Horizon
Beta'ed and/or revised by;
Contradicting-Whispers
Heather Shadelight
My most heartfelt thanks.
— O —
2009 October, that Saturday. Sarah's House, late afternoon.
Sarah found herself wrapped in something soft and warm, a pair of arms circling around her waist and pulling her towards Taylor, the brunette currently sleeping softly with a peaceful expression, no signs of distress or skin pulled taut due to stress or nerves.
She shifted a little and Taylor left a small pained gasp when one of Sarah's arms brushed against her torso as they moved upwards from their position at the other's hips, the slight touch near her ribs enough to startle her awake, if barely. Sarah had absolutely no idea how she slept that soundly if she was that sensitive to touch. Sarah knew she wasn't precisely still when sleeping.
"Taylor."
She looked up and froze the moment she noticed the position they were in. It wasn't anything indecent, but it still was cuddling and Sarah couldn't deceive herself enough to say that it didn't feel nice. For a moment, she managed to shove aside the little nagging whisper at the back of her head that insisted that she didn't deserve to be there.
She was distracted by the shade of red Taylor's cheeks started to acquire, growing deeper by the second and reaching downwards towards her neck, the remainder of the blush being covered by the black shirt she still had on her. Sarah felt faint disappointment in not seeing the rest before she quashed the thought.
"Come on, we…" Sarah yawned, her jaw popping uncomfortably. She rolled her neck, trying to do away with the little stiffness that survived the quite comfortable nap. "I need to ice those bruises, then," another yawn, this time it was a bit easier to open her eyes once more. "Then we'll get some food, and then…" Sarah threw a very pointed look at Taylor, gaze softening when she saw how her friend tried to hide herself once more beneath the blankets.
"Then you'll tell me how, exactly, you got injured, and I'm not going to accept 'the stairs mugged me' as an answer."
Sarah's attempt at levity apparently had some slight success, because the pale tone of skin that Taylor had started to acquire when Sarah spoke about scooping out of her the cause of her bruises lessened slightly, a small smile tugging at her lips, one that mirrored Sarah's.
The blonde recovered the now damp gel packs from the floor and went downstairs for another pair, glad that her parents were rich assholes and always bought a couple of everything, even if they didn't use it.
Perks of functional sociopathy applied to the working market, she supposed.
Leaving the room temperature ones and picking out the ice-cold pair, Sarah entered her room once more only for her breath to hitch once again at the sight of Taylor looking in her direction and rubbing the sleep of one eye, the other squinting slightly in her direction.
Right, glasses. Stop crushing on your friend and help her, idiot.
"Here, let me." Sarah reached the nightstand beside the bed and plucked the glasses from it, turning to Taylor and gingerly placing the spectacles on her once she stopped rubbing her eye. "There, perfect." Sarah gave Taylor a smile, then gestured with the gel packs. "Now comes the not-so-fun part. Ready?"
Taylor sighed, then spoke with a tone laden with resignation. "Is it really necessary? I've always hated ice and it leaves you damp and wet and it's uncomfortable and can't we wait for them to fade eee-holy shit that smarts!"
"Now don't be a baby, the cold isn't that bad and it'll help a lot long term, better than heat that's for sure." Taylor hissed once again when she moved from a smallish bruise to a larger one, her teeth clenched but staying still nonetheless.
Sarah piled on the banter, trying to take away her mind from the pain and cold after waking up from an admittedly quite nice nap. "Now, see how it wasn't that bad?" Sarah smiled at her, "now just be a good girl and stay still for a while."
At that Taylor went completely still, a nuclear blush overtaking her features a second later. Sarah bookmarked that as 'interesting, needs further research' in the back of her mind and let it fade into obscurity.
She worked like that, pressing the packs to the affected zones and telling Taylor to put the arm she just finished up in the air, because that supposedly helped.
That's what the internet said, anyway. She wasn't going to question it anytime soon if it could be helped.
The silence was broken some minutes later, Sarah's voice cutting through the pleasant atmosphere and turning it into something quite a bit more tense, seeing how Taylor's shoulders hunched and she started avoiding her gaze. "So, how did you get these anyway?"
Taylor took a minute to answer, but when she did she did so in a small voice, one that if it weren't for the silence currently permeating the room except for the sound of plastic on skin Sarah would have surely missed. "Do I… do I have to? I, it's my problem, and I don't…"
"Don't finish that, Taylor." Sarah interrupted in a gentle way that still had an undercurrent of hardness. "You aren't a bother, and I- this…" she gestured towards her arms, "isn't normal. Not at all."
Sarah locked her eyes with Taylor's, verdant emeralds meeting arsenic Scheele. "Please," she said, more plea inflected into her tone than a simple word could convey, "I worry about you. You don't have to answer me right away, or not at all if you want to, but, please, talk to me."
Sarah had stopped applying pressure to the spots in her arms, and given that to do the same to the rest of the injuries Taylor would have to lose her shirt; it was something she did not want to ask right now. This was more important.
Taylor seemed to waver and almost collapse on herself, until she apparently found her bearings and met her gaze once again, green locked on green. She gave a small sigh of resignation, and started to talk.
"You, well, you remember Emma, yeah?" At Sarah's nod she continued, a little faster. "We were friends, really close when we were little, but then I met you in that forum, and started to talk a bit more with you, and I think Emma didn't like it that I had another friend. She always had this… edge to her, and I think I just noticed recently." Sarah smiled when she mentioned their first encounter on the net, and Taylor apparently was doing the same, a small little smile tugging at her lips while she remembered.
"What was our first chat about? Something about Eidolon's best power combination?"
Sarah let the small change of topic slide, knowing that they would come back to the issue. "Yeah. We argued about power combos and interactions for almost three days straight. I think we were trying to one-up one another with ridiculous synergies, there at the end." Her smile and Taylor's too turned into a fond one.
Taylor chuckled, "yeah. Well, at least I was, and now I know you were too."
The pleasant silence stretched for a couple of minutes in which Sarah got out a hairbrush and positioned herself behind Taylor after some maneuvering, promptly starting to brush her friend's hair, silky as it was. Honestly, it was more of a cheap excuse so she could run her fingers through it.
She didn't push, she had already opened the can of worms, now Taylor only needed some time to compose herself.
"She turned on me the week that we started the year."
Sarah's brain stuttered and promptly tried to catch fire, the now well known taste of guilt readily making itself known at the back of her throat.
"She just… flipped, I guess. Said she didn't need me anymore, that I was weak, that she was strong. There was this other girl with her, talk, athletic, sneering face by default, the works. So I assumed that this other girl had gotten Emma into something that reeked of illegality." Taylor exhaled, getting a bit more worked out with each passing second, but Sarah could tell that the brush grazing her scalp was being a good distraction and stress relief.
"I tried to talk, really, I tried. She just wouldn't listen, so I stopped trying. That's when it started." Sarah made a very pointed effort to not ask and interrupt. "First it was just whispers on the hallways, then things scribbled in my desk, then my chair, then my locker, then the things inside my locker, no matter how many times I changed the combination each day things would just up and vanish, as if my life was being played in the stage of a bad magician. Just, poof. Gone."
Taylor laughed. It was a bitter sound, filled with something caustic. Sarah didn't like that laugh, so she stopped using the brush and started rubbing her fingertips in Taylor's scalp, the latter falling silent after that. Hesitation seemed to pass across Taylor's body, teetering on the edge of something before finally deciding and leaning against Sarah, her head coming to a rest in such a way that Sarah could plant her chin in the crown of Taylor's head.
Taylor let out a sigh, and positioned herself, trying to squeeze just some more warmth and find just a little bit more comfort. "Then things started to get physical." At that, Sarah had to stop her fingers and take a deep breath before she did or said something rash.
"As with the other thing, it started small. Spitballs, weighted paper balls to the back of the head, targeting me in softball…" Sarah breathed out, and that idea about dumping someone in Blasto's territory was starting to sound more and more appealing by the second. She wasn't a violent girl, but she very much wanted to stab someone right now. Preferably a redhead.
"Then it got worse. Elbows on the hallways, trying to trip me constantly, pulling at my backpack so I fell, people running in the hallways and slamming into me with nary a 'i'm sorry'... I'm sure I saw most of them smirking."
Taylor fell silent, and the guilt continued to crash against Sarah's mind. All of that at the start of the year course, just when she had abandoned her, just when Rex decided that life wasn't really worth it anymore. "I'm… I'm sorry."
Taylor moved her head backwards and to the side, intent on looking at her eyes. "Why-? I mean, I'm the one in your house freeloading, airing my grievances which I doubt concern you and somehow managing to- just," she sighed. "I'm just – happy, that you're still my friend…"
Sarah gulped past the knot in her throat. "I'm still sorry. For leaving you alone. You didn't deserve it. It's just…" the knot tightened, and suddenly it was hard to breathe, let alone speak. She- she couldn't talk about Rex. It was too fresh, too raw, too recent too bloody too red —
Soft arms circled her waist and she found her face buried in the crook of the neck of her friend, Taylor rubbing her back in small circles while she tried desperately to not cry, her efforts dashed when she noticed the dampness in Taylor's shirt. She reached with her own arms to reciprocate her hug, but recoiled when she brushed a bruise, arms almost falling to Sarah's sides before Taylor scooped them out from beneath and put them around the back of her neck. "It doesn't hurt there," was the soft murmur she heard, and Sarah held on for dear life.
She didn't know how much time it took her to calm down from the memories, but what she knew was that Taylor was there from start to finish, acting as a rock and stabilizing force.
God, thought Sarah, how can I be so pathetic? She was the one supposed to comfort Taylor and help her through whatever had landed her those injuries, not bawl her eyes out at the mere thought of speaking aloud about Rex.
Taylor glanced outside, and saw that the natural light of the day was coming to an end if the reds and oranges streaming across the crystal panes were a clue to go by.
"You don't have to talk about it," were Taylor's first words in minutes, and that was that. No questions, no judgment, no nothing. Just an open offer to just ignore the issue.
It was cowardly, and selfish, and the easy way out.
She took it anyway.
"I-I don't think I wa-nt to cook anything…"
Taylor simply smiled at her, that wide, radiant thing that made her want to pull her into a kiss.
"Pizza sounds good?"
Sarah nodded, but didn't let go of Taylor, staying latched onto her as best as she could.
Taylor didn't protest, she just looked at her with kind, green eyes.