theresalwayshope | 33) will i ever hear your voice again? the darkness is like an old friend...

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[When Allison returns to the Barge, she's happier than she's ever been. Paris was a perfect vacation, she's loaded down with new clothes, shoes, food, and souvenirs...and she's spent several days of her week in a luxurious borrowed bed with Isaac wrapped around her like a blanket.

She goes looking for her people, but they don't all show up right away. She waits to check on people as they seem to pop back in clusters, scans the network, and settles in to the task of unpacking, tending her animals...she has plenty to keep her busy.

As the hours wear on, however, she feels a growing sense of...something. She can't put her finger on it, but there's something that's just not right.

She sleeps on it. The trip was fun, but exhausting in a good way. Sliding into a new satin sleep shirt she got at a boutique in Paris, she curls up in bed with Brownie tucked against her back and Duchess curled against her chest.

It's the perfect end to a perfect trip.

In the morning, she walks the ship looking for the pack. Every scent she finds without a problem, every heartbeat, every voice...all but one.

She's not ready for what she finds when she reaches Isaac's cabin.

There's no announcement. No message on the network, no text to those that know and love him.

Mid morning, the only word that anyone gets about Isaac's departure is the soul-shattering howl of a werewolf in mourning.

She's a nonentity on the ship that day. For a while, at least, Allison stays huddled in the corner of Isaac's abandoned cabin, sobbing openly. Later, if no one's found her there, she will flee down to Zero, where she can be found tucked into the furthest corner of the farmost cell with the door standing open. She'll no longer be weeping openly, but as she stares at the nearest wall, tears continue to spill silently from her eyes as she tries to make the open wound in her chest start healing.

Duke is gone, and she's coped. Zane is gone, and she had Duchess to hold onto, to make that loss easier to bear.

Isaac, however, is gone...she can feel that he's gone, and she can't bear it because she let him in so much further than she had before she arrived on the Barge.

Forgetting life with him is so much harder. It hurts that much more to carve him out of herself...to believe in a world without his constant, comforting warmth until she gets her deal and she can go home.

She has to stitch that hole back up and eliminate everything he gave to her here...because it's the only way she's going to be able to keep going without him.]

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[She hasn't moved from her place in Zero, not even to eat. She can't, she can't, because at least down here she can't hear the wolf howling in her head, making the sorrow even worse with animal misery...

Any other message, Allison wouldn't have answered (maybe), but it's Mickey, and even while it only intensifies the gaping void Isaac's departure has left behind, it also reminds her that she has to look out for Mickey now.

Whoever becomes his warden...he's pack, and therefore hers. She's only sure of it in that moment.

Silent tears still sliding down her cheeks, she texts him back...so he knows he hasn't been abandoned.]

yes.

[Pause. Mickey had sort of been assuming what was, maybe, easiest and safest to assume. Allison's reply casts that into doubt. More than doubt, really.]

idgi

his rooms gone

i figured the 2 of u went on vacation r smth

no we didn't. i'm here.

[For a second, she can't breathe past the fresh sob she swallows.]

he's gone.

y?

[He knows, intellectually, that people sometimes disappear for no reason. Hell, he had. But most of the people who have taken off on Mickey have told him first, except for Zane, and who the hell doesn't know why he left?]

y

[It's all she can manage before she lets the comm slip from her fingers to clatter to the floor. Burying her face in her hands, she struggles to keep the sobs contained.

She wants to make it stop. She wants to make the pain just stop.]

no i mean WHY

argent

allison

jfc

Edited 2015-05-29 02:50 (UTC)

[It takes her about fifteen minutes before she's composed enough to answer the messages she hears coming in. Reading them over, she swallows thickly, and between scrubbing at eyes that won't stop seeping tears, she replies.]

i know. im sorry.

[Now this is really starting to hit him, now that it's basically not deniable anymore. Alone in his cabin, Mickey feels his stomach sink, and he sinks down onto his bed with it, feeling sick. It takes him a while to be able to respond; now it's his turn for radio silence while he sits there, staring numbly at his phone.

He doesn't cry, but at one point, he wonders if this is somehow his fault, and then he gets dangerously close. He blinks rapidly against the sudden sting in his eyes and forces himself back into gear.]

u ok?

[She's braver than he is; she might have the strength to say no where he wouldn't.]

no

[It's not strength that lets her admit it: it's weakness, cowardice, at least in her own mind. To be unable to cope, to be this overwhelmed and this unable to function...

For the first time in a while, she finds herself thinking of her mother, and how disgusted she'd be with Allison's behavior.

She's not fit to lead. She's an unworthy beta for Scott. She's hopeless, helpless, and pathetic.

She can't do this alone.]

[It is strength in Mickey's eyes. It's hard enough just to feel all this stuff, even by himself; it's hard not to tell himself he doesn't. It's even harder not to tell other people that. He's gotten better about it, bit by bit, but it's still his first instinct. Maybe it's been a little harder lately, too, with everyone leaving him one by one. Are you okay? Yeah. Sure. Fine. Whatever.]

anything i can do or

[Probably not, he figures, but that's what you do, right? Ask?]

Edited 2015-06-01 23:48 (UTC)

[For a long time, she doesn't answer because there's nothing he can do. There's nothing anyone can do, and right now the only thing she's got is this cold and distant notion of a plan. Cold was right: she has to stick to the plan, it's just...

It's so impossible.

After about twenty minutes, she finally reaches for her comm hesitantly and taps out a message.]

i'm alone in zero. not locked, just sitting. come sit with me?

[He doesn't really expect her to respond after the first minute or so spent waiting, and so he tries to just... move on. What else can he do, right?

And if moving on means having a couple of drinks, that's what it means. He does know, now, that there are other options, but none of them really seem like good ones. He could call somebody and... what? Cry about not being good enough?

Sitting, though -- sitting he can do.]

why 0?

[But he's already on his way down anyway, and he turns up not long after, rapping lightly at the door.]

blocks powers.

[She says nothing more, setting her device down and only stirring when the quiet knock rings out. It takes her a few moments, but she finally makes herself uncurl from her place on the floor in the furthest corner of the cell.

Reaching the door, she opens it slowly, peeking out to see him. She steps back to open the door so he can step past, greeting him with a small nod and damp eyes.]

Edited 2015-06-11 21:12 (UTC)

[She'd asked him to come and sit, and he'd been planning to come and sit. To show up, like he'd once told Mira, because that's how they do things where he comes from.

One look at her tear-stained face, though, and his usual aversion to contact crumbles. He comes inside and pulls her into his arms, surprisingly gentle for all his usual roughness.]

33) will i ever hear your voice again? the darkness is like an old friend...

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[text] nope i lied that's all of them

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