xp_logs | Sooraya, Sharon: Breaking point

xp_catseye posting in

After hearing about a distressing email from Alani, Sooraya confronts Sharon about her recent behavior.
CW: Allusions to bullying, loss of a parent, emotional distress.

Sharon chewed her lip thoughtfully as she let the video repeat. Since her fight with Liam she had largely avoided human form -- too easily spotted, and people took it as an invitation to lecture her -- but it was undeniably the most convenient way to operate her devices. Currently she was curled in an armchair with her feet tucked under her as she scrolled her favorite wildlife sanctuary account. She made note of how the leopard placed its feet as it leapt from trunk to trunk. Even after months of access to the woods surrounding the mansion she felt she could always improve her technique with vertical surfaces. Leaping from cabinet to sofa at 12lbs was very different from leaping from tree to tree at ten times that.

"Hey Sharon, is Match around?" Sooraya quickly glanced around, pausing in the door opening with a serious expression on her face.

Sharon glanced up.

"No," she said, a little warily. "Is out playing one of his games. I can help?"

"Oh, that's good." Sooraya quietly closed the door behind her and immediately took a seat across from Sharon. She took a moment to study Sharon before shaking her head slowly. "We really need to talk and that's easier if Match isn't here. If you're up for it?"

Sharon watched the other woman already seated before her and put down the tablet.

"Question is courtesy only, I think," she observed.

"I'm afraid so..." Sooraya tilted her head a little. "Sharon, what's going on between you and our new Hope? Because I've been hearing lots of not so nice stories. And I saw what you posted in your journal when she introduced herself."

Sharon's face remained impassive, but the fur on her purple tail began to rise. "Dislike is not permitted?" she asked, defensiveness already making its inevitable appearance. "Was words only. Freedom of speech is mine. I am an American."

"I think it's more than just not liking her... It's okay not to like someone, keep a bit of a distance... but I've seen you being kinda mean towards her, Sharon." Sooraya raised an eyebrow at her. "Or didn't I see you ignoring her and walking straight past her when she just asked you a question a few days ago?"

The girl's eyes narrowed a fraction. "I heard no question," she said as the tip of her tail began to move in a stiff dance. "And if I had, courtesy is not owed to the invader."

Sooraya's eyes narrowed immediately, honing in that last bit. "Why do you call her an invader?" She asked, though her voice gentled a little almost immediately.

"What else is one who commits home invasion to be called?" Sharon sniffed, raising her chin. "Is as I said. Dislike is my right."

"Interesting you mention home invasions by the way. There seems to have been one yesterday around here. Because Hope is missing a special shell Alani brought her from Hawaii. It was on a shelf in her room... and now it has vanished. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?" Sooraya made sure to meet Sharon's eyes, clear disappointment ringing in her voice. "I'd like to think of course you wouldn't, but I am having some serious doubts here, Sharon."

Sharon met Sooraya's eyes with an unflinching yellow gaze. So, Sooraya knew. Liam and Sam had tried disappointment on Sharon, too, and Sharon's response was the same now as it had been then: doubling down.

"If something of personal value was taken," Sharon snapped, "is only justice. Is she who stole first from me."

"So you did take her shell." There was no anger, only sadness in Sooraya's eyes. "I really wanted to believe you didn't. But I don't understand, Sharon. Help me... what is it she took from you?"

"My home!" The words came out in a rush, like a river finally bursting through a dam. "When I first came people petted and played with me. I was to be safe. Then new girl came and is only Hope, Hope, Hope. Just as I began to feel this home was mine she wrecked it and attacked my friends. Everyone says is no matter, but now everything is noise and mess, and always there are strangers here to work and inspect. All is chaos, and I cannot make anyone understand."

Sharon didn't understand why she was starting to shake as she said this. She hunched over her knees and seized her tail to clutch it to her chest like a child with a security blanket.

"I tried so hard to ensure all was correct," she continued, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. "For weeks before making my petition I planned, but she had only to appear. She is so small and so cute and" Sharon's face twisted as her arms tightened around her tail, "and everyone has grown tired of me!"

Sooraya quickly rose and move to the other couch to settling down next to Sharon. Lifting her arm, she wrapped it around Sharon's shoulders and pulled her a little closer. "This is your home now, Sharon. And you have a place here, with people that do love and care about you. They'll still play with you and pet you, even with Hope here."

"Is not true. Even my friends have been taken." Sharon's tail contorted against her chest, a curl of misery. "Shatterstar trains with her. Liam has taken her to see horses, and even Match lets her play with Milton. I know is same with you and Alani also. I went to visit but already she was there, and there was no place for me. And -- and is not fair, because she already has so many who love her. Her father will come for her and she will go back to them, but I will still be alone." Her voice cracked. "I have no one to come for me."

"Sharon, people's hearts are not so small there is only space for you or Hope. Love isn't finite... there is enough for both of you there. Both of you get to be loved." Sooraya gently tipped Sharon's head up with her finger, making sure she met her eyes. "But people get upset if you are being mean or doing other nasty things and it will be harder for everyone to show you that."

Sharon finally released her tail. Her mouth twisted. "Everyone thinks is on purpose, that I act like this, but is not like that. Sometimes these things I know are bad, but also at the same time I do not. Is . . . there is a feeling. Cannot describe it. It builds until I cannot stand it, and I must do something for it to be released. Why this is I do not know. Not why it happens or how I may stop." In her lap Sharon's hands wrung. "Only that is why people are angry with me always."

"Okay, that is good to know..." Sooraya gently acknowledged her, but her mind was racing as some puzzle pieces started falling together. "You say you don't know why you feel that way, right? It might be really hard, but I think it's important to figure that out. I bet you don't like feeling that way?"

Sharon's hands stilled in her lap. "No," she replied. The girl hung her head and gnawed at her lip, slivering away a tissue-thin patch of skin. "Always I am irritated now. Is so much energy."

"You know, I can make a little bit of a guess here.... When your mom died, you lost your home... you lost everything. Your whole world fell apart. And then you came here and made a little bit of a new home." Sooraya raised her hand and carefully ran her fingers through Sharon's hair. "But then stuff started happening when Hope arrived and you feel like your whole world is falling apart again. Just like when your mom died."

Sharon's mind blanked. She felt her tail, always responsive in a way her facial expressions were not, begin to curl around her calf. For a moment all she could do was sit there in silence, held by the reassuring brush of Sooraya's fingers in her hair.

"Is . . . is different," Sharon said. She met Sooraya's eyes with honest confusion. "I do not understand. When first I lost my home I did not feel like this, and I had no food or shelter as I do now."

"You were too busy surviving. Because you had to fight for food and shelter you didn't have a chance to feel like this." Sooraya explained, shifting a little so she could pet Sharon's hair a little easier. "But now that you have food and shelter, there is a lot more space for you to have those feelings."

"Is -- maybe." There was a sense of rightness about Sooraya's assertion even if she didn't quite understand the why. Forgetting what form she was in, Sharon bent to half-curl across Sooraya's lap. This posture was rendered slightly awkward by the women's respective heights. The girl fixed her yellow gaze on the floor.

"Maybe," Sharon repeated, helplessly.

Grabbing a nearby pillow, she carefully shifted it under Sharon's head to make her a little more comfortable before running her fingers through the thick purple locks again. "Kinda overwhelming, isn't it?"

Sharon shifted to allow the pillow before curling a little tighter. "Everything now is so difficult. Is like I cannot rest. At my own home I did not have to try so hard always. There I was understood. But is . . ." Sharon's tail wrapped tighter around her legs. She squeezed her eyes shut to bury her face in the pillow. "Now is gone."

"It is. And I am so sorry for that." Sooraya lengthened her strokes, now gently petting hair and the top of her shoulders. "But we'll be here for you, Sharon. Try to make it a little easier for you... if you let us."

Crying was not a common experience for Sharon. It was true most of her forms lacked the anatomy for it, but even the one that was capable didn't often feel the inclination -- and even when it did she would usually shift away from it to spare herself the discomfort. She saw no benefit to it.

But now all she could think of was how much Sooraya's touch reminded her of her mother's. The mother who had loved her even when they fought about stupid things like what she was allowed to post on social media or ordering another out-of-print book she'd been told they could not afford, who even in her moments of deepest frustration had never expected her to be anything other than who she was. The only one who understood her.

Her mother, just gone in the night.

The girl's shoulders jerked with a hitching breath. The pillow was suddenly wet with tears from a stream that would not stop, and then Sharon was sobbing. Sobbing, and shaking, her fists crammed against her mouth as she bit one knuckle like grief was a thing that could be pressed back into her skin.

Sooraya leaned forward, wrapping her arms around the girl as she rocked her a little. A soft peck was dropped on top of the purple hair. "Now, let all of this out first..." She murmured quietly. "We'll deal with all of the rest later..."

Sharon gave no answer. None was needed. Clinging to Sooraya, she cried. She cried and cried until her tears were spent and her nose running and raw.

In the end, grief was not a thing that had to be contained.