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Post by Dylan Cooper on Feb 12, 2008 21:02:32 GMT -5
Secretly hesitant, Dylan awaited her response with bated breath. It was all he could do, to pour his heart out in the form of remotely ineloquent words in the hope that she might find solace in them. He hoped that such a sacrifice of his personal emotion wouldn’t pass by, as useless as one or a hundred of the pebbles upon the ground beneath him. Then again… Perhaps everything had a use. Might there not come a time where the littlest thing could sway the balance? Could tip the scales in their favour or toward whatever cause one might serve. Whether for good, evil, or unwavering unfaithfulness to either side, surely everything had a purpose.
A small beacon of hope settling into his eyes at the tone of her response, he smiled once more. Before he was fully aware of what was happening, so slow were his reflexes of late, the words were out of her mouth and Dylan felt a small flicker of a very confusing feeling indeed taking up residence, or rather, coming into prominence, within himself. Unsure as to what exactly it was, but recalling one other time in which he had felt it, he ignored the emotion and focused instead on Susan.
“You’d probably be completely lost… You might have even converted to the Slytherin way of life, who knows?” he commented jokingly, his voice as quiet as ever and holding a playful lilt to it. A small grin played at his lips and he seemed to return a large portion of his attention to what could be called a small feast laid before them. Selecting a few small pancakes and placing them quite happily before him, he began to consume them at rates only a mother with a son like Dylan would understand.
His eyes flicked lightly back to regard Susan and she seemed somewhat absorbed in her thinking. Offering her one of the pancakes, he smiled brightly. “We’ll be as ready as we can be, and until then why worry? As long as you’re doing your best, there’s no reason you can’t be happy,” he said cheerily, that strange emotion welling up in him again. Confused, his brows furrowed slightly before vanishing quickly beneath a smile once more, this one not quite as genuine. If one had blinked, one would have missed the change, but it was, afterall, a very important moment in Dylan’s life.
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Susan Matthews
Gryffindor
[red]5th Year Gryffindor[/red] Shadow Warrior of Earth
goddess, nymph, divine.
Posts: 505
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Post by Susan Matthews on Feb 18, 2008 17:51:43 GMT -5
There was a small change, Susan noticed, in Dylan as she made her response. However, he didn't choose to confront it it seemed, as he continued on to reply with a bash on the Slytherin house. Susan laughed out loud. She couldn't imagine herself acting like a Slytherin. There was most definitely a method to the madness of the Sorting Hat.
Susan watched with amusement as Dylan commenced in devouring a plate of pancakes. She wasn't all that surprised, having seen him eat like this once before. Susan found her throat was now back to normal. She finished off the last of her icing-less cupcake, all the while watching as Dylan stuffed his face.
Susan took the pancake offered to her and found a paper plate to use. After pouring a good amount of syrup on her single pancake, it looked as if it were ready to eat. She began to slowly stuff her own face as Dylan gave his closing comment to his helpful speech on 'hanging in there.' Susan nodded in agreement, her mouth full of pancake, all the while watching Dylan closely.
She looked just in time to see his eye brows furrow. Susan blinked and looked again, this time catching a smile on his face. Susan couldn't shake the face of confusion that still lingered in her mind's eye. "Dylan, are you alright?" she asked cautiously. She felt out of place asking the same question that was asked to her only a few moments ago. However funny it felt, it was still necessary. Susan knew the alternative to letting things out, and it didn't feel good.
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Post by Dylan Cooper on Feb 23, 2008 18:12:33 GMT -5
Glad that at least he was no longer the only one ungraciously shoving food into their mouth, he smiled slightly at Susan, though it was weak and probably largely unconvincing to even the dullest person. His attention irrefutably drawn by her next question, his mouth stopped moving even as his eyes did, focused so intently on a blade of grass nearby. Swallowing the load in his mouth in one painful gulp, his eyes flicked nervously up to hers.
Not bothering to fail at deceiving her with a useless, fake smile, he instead appeared quite worried. “I don’t know…” he said truthfully, his voice quieter even than its usual volume. Shaking his head briefly, in what was obviously a severe lack of concentration, he was ready to push vague, nagging feelings about who-knew-what aside when a vastly painful headache sprung in reaction to the swift movement. Groaning lightly, he raised both hands to his head.
The driving force behind his previous response ran, scattered, through his mind even as the pain washed over him. Alright? His spell casting abilities were getting worse every day; as hard as he practiced, often for hours at a time on just one spell, his abilities only seemed to deteriorate. Being used to the highest marks possible, there was not only his reputation and pride at stake, but the cause of the lightfighters. With an Elemental Master so useless, he only thanked whatever higher beings there might be that wand work was not very effective against the Shadows and Wraiths anyway.
Even as that thought surged through him, a sudden realisation hit. He hadn’t even considered how his Elemental powers had been affected by the damage done to both his heart and body. Whether through grief or physical harm, his abilities had dropped significantly; but he had yet to even use his Earthly powers. Suddenly painfully afraid, he looked to the nearest thing around and a relatively large tree caught his eye. Assuming it would be best to start with something smaller, however, they continued to roam the contents of the room. Finding a small rock nearby, perhaps only five centimeters in diameter, he focused his will onto it and bid it rise into the air. The rock, however, remained resolutely planted onto the earthen surface of the room.
Looking, stricken, to Susan, he almost collapsed on the spot. “Oh god…” he whispered quietly, completely lost for any coherent sentences. “Oh god…” he repeated, unable to form any idea as to what to do. No instant solution came to mind, no miracle remedy. He was left useless by the damage inflicted onto him; either by the death of his foster father, the beating he’d received in his home town, or the torture received in this very room; perhaps it was even a combination of all three. Without being able to recover from any one event, the next had been sprung upon him. A hopeless, distraught expression on his features, he produced one tear that slid, alone, down his cheek and fell to the blanket below.
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Susan Matthews
Gryffindor
[red]5th Year Gryffindor[/red] Shadow Warrior of Earth
goddess, nymph, divine.
Posts: 505
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Post by Susan Matthews on Feb 24, 2008 0:55:29 GMT -5
She waited intently for Dylan to respond. As much as she wanted Dylan to be okay and to be alright, she knew that it was probably not the case. Susan began to nervously tick off the many things that could be wrong in her head. The list continued to grow until she found him looking at her again. She gently rubbed her lips with the tip of her finger. The syrup had become cold and sticky.
"I don't know," was his response. How quickly the tables had turned. It seemed only a moment ago that she was telling Dylan the same three words. She closed her eyes, squinting, wishing she had something as eloquent or helpful as what Dylan had told her to return to him. She opened her eyes in time to see him clutching his head. "Dylan . . ." Susan began worriedly, her eyes widening and her heart racing as she began to understand that he was in pain.
She cautiously reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, but stopped half way when his attention changed. Susan watched anxiously, following his gaze first to a large tree and then to a small rock. She felt Dylan concentrating on the rock, and she watched helplessly as the rock refused to yield motion.
Susan looked to him at the same moment that he looked to her. She frowned at seeing a most distressed face on her best friend. She hardly listened as Dylan began to mumble something about a god. She slowly moved her head back and forth, searching for the words to make everything right, when she saw the tear. At the sight of the tear, Susan feared she might cry herself.
Without saying a word, she crawled next to Dylan and wrapped her arms around him. For a moment she was simply there. She squeezed him a little tighter and she said, "It's going to be okay," Though she wasn't sure how yet, she meant it when she said it, "We're going to make it okay."
Susan wished she could make Dylan alright. That she could wave her wand or say a spell and make it all better, but she knew this was not so. Her previous inhibitions began to crowd her mind again. Susan pushed the thoughts away as she had done before, her brow furrowing in the concentration. She rested her head on Dylan's shoulder and was reminded of a time back home.
When her little sister had needed comforting, Susan had aimed to comfort by an embrace as well. When Andrea had begun to cry, Susan had sung her Twinkle Twinkle Little Star until the tears had ceased. Without making the conscious decision to do so, Susan found that she'd begun to hum the childhood lullaby to Dylan as well. As she reached the end of the melody, she lifted her head again and loosened her grip on him slightly. She wanted him to be okay. "What can I do?" she whispered, desperate to know what might make things better.
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Post by Dylan Cooper on Feb 27, 2008 2:31:37 GMT -5
The beginnings of a sentence, his own name, not ringing in his ears by any means, it was as if nothing else existed in the instant that his abilities failed. His spell casting was one thing; only a very powerful patronus was really useful in battle anyway, with the exception of healing spells or various things in case certain situations arose. The realisation that he might not have been fully able to use his elemental powers, however, was quite another matter. Without him, the lightfighters would fail. No… Without his powers they would fail… He was expendable.
He almost shook his head, but the pain was still too evident for him to even register doing such an action at this point. He was being silly… Of course he would get his powers back in no time at all. The conversation he’d had with Caitlin beside the lake renewed in him the hope that things would get better soon. She had said, afterall, that she herself knew of cases where wizards or witches had had temporary difficulties with their magical abilities after suffering such injuries or damages. Surely he would be fine in no time, if he just kept working at it.
This, if nothing else, this inability to control what had come naturally to him since he was little, spurred him into deciding that he finally needed to seek help. He needed to go and see the nurse again, or even to visit St. Mungo’s for a check-up, and he most certainly needed to see his teachers about his dwindling abilities. He hadn’t liked the idea at all, but the sudden realisation hit him that if he did not seek help he could fail them all; Keaira, Caitlin, Alessandro, Susan… D’rorah. All of them.
As Susan crawled closer to him, he felt her arms around him and, though he was a smart boy, did not realise that he could not simply lose his elemental powers. They were his until his final breath, and if only he could gain some confidence within himself they would surely work. All of his readings of foreign texts, however, had never taught him this, and D’rorah had failed to mention it. Surely, she didn’t think there would even be a problem with his power to control the earth around them, and so would not think to mention it. As it was, however, he did not know that it was simply a lack of confidence; could not know, just as the Shadow Warrior embracing him could not know.
Her words passing in one ear and out the other, so to speak, he did feel her arms tighten around him. Actions certainly spoke louder than words in this situation. Her head moving to rest on his shoulder, he did not hear the soft melody coming from her; he only had room in his mind to ponder the situation at hand. He jerked himself back into reality long enough to hear her whispered query, and more than that, a show of love that she would do whatever he might ask of her. At a loss, he simply looked at her helplessly. “I don’t know.” He spoke quietly, repeating that self-same sentence for the second time in what was possibly as many minutes.
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Susan Matthews
Gryffindor
[red]5th Year Gryffindor[/red] Shadow Warrior of Earth
goddess, nymph, divine.
Posts: 505
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Post by Susan Matthews on Mar 12, 2008 19:39:47 GMT -5
Susan let her eyes look into Dylan's searching for whatever answer he should provide, anticipating the outcome. She watched him struggle for a moment, before replying with the mantra of the evening: I don't know. Susan did not alter her gaze immediately, instead she stared intently, punctilious in her effort to find the truth. When nothing made itself apparent, she retracted.
Susan removed herself from the one sided embrace, pulling her arms back into her personal vicinity. "Oh," Susan said uselessly. She turned away to look at the plethora of food in front of them. She considered having another cupcake, but just the thought of more food on her churning stomach was enough to make her sick. Susan eventually returned her eyes back to Dylan.
She pursed her lips, fearing the awkward silence that was sure to come. Still sitting next to Dylan, she hugged her knees to her chest. Although at the moment, he didn't know how she could help, she didn't think Dylan would be the kind of person to hold things back from her. "Will you tell me what's wrong?" she asked with hopes of maybe deciphering herself what she might be able to do to help.
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Post by Dylan Cooper on Mar 30, 2008 4:43:22 GMT -5
((Sorry, sorry... I know, it's been a while))
Left for the moment to his own thoughts and grievances, he cast a sidelong glance at her and saw the peculiar position in which she had placed herself. Hugging her knees up to her chest, he watched her for a moment. As she spoke, his eyes shifted away as if he knew he was guilty of withholding things from her; his closest friend. If he could not tell her something, then he could not tell anyone, and he did not want to ever find himself in that situation again. It had been a lonely seven or so years since his father had died and he had closed himself off completely, destined, it seemed, to be an outcast from the world.
Trying to piece everything together himself so that he could express it in what would be an understandable way, he took a moment to choose his phrasing. Dylan had always been a boy of few words, even fewer since Darius had left their small family and made it that much smaller, and he held true to his tradition of speaking words that had a purpose rather than just words that held no meaning. “I can’t…” He faltered for a moment, seemingly unable to express such an intimate feeling. He tried again, willing the words to flow from him. “I can’t use my abilities…” As if to emphasise, he pointed one hand quite obviously toward a nearby patch of soil and, creasing his brow, he concentrated quite intensely on it, willing it to shift and rise, to form a pillar of soil.
The blasted thing remained unmoved; remained quite as it had been. “Susan… If I can’t do anything like I used to be able to… Then I’m… I’m useless.” Considering those last two words had faded away slightly, he chose to repeat them with a previously unheard of, from Dylan anyway, sense of despair. “I’m useless. What good can I be to the lightfighters if I can’t even do the simplest of things?” His head hanging, he emitted a heavy sigh.
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Susan Matthews
Gryffindor
[red]5th Year Gryffindor[/red] Shadow Warrior of Earth
goddess, nymph, divine.
Posts: 505
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Post by Susan Matthews on Apr 7, 2008 16:02:24 GMT -5
OOC: It's no big ;]
Hugging her knees rather tightly, she loosened some as her feet began to tingle with the sudden decrease in circulation. Susan wiggled her toes, willing the blood to return to them, and for the uncomfortable pins and needles feeling to cease. After waiting for longer she would have liked, Susan contemplated leaving their room. Maybe she would go to sleep, or maybe she would attempt to get away with wandering the halls for a while. Susan shifted slightly, in preparation to stand and to make her leave. She halted when Dylan spoke up at last.
At first she mistook his "I can't" for a comment that he could not and would not confess to her exactly what was wrong. Susan sighed slightly, and allowed herself to become gently depressed. She looked to Dylan, wishing for more, and saw him struggling with words. She understood there was more than the I can't, he had supplied previously. The completion of his sentence left Susan speechless. As she had not been formally introduced to Dylan's abilities she was quiet for a moment, attempting to fathom the extent of what was now missing from her friend.
As a part of proving a point, Susan watched as Dylan pointed to a small patch of soil. She understood suddenly as the soil pointedly did nothing. Susan kept her eyes on the dirt under the command of Dylan and silently cursed it for not obeying the will of her friend. She now understood how he had not known how she could help, for Susan herself did not know exactly what to do to make things better. She removed her gaze from the motionless piece of earth and fixed her gaze sympathetically on Dylan as he continued with his confession.
The words Dylan seemed to get caught on: I'm useless, fueled anger within Susan. After he finished with a sigh and a droop of his head, Susan burst, "You are not useless. Listen to me," she said sternly, "You are not useless." She made a point of placing extra emphasis on the word "not". She released her legs completely, leaving her hands free to place one on the closest shoulder belonging to Dylan. "What does it matter, if for now you cannot move a rock, or lift a twig?" she paused, motioning to the oasis around the two of them, "It's still your element, it's our element." She looked to Dylan again, hoping that he was listening and truly taking in what she was saying. "Even if it takes forever and a day, you will master it again. We will master it again," Susan said encouragingly, meaning every word.
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Post by Dylan Cooper on Apr 13, 2008 20:48:18 GMT -5
Feeling her eyes on him once more as they roamed away from the unmoving patch of soil, he flicked his own eyes surreptitiously her way and both did and didn’t want the sympathy she directed toward him. Raising his head at her unexpectedly stern words, his eyes widened and his jaw tensed in accordance. Shocked into silence, he absorbed every word and every emphasis and tone associated with them.
Steadily, they began to sink in, contrasting with the low feelings of self-worth he was currently enduring. Feeling slightly sickened and disgusted with himself for how he had reacted, he moved into the feel of her hand against his shoulder. Raising his gaze from the ground once more, he allowed his eyes to roam across the surface of the room as she gestured about the surrounds. Ashamed at his quick reaction, he sighed heavily and began to venture even further into his brief bout of despair.
Shaking his head with a slight pain arising in the process, he mentally told himself to stop being so petulant and his jaw tensed. Finding her eyes as she continued to speak, he couldn’t help but feel exceptionally grateful that he had her as both a Shadow Warrior and a friend. Despite her lack of experience and knowledge in dealing with the dark forces they face, he wouldn’t wish for anyone but her to be his warrior. “Thank you,” was all he said, his tone serious and his voice quiet. Moving his arms around her, he pulled her into a gentle hug and held on tight.
Pulling back after a few moments, he neglected to find her eyes once more. “Thanks, really, Susan… I think I’m going to go and take a bath…” he said quietly, moving to stand. Once on his own feet, he turned back to look at her and gave a wan smile. “I’ll see you later,” he said finally, turning to depart and leaving their unfinished picnic behind.
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Susan Matthews
Gryffindor
[red]5th Year Gryffindor[/red] Shadow Warrior of Earth
goddess, nymph, divine.
Posts: 505
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Post by Susan Matthews on Apr 24, 2008 18:56:36 GMT -5
Susan watched as Dylan absorbed her words. After a moment of contemplation, Dylan initiated another hug. Susan obliged instantly, returning with an equal amount of effort. She quietly let out a sigh of relief, relief that she had found the right words or at least words that would suffice for now. As Dylan drew back from their hug, Susan searched for his eyes. She looked, but found his gaze distant and distracted.
Susan remained quiet as Dylan excused himself from their room. Only after a quick 'see you later,' did Susan see his eyes again. She returned his sickly smile with one of her own, that she hoped looked better than it felt on her face. "Catch you later," Susan replied as Dylan turned to leave. Susan was left sitting with a plethora of food splayed around her on the soft green grass that carpeted the floor.
Susan stared at the bagels and pancakes and muffins and cupcakes and cookies in their packages around the basket and the several more items still inside. Filling empty, Susan grabbed the closest cookie and ate it three large bites, leaving her feeling only more empty than before. With great self control, Susan swiftly waved her wand, and incanted, "Evanesco ". The entire picnic vanished, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
Susan sat in the Earth room for a moment more, enjoying the silence before deciding to leave herself. Despite the large amounts of sugar consumed, she was suddenly exhausted. Stopping only to replace her shoes on her feet, Susan left the Earth Room and then the Room of Requirement, intending to sleep well into the next day.
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