34.2. Write about one of the most difficult decisions you've made in your life.
The sun was trying its best to crisp her skin. Even with the protection of her ring and the darkness of the sunglasses she hid behind, Lydia felt exposed. Before coming to the Park, she’d fed well and had several cups of coffee, speeding her heartbeat up uncomfortably and leaving her skin flushed and warm. All she could do, she’d done, but the sun’s light brought out the underlying pallor of her skin, and the cutting black vines winding around her, cruel thorns dripping crimson flowers like blood. There was no way they wouldn’t notice. Trying to cover them up would have been even more questionable, as if she had something to hide, and she wanted more than anything for them to think all was well.
As well as it could be, at least, when she’d been alive for months and let them think she was dead, buried in the dust that settled after Samuel’s betrayal.
With a sigh, she dragged her fingers through her hair, pushing it back, grateful it, at least, had remained unchanged, for the most part. A few more highlights, a bit more vibrant, perhaps, but she’d always had fun playing with it. They’d just think she had good shampoo. Her eyes might draw comment--the lights of the carnival had downplayed the shift in their color last night--but hopefully it wasn’t too noticeable.
They hadn’t warned Samuel of his impending doom, at least.
“Mom?” The slightly choked word skittered over her skin, breaking her reverie, and she froze for a moment, before turning, careful of how she moved, making sure not to spin too fast. The speedster standing next to her daughter would catch any differences there, and Peter had said sometimes they didn’t move like humans anymore.
“Amanda...” She stared at the girl for a long moment, before moving tentatively toward her. That was all it took, and her arms were full of her daughter--her living, breathing daughter--and all the little things she’d memorized about her were thrown up against her senses in dizzying detail. The smell of her shampoo, the warmth of her skin, the racing beating of her heart that Lydia’s only dimly echoed now, even with the stimulant.
Amanda was crying, an excess of emotion pouring out in salt water drops that were near scalding against Lydia’s skin. “It’s okay,” Lydia murmured. “I’m here. It’s okay...”
She buried her face in Amanda’s hair for a moment, breathing her in, memorizing her scent, and the fear she’d held deep inside that being this close to a human, well-fed or not, would set off the ache in her teeth she’d come to anticipate fled. Whether it was her nerves or maternal instinct, that teasing hunger stayed away, and she realized with a start that she was on the verge of tears herself. Choking them back, she raised her head, arms still tight around the daughter she’d lost, and studied Edgar from behind the protective black glasses. Her heart twisted a bit in her to see he was crying, too.
“Where have you been?” Amanda asked, pulling back, and Lydia felt blood rush to her cheeks, shame and confusion fueling an emotional storm she didn’t have any way of controlling.
“California. A little town, away from the big cities.”
“What were you doing?” Amanda’s gaze was searching her face, peering to see behind the mask Lydia had set in place.
“Telling fortunes on the boardwalk,” Lydia said, answering the practical level of the question first, before moving on to the deeper on. “Healing. Figuring out what came next...”
“We thought you were dead.” There was faint accusation in the statement, but Lydia could tell it came from a baffled confusion, and she let the words come, the most honest ones she had to try to explain.
“So did I. Amanda...I was...everything I’d ever known was in pieces. I was lost. I was confused. I didn’t know where I fit in the world anymore, and I needed to sort that out. Part of me wished Claire had left me where she found me...and I knew that wasn’t right. But I had to figure that out, figure out what was...”
“You fit with us.” Edgar’s voice cut through the pause she left trailing behind her. “Your place in the world was with your family, the people who loved you. You couldn’t....heal with us?”
Lydia looked away from Amanda again to study Edgar, the pain etched in new lines on his face that hadn’t been there before. Jealousy underscored some of it, she could feel today as clearly as last night. He’d seen. Seen her with Sylar, seen her with Peter, laughing, kissing, acting as carefree as a child. He’d seen, and she had no way to explain that frenetic reach for joy after days that were a series of incongruity, disjointedness and confusion. He’d seen.
“No,” she said softly, but with finality. “I needed time away. Away from everything I knew, everything I was. I needed anonymity, and to figure out who I was...” Without Samuel. She left the two words unspoken, but he heard them, and she watched the flinch that started in his heart and echoed in his eyes.
“Edgar said you were with Sylar.” Amanda hadn’t let go of her, warm arms still clinging, and Lydia brushed fingers through her hair.
“I am, now. But it’s...fairly recent. He thought I was dead, too, and then Claire ran into him, and she told him the truth, told him what she’d done. I don’t know how he found me, how he knew where to look, but...he just showed up on my doorstep one night a couple of months ago.”
“We would have, too, if we’d known,” Edgar inserted, jaw clenched.
“I know,” she said softly, looking from Amanda to him, again. “And I swear to both of you...I never meant...I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was trying to heal. For you. To be able to come back, and find you, and be okay for you.”
“We didn’t need you to be ‘okay.’” The words burst out. “We needed you to be here.”
Lydia flinched back. “And what about what I needed? All my life, it’s been about what everyone else needed from me. I wanted to be...stronger, ready, sure of myself for once in my life...”
She still wasn’t, and that was hard to know on several fronts. Things had changed. Her world was upside down. Changing. Samuel. The aching hunger that filled her, now. Sylar. Eternity stretching before her. Confessions. Memories of the hell she’d been in for too long before finding the carnival. Peter. Confusion. She didn’t even know who she was anymore, in the midst of it.
Edgar stared at her, and she held his gaze steadily, if still behind her masking shades. As if sensing the barrier she was keeping there, he moved, pulling the glasses off, and she hissed a bit, flinching too fast, closing her eyes immediately from the brightness of the deadly sun.
“You’ve never worn sunglasses.”
It was such a little thing, but his fingers moved back to her, tracing slowly down her arm, over the vines and thorns, around the ravens with their cruel beaks. “And these...I thought something was different last night...”
“They all faded when she...d-died,” Amanda reminded Edgar, glancing between them like a child trying to soothe fighting parents.
“And they came back like this when I revived,” Lydia said, forcing her eyes open against the blinding glare and trying to look at the speedster as steadily as ever.
He’d seen. She could see it in his eyes. She was different, and he could see, whether it was movement or tattoos or the way she held herself. The hunger that had held off at Amanda’s scent reared its head at his familiar and enhanced one. She could hear his heartbeat, see the pulse along his throat, smell the musk and salt of his skin. Her mouth watered, and for a moment she didn’t want anything more than to let Amanda go and melt against him, tasting him in ways she’d never done. The scene was vivid in her mind’s eye. He’d yield. He’d always been hers. Now would be no different. He wouldn’t tell her “no.”
Swallowing, Lydia dropped her gaze, but Edgar wasn’t having any of that. His fingers, dangerously close, settled like heated brands under her skin, forcing her gaze back up to his. She wondered if her eyes had shifted, had gone black with hunger and need. Her teeth were aching, at the least, and she closed her eyes instinctively.
“Look at me.” Her eyes stayed veiled in sheer defiance. “Lydia. Look at me.”
She couldn’t help it, but she took a long, slow breath--torturous when she could smell him so close--and forced them open.
“You’ve changed,” he said, frowning, but there was no fear, no sudden flash of insight that she had a monster curled up beneath her skin--and that she liked it.
“I died,” she whispered. “That has a way of changing a person...”
“It doesn’t matter,” Amanda interjected hurriedly. “It doesn’t. Mom, you’re still you, and you’re still my mom and...it doesn’t matter, okay?”
It mattered, but she didn’t know how to tell them just how much it mattered, now. Her tongue darted out, wet her lips, and she tried to take another steadying breath, tried hard not to retreat, move away from them. Tried to act normal.
“Does it matter, Edgar?” she asked, meeting his eyes, and once again there was that frisson of knowledge. He was hers for the taking. She could make it not matter. Just a few words, a suggestion....
“It doesn’t,” he finally breathed, before she could tell him how much it didn’t, and that he should leave it alone. “You’re back. That’s all that matters. Why don’t we go somewhere? Get dinner, or ice cream or...something.”
Lydia nodded slowly. “That would be nice.”
He smiled, finally, and moved to wrap them both in a hug. She felt his lips press to her head in some sort of benediction, perhaps forgiveness. “The rest of the family....they’ll want to see you...”
“Later,” she said, quickly, not sure she was up to being surrounded by so many, so fast. “Right now, I just want to spend time with the two of you. Tell me everything I’ve missed...”
Edgar offered her an arm, and she took it, while Amanda stayed pressed against her, the image of the daughter she’d longed for, all strife and friction that usually lay between them quenched in the joys of reunion. She listened as her little girl chattered, feeling the relief, the joy, that radiated from both of them until she couldn’t help but feel it warming her, as well.
She didn’t know how she was ever going to tell them that she had to leave again. But more than that, she didn’t know how she could stay, not when the truth wrapped so tightly around her skin it had literally marked her as its own. They’d see, eventually, and seeing would put them in danger, and no matter what Peter said about the penalties for truths and lies, she knew that this was one truth that would shred them beneath tooth and claw, and the only way to keep them safe was to lie until she could leave.
No matter what the cost.
Muse: Lydia
Fandom: Heroes
Words: 1920
OOC Note: Set in Lydia's vampire verse. Amanda and Edgar do not refer to any particular muses/are not binding on anyone. Sylar is heroslayer and Peter is hadtobeahero, and this prompt is a follow up to a RP with them.]
As well as it could be, at least, when she’d been alive for months and let them think she was dead, buried in the dust that settled after Samuel’s betrayal.
With a sigh, she dragged her fingers through her hair, pushing it back, grateful it, at least, had remained unchanged, for the most part. A few more highlights, a bit more vibrant, perhaps, but she’d always had fun playing with it. They’d just think she had good shampoo. Her eyes might draw comment--the lights of the carnival had downplayed the shift in their color last night--but hopefully it wasn’t too noticeable.
They hadn’t warned Samuel of his impending doom, at least.
“Mom?” The slightly choked word skittered over her skin, breaking her reverie, and she froze for a moment, before turning, careful of how she moved, making sure not to spin too fast. The speedster standing next to her daughter would catch any differences there, and Peter had said sometimes they didn’t move like humans anymore.
“Amanda...” She stared at the girl for a long moment, before moving tentatively toward her. That was all it took, and her arms were full of her daughter--her living, breathing daughter--and all the little things she’d memorized about her were thrown up against her senses in dizzying detail. The smell of her shampoo, the warmth of her skin, the racing beating of her heart that Lydia’s only dimly echoed now, even with the stimulant.
Amanda was crying, an excess of emotion pouring out in salt water drops that were near scalding against Lydia’s skin. “It’s okay,” Lydia murmured. “I’m here. It’s okay...”
She buried her face in Amanda’s hair for a moment, breathing her in, memorizing her scent, and the fear she’d held deep inside that being this close to a human, well-fed or not, would set off the ache in her teeth she’d come to anticipate fled. Whether it was her nerves or maternal instinct, that teasing hunger stayed away, and she realized with a start that she was on the verge of tears herself. Choking them back, she raised her head, arms still tight around the daughter she’d lost, and studied Edgar from behind the protective black glasses. Her heart twisted a bit in her to see he was crying, too.
“Where have you been?” Amanda asked, pulling back, and Lydia felt blood rush to her cheeks, shame and confusion fueling an emotional storm she didn’t have any way of controlling.
“California. A little town, away from the big cities.”
“What were you doing?” Amanda’s gaze was searching her face, peering to see behind the mask Lydia had set in place.
“Telling fortunes on the boardwalk,” Lydia said, answering the practical level of the question first, before moving on to the deeper on. “Healing. Figuring out what came next...”
“We thought you were dead.” There was faint accusation in the statement, but Lydia could tell it came from a baffled confusion, and she let the words come, the most honest ones she had to try to explain.
“So did I. Amanda...I was...everything I’d ever known was in pieces. I was lost. I was confused. I didn’t know where I fit in the world anymore, and I needed to sort that out. Part of me wished Claire had left me where she found me...and I knew that wasn’t right. But I had to figure that out, figure out what was...”
“You fit with us.” Edgar’s voice cut through the pause she left trailing behind her. “Your place in the world was with your family, the people who loved you. You couldn’t....heal with us?”
Lydia looked away from Amanda again to study Edgar, the pain etched in new lines on his face that hadn’t been there before. Jealousy underscored some of it, she could feel today as clearly as last night. He’d seen. Seen her with Sylar, seen her with Peter, laughing, kissing, acting as carefree as a child. He’d seen, and she had no way to explain that frenetic reach for joy after days that were a series of incongruity, disjointedness and confusion. He’d seen.
“No,” she said softly, but with finality. “I needed time away. Away from everything I knew, everything I was. I needed anonymity, and to figure out who I was...” Without Samuel. She left the two words unspoken, but he heard them, and she watched the flinch that started in his heart and echoed in his eyes.
“Edgar said you were with Sylar.” Amanda hadn’t let go of her, warm arms still clinging, and Lydia brushed fingers through her hair.
“I am, now. But it’s...fairly recent. He thought I was dead, too, and then Claire ran into him, and she told him the truth, told him what she’d done. I don’t know how he found me, how he knew where to look, but...he just showed up on my doorstep one night a couple of months ago.”
“We would have, too, if we’d known,” Edgar inserted, jaw clenched.
“I know,” she said softly, looking from Amanda to him, again. “And I swear to both of you...I never meant...I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was trying to heal. For you. To be able to come back, and find you, and be okay for you.”
“We didn’t need you to be ‘okay.’” The words burst out. “We needed you to be here.”
Lydia flinched back. “And what about what I needed? All my life, it’s been about what everyone else needed from me. I wanted to be...stronger, ready, sure of myself for once in my life...”
She still wasn’t, and that was hard to know on several fronts. Things had changed. Her world was upside down. Changing. Samuel. The aching hunger that filled her, now. Sylar. Eternity stretching before her. Confessions. Memories of the hell she’d been in for too long before finding the carnival. Peter. Confusion. She didn’t even know who she was anymore, in the midst of it.
Edgar stared at her, and she held his gaze steadily, if still behind her masking shades. As if sensing the barrier she was keeping there, he moved, pulling the glasses off, and she hissed a bit, flinching too fast, closing her eyes immediately from the brightness of the deadly sun.
“You’ve never worn sunglasses.”
It was such a little thing, but his fingers moved back to her, tracing slowly down her arm, over the vines and thorns, around the ravens with their cruel beaks. “And these...I thought something was different last night...”
“They all faded when she...d-died,” Amanda reminded Edgar, glancing between them like a child trying to soothe fighting parents.
“And they came back like this when I revived,” Lydia said, forcing her eyes open against the blinding glare and trying to look at the speedster as steadily as ever.
He’d seen. She could see it in his eyes. She was different, and he could see, whether it was movement or tattoos or the way she held herself. The hunger that had held off at Amanda’s scent reared its head at his familiar and enhanced one. She could hear his heartbeat, see the pulse along his throat, smell the musk and salt of his skin. Her mouth watered, and for a moment she didn’t want anything more than to let Amanda go and melt against him, tasting him in ways she’d never done. The scene was vivid in her mind’s eye. He’d yield. He’d always been hers. Now would be no different. He wouldn’t tell her “no.”
Swallowing, Lydia dropped her gaze, but Edgar wasn’t having any of that. His fingers, dangerously close, settled like heated brands under her skin, forcing her gaze back up to his. She wondered if her eyes had shifted, had gone black with hunger and need. Her teeth were aching, at the least, and she closed her eyes instinctively.
“Look at me.” Her eyes stayed veiled in sheer defiance. “Lydia. Look at me.”
She couldn’t help it, but she took a long, slow breath--torturous when she could smell him so close--and forced them open.
“You’ve changed,” he said, frowning, but there was no fear, no sudden flash of insight that she had a monster curled up beneath her skin--and that she liked it.
“I died,” she whispered. “That has a way of changing a person...”
“It doesn’t matter,” Amanda interjected hurriedly. “It doesn’t. Mom, you’re still you, and you’re still my mom and...it doesn’t matter, okay?”
It mattered, but she didn’t know how to tell them just how much it mattered, now. Her tongue darted out, wet her lips, and she tried to take another steadying breath, tried hard not to retreat, move away from them. Tried to act normal.
“Does it matter, Edgar?” she asked, meeting his eyes, and once again there was that frisson of knowledge. He was hers for the taking. She could make it not matter. Just a few words, a suggestion....
“It doesn’t,” he finally breathed, before she could tell him how much it didn’t, and that he should leave it alone. “You’re back. That’s all that matters. Why don’t we go somewhere? Get dinner, or ice cream or...something.”
Lydia nodded slowly. “That would be nice.”
He smiled, finally, and moved to wrap them both in a hug. She felt his lips press to her head in some sort of benediction, perhaps forgiveness. “The rest of the family....they’ll want to see you...”
“Later,” she said, quickly, not sure she was up to being surrounded by so many, so fast. “Right now, I just want to spend time with the two of you. Tell me everything I’ve missed...”
Edgar offered her an arm, and she took it, while Amanda stayed pressed against her, the image of the daughter she’d longed for, all strife and friction that usually lay between them quenched in the joys of reunion. She listened as her little girl chattered, feeling the relief, the joy, that radiated from both of them until she couldn’t help but feel it warming her, as well.
She didn’t know how she was ever going to tell them that she had to leave again. But more than that, she didn’t know how she could stay, not when the truth wrapped so tightly around her skin it had literally marked her as its own. They’d see, eventually, and seeing would put them in danger, and no matter what Peter said about the penalties for truths and lies, she knew that this was one truth that would shred them beneath tooth and claw, and the only way to keep them safe was to lie until she could leave.
No matter what the cost.
Muse: Lydia
Fandom: Heroes
Words: 1920
OOC Note: Set in Lydia's vampire verse. Amanda and Edgar do not refer to any particular muses/are not binding on anyone. Sylar is heroslayer and Peter is hadtobeahero, and this prompt is a follow up to a RP with them.]