Hi all! I loved the original Sens8 characters but for some reason I couldn't keep these new ones out of my head. I'm not sure where it's going exactly but I have a very general idea. Hopefully you'll go along for this ride with me. Feel free to point bad editing it helps me improve.
If you like this and my other stories I've posted links to my other profiles in this profile. Stories range from Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, Misfits, Lawless, The Dark Knight, and others.
I made the other profiles for stupid anxiety filled reasons, I'm trying to be mature about it now so hope you'll understand that I had my reasons even if they were dumb :P
So feel to check them out if you're interested!
Now on we go!
Chapter One - Sapphire
"The sky's, the sea, and you.
You're all blue.
It's clearly the loneliest color you do.
Take In some oxygen.
I lift up your chin open your ears, and let something in..."
- Late Night Alumni
Lila's hands were red.
Zahra had made sure to cover them thoroughly with coloured powder.
They were making paint. Finally…
Zahra hadn't stopped asking Lila's father to show her how since he'd first mentioned it three weeks ago.
Lila smiled down at her six year old niece.
They were both crouched with their knees pushed into their chests and their weight resting on their heels against the sun baked dirt beneath their bare feet.
Lila watched as Zahra's light brown eyes lit up. It was nice to see her grinning in the sun. They were both enjoying the sun. They rarely took the risk anymore even when they stayed inside the borders of her father's property.
'Not since…'
"Aunty Lila! Nika, was right it's so bright!" The young girl's voice cut through Lila's thoughts.
Lila nodded happily. Her father had been a chemist in the city and while making paint was not necessarily the highest form of science it was clear how excited he had been when he had presented the different powders to them that morning.
The excitement had rubbed off on her as well.
A chicken balked next to Lila, drawing her out of the enjoyable distraction, it's beak pecked into the dusty dirt near their toes.
"We should put this back and wait for your Nika, Zahra-jo." Lila sighed as she moved to stand up. She held in the groan that she had wanted to make at the movement, her mossy eyes drifting to the rusted metal door guarding the only way past the high walls of dry bricks encircling their tiny practically barren courtyard.
"But…"
If Zahra said anymore Lila did not hear it.
The metal gate's lock turned and the hinges screeched as her father entered the courtyard.
Her head filled with a buzzing noise as a sweating man with slanted eyes wearing what looked like a paper dress suddenly appeared directly behind her father. His dark eyes bore into hers.
She barely had time to gasp before her father closed the door and the stranger disappeared from sight.
The music pounded through Ilya's head.
With each crashing chord of the numbing metal notes playing through the buds of his iPod he drove his feet hard against the pavement.
He gritted his teeth.
Lola was really getting on his nerves lately.
He thought of her as his heart thudding in frustration while he ran across a walkway through the smog that constantly seemed to be hanging over the Moskva River.
Soon he'd be back on the estate away from the rush and grim of the city.
It was quite a bittersweet feeling.
He loved his home but when his father summoned him like this it typically meant that Bianca was acting out.
'These fucking women.' His gave his head a harsh shake, causing sweat to fall from his long dark brown hair into his eyes.
Wiping his brow with the back of his hand he thought of how Lola had essentially ruined his best friend's birthday the night before with her inappropriate behaviour.
His chest heaved as he neared the other side of the walkway bridging the two sides of the river. He had to stop to clasp his knees for a moment to catch his breath.
'Are you weak, my son?' He heard his mother's voice whisper in his ear.
He jerked to stand up straight, his dark blue eyes darting around the largely empty streets.
His breath fogged the cold air as his eyes seemed to be searching for something beneath the clouded sky.
He frowned, his earbuds were making a weird noise.
'Pieces of shit.' Ilya tugged them out of his ears only to find that noise was still in his head.
As if on instinct his gaze suddenly snapped up to see a smiling Asian man in hospital gown, standing by the entrance of nearby café. There were a few early risers walking right by the man and into the café, but none of them seemed to notice him.
No one seemed to notice except the sweating dark-haired man that the stranger was staring at.
His mother was yammering on in his ear about staying safe in the city.
She'd been going on about it ever since he'd moved years ago. And as per usual her phone call came at the worst moment. Namely when he had just woken up very late in the morning and was nursing a killer hangover.
"I hear you Mama." Boon-Mae scratched a weary hand over his short black hair.
The air in the room felt stale and grey. In large part due to the dust covered window that was filtering the smog dulled sunlight into his musty apartment.
He tripped over the neon green pumps laying on the floor of his living room on his way to open the window, accidentally hitting Aat in the stomach as he moved. Aat had clearly passed out the night before on the living room floor after Boon had gone to sleep. An occurrence that had been happening more often lately and being a good best friend Boon-Mae hadn't brought up the subject to Aat directly.
Instead he ignored the groaning from the ground and continued on his way to the small window.
"Boon, I wished you'd come home…" a tone of whining entered her muffled voice. "Just for a visit at least."
Knowing it would be easier than arguing Boon simply sighed. "Mama I know. But it depends on when I can get off work." He bit out as he struggled with the latch on the window.
"Psht!" His mother responded snidely, "That bar 'job', they don't even pay you enough."
"That's right Boony." Aat had clearly risen from his place on the floor behind Boon to dig his chin into Boon's shoulder and whisper playfully in his ear.
Boon jerked his head away from his smirking friend, who simply gave him a wink before sauntering back towards the bathroom, swaying his hips as he did. Boon marvelled at the way his friend's lithe body moved and how his real silk kimono slipped gracefully off of one his shoulders.
He thought of his own body, he glanced down the fleshiness of his own belly.
"What was that?" His mother's voice interjected over the phone still pressed against his ear.
"Nothing Mama." Boon returned his focus to the latch, his body feeling strangely weighted down. "I…"
Boon's mouth went dry, an ache filled his head.
He couldn't move his light brown eyes away, a figure wearing white on the busy road four storeys down had entranced him.
Ofelia's day was already off to a less than great start.
She'd been called in to cover a shift at the café and even though she'd had a late night she couldn't miss the opportunity for a shift.
"Oh Ofelia…" she shook her head at herself, wishing for once she could afford to say no. Or that she could say 'no' to anything period.
Today would be another long day.
Her mother had invited everyone over for dinner. Which, of course, meant that everyone would be over talking about when Ofelia would get a 'real' husband and a 'real' job until four in the morning... and that was being conservative.
It probably also meant that there would be some 'nice boy' from her mother's church who mysteriously had a free night to spend with a group of strangers and an overly enthusiastic mother trying to pawn off her only daughter.
Ofelia gathered her long slightly curly brown hair up into a hair tie. Her dangling silver earrings and the bracelets on her thin tan wrists jingled at the movement.
Rolling her shoulders, Ofelia tried not to think of the headache building at her temples.
'No more late nights.' She lied to herself as she carried on taking the chairs off the table tops inside the café as she prepared for the day.
A knock at the glass door of the café drew her attention.
'Right on time.' Ofelia resisted the urge to roll her brown eyes at the old man energetically waving at her through the glass.
She found it difficult not to return the old man's smile. He looked so endearing in his wrinkled suit that no longer fit his shrinking frame.
"Good morning, Mr. Martinez." She greeted him as she opened the café's front door.
The warm breeze from the quiet sunlight street blew in the familiar scent of lantana flowers.
"Good morning dear Ofelia!" He smiled brightly up at her. "Just wanted to make sure I didn't lose my table."
"You're always the first customer here, so I doubt that would ever happen." She grinned leading him to the corner booth by largest window in the small café.
"I know you young kids laugh at me, but you can never be certain of these things Ofelia."
"I'll take your word for it Mr. Martinez." Ofelia chuckled watching the older man sink into the booth. "I'll bring you your coffee."
"Thank you dear." He gave her another smile, though Ofelia didn't see it.
Her chocolate eyes had travelled back to the open front door of the café where all she could see was an elderly Asian man in gown.
A complete stranger who was smiling as if he knew her.
Hondo hated waking up.
It was the time of day that made him remember exactly how alone his was.
His light brown eyes watched as his brown arm wandered over the empty sheets next to him.
'Not exactly empty Hondo.' He observed, noting the multiple pages and printouts of pictures scattered over the unused half of his bed.
It had been a particularly productive night and once again he found himself falling asleep with his work.
'This has always been your problem Hondo.' Her words echoed through his head.
Yawning, Hondo stretched his arms out above his head, lazily rubbing his hand over the short hair covering his head once he'd finished.
"You'd better get up my friend." He mumbled to himself, catching sight of the time on his phone when it buzzed and lit up with the delivery of a new text message.
With a grunt Hondo hefted his muscular body off of the mattress on the floor that had been serving as his bed for the past six months. This whole situation was meant to have been temporary, but things had not gone according to plan.
Hence, why he was still in a tiny, brown, bachelor apartment with thin moth-eaten curtains and shitty plumbing.
Hondo made his way to his bathroom, which was one tiled corner of the apartment that at one time had a shower curtain hanging around it to divide the space. The shower curtain had already been long gone by the time Hondo had chosen to rent the place.
Yawning once again, Hondo used his pinky finger to attempt to dig out a strange buzzing in his ears as he pulled down the front of his boxers to use the toilet in his joke of a bathroom.
Hondo contemplated how he would break the news to Mrs. Mbiza.
'… I should milk a little more out of her first…' he decided, not bothering to flush the toilet, as he knew that at this time of the morning everything would be backed up and there'd be no point flushing unless he wanted to flood the whole room again.
The sound of the traffic and shop keepers yelling at few alleys over floated passed the iron bars crisscrossed over the open window and into his apartment.
Hondo clicked his tongue against his white teeth, his light brown eyes studying his own reflection in the mirror above the bowl and tap that served as both a bathroom and kitchen sink. The mirror was barely enough to show his entire face but it was big enough that Hondo could the see shame that had recently taken residence in expression.
Every day it was the same. Except…
Hondo's brow furrowed. He leaned towards the mirror to see if his eyes were tricking him.
His breathing quickened. He spun on his heel to see if the smiling grey haired man he'd just seen in his mirror was still standing in his room next to frayed curtains that were blowing away from his window.
Kylie's green eyes scanned around her lab.
'Where is it?'
She felt a wave of relief when her eyes landed on the beaker she been searching for.
"Thank god." Kylie smiled gulping down the dark contents of the beaker.
Sighing at the pleasure induced by the taste of coffee on her tongue, she tried not to think about how far behind she was on her workload.
She had veered off course again. Somewhere along the line, instead of reading the findings from the environmental reports she'd been given, she'd started in on her own private research.
Kylie wondered if a good person would feel bad about pursuing personal hobbies on company time.
But that thought only lasted a moment as she recalled which company she worked for.
Not only could could they afford it but they deserved it.
She couldn't help but feel like a total sell out. Her dusky hands gripped the beaker she was holding tighter.
'You need it, Kylie. You had no choice.' Shutting her laptop, Kylie attempted to keep herself from screaming.
She scraped her fingers through her very short blonde hair, tucking some loose strands behind her ears.
The sound of a squeaking gate broke her train of thought.
A smile made its way across her face.
"Mummy! Mummy!" She heard her daughter shouting with excitement as she raced in direction of the house.
"I'm in the lab my lovley!" Kylie called out, placing the empty beaker back onto her desk.
"Mummy!" Astrid ran into the side door of the detached garage-cum-lab with glee written all over her sweet face. Her brown hair had fallen out the braids Kylie had put them in that morning. "Look!" The little girl held her older brother's phone with picture of herself on a diving board up to Kylie's face.
"Look! Look!" The seven year old girl gripped Kylie's arm to get her focus. "I jumped off the highest board!"
"Oh my goodness!" Kylie exclaimed, letting her mouth hang open for affect. "You did! That's wonderful darling. You're such a brave girl." She hugged her daughter close, she could feel her wet togs through her dry clothes.
'Of course you wouldn't change her out of them.' Kylie stopped herself from getting upset, not wanting to squelch her daughter's mood.
"Was it terribly scary?" She asked.
"Only a little, but then daddy and Finn helped me." Astrid grinned down at the image on her brother's phone.
"That's great sweetheart. I'm proud of you." Kylie did her best to keep her attention on her daughter, but the mother in her had to ask. "Where's your brother?"
"He's coming." Astrid responded shortly her remarked punctuated with sound of the screen door to the house slamming closed.
'That'd be Finn.' A spike of anger ran through her. She should have known this would happen.
"Is your dad still here?"
"Dunno." Astrid shrugged distractedly fiddling with the phone in her hands. "Him and Finn had to 'talk'…" She added over the sound of her little stomach grumbling.
'Of course you didn't feed them.'
Kylie bit back her annoyance, and continued with a smile. "You must be pretty hungry after all that daredeviling. Go in and give Finn his phone back. I'll get some sweet treats ready for you. Ok?"
Excitement returned to Astrid's brown eyes, "Ok!" She practically shouted as she ran out of the garage and to the house.
Kylie chewed on the inside of her cheek before finally deciding to stand up and make her way to the door. She didn't know if she wanted to go outside and see him still parked outside her gate or not.
With a deep breath Kylie pushed herself outside into harsh glare of the Perth sun. Holding a hand up to shield her eyes Kylie squinted at the cloud of reddish brown dust that had clearly just been left by the wake of a car on the road.
She squinted harder and took a hesitant step forward, now questioning whether or not she was really seeing a Japanese man in a hospital gown smiling back at her through the dust.
"Miss, please do we have to do this?"
"What do think my answer to that will be Zion?" Irie sighed, rolling her dark brown eyes at the final student dawdling in her classroom that day.
"But, Miss, I'm never gonna use English." The teenaged boy whined at her about the homework she'd assigned.
"You're using it now Zion."
"That's not what I meant." The boy sniffed, moving closer to where she was sitting at her desk at the front of the room.
"Well, learn your English and then maybe you can communicate to me what you did mean." She snarked in return though her smile was kind.
The boy held her stare for a moment, he inched nearer. "Well, maybe…" his dark eyes burned into hers as he leaned over her desk to whisper "...I'll just beat you to a pulp."
Irie woke up with a start.
Cold sweat covered her body. Touching her hair, she could feel the cloud of bouncy dark spirals on her head were coated with a familiar dampness.
With a sigh Irie heaved herself out of bed to make her nearly nightly journey down the hallway to take a shower.
She thought of the pleasant exchange that had actually occurred with her student.
There had been no threats made but the fact that she was now blending her dreams with reality was troubling.
"Irie?" A tired voice called out from the darkness further down the hall.
"It's fine Mommy. Just had to use the bathroom."
"You sure you alright sweetheart?" Irie bristled at the apprehension in her mother's voice.
"I'm ok. Please don't worry." Irie tried to keep her tone of voice light. "I'm just going to the toilet."
There was pause before her mother responded. "Ok, baby. Goodnight."
"Good night, Mommy."
When she heard the bedroom door close, Irie entered the bathroom and turned on the light.
Under the harsh brightness of the fluorescent glow above her Irie did her best to avoid looking at herself in the mirror. She didn't want to see how tired she looked or how sickly the pallor of her dark skin was. She already knew.
She could hear the crickets singing and the rustling of the Hibiscus tree leaves in the night. It unsettled her.
Peeling off her tank top and underwear Irie stepped into the shower.
The water was cold but it felt good against her raw nerves.
She rubbed her hands over her thick thighs and over her biceps. A sense of reassurance eased her as she felt the strength of her muscles flex beneath her fingers.
Closing her eyes Irie let her head loll back into the water.
Something caused her eyes to pop open. Irie's heart seized. A strange pull caused her to slowly bring her head back down to level to see the sight of a calm old man who was standing with her in the shower.
Irie screamed.
'I'm never drinking water before bed again.' Rian yawned widely as he flushed his toilet, making a mental note to remind his flatmate to do his bloody chores. Specifically clean the fucking bathroom.
Bleary eyed he made his way back across his shared flat towards his bedroom.
Kicking the door closed with his foot, Rian took off his boxers and did all that he could to keep wakefulness at bay though he could feel a headache coming on and threatening to wake him up fully.
He still had time to catch a few more hours of sleep if only his brain got with the program.
Rubbing his hand in sluggish circles over his flat stomach as he flopped backwards down on to his bed, Rian attempted to soothe himself back to sleep.
It only took a few moments for him to realize that it was a pointless exercise.
"Fuck!" He breathed out, flopping his arm out to his side to punch his balled fist against his bed in frustration. The joint he'd smoked before bed to ease his nerves had completely worn off.
He flicked the lamp on his bedside table on and rolled on to his stomach to lean over the side of his bed so he could dig out his stash.
So many people simply watched porn online, but Rian found it more pleasurable to flip through a magazine time and again. Not that he didn't use the internet at all. But something about magazines brought back the danger of sneaking around behind his parents backs. Besides the pictures could be classy, even beautiful… every now and then.
Pulling the magazines out onto his bed Rian began flipping through. Images of smooth skin and silky hair…
Lately he found that the photos were preferable to the stresses and drama of the real thing.
It seemed that it was only a specific kind of girl around Dublin who was drawn to him and those girls had proven bad for his health.
Rian allowed his eyes to flit up to the full length mirror at the end of his bed, next to his closed bedroom door.
His light hazel gaze as always caught on the slight slant of his eyes.
Usually people didn't notice it. But if someone looked long enough, and put together the small upward slant of his eyes, the inky blackness of his hair and his sharp high cheekbones they'd be able to tell.
Most days Rian did a good job shoving It to the back of his mind, but other days it was more difficult.
His eyes drifted back down to the magazines laying on the mattress before him. They were the same as they had been only moments earlier but they seemed to have lost some of their lustre.
The ache in his head was growing. Rubbing his eyes Rian tried to clear his head.
Exhaling through his nose, he resolved to try to sleep again. Pushing the magazines to one side, Rian reached out shut off the light, but stopped midway through the movement.
A man was in his room.
'Am I sleeping?'
He watched the strangely familiar man in a hospital gown that was standing next to bedside table. Rian had some pretty vivid dreams in the past and this would definitely be up there with them. Either that or his high hadn't worn off yet and it had taken a turn. Somehow he knew that the man wasn't really there.
'I must be dreaming.'
Unsure of what to do, Rian stared up at the face smiling down at him for a breath longer then switched off the light.
Yuka had stayed up much later than she had intended.
Spending two hours trying to get off over Skype with Nathan hadn't helped at all. If anything she was more frustrated and distracted. Both he and Yuka had damned the shitty internet connection. Nathan was nice enough not to place blame on her though. Even it was mostly her fault they were in this situation. Her dark eyes moved her phone on the table next to her.
She had to be up in six hours to go out fishing with her sister.
This wasn't out of the ordinary though.
Yuka hadn't ever really been able to let an idea go once it entered her head.
Leaning back in her chair, she sipped on her open beer in the bright glare coming from her laptop screen.
Pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose Yuka ignored the sting of tiredness pinching at her eyes and carried on editing her most recent article.
She doubted that anyone would read it except for the locals who bothered to pick up their newsletters but that didn't matter. If one person read it that would be more than enough.
Yuka knew that change would never come quickly for her tiny village teetering on the edge of frigid Hudson's Bay. Way out here it often felt as though they were in their own world. A world where most people seemed to forget that they even existed.
When she'd gone for her degree, Yuka had thought that she had gotten her ticket out of this frozen wasteland.
But the longer she was away from home the more she knew had she to go back. She missed her family, her culture, her cause more than she thought she ever would.
And that was how she had wound up in a trailer, tapping away at her computer when she should have been sleeping.
Taking one last gulp of her beer Yuka decided to call it a night.
Passing a weary hand over her dark eyes, she wondered how important it actually was to brush teeth before sleeping.
As she weighed the pro and cons she realized with some irritation that the point was moot because her bladder had chosen that moment to act up.
Yuka pulled on her boots and jacket, grabbed her toilet paper and a flashlight and made her way out into the cold night.
In the silvery moonlight Yuka asked herself how she could ever have thought of leaving this place.
But that was only in the moonlight. As soon her bottom touch the freezing seat of the makeshift outhouse she had to use to relieve herself, she wondered why she had bothered to return here.
On her way back to her trailer, Yuka fiddled with the roll of toilet paper in her pale hands under the glow of the moon.
She had go to town at get some more soon.
'Joy.' Her mind went to her previous less than pleasant experience getting supplies. The process involved dealing with the leadership in her village.
Lifting her head Yuka looked to her trailer, trying to push out the worries of tomorrow, thinking of the warmth of her waiting bed instead.
That pleasant image was disrupted by the sudden new one of a man, barely dressed and clearly hunched with age standing next to the door of her trailer with a grin on his face.
Leo smiled to himself.
He had done it.
A faint beeping noise pushed at the edges of his mind.
He had been given a task… a gift. And he had pulled himself out and scraped together enough of what remained of his energy to share it.
None of them were here.
No one had come.
'That's good.' He thought to himself. A tear slipping out his eye and sliding down into his hair.
Laying down now he could see how easy it all was now.
The beeping grew less consistent.
He was done.
He knew he should have felt guilt about leaving them alone with this, but they'd keep each other safe and they would soon discover that they weren't alone.
Smile broke over his face, as his tears dried on his skin.
They'd never be alone again.
The beeping stopped.
Hope you guys enjoyed it! I was gonna go with eight at first but then I couldn't decide who to leave out and the story didn't work as well without them.
Let me know if I should put the names of the countries or cities up! Or if it's more fun to guess!
Not sure when I'll be posting again, but fingers-crossed it's soon!
As always I appreciate any and all feedback.
Check my profile for links to my other accounts if you're interested.