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xp_logsOn her way to the cemetery, Amanda runs into Marie-Ange, who's moving in. They talk about Charlie and Marie-Ange reveals her vision.
Rosemary for remembrance, fern for magic and shelter, white heather for protection, marigold for sorrow... Amanda fussed with the small bouquet , tying the stems together with a bit of kitchen string. For a moment she found herself wishing she had witch hazel to bind the spell and paused, biting her lip. There was no spellwork here, just the application of what she'd been taught to make a gesture, however small, the flowers gathered from the florist near the subway station (which the exception of the rosemary - that she'd found in the grocer's, among the basil and sage and dill). Marie-Ange and Manuel had taught her enough about colours to know that they clashed horribly, the orange of the marigolds drowning out the softer green and blue and white of the others, but again, it didn't matter. The bouquet was a message and she thought that maybe, if Charlie was anywhere he could see it, he'd understand.
Her eyes filled again and she blinked hard. Not yet. She wanted to get out to the cemetery and she didn't want to be all pink and puffy-eyed for the trip over. And no doubt there'd be plenty of time for tears today. Picking up her bookbag (a box of tissues, a bottle of water, a couple of books she wanted to read to him, the wych he'd given her), she let herself out of the apartment, flowers held carefully in her right hand. She'd packed a small jar to put them in, so they'd last a little longer. All set.
Marie-Ange was tempted to just move into the hardware store. She'd spent enough time there, certainly. But the apartment needed fixing, and it was hers, and she was taking down that wallpaper in the most awful shade of yellow ever if it was the -last- thing she did.
Carrying a bag overfull with wallpaper removers, scraping tools, and everything else that had caught her eye in the store, she cut through the courtyard towards the brownstone, half lost in her plans for the apartment. If she got the bedroom comfortable, then she could work on the living room, and perhaps open it up. It was a little too cramped for her tastes, and there was a dividing wall that -had- to go.
Movement caught Amanda's eye as she entered the foyer, spotting Marie-Ange in the courtyard, and she smiled. So it really looked like Marie-Ange was moving in - they hadn't had a lot of time to talk, what with San Diego and the rest. "Hey, Frenchie," she called, crossing over to intercept her. "Looks like you're getting all set with the moving in."
"I am trying to.." Marie-Ange said. "I did not think just moving would be this hard. I knew the job would be hard, but the moving is ... I have so many boxes, I think they are breeding little baby boxes." She nodded and looked down at her bag. "And so much to do to the apartment to make it livable." Livable to her standards.
"Well, if you need a hand, just ask... well, except for today." Amanda gestured a little with the small bunch of flowers. "I, um, have somewhere else I have to be today."
Marie-Ange nodded. "Oh, I will. I am going to take down the wall between the kitchen and the living room and make a counter space. And I am going to need help destroying the wall." She shifted the bag to her hip and looked at the flowers, putting two and two together. "I saw your note that you were taking the day off. I had forgotten what day it was.." She said apologetically.
Amanda smiled wanly. "Destruction and property damage? You can probably find someone to help you with that." Then she shrugged a little. "It's all right," she said. "It's probably slack of me to not go into work but... I don't think I could have sat there today. Too much going through my head, y'know? At least going to see him, talking it out loud gets it out there. Not that it will ever make any sense tho'. That's the worst part - it was just so... stupid." She was trying hard to keep a calm demeanour, but as she spoke, her lips trembled and her throat tightened so the last came out as a squeak.
"It isn't slacking at all. If it was, Remy, or Pete would have told you." Marie-Ange argued. "We have sick and personal time off for a reason. Even if I think most of us will never end up using very much of it." She shifted the bag again, and frowned at it. Heavier than she'd thought. "Are you.. " Marie-Ange started, and then shook her head. "If you do not want to go alone, or want to not be alone after, let me know?"
"Remy'll be there." Amanda was sure of that - if he was going to be anywhere today, it would be the cemetary. There was a small, cracked wooden bench nearby and Amanda moved to perch on it. "I just... I miss him." Her eyes brimmed again but this time she let the tears fall. "He was my friend and now he's gone and I don't understand why."
Marie-Ange joined Amanda on the bench, setting the bag down at her feet. "I wish I understood it myself." Because then she could explain it to Amanda, maybe. She frowned, and shook her head. "I do
not understand why he made that choice. Why he thought there was nothing left for him."
"For ages afterwards - and even now, sometimes - I kept trying to think of things I might have done, that might have changed it. If I hadn't had my phone turned off, if Remy and I hadn't gone out that night, if we'd called when Remy found his dad instead of waiting to tell him in person..." Amanda shook her head. "And then there's times
I think, who am I fooling? We didn't know each other that long, only a couple of months - he probably would have gotten sick of me or something and dumped me six months later, for all I know."
"No, I .. I very much do not think that would have happened." Marie-Ange said softly. "It was his choice, and perhaps he thought he had no other, but ... if he had made a different one.." She wrung her hands, anguished look on her face.
Amanda wasn't so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she wasn't aware of Marie-Ange's anguish. Laying her hand over her friend's she asked, gently: "What is it?"
"I saw.. when everyone else was having those visions..." Marie-Ange squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "I do not know why this is so hard to explain. All of the things that everyone saw, they were choices. Not circumstances, but choices people had to make. Wanda saw her brother at the school, Terry saw Alison as a retro disco star, it was all choices.." She wiped away a few tears, and looked up at Amanda. "I saw Charlie... and you."
"Choices." Amanda frowned a little as she wrapped her fingers around Marie-Ange's other hand, squeezing a little in an effort to reassure her. Hadn't last year been all about choices? Making her own, living with the consequences... But Charlie's suicide hadn't been a choice for her, it had been his. All his. "You saw... us? Me and him?" The would-be comforting grip on her friend's hand turned a little clingy. "How did... was he... we..." She faltered, not knowing what it was she wanted to ask.
Was it better?
"Happy. I think..." Marie-Ange answered. "He threw a pencap at you, and you messed up his hair, and it was all so... comfortable." Her mouth went tight, and thin. "That Charlie made a choice to stand up for himself, I think. Or to keep fighting, or to run and hide. Anything than what he did here..."
He made a choice to stand up for himself... Anything than what he did here. "I would have helped," Amanda whispered, the tears spilling over again, holding tightly onto Marie-Ange's hand. "Anything he needed me to do, I would have done it. But he didn't ask, he didn't tell me, he just... kept it to himself. Locked us out, the same as I locked out everyone later. We both ran away from everyone who could have, who wanted to help." It was suddenly so clear. It wasn't my fault, it was never my fault...
There wasn't much Marie-Ange could say anymore. She didn't think she needed to either. She just sat with Amanda, and let her cling to her hand, and tried to give what silent comfort she could, without breaking down to tears herself. She could do that later, privately.
At last the storm passed, leaving Amanda feeling somehow better for it. One less stone of guilt weighing on her. "Thanks, for telling me that," she said at last, letting go of Marie-Ange's hand to dig through her pockets for a tissue - she was a soggy mess. "Didn't mean to break down on you, but I s'pose it's that sort of day." Blowing her nose on a scrap of tissue she'd found, she pushed her hair back out of her face with a sigh. "Seems to be the month for this sort of thing. Catharsis, the shrink calls it." She gave Marie-Ange a wobbly smile. "Sorry to fall apart on you."
Marie-Ange produced a packet of tissues from her purse, and handed them to Amanda without comment. She'd probably need them. "You do not need to apoligize for falling apart on me..." She said awkwardly. "If you needed to.. " She frowned, and shook her head. "I am so very awful at this. I never know what to say. I... I am just... if you need to talk more, you know where I am..."
"You don't have to say anything - what you told me already helped a lot. Really." Amanda hesitated and then gave her friend a brief sideways hug. "And I might take you up on that later. I could help with the decorating - I'm wicked with a paint scraper." She paused, her face thoughtful. "Choices. Funny how it comes down to that." For some reason she was remembering what Forge had said, about responsibility and doing what you could. The choice to do that. That easy life isn't who I am. It's not who we are.
"Everything we do - everything anyone does comes down to a choice." Marie-Ange said. "Even the choices we do not know we are making. We get up out of bed, that is a choice. You could lie about and do nothing. You leave your apartment to go to work, that is a choice too. What you eat, what you wear, the people you talk to, every little thing we do is a decision we made at some time." She patted the always-present lump in her purse that was her cards. "Fate is fate, and sometimes the future cannot be changed, but it was written by choices people made."
"And how do we know we've made the right one?" Amanda sighed a little. "Giving up the magic... it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It seemed like the right thing to do. But I see Remy in pain all the time and getting worse, and there's nothing I can do. I go on jobs and I spend my time hiding behind Betsy or you because I can't do shite to defend myself. One of these days, someone's going to get hurt because they're too busy watching my back and I'm not even going to be able to help them." She glanced at Marie-Ange. "Forge said something to me the other day about responsibility. That what we can do makes us responsible for what we can do with it. Giving mine up... it feels like I'm being a coward, sometimes, taking the easy way out. Only, I don't know what to do, what is the right choice here."
Marie-Ange frowned, thinking. "Perhaps it was right at the time, and what is right and wrong changes with circumstance, and surroundings?" She said, almost half to herself. "I am not sure I have advice for you. I am not sure I have advice for -me-, when I struggle with this. I think I know who you could ask about changes, about if it was right then, or is right -now-." She said, and winced a little. Precognition made for troublesome grammer rules.
"Don't tell me - scary, incomprehensible accent, lives in a swamp?" Amanda asked wryly.
Marie-Ange nodded. "And do not tell Doug if you go, he will grab your ankles and try to pack himself in your luggage. For some reason he likes her cooking." She couldn't help but grin. The last time she'd seen Tante, she'd brought food, and Doug had -hugged- the containers.
"I'll bring him something back. That is, if she doesn't chuck me in the swamp as alligator bait for even thinking of asking what I'm thinking of asking her about." Amanda huffed, blowing hair out of her face. "I should go. I figure Remy's already at the cemetery and I need to talk to him about this too." But before she got up, she gave her friend a tight hug. "Thanks, mate."
A flash of.. something, that Marie-Ange made a mental note to look into more deeply made her pause before answering. But she knew Amanda wouldn't be going to the alligator pit. "The worst she can do is say no. I think the worst she would do is say no, if all you are doing is asking, instead of demanding or ordering." She hugged Amanda back and stood, offering her an arm up. "Make sure Remy is as allright as Remy can be? He was.. " Drugged out of his mind. Drunk. Miserable. In pain. Dying. "not in a good way the last time he and I spoke."
Amanda accepted the helping arm and nodded, a little grimly - they both knew Remy was beyond 'not in a good way'. "As best he'll let me. I'll probably be anti-social the rest of the day, but I'll see you at work tomorrow, yeah?"
"If by work you mean "The nightmare of boxes that is to be my office." Marie-Ange said, nodding. "Moving all of my things is bad enough. Setting up an office... I had actually not considered that." She bent to pick up her bags. "I will be there in one way or another. We should catch breakfast, if you are up to it. My kitchen is not exactly well stocked. Or stocked at all."
"I was a bit slack on the welcome box," Amanda said with an apologetic grin as she gathered her own belongings, the small bunch of herbs only a little rumpled from the mini-drama. "Brekkie sounds good - the diner Jubes used to work at is just 'round the corner from the office." She smiled at Marie-Ange. "I might even be convinced to help you out with the Great Box Pile - got plenty of practice helping Wanda. But right now, I'd better run. Take care, don't go falling off any ladders or anything."
Rosemary for remembrance, fern for magic and shelter, white heather for protection, marigold for sorrow... Amanda fussed with the small bouquet , tying the stems together with a bit of kitchen string. For a moment she found herself wishing she had witch hazel to bind the spell and paused, biting her lip. There was no spellwork here, just the application of what she'd been taught to make a gesture, however small, the flowers gathered from the florist near the subway station (which the exception of the rosemary - that she'd found in the grocer's, among the basil and sage and dill). Marie-Ange and Manuel had taught her enough about colours to know that they clashed horribly, the orange of the marigolds drowning out the softer green and blue and white of the others, but again, it didn't matter. The bouquet was a message and she thought that maybe, if Charlie was anywhere he could see it, he'd understand.
Her eyes filled again and she blinked hard. Not yet. She wanted to get out to the cemetery and she didn't want to be all pink and puffy-eyed for the trip over. And no doubt there'd be plenty of time for tears today. Picking up her bookbag (a box of tissues, a bottle of water, a couple of books she wanted to read to him, the wych he'd given her), she let herself out of the apartment, flowers held carefully in her right hand. She'd packed a small jar to put them in, so they'd last a little longer. All set.
Marie-Ange was tempted to just move into the hardware store. She'd spent enough time there, certainly. But the apartment needed fixing, and it was hers, and she was taking down that wallpaper in the most awful shade of yellow ever if it was the -last- thing she did.
Carrying a bag overfull with wallpaper removers, scraping tools, and everything else that had caught her eye in the store, she cut through the courtyard towards the brownstone, half lost in her plans for the apartment. If she got the bedroom comfortable, then she could work on the living room, and perhaps open it up. It was a little too cramped for her tastes, and there was a dividing wall that -had- to go.
Movement caught Amanda's eye as she entered the foyer, spotting Marie-Ange in the courtyard, and she smiled. So it really looked like Marie-Ange was moving in - they hadn't had a lot of time to talk, what with San Diego and the rest. "Hey, Frenchie," she called, crossing over to intercept her. "Looks like you're getting all set with the moving in."
"I am trying to.." Marie-Ange said. "I did not think just moving would be this hard. I knew the job would be hard, but the moving is ... I have so many boxes, I think they are breeding little baby boxes." She nodded and looked down at her bag. "And so much to do to the apartment to make it livable." Livable to her standards.
"Well, if you need a hand, just ask... well, except for today." Amanda gestured a little with the small bunch of flowers. "I, um, have somewhere else I have to be today."
Marie-Ange nodded. "Oh, I will. I am going to take down the wall between the kitchen and the living room and make a counter space. And I am going to need help destroying the wall." She shifted the bag to her hip and looked at the flowers, putting two and two together. "I saw your note that you were taking the day off. I had forgotten what day it was.." She said apologetically.
Amanda smiled wanly. "Destruction and property damage? You can probably find someone to help you with that." Then she shrugged a little. "It's all right," she said. "It's probably slack of me to not go into work but... I don't think I could have sat there today. Too much going through my head, y'know? At least going to see him, talking it out loud gets it out there. Not that it will ever make any sense tho'. That's the worst part - it was just so... stupid." She was trying hard to keep a calm demeanour, but as she spoke, her lips trembled and her throat tightened so the last came out as a squeak.
"It isn't slacking at all. If it was, Remy, or Pete would have told you." Marie-Ange argued. "We have sick and personal time off for a reason. Even if I think most of us will never end up using very much of it." She shifted the bag again, and frowned at it. Heavier than she'd thought. "Are you.. " Marie-Ange started, and then shook her head. "If you do not want to go alone, or want to not be alone after, let me know?"
"Remy'll be there." Amanda was sure of that - if he was going to be anywhere today, it would be the cemetary. There was a small, cracked wooden bench nearby and Amanda moved to perch on it. "I just... I miss him." Her eyes brimmed again but this time she let the tears fall. "He was my friend and now he's gone and I don't understand why."
Marie-Ange joined Amanda on the bench, setting the bag down at her feet. "I wish I understood it myself." Because then she could explain it to Amanda, maybe. She frowned, and shook her head. "I do
not understand why he made that choice. Why he thought there was nothing left for him."
"For ages afterwards - and even now, sometimes - I kept trying to think of things I might have done, that might have changed it. If I hadn't had my phone turned off, if Remy and I hadn't gone out that night, if we'd called when Remy found his dad instead of waiting to tell him in person..." Amanda shook her head. "And then there's times
I think, who am I fooling? We didn't know each other that long, only a couple of months - he probably would have gotten sick of me or something and dumped me six months later, for all I know."
"No, I .. I very much do not think that would have happened." Marie-Ange said softly. "It was his choice, and perhaps he thought he had no other, but ... if he had made a different one.." She wrung her hands, anguished look on her face.
Amanda wasn't so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she wasn't aware of Marie-Ange's anguish. Laying her hand over her friend's she asked, gently: "What is it?"
"I saw.. when everyone else was having those visions..." Marie-Ange squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "I do not know why this is so hard to explain. All of the things that everyone saw, they were choices. Not circumstances, but choices people had to make. Wanda saw her brother at the school, Terry saw Alison as a retro disco star, it was all choices.." She wiped away a few tears, and looked up at Amanda. "I saw Charlie... and you."
"Choices." Amanda frowned a little as she wrapped her fingers around Marie-Ange's other hand, squeezing a little in an effort to reassure her. Hadn't last year been all about choices? Making her own, living with the consequences... But Charlie's suicide hadn't been a choice for her, it had been his. All his. "You saw... us? Me and him?" The would-be comforting grip on her friend's hand turned a little clingy. "How did... was he... we..." She faltered, not knowing what it was she wanted to ask.
Was it better?
"Happy. I think..." Marie-Ange answered. "He threw a pencap at you, and you messed up his hair, and it was all so... comfortable." Her mouth went tight, and thin. "That Charlie made a choice to stand up for himself, I think. Or to keep fighting, or to run and hide. Anything than what he did here..."
He made a choice to stand up for himself... Anything than what he did here. "I would have helped," Amanda whispered, the tears spilling over again, holding tightly onto Marie-Ange's hand. "Anything he needed me to do, I would have done it. But he didn't ask, he didn't tell me, he just... kept it to himself. Locked us out, the same as I locked out everyone later. We both ran away from everyone who could have, who wanted to help." It was suddenly so clear. It wasn't my fault, it was never my fault...
There wasn't much Marie-Ange could say anymore. She didn't think she needed to either. She just sat with Amanda, and let her cling to her hand, and tried to give what silent comfort she could, without breaking down to tears herself. She could do that later, privately.
At last the storm passed, leaving Amanda feeling somehow better for it. One less stone of guilt weighing on her. "Thanks, for telling me that," she said at last, letting go of Marie-Ange's hand to dig through her pockets for a tissue - she was a soggy mess. "Didn't mean to break down on you, but I s'pose it's that sort of day." Blowing her nose on a scrap of tissue she'd found, she pushed her hair back out of her face with a sigh. "Seems to be the month for this sort of thing. Catharsis, the shrink calls it." She gave Marie-Ange a wobbly smile. "Sorry to fall apart on you."
Marie-Ange produced a packet of tissues from her purse, and handed them to Amanda without comment. She'd probably need them. "You do not need to apoligize for falling apart on me..." She said awkwardly. "If you needed to.. " She frowned, and shook her head. "I am so very awful at this. I never know what to say. I... I am just... if you need to talk more, you know where I am..."
"You don't have to say anything - what you told me already helped a lot. Really." Amanda hesitated and then gave her friend a brief sideways hug. "And I might take you up on that later. I could help with the decorating - I'm wicked with a paint scraper." She paused, her face thoughtful. "Choices. Funny how it comes down to that." For some reason she was remembering what Forge had said, about responsibility and doing what you could. The choice to do that. That easy life isn't who I am. It's not who we are.
"Everything we do - everything anyone does comes down to a choice." Marie-Ange said. "Even the choices we do not know we are making. We get up out of bed, that is a choice. You could lie about and do nothing. You leave your apartment to go to work, that is a choice too. What you eat, what you wear, the people you talk to, every little thing we do is a decision we made at some time." She patted the always-present lump in her purse that was her cards. "Fate is fate, and sometimes the future cannot be changed, but it was written by choices people made."
"And how do we know we've made the right one?" Amanda sighed a little. "Giving up the magic... it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It seemed like the right thing to do. But I see Remy in pain all the time and getting worse, and there's nothing I can do. I go on jobs and I spend my time hiding behind Betsy or you because I can't do shite to defend myself. One of these days, someone's going to get hurt because they're too busy watching my back and I'm not even going to be able to help them." She glanced at Marie-Ange. "Forge said something to me the other day about responsibility. That what we can do makes us responsible for what we can do with it. Giving mine up... it feels like I'm being a coward, sometimes, taking the easy way out. Only, I don't know what to do, what is the right choice here."
Marie-Ange frowned, thinking. "Perhaps it was right at the time, and what is right and wrong changes with circumstance, and surroundings?" She said, almost half to herself. "I am not sure I have advice for you. I am not sure I have advice for -me-, when I struggle with this. I think I know who you could ask about changes, about if it was right then, or is right -now-." She said, and winced a little. Precognition made for troublesome grammer rules.
"Don't tell me - scary, incomprehensible accent, lives in a swamp?" Amanda asked wryly.
Marie-Ange nodded. "And do not tell Doug if you go, he will grab your ankles and try to pack himself in your luggage. For some reason he likes her cooking." She couldn't help but grin. The last time she'd seen Tante, she'd brought food, and Doug had -hugged- the containers.
"I'll bring him something back. That is, if she doesn't chuck me in the swamp as alligator bait for even thinking of asking what I'm thinking of asking her about." Amanda huffed, blowing hair out of her face. "I should go. I figure Remy's already at the cemetery and I need to talk to him about this too." But before she got up, she gave her friend a tight hug. "Thanks, mate."
A flash of.. something, that Marie-Ange made a mental note to look into more deeply made her pause before answering. But she knew Amanda wouldn't be going to the alligator pit. "The worst she can do is say no. I think the worst she would do is say no, if all you are doing is asking, instead of demanding or ordering." She hugged Amanda back and stood, offering her an arm up. "Make sure Remy is as allright as Remy can be? He was.. " Drugged out of his mind. Drunk. Miserable. In pain. Dying. "not in a good way the last time he and I spoke."
Amanda accepted the helping arm and nodded, a little grimly - they both knew Remy was beyond 'not in a good way'. "As best he'll let me. I'll probably be anti-social the rest of the day, but I'll see you at work tomorrow, yeah?"
"If by work you mean "The nightmare of boxes that is to be my office." Marie-Ange said, nodding. "Moving all of my things is bad enough. Setting up an office... I had actually not considered that." She bent to pick up her bags. "I will be there in one way or another. We should catch breakfast, if you are up to it. My kitchen is not exactly well stocked. Or stocked at all."
"I was a bit slack on the welcome box," Amanda said with an apologetic grin as she gathered her own belongings, the small bunch of herbs only a little rumpled from the mini-drama. "Brekkie sounds good - the diner Jubes used to work at is just 'round the corner from the office." She smiled at Marie-Ange. "I might even be convinced to help you out with the Great Box Pile - got plenty of practice helping Wanda. But right now, I'd better run. Take care, don't go falling off any ladders or anything."
