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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 11, 2013 11:02:37 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- How had it come to this?
Her brother was supposed to be with her. She knew that, but how could she blame him for this? It was her own fault that she was stuck in this situation, she’s the one who had told him she could make it home on her own. That he could be free to go hang out with his friends. That she hadn’t particularly needed him this night. Emmeline already felt bad enough that mom and dad had made him come out with her, so she’d said she’d be fine.
She didn’t want to ruin his life, after all, just because she was a little too needy, a little too afraid to leave the house.
But now she was cornered. She’d taken a wrong turn at a street she thought she’d recognized and found herself in this—place. It was definitely a lower-budget neighborhood, and it was pretty dark out already. The sun was on its way past the horizon and clouds were covering the sky, making it a little darker a little earlier, and it seemed there were some unsavory folks around.
“I—I didn’t bring any money,” she squeaked pathetically, keeping her eyes down and focused on the man’s midriff. It wasn’t like staring at his face was going to help anything if she had to come identify him at the police station. He and one other person had her pinned against a wall in an alley just off the street.
Emmeline didn’t like his sneer, and the other reason she wasn’t looking at either of them was because she quite disliked the looks on their faces. “Well, you’ll just have to pay us for passage another way!” he jibed. Emmeline swallowed hard—that’s right. He’d said something about that earlier. They’d realized that she was lost—probably because of the look on her face—and told her they’d help her find her way for a small fee—one that she probably never would have been able to pay.
There had to be some way to get out of here—and if she did, she was never ever leaving the house again. Ever. She tried to be polite and swiftly duck back onto the main street, but one guy—the leader she assumed—grabbed her arm hard and slammed her back against the wall even harder, making her cry out sharply before he put a hand over her mouth.
“Now, no screaming without permission,” the other guy said breathily, running a hand down the side of her head. Emmeline closed her eyes tight and wished herself dead.
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 14, 2013 16:35:13 GMT -8
tagged: Emmeline. date: may 14th, 8pm.notes: notes. When Moose had gotten out of prison, he'd set himself a goal. Realistically, it was the goal that almost every felon set for themselves when they got out: Don't go back in. For Moose it was a whole extra level of necessity though. He had no memories of a life outside of prison, and nothing but fifteen dull years of existence to go on. Prison had been his everything, and it had left him feeling dull and hollow. Everything on the outside was better. The air was clearer, the sun was nicer, and the feeling of grass under his toes was amazing. Not that he got to see much grass, but when he did, it was worth it. Even if the food was in considerably shorter supply, it was still better, and Moose would take sleeping on a bench outside prison to sleeping on a bed in one.
But he knew how fragile his freedom was. His sentence had been fifteen years to life, and his parole terms were strict. They were a razor wire wrapped around his throat, and if he did anything, they might very well lop his head off. The list of things he could and couldn't do was as long as his arm, but the jist of it was simple: Don't break the law. Tell your parole officer everything. Don't have weapons. To his credit, Moose had done everything in his power to obey those rules. He had no weapons, he'd told his parole officer the first day after being hired (rather than the mandatory three days), and he'd even alerted his parole officer to little things that weren't mandatory, like the fact that he'd stayed overnight at the hostel. He was doing everything he could to stay within both the letter and meaning of the law, and avoiding any messy gray areas.
The messy gray areas were what would do him in. The law was clear that if he broke the law, he'd be back in jail. The problem was that 'breaking the law' was a messy grey area in itself. If someone tried to punch him, and he punched them back too hard and hurt them, even if it was ruled 'mostly not his fault' he still ran the risk of ending up in jail. Unless he was one-hundred-percent not at fault, that risk was always going to be there.
Which was why Moose was entirely willing to let a young girl get mugged. Money was money. It was important, but someone elses money (or hell, even his money) wasn't worth going back to jail. He was lurking not far off from the group, lingering in the shadow of a building, and he was completely fine with standing there and letting it happen--until one of the thugs pushed a bit too far. Moose might not have wanted to get involved and risk himself, but at the same time, he couldn't just walk away while some girl was taken advantage of. He absolutely wasn't going to stand for that, and as the man touched her face, muttering something Moose couldn't hear, he stepped out of the shadows.
Moose was big, and he took full advantage of that. The number of altercations he'd been involved in during his time in prison was small, and the vast majority of those had been over before they started. People simply didn't want to mess with someone who was a good foot taller than them, and he was a foot taller then the average man. Someone like the girl, who couldn't have been more than five five, was absolutely tiny compared to him, and he had no intention of wasting the advantage of surprise.
He wasted no time in heading over for them, calling out loudly as he went. The first thing was to get them off guard--the second task was to make sure they realized that the girl wasn't going to be worth their time. "Amy! There you are." His voice was loud, and he was making no attempts to sneak up as he brushed right past the no doubt stunned men, hooking an arm around the girl the way a man would his younger sister... or daughter, because up close he realized she was even younger then he'd thought. Certainly young enough to be his daughter, even if there was absolutely zero resemblance.
"I told you not to go wandering around." He instructed, hoping she was going to go along with it, and hoping that the men would rapidly decide it wasn't worth messing with a girl and her absolutely terrifyingly huge father.
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 14, 2013 17:49:25 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- There would be no recovery from this, Emmeline just knew it. Her skin scrawled with each passing millisecond that this man’s skin touched hers, but the combined feeling of fear along with the hand clamped over her mouth kept her from calling out: surely someone was nearby? Surely someone would come if she called?
As if whatever God existed were answering her silent plea for help, a voice called her name—or what sounded like her name. Emmeline’s eyes opened and for one glorious second she thought her brother had come to find her and would chase off these men—he was a hockey player; they had to be tough! She knew she could count on her brother—but no, the voice was too deep and nowhere close to her brother’s.
But the guy removed his hand from her mouth and the grip on her arm was lessened. She might have fallen, but the man who came to her rescue—was it someone she knew? Emmeline gave him a quick look, but decided that she most definitely would have remembered him—he had a very distinct body type.
Then how had he known her nickname—?
No—no he’d called her Amy. Her mind hadn’t quite registered it until then.
So it was like on TV, then. He was a stranger coming to her aid by pretending to be somebody she knew. He couldn’t possibly know her name so he’d just called her something off the top of his head—that had to be it. Then she would have to play along—but what was she supposed to be? A sister? A daughter? Definitely not his girlfriend—she glanced at his face on instinct and was immediately ready to not gather any information from his face but—
That scar, across his nose—he had to be older or as old as her dad. Then that was it—she’d pretend to be his daughter! If—if she could even get her voice to work, or the altercation lasted long enough. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air, until she managed to get a warbled “Sorry,” through the tears.
The man that had been on her other side had stumbled away, and both were immensely startled by the man who had appeared to save their toy—they’d been ready to fend him off at the start, but after getting a good look in the dim light, they’d decided that was not a terribly brilliant idea—he was like, twice their size and looked scary—way too scary. Like any street-savvy punk (except for one particular red-headed girl), they decided not to mess with him and just ran off like they’d done something wrong and had just got caught.
Emmeline swallowed hard, relieved that they weren’t going to contest it, and then it all rushed over her. Despite the fact that this man was a complete stranger—and under different circumstances she probably would have quickly crossed the street if he’d been walking in her general direction on the sidewalk—she burst into tears and clung to his stranger’s shirt.
Oh her therapist was going to have a handful after this one.
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 15, 2013 7:07:17 GMT -8
tagged: character. date: date and time.notes: notes. Oh god, she was crying. Moose was not prepared for crying. Crying was an outlier, a strange thing that rarely happened in prison. He could count the number of times he'd cried on a single finger, and that had been in happiness. People didn't cry because they were afraid in prison. You just didn't. If you did, you might as well have painted a target on your back. There were only two acceptable reasons to cry that Moose had seen--one, if someone close to you had died. If that happened, mostly people just stayed in their cells for a while until they were ready to come out, and no one tended to bother them. Moose had never encountered that, because as far as he knew he didn't have anyone outside. He had no idea what family he did or didn't have, and since no one had contacted him, he could only assume they either didn't care or were already dead. The second reason was if you were in a lot of pain, and it did have to be a lot. Moose had been lucky enough to not break any bones or end up seriously injured while in prison, and while it was understandable that even the toughest guy might cry when he was in excruciating pain, it was still looked down on.
Needless to say, the amount of experience Moose had with people crying because they were afraid was absolutely zero. He didn't even have the vaguest idea of how he was supposed to comfort a girl who was crying, and when she abruptly latched onto his side the moment the thugs were out of the way... well, he had even less of an idea. She was sort of hugging him, and he'd never even been hugged before, let alone hugged by someone who was crying. What was he supposed to do? He knew if people hugged you, you were supposed to hug them back, but she was so damn small, and Moose was genuinely worried he'd crush her if he did it wrong.
Up on the edge of the rooftop, Aura settled down, her multifaceted eyes keeping a watch over the scene. Ever since they'd encountered Dominic, the pair had been a lot more careful, and Moose had even come up with a simple enough signal for Aura to take off and stay away for a bit. She didn't like it, but it had become a necessity.
Hesitantly, Moose reached down to pat the girl on the head, trying to sound comforting when he spoke. At the very least he didn't sound angry, which was what really mattered. "It's fine, they're all gone. C'mon, we should get you back to a main street." Which begged the question of why the girl was there. Was she lost? A runaway? If she was a runaway, then Moose really wasn't prepared for that, either, and it was obvious that she wasn't either.
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 15, 2013 11:00:30 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- A few awkward moments passed, though Emmeline was barely aware of how awkward it actually was while she was crying. It took her about that long to gain control of herself again, and the little pat on the head from the big guy helped a little bit. Emmeline relinquished her grip on his shirt and rubbed a fist against her eyes to dry the remaining tears. She sniffled a bit, then looked up—way up—at the big guy.
Her eyes widened slightly in surprise: she could recognize him. Emmeline’s gaze lingered on that scar for a second and then she realized she was being rude.
He had spoken to her after all.
She nodded her head slightly and averted her gaze as she always does. “Um. . . thank you,” she muttered, fidgeting a bit where she stood. A few stray tears were still leaking from her lids, and she continued to sniffle for a bit afterwards, as if she was on the verge of another little melt down. She kind of was, but she didn’t want to cry anymore in front of this stranger. It was terribly embarrassing and he probably didn’t appreciate it.
Maybe he would regret saving her if she continued to cry anymore.
Emmeline felt she had to explain herself, but even as she started speaking she felt more and more pathetic. She didn’t break into a sob, but her tears did start fresh even as she tried to contain herself. “I—I was trying to walk home and—I took a wrong turn and—they found me before—I could call someone and—they seemed like they wanted—to help but they—and,” she trailed off and sniffed loudly as she allowed him to guide her away.
However, she hadn’t realized she had yet to let go of his shirt with one hand.
Oh—where were her manners. “My name is Emmeline,” she murmured between sniffles.
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 15, 2013 11:31:09 GMT -8
tagged: character. date: date and time.notes: notes. It was not the first time someone stared at his scar, and it wouldn't be the last. It was an obvious feature on a man the size of a mountain, and if someone went to look at him properly, their eyes were probably going to wander to it. Whether or not they stayed was another story, but plenty did. It was the sort of scar that rarely showed up in America anymore, the sort of scar that implied he'd been stitched up with string in the back alley. In fact, he'd had a professional doing the stitching, but at the time the doctors had been almost entirely sure that he was going to kick the bucket, and hadn't bothered spending the time to make it look nice. Really, all they'd done was stitch it together enough that he wasn't going to bleed out, and then they'd gone to work on the rest of his injuries.
By the time they'd finished and someone had noticed the old stitches were still in, it was too late to redo it all without having to make a whole separate deal of it.
She was so tiny and scared. She was like what he imagined a doe would look like--some frail little woodland creature who did god knows what. Of course, he'd never seen a doe (or even a deer, let alone a moose), but he'd seen one in a book once, and that was the impression he was getting. The fact that she was back to crying just explaining herself was a tad upsetting, although the fact that she wasn't a runaway was a relief and a half. He had no idea what to do with someone who had run away from home, and she was far, far too frail to be out on her own.
"Name's Moose." He commented offhand, staring down at her at an angle that was starting to make his neck hurt. "How about we go back to the main street, and then I can take you home so no one bothers you." Because she looked as if a busker asking her for some change would cause her to fall over and die right there in the street, and he was feeling a little bit worried--for both rational and irrational reasons.
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 18, 2013 11:23:11 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- She nodded again and took a few deep breaths so she could calm herself down. It was over—they weren’t coming back, and this man was even willing to take her all the way home, though Emmeline felt that would be far too troublesome for the poor guy. Already he’d had to come to her rescue even though he probably had far better things to do with his life than to save poor little girls in trouble, and that made her feel bad enough.
Once she was calmed down, she realized that her shoulder hurt quite a bit after that guy had slammed her back into the wall. She rubbed it with her free hand—since the hand attached to the shoulder in question was still grasping Moose’s shirt—but said or did nothing more about it.
It might bruise but it wasn’t anything to whimper over.
“Are—are you sure? I—I live down on, um, Bunker Hill. If—if it’s too far—I don’t want. . . want you to go out of your—way,” she said, her voice almost a little murmur. Emmeline was trying to make sure she was speaking loud enough for him to hear, but she wasn’t sure if she could do it when her throat was still choked up from her sob fest a few minutes earlier. Her voice still sounded pretty watery to her.
Emmeline figured she probably looked a mess—she was never a pretty crier. Her sniffles helped a little bit, but she was sure she was covered in tears and her face was probably all red, eyes blood-shot. . . . She tried to remedy that a little bit by rubbing her face with the sleeve of her jacket, doing her best not to ruin the water-proof make-up she’d put on earlier that evening before leaving the house. Emmeline knew how frequently she was brought to tears and had since started buying water-proof everything.
Swallowing again, Emmeline chanced a glance up at the guy. It was weird—she was currently clinging hopelessly to this man even though she was most certain she would have avoided him like the plague had she seen him randomly on the street.
And now he was her savior.
“Is—is that your real name?” she asked before she thought better of it. It was too late though—she’d already blurted it out without really thinking and now she wanted to kick herself. Of course it wasn’t his real name. Quickly, she looked away from him and shuffled slightly. No wonder she was a prime target for the city’s scum. “Sorry, never mind.”
She also really wanted to ask him about his scar, but she figured he probably wouldn’t want to talk about it and he probably wouldn’t appreciate her prying, and for some reason (it couldn’t possibly be because he was four times her size and terribly intimidating) she really wanted to make sure she was on his good side. Besides, he’d done her a favor by saving her from those dudes, and insulting him would just be a terrible way to say thank-you.
But it was just so—important to her. Emmeline had already tested it out a few times by looking away from him and then glancing again at him, but it was the same—some of his features were a little strange, but his scar mixed with that statuesque jawline made it easy for her to tell that it was the same person.
And it was kind of a big deal to her.
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 18, 2013 16:37:27 GMT -8
tagged: character. date: date and time.notes: notes. She was still holding on. Moose wasn't sure what to do about that. He wasn't very good at physical affection--was downright terrible, actually. He had no experience with it, and only the vaguest idea of how it was supposed to work. What he knew was cobbled together from seeing people visit with family, and what he'd seen on TV, and neither was a particularly good source of information. In fact he'd been told two or three times that things 'weren't like they were on TV', and he'd tried to take what little he'd picked up from that source with a big grain of salt.
"It's fine." He tried to sound reassuring, and it was. Hell, he'd taken Rhiannon home, a much greater distance, and she hadn't even been in real danger. She just couldn't carry the thing that she'd had with her, and needed someone to carry it. He'd gotten a meal and a place to sleep out of it, and he hadn't regretted it at all. Bunker Hill wasn't far, and it wasn't terribly out of his way. He could reasonably making it back to Rhiannon's place without being that late.
Moose was actually struggling to remember a time when someone had actually asked if it was his real name. People always simply assumed that no, it wasn't, and they were right. It wasn't his 'real name', but to him it was as real as anything else. 'Darrin' wasn't who he was. He was Moose. "Good as the real thing, yeah. What everyone calls me." Not some fake name he gave out to strangers at least.
The fact that she kept looking at him threw him off, and he squinted at her for a moment before giving her a little nudge. "We should get to the street proper. People won't bother you so much if you're in sight of a lot of other people." Some would, but those kind of people couldn't be easily deterred by anything.
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 21, 2013 11:40:41 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- Ever since losing her ability to remember faces, Emmeline had developed the habit of clinging to whoever she was with to lower her chances of losing them, at least until she got better at recognizing people through other means. She usually tried not to cling to people she’d just met—not that she met new people often anyway—but she was terribly out of her element and the familiarity made her feel a little better.
She’d probably catch herself soon and let go anyway, but for now, Moose’s shirt was stuck in her tiny little grasp.
To her surprise, he actually answered her question, even though she thought it was pretty stupid question. Emmeline just nodded and headed toward the main street with Moose, though she was really just in tow: she was more of a follower than a leader, even before her incident. Emmeline was always the one that did what others asked and never really concerned herself with her own wants and needs.
It was the reason why the accident happened in the first place.
“Um—everyone calls me Emmie,” she offered, hoping to resolve whatever problem she’d caused by asking such a silly question. She wasn’t sure exactly what she did wrong, but she was certain she’d done something—she always does something wrong.
It was really awkward, even after they finally made it to the real street. She wondered how she had managed to wander so far from the main road, but she was probably distracted by her own thoughts and made a wrong turn somewhere. But the bright lights and the cars and the people milling about was quite a relief. Though, Emmeline was pretty much certain that if she walked next to Moose, not a soul was going to mess with her.
The question was burning on her tongue. She needed to know, but she didn’t want to be rude. She wasn’t even sure why it mattered where he got the scar, just that he had it. But she really wanted to know. The curiosity was threatening to tie her insides into knots.
Finally, she came to a conclusion and fine way to ask politely and without seeming to pry. It took her longer than she’d like to admit and the silence drove her crazy—what if he thought she was weird because she wouldn’t talk? “Um—do you—do you mind if I—if I ask about your. . . uh. . . scar?” she finally piped up, chancing a quick little glance up at him. Yup—still the same Moose.
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 23, 2013 12:38:06 GMT -8
tagged: character. date: date and time.notes: notes. Emmie? Moose wasn't very good with female names. It was a side effect from being around men almost exclusively for most of his life, and while he was pretty sure Emmie was a girls name, he couldn't hope to guess at what it stood for. He couldn't even fumble through the likely syllables to take a guess at what it could possibly be. Maybe Emmie wasn't short for anything. Maybe it was Emmy, and that was her full name. Only the way she'd said it made it sound more like a nickname. Everyone called him Moose, but that wasn't his name. Maybe Emmie was the same way.
He didn't mind terribly the fact that she was clinging to his shirt, but it did make him a tad wary when they got back to the main street. He didn't want anyone getting the wrong idea, but he supposed the fact that she was holding onto him, rather then the other way around would help things. He kept his hands off her, pausing at the street corner as he guided her in the direction she'd said she lived.
Her question caught him a tad off guard, and he let out a little grunt, raising on hand up to rub over the bridge of his nose. "This?" Of course she was talking about that, but Moose technically had a myriad of scars. The one on his face was just one of many, and gained special status simply by being the most visible of the lot. It pretty much went without saying that she was asking about that one, but he still had to think about it.
"Oh. Was in a car accident, and it was a smarter idea to fix my brain then fix my face." Which was a horrible summary of the situation, but it at least got the general point across, didn't it?
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 23, 2013 13:31:05 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- A tiny little nod was her response. She wasn’t sure if he thought she’d been talking about another one, but that was the only one she could see. Or maybe it was the fact that he was so used to having it that he forgot about it sometimes. Though, Emmeline was certain that if she was left with a scar like that she wouldn’t ever forget about it, but she was a girl, after all.
At least she’d be able to recognize herself in the mirror.
Thoughts of self-mutilation aside, Emmeline was a little taken-aback by the point-blank manner he answered in. Her shoulders hunched slightly and she wondered if she’d offended him by asking. He hadn’t seemed too upset, but she was always worried that she was going to offend someone.
“Oh—well, um—that’s good that—um, they fixed your brain,” she murmured feeling dumber and dumber the more she opened her mouth. She didn’t know what else to talk about, though, and she felt that if she stopped talking then a terrible silence would fall over them and she wasn’t sure she could handle that kind of silence in the presence of someone like Moose. She wasn’t sure why, but she did not want to walk in silence with him.
She chanced a tiny glance up at him, but as per usual she could never make true eye-contact. However, she still tried not to stare at his scar too much. “It doesn’t look um—bad. So—I think they did a—an ok job on that, too,” she offered, trying her best to smile, even though she felt the lingering remain of tears at the corner of her eyes.
Moose seemed to know at least where he was going, and the street looked a little more familiar than the previous one. The names were still only vaguely familiar—she didn’t really go places by herself a whole lot; she was either driven by her mom and dad or her brother took her places. “Do you, um, live around here, too?” she asked, grasping any sort of conversation.
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 23, 2013 17:50:06 GMT -8
tagged: character. date: date and time.notes: notes. Fixed his brain? Not really. He'd lived, but the damage had been done. There was really only so much that could be done to fix a brain anyway. Really, most brain surgery was either removing things that were already dead or at risk of getting worse, or easing pressure on the brain itself. There was no way to fix something as insanely complicated as a brain. There were only ways to lessen the amount of damage, and that was what they'd done to him. They'd reduced the damage, but they couldn't fix it.
Moose had known that for a long time. There was no fixing the damage done. There would be no miracle recovery, no returning of his memories. He wouldn't wake up one day and have regained what he had lost. For the rest of his life he'd be unable to remember things, unable to recall any part of his childhood. They were gone, and there was no getting them back.
"Dunno really. Guess they did a good job. Figured I should have died, and I didn't, so I guess that's one for them, yeah?" He had no memory of any of them, but he'd been told about them enough to have a rough understanding of how bad it had been and what they'd done to save him. The next question she asked seem to bother him more then the first few had, and he seemed to dwell on it a moment before answering.
"Yeah. Back there." He gestured over his shoulder, back the way they'd come, and then abruptly left it at that. People got awkward when they realized you were homeless, and he had no desire to bring that up again as they headed down the street. "You got someone waiting for you at home? A parent?" Because good god, if she did... well, if she didn't that was concerning, but if she did, Moose was a tad worried.
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 23, 2013 19:47:58 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- She wasn’t really sure how to respond to him. There really wasn’t much to go on. She was glad he didn’t die. That would have been sad. And a really awkward conversation with a dead person. . . . Well, the fact that he survived and could come save her from being deflowered in an alleyway, well that was a blessing she was going to be grateful for, at least. But that was a little too much to say, so instead she went for a simple sentence. “Well, I’m glad that they could.”
Emmeline glanced over her shoulder as if she could see Moose’s house right there behind her, but of course it was just closing shops and people trying to scurry home before it got too late. She turned back to watch where she was going and glanced up at Moose. “So, I’m not—I’m not um, taking you too far—um, out of the way?” she asked.
It went completely over her head that he meant he lived in that backstreet where things almost happened.
That made her feel better, though. It was just a short distance away from where Moose lived—well, relatively anyway. It was better than him living across town and having to take fifteen different busses to get home just to make sure that he got home safely. She’d relaxed quite a bit now, but she still showed no signs of wanting to let go of Moose—habits died hard, after all, and she wasn’t thinking about what she was doing to stop herself.
“Um, I don’t know. Sometimes my dad um, works late and my mom—my mom um, has a Candle Light party tonight so—she uh, probably won’t be home till. . . later.” There was one time when everyone was home as soon as they possibly could to make sure Emmeline wasn’t home by herself, but she’d assured everyone that she didn’t need it anymore—she didn’t quite feel like offing herself anymore.
Well. At least not as much.
For a few moments she kept her eyes on the ground and just let Moose drag her around, only occasionally looking up at the streets so she could find her way back if this ever happened again. Which it probably would: Emmeline tended to let people run off so she didn’t feel like a bother.
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 25, 2013 16:07:09 GMT -8
tagged: character. date: date and time.notes: notes. Moose shook his head at her question, unaware that his meaning had gone flying over her head. "Nah, not a big deal." Maybe he'd head over to Oskenonton's place after. It was closer from her place then it was to Skid row, so if anything, she was getting him a bit closer. Plus, then he could say he'd been out that way anyway when he dropped by, and it wouldn't even be a lie.
Sometimes Moose was just too awkward for words. There had been no explicit offer for him to stay with them, and while most would have assumed it was a given, Moose wasn't sure if it was safe to assume such a thing. So he would simply continue making excuses until they got used to it, and then he'd finally, finally have a place to live. Maybe he'd get to write a letter to his parole officer at last--a formal change of address, to tell him where he'd be living.
It was a bit awkward that she was still clinging to the front of his shirt, and while he glanced down once or twice, he didn't try and remove it. Maybe it was normal. Moose really had almost no experience with females, and even less with young females. He could count the number of under thirty females he'd spoken to on one hand. Maybe two, tops. This was entirely new territory, as was half the stuff Emmie was talking about. Work, he could understand. Candle Light party? Nope, he had no idea what that was. He had a vague idea of candles, but the rest... well, less then a single clue.
They were getting close to her neighbourhood, or at least where she'd told him, and Moose started to slow down, glancing around. "So where do you live?"
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 26, 2013 12:04:47 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- The area was getting more and more recognizable and Emmeline wondered how she had managed to veer so far off-course. Had she really been that distracted with her own thoughts that she’d wandered so far away from home? She’d only been to the local book store to see if she could find something to read.
When Moose asked, she glanced around to get a precise reading on her bearings, then lifted a hand to point further down the road. “Just, um, three more blocks this way, then we’ll take a right and, um. . . it’s just a few houses in,” she answered, glancing up at him once more.
Yup. Moose was still Moose.
Though she kept it bottled up and tried to be calm, she was excited. This was the first person since her accident she could recognize. Though she really just recognized the scar, but it was more than she really recognized, and it was right on his face. She wouldn’t have to remember to check for a recognizing frame (though his was still pretty recognizable too). She wouldn’t have to worry about learning the way he walks, straining to recognize his voice. . .
Emmeline swallowed and tried to get a hold of herself. What made her think she was ever going to see him again? She couldn’t just run around hanging out with some strange man that was twice her age (and size). If anything would get her unwanted attention, it would be that. Though she didn’t understand why—if he was nice enough to save her from those guys, then he couldn’t be a bad person.
Finally, the silence got to her and Emmeline needed something to talk about, so she grasped one thing they had in common and managed to say it out loud. “You know, um, they had to uh—try to fix my brain, too.” She looked up at him sheepishly. “I uh—had an accident, too.”
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 26, 2013 19:01:43 GMT -8
tagged: character. date: date and time.notes: notes. Moose was paying little attention to the area around him. Even if he knew to be wary in general, he'd never particularly had to fear anyone jumping him. He had no true enemies, and those looking for victims of opportunity would look elsewhere where he was involved. No one looking for some quick cash was going to mug a giant hobo. It simply wasn't good business sense.
They were almost home when she spoke again, and he'd largely disregarded her quick glances up. He hadn't realized there was anything behind them when she spoke, and Moose actually felt his heart flutter.
She was the same. It was a stupid assumption based simply on Moose's lack of understanding about his situation. Even so, he believed it was true--that her having an accident that required brain surgery meant she'd forgotten, like him. Like she'd lost it all. Only she did have family, and Moose could only imagine what that would be like--to have people to support you, to stand by you even if you couldn't remember.
He seemed to light up a bit at that, an alarming amount of hope showing on his features. "You forgot too?"
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Oct 30, 2013 10:24:09 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- Emmeline felt better when she was talking. If she stopped talking, she started thinking. And if she started thinking, then she started freaking out again. She would continue to remember those things they said to her—albeit a little bit more flourished and exaggerated than what had actually happened—and then started to imagine how things might have gone if no one had shown up to help her.
Those were the images she couldn’t handle. She could handle the memories, but the things she imagined afterwards made her start trembling again.
It surprised even her when she mentioned her accident. She hadn’t told many people about it, but it was what she felt was appropriate right now. It wasn’t even actually an accident, more of a stupid mistake, but she preferred calling it an accident. Her parents called it that, too. Emmeline wasn’t sure what her brother called it, if he even talked to anyone about it. He sure never talked to her about it.
His question caught her a little off-guard, and she thought about it for a second.
“Um, well, kind of,” she said after a few seconds of deliberation. It was—sort of like that? It was really hard to explain to someone else, and that was part of the reason that she normally didn’t tell anyone. That and people her age tended to play jokes on her when they found out, so she stopped mentioning it. “It’s more like, um, I forgot how to. . . remember?”
She fidgeted for a second while trying to think about it. This guy—he obviously had some sort of amnesia. Poor guy—Emmeline couldn’t imagine if she had forgotten everything instead of just an extremely narrow field. “It’s—I am, um, now, incapable of. . . um, recognizing people um, no matter. . . how long I have known them. How often, um, I see them.” It was so weird—she barely told anyone about this, and now she was just spewing it all out to this guy.
Maybe it was just because they could sympathize better with each other.
“So—I can’t—I can’t even recognize my own, um, family. . . anymore. They just—they look like strangers to me. . . every. . . um, time I see them. . . ,” she finished, head down and gaze staring at the floor. “I remember them, I just, um, couldn’t pick them out in a, uh, crowd.”
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Oct 30, 2013 13:31:27 GMT -8
Kind of? Moose tried to keep an open mind, trying to follow along and kind of struggling with it. At first he thought she had the sort of memory issue you saw in movies--the kind where you didn't remember anything new. Only then she explained it was faces she didn't remember. He'd never heard of it before, but he wasn't going to call her on it being bullshit or anything. After all, Moose was well aware that he was pretty damn stupid when it came to stuff like that. He didn't know plenty of things. He didn't know what a thunderbird was, for one, and he didn't know how to do basic stuff like prepare his taxes either. He gave a little grunt of acknowledgement, mentally filing away words to ask Oskenonton about. Things like 'incapable', which were a bit too big for his limited vocabulary.
"Guess I get it. You don't realize people are who they are, yeah? Like you'd remember me, but if you saw me again you wouldn't realize I was me." Which was both grammatically incorrect and a horrible oversimplification, but whatever, it was close enough for him. "So... sort of similar I guess. I just don't remember any of the stuff. I mean, I can remember new stuff, like I'd remember you, but I wouldn't remember anyone from before." Like his parents, which was the unspoken bit that they shared. He didn't even know who they were, or if they were still alive.
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Post by EMMELINE EVANS on Nov 3, 2013 15:47:35 GMT -8
| rabbit - hearted I look around, but I can't find you If only I could see your face Instead of rushing towards the skyline I wish that I could just be brave I must become a lion hearted girl Ready for a fight Before I make the final sacrifice We raise it up, this offering We raise it up This is a gift, it comes with a price Who is the lamb and who is the knife? Midas is king and he holds me so tight And turns me to gold in the sunlight And in the spring I shed my skin And it blows away with the changing wind The waters turn from blue to red As --- Though it was definitely an oversimplification of the situation, Emmeline was just glad that he understood. She hoped he believed her, though. Most of her friends whom she told had thought she was just making up excuses for not remembering people’s faces. They’d thought she was being a hypochondriac, thinking there was more wrong with her than there was. People who her family told had thought the same thing—a lot of people have trouble remembering what people look like.
But, he’d actually taken the time to paraphrase what she’d said. Sometimes people didn’t even do that much. They just wrote it off. And since he had memory problems, then maybe he’d totally understand. Sure, they weren’t exactly the same, but memory problems were memory problems, especially when it wasn’t just the usual “oh I forget things a lot, I’m so scatter-brained.”
She nodded eagerly, glad that he understood. “Yes—yes that’s pretty much it. It’s not just that I have a hard time remembering faces, I absolutely can’t. But. . . .” Emmeline trailed off for a second. This was going to be the awkward part. She lowered her gaze slightly and lifted her free hand to her hair, tugging at a few strands. “Um—with you. . . I think I’d know you when I saw you. You—that, um, that scar—it, it makes it easier for me to—to distinguish your face from. . . from others.”
And you know. That very distinct body type of his.
“Plus I—if I pay attention enough, I can recognize people by, um, hair style and. . . body type and. . . the way they walk and hold themselves but—the flaw with that is—if someone is wearing similar clothes or a similar hair style I could—mistake them for someone I know. . . ,” she continued. It was really nice to have someone else to talk to about this other than her therapist.
She looked up again at Moose and frowned slightly. “You can’t—you can’t remember anything? Like—like total amnesia? I mean—since the accident, of course?” she asked. How horrible that would be, not to know who you are or where you’re from. What you’ve done. Who your family members are. At least Emmeline still had all of her memories. She didn’t know what she would do if she completely forgot everything from her past.
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Post by DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE on Nov 4, 2013 10:59:18 GMT -8
Moose might not have understood the technicalities of it, but he was familiar with it in the general sense. He knew what it was like to have people saying that you were making things up--that you were exaggerating. Moose had never felt the need to exaggerate. It wasn't as if things could get worse then 'I don't remember a damn thing'. People often thought he was though. When he said 'I don't remember anything', they thought he just had a bad memory, and he frequently had to explain things much in the way that Emmeline just had. He had to explain that no, it was all gone. He didn't remember any of it, and while he sometimes thought he might, none of it had ever come back. It wasn't temporary either, which was a thing people often assumed. In movies, memories always came back at the worst of moments. Moose's never would. He'd never remember anything, that part of his brain having been utterly destroyed. His ability to retain memories would improve as his brain rewired itself in his head, but it would never be perfect. He'd still miss things, still have a worse memory then the average person--the whole deal.
It was vaguely interesting to him that she could recognize him--or thought she could. Obviously she hadn't exactly gotten to test it. It made sense though, the way that she explained it. Even if she couldn't recognize the structure of a person's face, his scar was obvious and prominent, hard to miss for anyone giving his face even a glance. Plus, there were really only so many people that were his size wandering around. Moose had yet to meet a single person who was his size and taller, and the closest he'd gotten was spotting someone from the distance who looked about his size. It wasn't as if she was going to be commonly mixing him up with anyone, and he gave a little nod.
"Yeah. Don't remember anything before it. Doctors say I won't either--that part's destroyed, not just damaged." He'd never them back. Supposedly he'd once been shown a scan of his brain, but he had no memory of that either--his ability to make memories had taken time to recover as well.
"Yeah, total amnesia. Think that's what they called it." That and something else with a bunch of big words he'd had trouble remembering. It didn't matter--what mattered was what it was, and he understood that easily enough.
EMMELINE EVANS | MAY 14TH, 8 PM |
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