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Part 2
Diya flipped over in her bed, red-eyed with a grouchy look about her. Slouched on her elbow and hip, her good ear pointed at her door, she simply glared at Akarsha, wordless.
"Uh...-" Akarsha awkwardly closed the door behind her, taking a few cautious steps in. "...Yooo," she murmured sheepishly, hovering by the end of Diya's bed. "See you're...gettin' your Chrissy Teigen on..."
"...What?" Diya grunted irritably, having no idea what stupid meme Akarsha was leaning on this time.
Akarsha began clamping and unclamping her sweaty palms together until they started making 'poot' noises, a timid grimace about her the whole while.
Diya groaned gently, shoving her disheveled hair back over her shoulders as she sat upright, her sneakers dangling off the end of her bed, with how tall she was.
Akarsha took a couple more wary steps closer, rolling her eyes, her whole body kind of flowing with the gesture. "Sooooo...yeaaaaa..." she whispered, still avoiding Diya's dull dagger glance.
Akarsha was dressed in a tacky windbreaker with 90's era Playstation logos on it. She had her hair down, an unusual sight, though Diya had noticed she'd been growing it out. Maybe for Noelle? Wasn't sure. Either way, Diya could never commit to that kind of thing. She'd hold out as long as she could but always ended up cutting it back down once it started getting irritating to manage.
"Noelle send you?" Diya mumbled.
Akarsha finally went to meet her gaze, but the split second this occurred, Diya's eyes dodged away to her paisley-flowered bed sheets.
"Yep," Akarsha replied. "Says you, like, bailed mid-convo on her? Somethin'...-?"
Diya dragged her knuckles across her mattress and shoved her legs out and off the side. She rubbed at her dampened eyes groggily before letting her elbows settle on her knees, her cheeks sagging into her wrists.
Akarsha observed bluntly, "Damn, gurl, this whole thing's got you wrecked, huh?"
With a slow, frustrated inhalation, Diya let her arms cross down over her knees and gave Akarsha a stoic, deadpan look, right in the eye.
Akarsha's expression wavered uncertainly, and she shrunk back a bit, hands in her pockets.
"Readin' the room," she muttered nervously. "It's tellin' me you just wanna sit in your corner n' drown yourself in Vanilla Twilight."
"What do you want?" Diya quickly asked, her tone like a winter breeze.
"Dude, look, I've been giving you space all week, but, man...-" She shrugged with some exasperation. "Emo's a bad look on you, D."
"It's in season," Diya dryly quipped back, bobbing her head at the dusty floorboards beneath her.
"What season is that?" Akarsha countered. "Order of the Phoenix?"
"That-...What?...That's not even...-"
"'Cuz he was so emo in that one."
"Stop."
"I'm just...sayin', h-"
"No."
"'Kay."
"You going to stop?"
"...Will it help?"
"...I don't know."
Diya's voice wavered a little, there. She swallowed, and it stung a bit. A heavy pause followed. Not too heavy. Like, water cooler jug heavy. Inconvenient. But manageable. If you put in some effort. Like, any. Too bad Diya wasn't in the mood for any effort.
Akarsha dropped the humor at last.
"She'll be out in, what, two weeks?"
"Two and a half," Diya corrected. Every single day made a difference.
"Yea. That ain't bad. My old roommate was in for like, six months. Min got off easy, man."
"Was your cousin already struggling to get a degree in order to turn his life around?"
"Uh...That a-...Is this...like, rhetorical, or...-?"
"It's bullshit," Diya winced, her nails digging into her palms a little, with how hard her hands clenched at the frustration of it all. "She needs me. She needs...us. Not solitary confinement."
"Uh, not to damper your whole, like, downer vibe and all that, but...it's county jail, it ain't like Arkham Asylum or some shit."
"It's wasted time, either way. Time she could be-...She could be improving. Getting better. She was getting better."
"You gonna try telling your cousin that?"
"He knew how she'd react. He-...He knew." She rubbed at her eyelashes, dust having dried up in them from her crying.
"Family's an 'F word,' I guess," Akarsha said with a tired shrug and a sigh. "Just 'cuz they finally flipped Prop 8 doesn't mean all the assholes go away..."
Silence drifted along. The muffled sound of some acoustic guitar reverberated from the first floor of the flathouse. Akarsha leaned against Diya's bedpost, scooping up her old hat.
"How bad'd she fuck him up, anyway?" she mused. "Like, what level of beatdown was this, anyway? We talkin', like, Frieza on Vegeta? Or...-?"
"This isn't funny," Diya moaned lifelessly.
"N-...No, yea, I know, I just...-"
"She beat him badly enough to press charges."
"Yea? Well." Akarsha softly and coolly mused, "Maybe he'll think twice before opening his fuckin' mouth..."
"Maybe she will just-...just do it again the next time some jerk goes and...-"
Diya's chest swelled with fire, and a trembling, stifled laugh spilled out. Not a good laugh. Scared one. Before she knew it, she was sobbing again. All of the built up pressure from the past two weeks was really becoming a problem.
Akarsha plopped down in the bed beside her, giving her back a rub with one palm.
They sat like this for a couple minutes, until Diya's breathing calmed back down. Now her sleeves were all gross.
"Why ain't you seen her lately?" Akarsha wondered, breaking the silence.
"Scared," Diya
"Of what?"
"Of the possibility that she still hasn't learned anything from this..."
"I mean...-" Akarsha let her thought hang in the awkward stillness for a sec. "Do I gotta say it?" she
"Say what?" Diya sighed tiredly.
"You two've been together for how long? And she ain't changed. I mean, yea, she has, but not with this shit."
"She needs to."
"...I mean, the legal system would totally agree with you. So, like...yea. But."
"But I'm getting...tired of this, Akarsha."
"Yea. Mm. Mmkay. Sure. I feel you. Noelle and I, ya know, we get into our spats, but-"
"Noelle doesn't beat people with a bat when she wants to steal their popcorn. Noelle doesn't slam people into lockers when they make fun of her. She doesn't constantly threaten...death on random strangers out in public. And Noelle definitely doesn't...beat the hell out of her in-laws at Thanksgiving..."
"W-...'Kay, but like...don't you find that hot?"
"What?"
"Your wife, all, like, puffin' up her chest, gettin' all like a mad chihuahua when her master's in trouble. I mean, you married her, my dude, the hell'd you think she was gonna do?"
"I'm not saying I'm even thinking of...-"
"For better and worse 'n all that shit."
"Yes."
"This seems like the exact kinda reason they have you say that stuff. Is all I'm sayin', D."
"OK. You don't have to tell me, I...-"
"You're really in a tizzy 'bout all this, huh?"
"Obviously."
"Dude-dude-dude," Akarsha spat, giving Diya a sideways hug. "'S OK, gurl. She's got this. 'Cuz of you. Right?"
"..."
Diya's stomach gurgled.
"You got her here," Akarsha pointed out. "You really think she'd have gone to college on her own?"
"..."
Did Diya really think Min was going to finish college? At this rate? A year behind, as it was?
"You're gonna get her through all this mess, too."
"..."
(Mess. Real mess.)
(His blood was all over her knuckles...)
Leaning in, Akarsha whispered, "Believe it." She pounded Diya's back with the meat of her skinny hand. "Sure as mah boi Naruto's gon' be Hokage some day, you two're gonna get through this shit. You know, really, when you think about it, Min's more like Naru than I bet she'd like."
"..."
Diya was tired. She was so, so tired of being the one pulling.
"They both got bigger barks than bites..."
"..."
Min had to push Diya out of her comfort zone, sure.
"They both catch their enemies by surprise..."
"..."
A push, a shove here and there, it was different from...pulling.
"That's 'cuz their enemies are all constantly underestimating them."
"..."
Constant pulling. And now it was more like dragging.
"They're both outcasts. They're both angry as fuuuuuuck but still got gushy soft sides."
"..."
It wasn't dead weight, was it?
"They're both gayyyy for their childhood bff...Like, even straight down to the vows."
"..."
Even if it was, it wouldn't always be.
"They both have nine tails..."
"..."
Diya was big. Strong. She could handle the weight for a while longer.
"They both create multiple copies of themselves to spin chakra into balls of death..."
"..."
A while longer. After that, though...
"Damn, though, but what about you and Sasuke?"
"Compare me to him and I will hit you."
"...DANG, D, pull outcha SHARINGAN on me like that..."