Abeyance-
Temporary inactivity, cessation, or suspension.
. . .
Talia retreated to her room that night, scared, more fearful than she had felt in a long time. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry, that she wasn't ready to tell him yet, but she ran. She fled because she knew her words would fail her, she felt so sick to her stomach that if she had stayed a moment longer she would have succumbed to her nausea, all over the carpet.
She choked on a sob, her whole body trembling and hot tears dribbling down her face, blurring her vision– not that it mattered with the complete darkness of her room. She leaned her back against the hard, wooden surface of the closed door, hearing it squeak under her weight. She buried her damp face in her hands her crying becoming more intense as she started hiccuping.
She scrambled over to her bed with blind haste, launching herself onto the coverless mattress and burying her tear-stained face into the plush, softness of her pillow. She held onto the pillow as she let herself cry into it, the only sounds to be heard were weak hiccups, small sniffles, and muffled whimpers.
And then her head began to swarm with broken, purple static and she was transported into another flashback, one that wasn't as physically painful. Suddenly her room wasn't dark anymore, and she was bathed in a butter-yellow light, and when she lifted her red, puffy-eyed face from her pillow she realized she wasn't in her room at all.
Again her movements were entirely involuntary as she was reliving a memory, not a dream. She heard soft knocks on the door across the room, and then saw the doorknob twist with a click and allow the wooden door to open. She saw a large, white, gloved hand emerge from the space between the door. But she squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face back into the pillow before she could see more, irritation from not being able to see who it was bubbled dimly in her chest.
Talia heard the door close with another click and heavy footsteps approach her bedside. And then 'felt' the intruder ungracefully place their weight down onto the side of the bed, the force quite literally causing her to be launched up from the mattress a good foot or two and then fall back down on her stomach.
"What's up with you?" She hears them ask in a seemingly disinterested and gravelly voice, the raspiness of it making her mentally cringe, it sounded like it hurt to speak. To present Talia's frustration, she didn't look up from her pillow.
"Nothing, go away." Was her dismissive, almost hostile response, and it earned a scoff from the receiver of it.
"Y'know," They started, a small clicking sound followed by something small catching fire caught her attention. She could practically remember the smell of smoke that followed. "That I'm not gonna leave ya alone 'til you tell me why you've been in bed all day."
Talia finally rolled over on her back with an exasperated sigh of mostly annoyance and moved to sit up on her knees facing him directly. If present Talia had been in control of her body, her heart would have frozen over.
She was met with huge lilac eyes, with a line dividing the halves of the irises, a round blue face with what looked like makeup or paint above his eyelids, around his wide mouth like a second pair of lips. He had a yellow sphere for a nose, strange ears, and a black hat, most likely a beret.
Not to mention the yellow, ruffled collar surrounding his neck and his strange clothing. He looked like a clown, obviously but the metal cigar between his teeth tainted the childish image of a circus carnie. It was him. From her first flash after waking up on that ship, in that blood-stained corridor, that was who she had seen. What really caught her attention was the white gloves he wore over thick fingers, it was most definitely the hand she'd seen just moments before fleeing to the kitchen hour earlier. The only difference was his gloves, they had been soaked with wet blood, but now they were clean.
"You gonna fess up or what?" He asks impatiently, taking a long drag and blowing the smoke through his teeth and ears. "Or am I gonna have 'ta force it outta ya?"
"You talk too much." Past Talia grumbled with a scowl crossing her arms and leaning against the headboard, not interested in talking about anything at all.
"And you aren't talking enough, my patience isn't endless," He says returning a stern glare in her direction, he really wasn't going to leave until she said something. "Just tell me what's botherin' you so much that ya can't talk 'ta me- your best friend might I add?"
"I just… I have this sick feeling." She finally says and receives a puzzled look from the clown sitting at the edge of her bed.
"Uh… okay? Care 'ta elaborate a bit more on 'a sick feeling'?" He asks warily, obviously not knowing what she was talking about. Talia groans sliding down the headboard until she is laying on her back again, throwing an arm over her eyes.
"I-I don't know! I just feel… drained, kind of sad but for no reason at all. I don't know why I feel so bad right now, I feel light-headed and dizzy when I move too much and my chest hurts and I can't concentrate."
The clown looks hopelessly confused, lost even. His small brows creasing and his huge eyes squinting almost half of the size they were, smoke leaking out of his mouth with the puzzled expression he held.
"I'm… not sure I'm following," He says, and Talia can't faintly remember the feeling of hopelessness in that moment. "Are you like… sick?"
Talia paused for a moment and then shrugged, "I don't know."
"What do ya mean you don't know?!" Pogo exclaimed throwing his hands- and almost his cigar- into the air.
"I mean, I don't know! I've never had an illness before, how should I know?" Talia retorted, despite the natural softer tones to her voice. In her case, this was as close to yelling as she could get. "I didn't think kais could get ill!"
"Well, obviously they can!" Pogo growled not necessarily angry, but rather confused, but not getting something always led to him being angry so there really was no difference.
"Stop yelling!" Talia snapped back, both of them frustrated with each other.
"You're yellin' too!"
"Oh my god, you're annoying!" She exclaims with a dramatic sigh and flops down on the bed in her melodramatic moment. There is a few minutes of silence as they both allow each other to cool off.
"So, what's the matter? Headache? Bellyache? Monthly cy-"
"No!" Talia interrupts him frantically tossing a pillow in the general direction of his face, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Pogo let the pillow bounce off his face, flicking the significantly shorter cigar from his lips to the trash across the room.
"It's just… a horrible migraine and I feel nauseous, kind of dizzy as well. It's hard to explain." She explains, trying to describe her symptoms the best she could with a hazy mind and a painful ache burning around her temples and neck. Out of habit, she lifts her hands to her neck to try and soothe the agitated muscles, she tilted her head to the opposite side of her afflicted nerves in her neck.
Talia can vaguely recall the persistent throbbing pain in her head, and it was a most unpleasant physical experience. Similar to the sharp, scream-worthy pain in her head when she got intense flashes, each one affected her body differently.
The most traumatic one she'd had caused her to have a seizure, one of the scariest moments in her life- that she could remember experiencing. She was beginning to wonder if she had some sort of head or brain injury, it would explain the constant pain, and maybe even her memory loss. Present Talia refocused her attention on the scene that was still playing out before her eyes, not wanting to miss anything important.
"Here let me see… " Pogo reaches out to her face to cover her forehead with his gloved hand, but the abrupt familiarity of it causes the scene to break. At first, it just seems to pause and glitch with dark purple static, but then everything dissolves and Talia's head shoots up from the pillow.
She's back in her room now, and there's sunlight peeking through the curtains of her window shining in her eyes when the curtain moved to the side. The small kai sighed and let her warm forehead collapse into the plush pillow once more, she knew this morning was going to be an awkward one, hopefully, Shin would not bring it up.
Her eyes flickered to check the time and she hauled herself off of her bed covers and padded over to her generous-sized closet. She only used up less than one-fourth of the closet space, she didn't really have many changes of clothes, just another duplicate of her uniform and night clothes. Talia took out her other uniform they let her wear and closed the closet.
Kibito could materialize clothing right? Maybe she could ask him to make her more clothes to wear since she can't really go anywhere to acquire more.
She scampered into the bathroom she had to herself and put her change of clothes on the marble counter, looking at her frazzled appearance in the unavoidable mirror was probably a mistake. Her hair was a tangled mess, and her eyes were surrounded with round red circles, she looked as awful as she felt.
Talia shook her head and started filling the tub for a much-needed bath, she could deal with last night's events later.
. . .
When Talia finally did step out of her room, she did so cautiously, she didn't seek out Shin right away like she normally did. Instead, she tried to find his servant, sensing his Ki was a difficult thing to do, kai's repressed their Ki signatures very well. She jumped when her vision suddenly went dark, all she could see were heat signatures now, she didn't know she could do this.
Choosing to appreciate it rather than question it, she looked for Kibito's, it wasn't long before she found him. He was a couple halls down, cleaning most likely. Looking hesitantly for Shin's signature she found him in his study, good.
Talia took off in the direction she assumed Kibito was, and the moment she turned the corner she caught sight of the tall kai moving vases back onto a shelf. She strode down the hall waiting for him to notice her presence, which he had already sensed a few turns ago but he hadn't thought much of it.
Kibito turned away from what he was doing to look down at the much shorter frame of Talia, who was craning her neck to look up at him with inverted eyes. The sclera of her eyes now black, and her pupils a pearly white, the irises a bit lighter than normal.
As if the ability had sensed it had served its purpose it deactivated, her eyes fading back to their original hue. This seemed to unnerve Kibito, and Talia was unaware that they had changed so she blinked right back.
"Is there something you need?" He finally says after an uncomfortable silence, and Talia is thankful for his conversation starter- if you could really call it that.
"Oh- Yes, actually. I wanted to ask if you could make me more clothes… like… more casual ones?" Kibito looks mildly surprised but genuinely considers her request, before nodding his approval of it. "Thank you, Kibito."
"It is not a bother to me, I will finish up cleaning first, however." Talia nods in agreement, and the stoic shin-jin turns back to his task. Watching him wipe the dust from more shelves and surfaces compels her to pick up a rag of her own and start cleaning the large glass window of the hall. For some reason cleaning was helping her keep busy around here, she didn't do it compulsively, but it helped her unwind.
She hadn't done it around either of the other residents and didn't really want to mention it to avoid being put in an uncomfortable confrontational situation. Both of them had tried insisting that she didn't need to clean up, but she made it clear that she felt uneasy leaving, or seeing messes.
Kibito took notice of her cleaning the windows, now on the second or third one. It confused him because he didn't even ask for assistance or think the glass was all that bad yet to need clearing. Remembering her insistence to keep things neat he dismissed his stare and moved on to dust off other surfaces, he did not pay much attention to her throughout the next hour. That was until he saw her scrubbing the floors, and that she had already done more than half of this hall and the whole other one.
"Miss Talia, do you desire assistance?" Kibito calls out dryly, and her head lifts from her work.
"No, thank you!" she shouts back down the hall, and returns to the wood floors on her hands and knees like a housemaid. It did not even seem to bother her, she looked relaxed.
. . .
Shin is in his study buried in his work, sketching out ideas and demographics for the next batch of planets he'd have to create within a decent time frame. The one he was working on currently was conceptually a mostly water world and would be fairly cold, and desolate being a planet so far away from a sun.
He couldn't help but look at the time every now and then, and glancing over to the unusually empty chair, half-expecting- or rather hoping- to see her sitting in it buried nose-deep in a book. It felt odd without her presence, and the empty feeling of guilt settled unevenly in his stomach. Perhaps he should not have said all the things he did last night, he did not regret himself venting his heart out to her, but rather insisting that she did the same so selfishly, what kind of person does that?
It was low for him to guilt-trip her into telling him her own personal issues when he had no way of knowing what she was dealing with. But… at the same time, he was worried about her, and she was always so dismissive and closed off about it that it became unbearable to keep to himself in that moment of vulnerability.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of it all was that she was giving so much and refusing to receive anything in return. He was a humble kai, and naturally wanted to give things to people without expecting anything in return, but he knew the right times to be selfish and selfless.
Shin sighed glancing over at the empty armchair and then the time again, and set down his pen on the smooth marble of the desktop. He would apologize to her whether she accepted it or not.
Maybe today was a good day to be selfish.
. . .
A/n: Sorry that it took me so long to finish this chapter, been busy with mid-term exams!
I apologize if there are any grammatical errors, didn't have much energy to proofread.
I'll start the next chapter soon, suggestions or questions are welcome, just PM me!
