Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 00:21:04 -0500
title: a not-so-quiet stroll (part 1)
authors: teri, stana, ian

note: this is part 1 of 2, please forgive any paragraph formatting errors.

((Dinner))
Clip gazed around at the chattering butterflies around him.
It seemed that he was considered something of a novelty, a friend of
the Unicorn's emissary and a potential interest to the gaggling
females at the dinner. Stana seemed to be concentrating on not being
noticed at all. She kept her eyes down and answered only to a direct
question. She was the epitome of modesty. And Clip, despite his
limited knowledge on mortals, was sure he knew why.
Teri was working the crowds at the table and appearing to
love every minute of it. Her smile burst through graciously every now
and then and she seemed to be lapping up her current status. The
guests loved it too, and zeroed their attentions to the vivacious
Guardian.
It didn't stop Clip and Stana being barraged with a red
wash of resentment and anger whether the empath's eyes were directed
their way or not. By the end of the evening Stana was openly rubbing
her temples and clutching a napkin under the sight line with a shaking
hand.
The Unicorn noted the strain in the human and wondered how
much more she would take. He wondered how much more she actually
could, though she was covering for her discomfort well.
. Surprised more than anything though, were the words he
murmured recommending she take a walk outside to clear her head.

As soon as she could, Stana excused herself and left. Not seeing
Clip's own grim expression or Teri's smouldering one. She had to get
into the fresh air, she felt stifled, and more than a bit violated.
At a walk, Stana fled slowly across the garden, each step taking
her further and further away from the gala behind. She had never felt
comfortable in a crowd, and was rueful that she had left Clip alone to
face that fate. Not rueful enough to go back though. He had told her
to leave after all, and if he was concerned enough about this-then she
must have really been a sight..
There were lots of flowers, and she could probably tell each one
by name and potential healing property. That thought gave her slim to
no comfort. And Slim had left town.
That was a joke from home.
Home.
She would never say how, but she knew the moment that she stopped
being alone in the garden, and she knew who was there. It was almost
as if the ground and the trees whispered the name. And she had gotten
more practice at listening.
"Hello Teri." A sharp remark about the negative vibes she'd been
shooting at her and Clip all night died on her tongue. There was no
real temptation there anyhow. Just an exhaustion of everything. A need
to sleep.
"Stana."
The silence stretched between them, until they both began to feel
the pressure of quiet building to overload.
In the end, Teri broke the peace, as she felt the most wronged.
"Nothing to say, Stana?" she said acridly, her bared
back to the balustrade. With her elbows propped backwards against the
smooth marble, she watched a nearby fountain spray moonlight droplets
from a cherubs' hand.
"What would you like to hear?" Stana answered
flatly. "Should I tell you now about how Clip wasn't mortal? Or tell
you that we had plotted to leave without your knowledge to rescue the
Unicorn princess, or die trying? Or can we reverse this question
format and say that the real reason you could never come with me on
the nature walks I took was because I wasn't just being taught about
Herbs but about healing and fighting as well from Rashka. The old
crone is dead, Teri. Last of a dying generation. I knew she was going
to die, that it was her time. Why couldn't I have told you all that
then? I don't know Teri, there were a lot of things I never confided
to you, mainly because most of those secrets weren't mine to tell. I
was under constant pressure not to let things get out. There was too
much at stake. Now, there are things I won't reveal, because they are
still not mine to tell. Because secrets thrive in the dark. Just as
there are things you will never tell me. " There was an unspoken
"get over it" in her tone.
If Stana had turned her gaze from the flower
petal- magnolia- on which it had frozen, she would have seen Teri
smiling. A slow-curved, tight-lipped smile far worse than that of the
audience chamber. Teri watched the icy moonlight and warmer
candlelight of the garden mix in a wash on Stana's bland and
motionless face. The frustrated rage inside her, the Moment-of-Now
hatred which curved her lips had made it difficult to talk.
"As anyone with half a heart would know,
Stana," she said slowly, lest the older girl have trouble
understanding simple words, "there's a far cry between keeping others'
secrets and showing a bit of decency to those you pretend to call
'Friend'. Simple things, Stana. Simple things, like- oh, I don't know-
a Goodbye maybe. Maybe just a little bit of humanity towards those
you care about."
"How I feel about you was and is irrelevant." There
was a coldness in the red head's voice that caused the temperature in
the immediate area to drop several degrees. "I warned you away from
Clip the best I could. I said goodbye the only way I could. The only
ways left to me. We're not playing in a child's game here, as strange
as this all is, this is real and very serious." She wasn't thinking
of Teri as she said that, she was thinking of the beast within. She
was thinking about the time she had spent beneath the wizard's
chamber, among dead and rotting corpses. Of the pendant lying nestled
in her hand as she cupped it. About Armies fighting over that
pendant, and the possessor of it. About a home she was sure she would
never see again
But none of it showed on her expression.
Something wouldn't let it.
A raised eyebrow in response. Teri restrained a
sudden urge to turn, leave, and take her anger on some less
frustrating inanimate objects while imagining herself rending this
woman's limbs. But for all her rosy-filmed rage, Teri could be
amazingly clear-headed and practical.
"No game? Well the real world has consequences,
Stana. Which you apparently aren't mature enough to handle." Teri
smiled sweetly. "And if I were you I would look at your Seriousness
very closely-- be careful who you offend, Stana. Not everyone thinks
this is a game. Did you think we wouldn't meet again? That you could
just traipse off with your own blind and selfish disregard for simple
courtesy?"
"Does it matter what I think?"
"No." Teri answered with her own chilliness "You
lost the privilege of my care."
"And this is what you came to tell me? It
doesn't feel like that at all." Stana said- of course, Teri was still
broadcasting her rage.
"As you said earlier, Stana, there are secrets
now that you won't be told. Don't presume to think me as simple as
before."
"Nor I." But her eyes wouldn't meet Teri's.
Teri didn't say it, but she viciously wanted
to add that Stana was even more basic now than she had ever been
before. There simply was... nothing to the girl anymore. The cold
she felt from Stana, that she sat tasting in their silent-stand
still, came not from the older girl's will, but from a lack of inward
heat. Teri was convinced that, for one reason or another, Stana didn't
FEEL anything anymore.
They stood there for a while, neither talking,
both pretending that there was no impending sense of disaster in the
air.
"Clip couldn't really return your love." Stana
finally offered. "He wouldn't know how to."
Teri broke into a dry, short laugh. "And you
would know WHAT about that?" she shot back. "And wait- 'Friend'- you
know -*what*- about my feelings?" Images came back of that kiss, and
the night together they spent. The almost night. And a wave of heat
flashed over Stana. Teri glared at the girl's profile. Love? It
hadn't been love. But what right did Stana have to assume anything?
Stana didn't answer, and that infuriated Teri
more.
"You're one to talk!" She flared "You talk about
friendship and then abandon me in the arms of a veritable stranger
while you go romping off to 'save the world' from god-knows-what!"
"Sullam, Clip and I heard the Princess call."
Stana commented, remembering her earlier statement that Teri wouldn't
care about her "higher calling". "And Shinji was hardly a stranger.
You weren't well enough to come with us, and we couldn't wait for you
to get better."
"Whose decision was that to make?!"
Stana leveled her firm gaze on Teri.
"In your condition it wasn't yours." There was
no apology in her voice. Not even a tint of regret for her choice. It
was that remorseless practicality that hurt the most.
"And I suppose 'my condition' made it ok to just
leave. Oh- right, and 'my condition' makes it ok that you don't even
offer the hint of an apology."
Apologize for what? ! A spark of anger touched
her thoughts as images of what she had gone through flashed across her
mind. Then apathy slammed down. To engage in that kind of behavior,
the "I suffered more than you" syndrome was pointless. It was more
childish than any claim Teri threw at her. She grasped at the last of
her control and kept to logic.
"You had to go to Reiki. You weren't in any
shape to go anywhere else and you know it. Or rather you didn't then
but you certainly do now."
Teri gave off another touch of a projected
feeling. Hostility. Nerves that had already been rubbed raw, with
exhaustion, mental fatigue and pain finally caused Stana to lose some
composure.
"Get. Out. Of. My. Head." she snarled,
accentuating each word in a clipped voice. She put as much anger and
resentment into it that she could muster, causing the other to flinch
ever so slightly. "If you want know what I'm feeling, then *ASK*. I've
had nothing but voodoo vibes from you all night and it's giving me a
headache."
Teri grabbed the girl's throat with a
suddenness that sent Stana's eyes twitching. And yet still her face
showed no hint of mobility. Twitching, because with that increased
contact, feeling flooded Stana's head. Like a watercolor wash of hurt
and pain, betrayal and anger, sadness and pity. Stana didn't move, but
an air of watchfulness enveloped her, and her eyes were very very
steady.
Teri locked gazes with the taller woman and felt her
heart running through her arm, her fingers, through Stana.
"If," Teri began softly and slowly, her voice
taut, "you think I have any reason, now, to -care- about how you
feel... then you, my returned companion, are sadly mistaken." She
pressed closer against the still seemingly-unruffled Stana- who stood
motionless but for a trickle of sweat running down her cheek from the
heat. "You made your bed, Stana. If you want to lie in the hay, in
the cold, with nothing but a bitter horse for company-- that's your
choice. I don't know what happened to you out there- and to tell you
the truth, I don't give a shit. Nothing- NOTHING- gives you the right
to disrespect ANYONE else. Not me, not Shinji, not the fluffy queen
with her fluffy banquet--"
And she stopped- searing whiteness on the edge
of her vision. The red wash surrounding the two was being replaced by
a senseless white glow- visible only to Teri, and apparently one
other. The pure force, raw and blind, struggled to protect what it
couldn't define-- and for now managed to succeed. Teri snapped her
hand back from Stana and leaned forward against the balustrade,
towards the remainder of the wooded garden.
Stana looked away from the angry girl. Not
saying anything. Not making a sound.
With disdainful cheer,Teri tucked one hand
delicately under her chin and called, "It doesn't matter, Clip. You
can protect her from me, you can protect her from bandits and
monsters and whatever else it is that you do. But you can't protect
her from herself, Clip." Teri smiled again. "You didn't know that?"
she snorted. "You poor, bad-tempered Unicorn."
Teri shrugged, light-heartedly, and picked her
delicate way out of the garden. When the golden-glowing arches of the
banquet hall were once more visible, she stopped, and pressed her
forehead to the cool marble.
What terrified her, more than any hatred she
might bear Stana, was that when Teri had dropped the empathy-wash, the
red haze around the older girl... all emotion had slid, like beaded
water on the cold sides of a glass, off of Stana. And this was no
work of the unicorn-- as gallant as he might attempt to be. Stana's
heart was ice. There was, quite simply, nothing left there.