well). Immediately after, Tara, Nuridarr, and Luke took a sudden leave of absence from the galaxy for two years, during which time Sarris an acquaintance through Tara by the name of Novarr Schaefe. (My apologies for similarities between Novarr and Nuridarr's names. Mostly accidental, and you never get them mixed up once you know them.)
After that, Tara and Luke find three of their younger siblings. Their entire family has been missing for several years, and they do find them somewhere between finding Ron, Andro, and Mara and Luke 'dying'. Except he didn't actually die. (Don't ask me, not my characters, and I can't recall anyways.) Following Luke's death by a couple of months, Tara married Nuridarr. Sarris and Novarr are just... living during this time. Not a lot is going on for them.
Tara and Nur's first daughter, Raina, was born a handful of months later, followed closely by Sarris and Novarr's adopted, newborn daughter, Ruusan. And Jhidek/Jay (Tara and Nur's son) came along a bit after that. (Don't worry, that was the end of the baby boom for seven years.) Sarris, a Ronin in the Uhrician Elite Force's ranking system, went into "the reserves", in a way, during all this that way she could be at home to look after Ruusan.
There was another kind of blank seven years, where life just went on and the Vhanders and Schaefe's raised their respective children/child. Jaydn and Merri were adopted/born about the same time. Jaydn was five when Novarr whisked her away from an inevitably bad situation after her parents died/were killed. (The details are still kind of sketchy at that part.) In the following eight years, there were a passel more Vhander children, while the Schaefe household remained safely at two. The two families are far from strangers, to the point where the parents are all "aunties" and "uncles" to each other's offspring.
Jaydn follows in Novarr's footsteps, taking up bounty hunting and eventually turning into something of a loner, which is her downfall in the end. Ruusan, after being lost for a time, decides to become an Emergency Response Transport Paramedic, which means that she's in the ambulance, at the scene of the crash. She attends medical school and takes up a job as an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, where her parents live. It's in the hospital that she meets Cameron Armstrong, a fairly average guy who is dying from a non-contagious, but uncurable, disease. When he asks her to marry him, she does.
Cameron's death ten months later coincides with the birth of their daughter, Vivian. Two months pass, and Sarris works with Tara and Nuridarr to find an apartment near the Vhander home on Norsha'ac for Ruusan and Vivian. Staying on Kahn is only a constant reminder of Cameron for Ruu, and the vote is unaninmous that she needs some time away.
Over the course of two years and through a series of author-caused events to cause a little heart-pounding anxiety and to strengthen bonds, Ruusan falls in love with childhood friend and never-before-romantic-interest, Jhidek. And he falls in love with Vivi, and Ruu too. (What? Vivian's an angel. Anybody would fall in love with her first.)
So they get married, and Ellora, the first Ruu/Jay bundle of adorableness, is born fifteen months later. Jaydn dies from her injuries after her ship is shot down by space pirates, much to the trauma of her family.
Here, I shall end. (Though there is a lot of unaccounted drama, let me assure you.)
Steampunk Storyline:
Began: Sometime in early 2012, Penny and I had been curious as to how Jaydn and Nuridarr would get along, as they've both got the same blood running through their veins and all. We couldn't come up with plausible trouble for them to get into in the original storyline, so we picked them up and moved them to Penny's steampunk world (a city named Sanbourne) which she has with a friend of hers, Katana. It really only served to show Jade's true colors.
General Summary: Nuridarr, now Nathaniel, and Jaydn, shortened to Jade, meet when she's ten-ish and he's eighteen-ish and she's an orphan and he's thrown himself out of his Gogamian crime....syndicate/gang/tribe/thing. Ten years later, and the two of them have, quite successfully, made their living on bounty hunting. Life is good, Jade is happy, and I kind of want her radio that she's got.
Insert Natasha Bennet, a rather fiery woman they nab, who ends up biting Nathan ("Shikhan, should you take something for rabies?" "I've had worse.") before they take her to meet the person who hired them to find her. It turns out to be a Gogamian that Nathaniel knew back when he was still with them. Also a man that Nathan isn't going to hand Tasha over to, so he sends Jade and Tasha off while he faces their client and his goons.
To summarize the rest, because this was an incredibly difficult storyline to write and it's hard to capture everything that happens, Nathaniel falls in love with Tasha, and it doesn't go over well with Jade. She moves out, starts working on her own, and goes to great pains to avoid seeing Tasha.
A lot of things occur in the next year or two.
Jade locates Tasha's missing family with the help of her contact, Charles, and an ex-assassin-turned-bounty-hunter named Jase Drouais gets mixed up in everything through a former connection to the kidnapper and the disappearance of his brother, Markham. Unfortunately, Jade gets laid up with an injured leg and is out of commission for the actual rescue.
Later, there is the appearance of a government official bent on killing all lowlifes. He's sees them as a taint upon the clean-blooded people of higher society in Sanbourne. Jade, Nathan, and his daughter with Tasha, are on the hit-list due to their heritage. After a really close call which Jase, the ex-assassin who she now works with, saves her from, they go to make sure that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are safe and the three of them end up leaving town. Jade, Jase, and Tasha's brother, Lucas (Luke, originally) work together to try and locate, then bring down, the government official, Horace Scott. It is thought for a time that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina perish in a train wreck, which makes life difficult, to say the least.
After that, Penny and I never actually finished talk-gaming it. And I know it sounds like Jade's perfectly balanced through all those events, but she really isn't, and after it turns out that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are alive, she skips town for four years, staying away as long as she needs to so she can screw her head on straight again. A lot happens to her while she's gone, including a couple of near-death experiences, a semi-relationship with a guy named Sato, and a friendship with a woman named Kensey during her last year
who ends up dying from sickness. After that, she goes back to Sanbourne to see if she'll be welcomed back after practically abandoning the people there that cared about her. And while things were far from what they'd been years prior, Nathan and Tara were willing to let her back into their lives to start rebuilding what she'd crumbled.
Deviant Storyline:
Began: Back in August or thereabouts of 2012, with Penny's curiosity over what would've happened if Luke had been unable to locate Tara on Gogam and save her, and by extension, Nuridarr, from the planet. Initially, I was a spectator, interested in the idea for itself and the effect it would have on Sarris. I didn't really become involved until the characters got their revenge for Penny and I wondering if Jaydn might've been an antagonist all along that we'd been trying to make into a protagonist. The question came up of how Jade might've turned out different had she been raised up with good, strong morals while still on Gogam. If that hard setting that she was born for was where she needed to be in order to be instilled with a good heart. The idea caught on quickly, and thus it began.
General Summary:
Tara's transponder is damaged during her initial days on Gogam, so instead of being rescued by Luke, she and Nuridarr are forced to remain on the planet, living on the run from his tribe who've branded him a traitor. She has gives up hope of ever getting off Gogam quickly and they just survive for a year or so. They're negotiating for supplies with an tribe that's an enemy with Nuridarr's old tribe when the tribe is attacked. In the chaos, Tara rescues a three-year-old baby girl named Jaydn after her motherr is killed. (Please don't feel bad, her parents were a far cry from what parents should be.)
For a small amount of time, the plan is to drop her off with another tribe, but Tara falls in love pretty quickly and while Nur was initially opposed to the idea of keeping her, he gets attached as well and they adopt Jaydn as their own.
Over the course of the following six years which are spent constantly moving, fighting to survive against both the planet and other Gogamians, Jade is brought up included in every process, being given her own duties and responsibilities, and she's taught that they all protect each other. Not every man for himself, as the rest of Gogam does.
While Tara gave up on leaving, Jaydn's addition to their family gave Nuridarr a newfound motivation to get Tara and Jade off of Gogam and to a better life out in the rest of Zephron. And he does, joining a pirate gang in order to get them passage on a ship headed off Gogam.
Jade is nine years old when the time to leave comes, and they realize that Tara is pregnant either while on the ship, or shortly after they escape into the rest of the galaxy.
While all this has been happening on Gogam, Sarris has spent the six years searching the galaxy for Tara, not even having a place to start, but refusing to quit until she finds Tara, living or dead. Novarr, only an acquaintance at this point, keeps in touch with her and does some of his own searching, while Luke, unable to get to Tara on Gogam, breaks off his efforts early on to continue looking for their missing family.
After this point, events get fairly fuzzy, as Penny and I haven't even talk-gamed their leaving. But Raina and Jhidek are both born within a couple of years of their getting of Gogam and Jade settles into her role as Imo's (Daddy's) wing mate and big sister with
ease, much to our relief.
Merri follows seven years after Jhidek, when Jade is seventeen, Raina eight, and Jay seven.
In the deviant, their focus as hunters is trained much more on the Gogamians who leave their home planet to terrorize the rest of Zephron and either turning them back or finishing them off. The effect on them as a family is a much more trained, orderly, and possibly an even tighter and closer dynamic than the original. They protect each other and carry out their missions together once Raina and Jhidek get older. (Not sure how they worked the Merri angle when she showed up later.)
Meanwhile, Sarris and Novarr slowly drifted toward each other, Tara's return to their worlds drawing them back together. He's there to help support Sarris as she deals with the guilt she feels over not finding Tara sooner, but eventually it turns to something more.
Ruusan does not go forgotten either. Sarris helped rescue her from a hostage situation on Sinjaro Kahn when Ruusan was ten and on her way back to Norsha'ac following a failed adoption attempt. Always a decisive thinker, Sarris decided that she didn't want to let Ruu go back to the orphanage and worked with the social service system on Kahn to legally adopt her. I'm not sure what her relationship status was with Novarr at the time, but they might've been on the edge of getting married when Sarris picked up Ruu and that was the turning point.
For a few years, the Vhander and Schaefe households would get together, so Ruusan wasn't strangers with Raina, Jhidek, and Merri, but when they got older, the visits dropped off some, possibly because the Vhanders, now with the kids of a safer age to aid in the fight, got busier with missions. Not positive on that account either.
Ruusan headed to med-school on Sinjaro Kahn from Uhric at eighteen, taking a more intensive course and finishing in four and a half years to return to Uhric where her parents and Jensen lived.
(Sarris became a Grandmaster while Tara was gone, which equates to a general or some such, and Jensen is a Ronin [equivalent = colonel] who works as her aide and was with her when she helped to rescue Ruusan. He started as a trusted aide and friend and was basically adopted into the family after a couple of years. Ruu sees him as an older brother and close confidante.)
The unintended silence between the two families came to a rather abrupt end when Jhidek, injured in an explosion while he and Raina were on a mission, dropped in, quite literally, to Ruusan's apartment. Things were touch-and-go, but she saved his life and
things just take off from there. I won't bore you with those details, but suffice it to say, after a couple of spontaneous visits, a close encounter with the bad sort of Gogamian for Ruu, a few months of silence to protect her on Jay's part, a tought fight that ended with a "missing, perhaps dead" news report on the Vhanders, and a conniving Tara, Ruusan and Jhidek worked out what they both wanted. Not without a bit of drama, of course, but they were married just under a month later.
And the rest of the story, as they say, has yet to be told.
And that's all of it! For the moment, at least. The only really "finished" storyline is the Steampunk storyline. The other two kind of go through stop-again-go-again expanding. Currently, Penny and I are caught up in the Deviant again, although we're at the tail end,
instead of the beginning.
To clarify that, we're talk-gaming at two points in the storyline. The first point is with Nuridarr, Tara, and Jaydn on Gogam and Jade is currently seven. The second point is twenty-five-some years down the road, with Ruusan and Jhidek, although I don't think we
truly intended to pick it up as agressively as we have. (It's only mostly my fault; I was curious if Ruu and Jay would work out in the Deviant as they did in the Original.)
Once again, please feel entirely free to either leave a comment here with questions or on my OYAN profile, where I can be found as PenWielder62. These storylines are ones that Penny and I have invested a lot of time and thought into, and they're actually quite
important to me, so I would greatly enjoy helping you clear up whatever it is that I've confused you with.
And thank you so much, as always, for reading. Knowing that there are people who actually enjoy what I write means a great deal to me.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Writing: Aftermath
...to Jaydn's death.
I'm making up for my lack of posting, see? Two posts. Maybe three, if I can hang onto consciousness long enough to work on the next thing I've got in mind.
These are just my scrawls for the aftermath of Jade's death. Truth be told, while I didn't shed a tear writing the actual death scene, I cried writing these. (I suppose the time at which I wrote it might've been part of that. It was either really later, or really early. One of the two. Somewhere between 12 AM and 2 AM, how about that?)
Other notes to keep in mind:
-- Charro ki sotan -- Gogamian, an apology.
-- Charro shik -- Gogamian, I love you.
Jay equates to Jhidek Vhander, Ruu's (epic) hubby who she loves to bits.
Charles is Jade's contact who is amazing and originally from the steampunk alternate reality.
Novarr held Sarris by the shoulders, his voice shaking as he told her, “Don’t blame yourself for this, Sar. You can’t blame yourself for this.”
She shook her head, grabbing his forearms, but the Warrior couldn’t force his hands away. She drew in shuddering breaths as she continued to shake her head, over and over and over, unable to stop, because this could not be happening.
Dear God, don’t do this to me, Sarris begged silently as Novarr pulled her close, dropping his head to her shoulder.
Ruu’s grip tightened on the comm. and her voice was so very quiet. “You’re lying to me.”
“I’m sorry, Ruu. I’m sorry. I wish I were, but I’m not.” Novarr said to her, sounding as unstable as her heart was beginning to feel.
“No, Dad, you have to be lying to me. Jade can’t be—be—“ She couldn’t finish, couldn’t think of her little sister – her precious little sister – and imagine never being able to see her brown eyes again. “Please, Daddy, don’t tell me this,” Ruu pleaded, her voice catching in her throat as the first tear slid down her cheek. “Please, Daddy.”
“I’m sorry, Ruu. I’m sorry.”
She crossed her free arm over her stomach, a sob breaking from her throat. “How, Daddy? Who took her away from us?”
It took a moment for him to answer, voice rough as well and Ruusan tried to remember if she’d ever seen her father cry. “Her ship was shot down by space pirates, Ruu. Charles tracked her down a couple of days ago.”
“Was anyone there? Please tell me she wasn’t alone, at the very least, Daddy.” Where was Jay?
“She wasn’t. A local found her before she— before she was gone,” the Hunter explained to his remaining daughter, fighting the urge to breakdown again. “He said... he said that she had things she wanted to tell us through him.”
Ruu clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs, desperate for someone to hold her, but Jay had gone to his parents for a bit to talk with Raina and his dad.
“She said she loved us, Ruu. All of us. And that—“ he halted to try and regain his composure. “Charro ki sotan and charro shik. He said those were her last words to us, Ruu.”
The woman nodded, unable to speak, unable to get the words from her closed throat, because Jaydn was gone. Jaydn was dead.
Neither Sarris nor Novarr slept that night. Her grief came in the tears that traced her face, not a noise passing from her lips, but Novarr’s chest heaved for air as he cried for his lost daughter.
The apartment was so black that night, so empty and lonely and Novarr clung to Sarris, clung to his wife, because he didn’t know how to handle this.
He couldn’t handle this. His Jaydn, his baby girl who held his hand so very tightly that first day even though she hadn’t known a lick of Galactic. So he clung to Sarris and tried not to think, tried not to realize she was gone forever.
And since that all looks like such a puny amount, I'm going to go find my initial scrawl for when Novarr brought Jaydn home in the very beginning, when she's five and Ruu is seven, I believe.
Additional notes:
-- Ey, Ji -- Gogamian, yes and no.
Galactic equates to English.
And Novarr is a bounty hunter. Have I mentioned that before?
“Sar, you around?” Novarr called, leading Jaydn into the apartment by the hand.
The five-year old studied her new surroundings with quiet interest, and looked up at him with a bit of question in her gaze.
“Hang on a sec,” he said, ruffling her hair and heading farther into the space.
Jaydn trailed along at his heels as Sarris appeared with a basket of clothes on her hip and Ruusan hanging onto her arm, in the midst of asking something.
His wife and daughter both paused at his small shadow.
“Say, Sar, how much of your Gogamian can you recall?” Novarr asked with a congenial grin.
“...Why?” She said, setting her basket on the ground, gray eyes on Jaydn.
“Because this little lady doesn’t seem to speak a lick of Galactic,” the man explained, guiding the child forward with a hand on her head. “It was a very quiet trip home, to say the least.”
Sarris crouched down to Jaydn’s level, meeting the girl’s brown gaze with a calculating look. It was a moment before she spoke, and Novarr didn’t understand a word of what she said.
But Jaydn seemed to perk up and she replied to whatever Sarris had said with a simple, “Ji.”
Sar glanced up at him. “Where are her parents?”
“Dead.” He said, settling down on the floor as well. “Gogamian pirate ship, and she was the only one left after all was said and done. I wasn’t sure what they were going to do with her, so I decided to take responsibility.”
His wife nodded and returned her attention to Jaydn. The five-year-old voiced what seemed to be a question.
Sarris glanced over her shoulder at Ruusan, whose blue eyes portrayed her confusion with the situation.
Novarr smiled at his daughter and held out an arm for her while Sarris answered Jaydn’s inquiry.
“What’s she saying?” Ruu asked, hugging his waist.
“She wants to know if you’re our daughter, because your eyes are so bright and your hair is so curly,” Sarris said, without looking away from Jaydn.
Novarr reached out to tap the child on the shoulder, bringing her gaze around. He pointed to his chest and said, “Novarr.”
Accustomed to this game, Jaydn pointed to herself and dutifully repeated, “Jaydn.”
He tapped Ruu’s nose. “Ruusan.”
Jaydn blinked. “Ruusan?”
“Ey,” Sarris broke in, then continued with a sentence that included Ruusan’s name and her own.
“Sar, you need to ask her if she wants to be part of our family,” Novarr murmured after a few minutes of interchange in Gogamian between Sarris and Jaydn.
Gray eyes flicked to him, and he caught the hopeful light in her eyes as she nodded.
Jaydn waited patiently for them to finish talking, looking around the apartment with now-undisguised curiosity.
...You have no idea how many little red lines I've got in this bit, as Sar, Novarr, Ruusan, and Jaydn, are all not included in the dictionary and thus get marked as spelled wrong.
At any rate, that shall be all for this post.
I hope you maybe enjoyed it, despite the initial depressing stuff and then the subsequent heavy-weighting of Jaydn's death, and thank you, as always, for reading. You have no idea how much it means to me to know that somebody actually enjoys reading the little scribbles I come up with.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
I'm making up for my lack of posting, see? Two posts. Maybe three, if I can hang onto consciousness long enough to work on the next thing I've got in mind.
These are just my scrawls for the aftermath of Jade's death. Truth be told, while I didn't shed a tear writing the actual death scene, I cried writing these. (I suppose the time at which I wrote it might've been part of that. It was either really later, or really early. One of the two. Somewhere between 12 AM and 2 AM, how about that?)
Other notes to keep in mind:
-- Charro ki sotan -- Gogamian, an apology.
-- Charro shik -- Gogamian, I love you.
Jay equates to Jhidek Vhander, Ruu's (epic) hubby who she loves to bits.
Charles is Jade's contact who is amazing and originally from the steampunk alternate reality.
Novarr held Sarris by the shoulders, his voice shaking as he told her, “Don’t blame yourself for this, Sar. You can’t blame yourself for this.”
She shook her head, grabbing his forearms, but the Warrior couldn’t force his hands away. She drew in shuddering breaths as she continued to shake her head, over and over and over, unable to stop, because this could not be happening.
Dear God, don’t do this to me, Sarris begged silently as Novarr pulled her close, dropping his head to her shoulder.
Ruu’s grip tightened on the comm. and her voice was so very quiet. “You’re lying to me.”
“I’m sorry, Ruu. I’m sorry. I wish I were, but I’m not.” Novarr said to her, sounding as unstable as her heart was beginning to feel.
“No, Dad, you have to be lying to me. Jade can’t be—be—“ She couldn’t finish, couldn’t think of her little sister – her precious little sister – and imagine never being able to see her brown eyes again. “Please, Daddy, don’t tell me this,” Ruu pleaded, her voice catching in her throat as the first tear slid down her cheek. “Please, Daddy.”
“I’m sorry, Ruu. I’m sorry.”
She crossed her free arm over her stomach, a sob breaking from her throat. “How, Daddy? Who took her away from us?”
It took a moment for him to answer, voice rough as well and Ruusan tried to remember if she’d ever seen her father cry. “Her ship was shot down by space pirates, Ruu. Charles tracked her down a couple of days ago.”
“Was anyone there? Please tell me she wasn’t alone, at the very least, Daddy.” Where was Jay?
“She wasn’t. A local found her before she— before she was gone,” the Hunter explained to his remaining daughter, fighting the urge to breakdown again. “He said... he said that she had things she wanted to tell us through him.”
Ruu clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs, desperate for someone to hold her, but Jay had gone to his parents for a bit to talk with Raina and his dad.
“She said she loved us, Ruu. All of us. And that—“ he halted to try and regain his composure. “Charro ki sotan and charro shik. He said those were her last words to us, Ruu.”
The woman nodded, unable to speak, unable to get the words from her closed throat, because Jaydn was gone. Jaydn was dead.
Neither Sarris nor Novarr slept that night. Her grief came in the tears that traced her face, not a noise passing from her lips, but Novarr’s chest heaved for air as he cried for his lost daughter.
The apartment was so black that night, so empty and lonely and Novarr clung to Sarris, clung to his wife, because he didn’t know how to handle this.
He couldn’t handle this. His Jaydn, his baby girl who held his hand so very tightly that first day even though she hadn’t known a lick of Galactic. So he clung to Sarris and tried not to think, tried not to realize she was gone forever.
And since that all looks like such a puny amount, I'm going to go find my initial scrawl for when Novarr brought Jaydn home in the very beginning, when she's five and Ruu is seven, I believe.
Additional notes:
-- Ey, Ji -- Gogamian, yes and no.
Galactic equates to English.
And Novarr is a bounty hunter. Have I mentioned that before?
“Sar, you around?” Novarr called, leading Jaydn into the apartment by the hand.
The five-year old studied her new surroundings with quiet interest, and looked up at him with a bit of question in her gaze.
“Hang on a sec,” he said, ruffling her hair and heading farther into the space.
Jaydn trailed along at his heels as Sarris appeared with a basket of clothes on her hip and Ruusan hanging onto her arm, in the midst of asking something.
His wife and daughter both paused at his small shadow.
“Say, Sar, how much of your Gogamian can you recall?” Novarr asked with a congenial grin.
“...Why?” She said, setting her basket on the ground, gray eyes on Jaydn.
“Because this little lady doesn’t seem to speak a lick of Galactic,” the man explained, guiding the child forward with a hand on her head. “It was a very quiet trip home, to say the least.”
Sarris crouched down to Jaydn’s level, meeting the girl’s brown gaze with a calculating look. It was a moment before she spoke, and Novarr didn’t understand a word of what she said.
But Jaydn seemed to perk up and she replied to whatever Sarris had said with a simple, “Ji.”
Sar glanced up at him. “Where are her parents?”
“Dead.” He said, settling down on the floor as well. “Gogamian pirate ship, and she was the only one left after all was said and done. I wasn’t sure what they were going to do with her, so I decided to take responsibility.”
His wife nodded and returned her attention to Jaydn. The five-year-old voiced what seemed to be a question.
Sarris glanced over her shoulder at Ruusan, whose blue eyes portrayed her confusion with the situation.
Novarr smiled at his daughter and held out an arm for her while Sarris answered Jaydn’s inquiry.
“What’s she saying?” Ruu asked, hugging his waist.
“She wants to know if you’re our daughter, because your eyes are so bright and your hair is so curly,” Sarris said, without looking away from Jaydn.
Novarr reached out to tap the child on the shoulder, bringing her gaze around. He pointed to his chest and said, “Novarr.”
Accustomed to this game, Jaydn pointed to herself and dutifully repeated, “Jaydn.”
He tapped Ruu’s nose. “Ruusan.”
Jaydn blinked. “Ruusan?”
“Ey,” Sarris broke in, then continued with a sentence that included Ruusan’s name and her own.
“Sar, you need to ask her if she wants to be part of our family,” Novarr murmured after a few minutes of interchange in Gogamian between Sarris and Jaydn.
Gray eyes flicked to him, and he caught the hopeful light in her eyes as she nodded.
Jaydn waited patiently for them to finish talking, looking around the apartment with now-undisguised curiosity.
...You have no idea how many little red lines I've got in this bit, as Sar, Novarr, Ruusan, and Jaydn, are all not included in the dictionary and thus get marked as spelled wrong.
At any rate, that shall be all for this post.
I hope you maybe enjoyed it, despite the initial depressing stuff and then the subsequent heavy-weighting of Jaydn's death, and thank you, as always, for reading. You have no idea how much it means to me to know that somebody actually enjoys reading the little scribbles I come up with.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Writing: "The End" (Jaydn's Death)
Man, its been a while, again. Which I apologize for, profusely.
Life has been life, I have been me, and writing had been predominantly with my bestie, Penny. We've been working on that deviant storyline I mentioned... a long time ago. If I've mentioned it at all. I can't actually remember right now.
In light of that, I've decided to post a bit I wrote for Jaydn, Ruusan's sister and my most troubling character, in the original storyline, where she is... not who I wish she'd turned out to be.
Things may be a bit jumbled, as I haven't posted anything with Jaydn prior to now, but, to be blunt, this scrawl is the one I wrote the night I decided that Jade would die. I know that it's kind of heartless to put it that way, but it wasn't looking like Jade was ever going to change her way. While her actions weren't exactly bad, they still hurt, both herself and her family.
(After this, I think I'm going to write out a summary-ish something for the three different storylines involving Penny and I's characters, to help you keep them straight as I inevitably post a some stuff that I've had tucked into my back pocket.)
Jaydn is Gogamian, which is the language that she speaks throughout the scrawl. I shall provide a translation, so you can understand her last words:
-- Shak -- A curse, which she shouldn't be saying, but does anyways.
-- Charro ki sotan -- A very sincere apology
-- Charro shik -- I love you.
(There's a reason they both start with charro, but I'm too lazy to go look up the document explaining it all.)
Alright, I won't keep you any longer.
“I’ll be back sometime soon,” Jaydn promised, on the doorstep of Ruusan and Jhidek’s apartment, bag over her shoulder.
Vivian clung to her legs stubbornly, but Ruu smiled, Ellora in the sling on her front.
“You’d better be back, Jade, or you will be in serious trouble,” her elder sister warned, dragging her into a hug.
“Yes, Ruu,” she said obediently, embracing her sister in return.
“I love you, Jaydn. Be safe, alright? I want to see you back in one piece.” Ruu’s voice was serious next to her ear, but it drew a partial smile from Jaydn.
“Love you too, sis,” she murmured, drawing away and ruffling her niece’s hair in parting.
~~*~~
Jaydn leaned back in the seat, holding the comm. to her ear as she watched stars slip by out the viewport. “Don’t worry, Dad, I’m going to be back in town by next week, then we can do something. Dinner, maybe.”
“You know I worry about you?” Novarr questioned over the link.
An amused smile tugged at her mouth. “Yes, but you really don’t need to. I’m fine, truly.”
His sigh was lengthy. “You said that the day you nearly died, Jaydn.”
Jade’s good humor fled in a heartbeat, and she didn’t say anything in reply, struggling with the pain that rose up in her chest.
“We want to see you in a week, Jade, and no later or I’ll have your mother send out all her little minions to find you and so we can bring you back.”
“Mom doesn’t have minions, Dad,” Jaydn reminded quietly, pushing her fingers into her pant pockets.
“You know what I mean.”
If she could have seen him, she knew he would’ve been shrugging in that offhand way he always did.
“I love you, Jade. You my favorite Jaydn in the whole galaxy.”
“I’m the only Jaydn you’ve got, so I hope I’m your favorite,” Jade said, unable to resist the urge to poke some halfhearted humor back at him.
“Exactly,” Novarr murmured. “The only one I’ve got, so be careful and give your mom a call. She worries a lot about you.”
“I’ve got it, Dad.”
It was only after he bid her farewell and she closed the link between them that she realized she’d forgotten to tell him I love you in return. Well, she could do it when she got home. Filing that memo away, she keyed in Charles' comm. number to find out where they were meeting the next day.
~~*~~
The only thing Jaydn could process when she regained consciousness was that pain was burning, tearing, and ripping its way through her. It was like fire in her veins and she couldn’t keep from screaming. Over and over, until she had no breath left in her lungs to continue crying out.
Heat surrounded her, but when Jade tried to open her eyes to see why, she couldn’t, and she couldn’t move either.
It took one experimental twitch of her legs to realize why, and to make agony take over her mind again. She couldn’t feel her toes, but not because her legs were numb, but because there was nothing to feel from her knees downward.
Jaydn drew in a ragged breath, reaching out, scrabbling for something to try and pull herself upright. Pain was overwhelming her to the point of being unable to function though and she collapsed back onto the metal floor beneath her.
Coherency drifted and Jade didn’t see the way blood pooled beneath her body from her severed legs, its edges spreading by the moment.
“—otta wake up!!” A voice yelled above her.
Jaydn cracked her eyes open, almost unable to do so because of a stinging sensation that she couldn’t pinpoint the reason for. Why am I so cold?
A hazy, blurry face hovered overhead, with a shock of blond hair and blue eyes that made her think of Ruu.
I’m not seeing her again, am I?
“My dad’s coming,” the boy said, his words too loud for her taste. “He’ll know what to do. You’re gonna be okay.”
Shak, I forget to tell Dad I loved him when we talked...and I never called Mom like I said I would...
“Hey, are you awake? You need to try and stay conscious, okay?”
Charles is going to be waiting at the rendezvous point...
“Oi, don’t close your eyes,” he said urgently, and Jaydn felt a light touch on her forehead.
“I need...” she started but her voice wouldn’t come out.
Jade blinked her eyes open again, staring upwards, at the gray roof above her, swallowing to try and make the words come out. The boy was there, a frown on his fair face.
“I need...” and she heard the cracking words sound this time, and nearly closed her eyes again, in relief this time. “I need...”
“Hey, you shouldn’t talk. Everything’s gonna be okay, I promise.”
The woman would’ve shaken her head if it didn’t hurt so much. The coldness was spreading; she could feel it in her chest now, creeping closer and closer to her heart.
“You have to tell them...” Jaydn managed, every sound that left her tongue burning her throat. “You tell them that I love them.”
“Who?” He asked before he could stop himself. “Wait, no, you’re going to tell them yourself. You’re gonna be okay.”
A ghost of a smile pulled at her lips. Jade wondered if the moist feeling on them was blood. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” Blue eyes were fierce with determination. “You’re gonna go home to your family and you’re gonna be okay.”
“I’m bleeding out, buddy,” Jaydn said faintly, vision blurring again from the extended effort to focus. “I just want you... to tell them... that I love them.”
There was a long silence from above her, then an uneven voice said, “Okay. I’ll tell them, but only if you can’t.”
Sadness tugged at her consciousness and Jade lifted one arm, fingers outspread. At least, she thought they were. The coldness had long since penetrated her hands. “Hold my hand?” She requested, closing her eyes.
A hand wrapped around her, warm and rough and alive. “You’ve gotta be okay.”
Jaydn shook her head absently, holding tight to him, to that last bit of life. Pain had all but faded now. Physical pain, that was. Not the pain in her heart.
“Tell Ruu that I love her...” she whispered. “Tell Momma that I love her... Tell Daddy that...I love him...”
The words were coming out quieter, but Jade refused to let them fail her now.
“Charro ki sotan. Tell them... charro ki sotan... and... charro shik...”
The hand around hers tightened. “I’ve got it. I’ll tell them. I promise you, I will tell them. I won’t forget.”
“Thank you,” Jaydn said, and drew in a last breath, then the coldness reached her heart...
And made it stop beating.
With that pleasant note, let me inform you that, after Cameron dies, Ruu moves to Norsha'acite to get away from the memories and ends up falling in love with Jhidek Vhander a couple of years later. Ellora is their first daughter. And Charles is an awesome side character who works with Jaydn occasionally as her contact. He originated in the alternate Steampunk storyline that Penny and I did, but I love him so much that I drag him along to other realities.
Also, I'm going to double-check this, but if there are any glaring errors, please blame it on the fact that I wrote this out while sitting in a moving van on a highway in Korea. Tends to do funny things to your spelling quality.
I feel like I'm a roll, so don't be too surprised if there is a post or two stacked on top of this. I have some aftermath that I wrote that I'll probably put up.
Thank you so much for reading and putting up with my highly erratic posting schedule! And sorry for putting up this up right after Valentine's Day.
Actually, how was your Valentine's? Hopefully, it went really well and maybe you even got some chocolate. I got a bothersome stitch out of my mouth, a freebie flower at the commissary, and then went to the airport to meet our cousins' grandparents who had a layover here in Seoul.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Life has been life, I have been me, and writing had been predominantly with my bestie, Penny. We've been working on that deviant storyline I mentioned... a long time ago. If I've mentioned it at all. I can't actually remember right now.
In light of that, I've decided to post a bit I wrote for Jaydn, Ruusan's sister and my most troubling character, in the original storyline, where she is... not who I wish she'd turned out to be.
Things may be a bit jumbled, as I haven't posted anything with Jaydn prior to now, but, to be blunt, this scrawl is the one I wrote the night I decided that Jade would die. I know that it's kind of heartless to put it that way, but it wasn't looking like Jade was ever going to change her way. While her actions weren't exactly bad, they still hurt, both herself and her family.
(After this, I think I'm going to write out a summary-ish something for the three different storylines involving Penny and I's characters, to help you keep them straight as I inevitably post a some stuff that I've had tucked into my back pocket.)
Jaydn is Gogamian, which is the language that she speaks throughout the scrawl. I shall provide a translation, so you can understand her last words:
-- Shak -- A curse, which she shouldn't be saying, but does anyways.
-- Charro ki sotan -- A very sincere apology
-- Charro shik -- I love you.
(There's a reason they both start with charro, but I'm too lazy to go look up the document explaining it all.)
Alright, I won't keep you any longer.
“I’ll be back sometime soon,” Jaydn promised, on the doorstep of Ruusan and Jhidek’s apartment, bag over her shoulder.
Vivian clung to her legs stubbornly, but Ruu smiled, Ellora in the sling on her front.
“You’d better be back, Jade, or you will be in serious trouble,” her elder sister warned, dragging her into a hug.
“Yes, Ruu,” she said obediently, embracing her sister in return.
“I love you, Jaydn. Be safe, alright? I want to see you back in one piece.” Ruu’s voice was serious next to her ear, but it drew a partial smile from Jaydn.
“Love you too, sis,” she murmured, drawing away and ruffling her niece’s hair in parting.
~~*~~
Jaydn leaned back in the seat, holding the comm. to her ear as she watched stars slip by out the viewport. “Don’t worry, Dad, I’m going to be back in town by next week, then we can do something. Dinner, maybe.”
“You know I worry about you?” Novarr questioned over the link.
An amused smile tugged at her mouth. “Yes, but you really don’t need to. I’m fine, truly.”
His sigh was lengthy. “You said that the day you nearly died, Jaydn.”
Jade’s good humor fled in a heartbeat, and she didn’t say anything in reply, struggling with the pain that rose up in her chest.
“We want to see you in a week, Jade, and no later or I’ll have your mother send out all her little minions to find you and so we can bring you back.”
“Mom doesn’t have minions, Dad,” Jaydn reminded quietly, pushing her fingers into her pant pockets.
“You know what I mean.”
If she could have seen him, she knew he would’ve been shrugging in that offhand way he always did.
“I love you, Jade. You my favorite Jaydn in the whole galaxy.”
“I’m the only Jaydn you’ve got, so I hope I’m your favorite,” Jade said, unable to resist the urge to poke some halfhearted humor back at him.
“Exactly,” Novarr murmured. “The only one I’ve got, so be careful and give your mom a call. She worries a lot about you.”
“I’ve got it, Dad.”
It was only after he bid her farewell and she closed the link between them that she realized she’d forgotten to tell him I love you in return. Well, she could do it when she got home. Filing that memo away, she keyed in Charles' comm. number to find out where they were meeting the next day.
~~*~~
The only thing Jaydn could process when she regained consciousness was that pain was burning, tearing, and ripping its way through her. It was like fire in her veins and she couldn’t keep from screaming. Over and over, until she had no breath left in her lungs to continue crying out.
Heat surrounded her, but when Jade tried to open her eyes to see why, she couldn’t, and she couldn’t move either.
It took one experimental twitch of her legs to realize why, and to make agony take over her mind again. She couldn’t feel her toes, but not because her legs were numb, but because there was nothing to feel from her knees downward.
Jaydn drew in a ragged breath, reaching out, scrabbling for something to try and pull herself upright. Pain was overwhelming her to the point of being unable to function though and she collapsed back onto the metal floor beneath her.
Coherency drifted and Jade didn’t see the way blood pooled beneath her body from her severed legs, its edges spreading by the moment.
“—otta wake up!!” A voice yelled above her.
Jaydn cracked her eyes open, almost unable to do so because of a stinging sensation that she couldn’t pinpoint the reason for. Why am I so cold?
A hazy, blurry face hovered overhead, with a shock of blond hair and blue eyes that made her think of Ruu.
I’m not seeing her again, am I?
“My dad’s coming,” the boy said, his words too loud for her taste. “He’ll know what to do. You’re gonna be okay.”
Shak, I forget to tell Dad I loved him when we talked...and I never called Mom like I said I would...
“Hey, are you awake? You need to try and stay conscious, okay?”
Charles is going to be waiting at the rendezvous point...
“Oi, don’t close your eyes,” he said urgently, and Jaydn felt a light touch on her forehead.
“I need...” she started but her voice wouldn’t come out.
Jade blinked her eyes open again, staring upwards, at the gray roof above her, swallowing to try and make the words come out. The boy was there, a frown on his fair face.
“I need...” and she heard the cracking words sound this time, and nearly closed her eyes again, in relief this time. “I need...”
“Hey, you shouldn’t talk. Everything’s gonna be okay, I promise.”
The woman would’ve shaken her head if it didn’t hurt so much. The coldness was spreading; she could feel it in her chest now, creeping closer and closer to her heart.
“You have to tell them...” Jaydn managed, every sound that left her tongue burning her throat. “You tell them that I love them.”
“Who?” He asked before he could stop himself. “Wait, no, you’re going to tell them yourself. You’re gonna be okay.”
A ghost of a smile pulled at her lips. Jade wondered if the moist feeling on them was blood. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” Blue eyes were fierce with determination. “You’re gonna go home to your family and you’re gonna be okay.”
“I’m bleeding out, buddy,” Jaydn said faintly, vision blurring again from the extended effort to focus. “I just want you... to tell them... that I love them.”
There was a long silence from above her, then an uneven voice said, “Okay. I’ll tell them, but only if you can’t.”
Sadness tugged at her consciousness and Jade lifted one arm, fingers outspread. At least, she thought they were. The coldness had long since penetrated her hands. “Hold my hand?” She requested, closing her eyes.
A hand wrapped around her, warm and rough and alive. “You’ve gotta be okay.”
Jaydn shook her head absently, holding tight to him, to that last bit of life. Pain had all but faded now. Physical pain, that was. Not the pain in her heart.
“Tell Ruu that I love her...” she whispered. “Tell Momma that I love her... Tell Daddy that...I love him...”
The words were coming out quieter, but Jade refused to let them fail her now.
“Charro ki sotan. Tell them... charro ki sotan... and... charro shik...”
The hand around hers tightened. “I’ve got it. I’ll tell them. I promise you, I will tell them. I won’t forget.”
“Thank you,” Jaydn said, and drew in a last breath, then the coldness reached her heart...
And made it stop beating.
With that pleasant note, let me inform you that, after Cameron dies, Ruu moves to Norsha'acite to get away from the memories and ends up falling in love with Jhidek Vhander a couple of years later. Ellora is their first daughter. And Charles is an awesome side character who works with Jaydn occasionally as her contact. He originated in the alternate Steampunk storyline that Penny and I did, but I love him so much that I drag him along to other realities.
Also, I'm going to double-check this, but if there are any glaring errors, please blame it on the fact that I wrote this out while sitting in a moving van on a highway in Korea. Tends to do funny things to your spelling quality.
I feel like I'm a roll, so don't be too surprised if there is a post or two stacked on top of this. I have some aftermath that I wrote that I'll probably put up.
Thank you so much for reading and putting up with my highly erratic posting schedule! And sorry for putting up this up right after Valentine's Day.
Actually, how was your Valentine's? Hopefully, it went really well and maybe you even got some chocolate. I got a bothersome stitch out of my mouth, a freebie flower at the commissary, and then went to the airport to meet our cousins' grandparents who had a layover here in Seoul.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)