Logs:Alphabet of Revenge
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| RL Date: 16 September, 2013 |
| Who: Tayte |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Vignette |
| What: Tayte has an alphabet of revenge (and other things). |
| Where: High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 24, month 10, turn 32-Day 23, month 11, turn 32 |
| Mentions: Anvori/Mentions, H'vier/Mentions, K'del/Mentions, Jo/Mentions, Telavi/Mentions, Yvalia/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: I wanted to try something a little different, structure-wise with this vignette. It was challenging, and fun! I made up so much stuff in this vignette. A big thank you to those mentioned for being flexible and working things out with me. |
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| A is for affliction. It's love that afflicts her so. Love that makes it hard in the moment after her knee makes contact that leaves her fleetingly remorseful. It's the love, not the lack of it, that makes this betrayal hurt so keenly, strike so deeply, and leave her heart aching and agonized. B is for bedded. Which Tayte certainly was by the bouncy brunette H'vier'd brought home for himself. She wasn't exactly what the blonde would've chosen for herself, a little less brain and a little more boob than her type, but she'd damned well dressed to get laid, so, that happened. C is for crying. She did once she'd kicked her bedmate out. It was messy, unattractive and she was glad she was alone. D is for dick. It's the word that kept exploding in her head whenever she thought back on him, happened a glimpse of him, or served him drinks at the bar over the next seven. D could also be for the drinks themselves which varied from suspiciously weak to a lower shelf bottle of the requested drink, to even ones that just tasted a little off. Professional pride kept her from doing anything disgusting to them, even when he was buying for some other dame, but she could make the whole experience just a little less pleasant for him. Not so unpleasant as to lose Anvori the man's business. E is for effort. It took effort to not let herself be overcome. Warring emotions singularly won out battles and boiled up within her. Sometimes it was easier to control. Anger was easy. She wasn't normally an angry person, so the anger would come, and she would feel it, and then let it go. Vengeance was a different matter. She put her energy into planning some lessons for him. The hardest ones, the ones that took the most effort to resist, were feelings of reconciliation. Those came late at night when she lay alone in her bed and would wake, feeling a hand blindly toward the other side of the bed only to find what once was warm and comforting, cold and empty. F is for flirting. She flirted. With whomever wanted to flirt with her. It wasn't unusual for her to do so, but when he was in the bar, she made sure she did it with the not-so-subtle difference of intention. She even let some of them walk her home some nights so he'd think she'd taken them to her bed. She didn't, but if he wanted to believe her a whore, then she'd promote that thought. If she'd thought that one through, maybe she wouldn't have done it. The flirting wasn't just for her though, no, no, no. She'd never be so selfish. G is for girls. The girls she paid or swapped favors to flirt with H'vier, to stroke his ego, but never his ... It was a simple enough game for them. Put up with him for drinks, make him think they wanted it, and then simply change their minds or be conveniently rescued just before having to leave with him. Tayte made sure to spread the girls out, over time. She didn't fool herself; she knew he could and would get what he wanted elsewhere, but it was enough for her to give him... H is for hope. ...hope, and let those hopes be dashed. After all, isn't that what he'd done to her? Given her hope? Hope that he'd want to talk? Want to work things out? Want to be with her, and then thrown it all away? And for what? A bouncy brunette that was a mediocre lay at best? Maybe she was better with men, or maybe he didn't care if she was a little like a perfumed but lifeless fish. I is for indifference. She forced herself to stop caring, or at least to stop appearing to care. After the first seven where every look she gave him was a poorly veiled glare, by the second seven, she could look at him with cool indifference. His drinks started to be as ordered and taste normal again. He didn't deserve to have her hung up on him. So she'd make him think she wasn't. Meanwhile... J is for jumble. Everything felt wrong. He made her feel like a child. She wanted to throw tantrums and hit things. She wanted to break his toys. She wanted to run away. Her head was a mess. She was still a mess from the baby. That's a wound too wide and too deep to heal so swift, and he was jumbled up in that pain. The pain was compounded by this new confusion over whether or not she wanted someone who would treat her so ill. She still wanted him. She knew she shouldn't, but she did. She hated him in one moment and loved him in the next. K is for kicking. Mostly herself. For the moment of weakness when she went up to his weyr, and arranged for the elevator dragon to come get her at the end of the pair's shift. This time she didn't dress. This time, she didn't know if she was there to fuck him over, fuck him up, or just fuck him. But she caved to her desire to see him, to be alone with him, to want to be real with him, instead of playing these games. He didn't come home, and she kicked herself for going, but part of her was relieved. Her ego couldn't take a repeat of the last time, and she didn't want another one of his choosing for a partner. L is for laughter. A much needed break. K'del and Yvalia brought it home with them. For once, it was a nice evening at home, such as they'd been accustomed to in times long past. They had a meal together, played together, put Yvalia to bed together, and had drinks together. It really was like old times, with the volume turned to low, and K'del had to help her smother her uncontrollable fit of giggles. Only this time, unlike some others before, it wasn't smothered with his lips, but with a throw pillow he pulled swiftly from behind him and handed over. It was good enough. The laughter was good. The rest was enough. M is for moping. She did it after K'del left. Yvalia'd finally adjusted back to sleeping just with her mother, so long as K'del stayed just long enough for her to fall asleep (and even that need was becoming less frequent, thankfully for him). But K'del being gone came with a sense of absence. It wasn't that she wanted to fill that absence with H'vier instead, but she'd started coming to the conclusion that she didn't like being alone. Yvalia had once been enough. Now? She wanted a baby. It was a thought she only admitted to herself when there was enough other rumbling in her head to keep the thought a whisper by comparison. Now? She wanted a someone to raise that baby with. She'd never had that before, not until H'vier. He had been an unexpected gift. He had turned everything around and made it good. Too bad he had to be such an ass now. N is for nostalgia. She tried hard not to remember the things she'd wanted and couldn't have, and focus on the things that had been so good. Things had been nearly perfect there for a while. She missed the good times. But try as she might, she couldn't forget all the ways things had gone so wrong. O is for old wounds. Well, not so old. But the evening she pouring drinks in Snowasis and she watched a buxom blonde go bouncing up to H'vier making big, dumb, googly-eyes at him and practically begging him to take her home, she felt the pain anew. She even bet herself the girl was probably some untried virgin up from Nabol-way, too impressed with a big, beefy bronzerider for her own good. It made her... P is for pissed off. ...pissed off. In a flash, she was back to where she was the morning after she'd kneed his family jewels. She had to take a moment to curb her irrationally strong desire to go drag the girl away by her runner's tail. She was working, after all. And it was none of her business who H'vier bumped uglies with. Still, her teeth ground as she worked, and she stared-- well, glared more than was even remotely respectable. Q is for quitting. She gave up. She quit. She quit trying to control how she felt about him. He was an asshole. But an asshole she liked and maybe even loved. He didn't deserve her, would probably never deserve her, and maybe she had it right their second time together after all. Maybe she should have just been using him all along. Maybe she still could. A woman could make the life of her man pretty miserable and yet amazing enough that he'd stick around if she played her cards right. Maybe it was time for a new kind of game. R is for revenge. She wanted to take it on him. And she didn't. She was brave. And she was a coward. She knew how to start going about it, but to carry it out she would have to be ruthless, not to mention cunning. She'd have to read him just right. Could she? Would she? It was a long con. Could she keep it up? Would she want to? S is for speculating. She started to watch him. No longer with eyes that betrayed any emotion, because in this kind of watching, there was no room for emotion. Emotions didn't play into it. This kind of watching was to determine the parameters of the game, if she chose to play it. Was he in a place where she could cultivate his interest again? If she wanted to devastate him utterly, what buttons would she have to push? Which brick of the carefully made tower that was H'vier-the-horndog would she need to remove to get him to crash? T is for timing. She resolved not to rush anything. Revenge, being a dish best served cold, if it was served at all, was the kind of thing you took your time with, and so she would do just that. U is for undecided. The more she planned, the more she became undecided. Was it in her to do this? Sure, she'd pranked people, and said mean things, and really made some people quite miserable on occasion, in her misguided youth, but she was an adult now. Was this really who she wanted to be? Tela might enjoy it, but K'del? Ugh. K'del. He was so good, when he wasn't being an idiot. He'd think less of her if she did this. But did it matter? She wasn't his type anyway. Apparently. V is for vendetta. Maybe, she thought, a vendetta was really the way to go. After all, she'd have to expect some sort of retaliation eventually, and if they began this game, it would only escalate over time. H'vier had never been the sort to sit down and take anything, even if he should. W is for weight. It made her feel heavy. All of the feelings, all of the planning, all of the everything. Two jobs, two not-boyfriends, two babies (one who lived), two gal-pals (one who was more). At first, Tayte thought two was a balancing number. A number that made things easier. Now, she was finding it overwhelming. She wanted to simplify. X is for 'xpectations. She started by lowering them. She put her plans for revenge on hold, focused on what was important: her jobs and her daughter. She mellowed again. Yvalia found ways to make her laugh again, and... Y is for yet. And yet. She still woke up at night and reached for the empty spot on the bed, and snuggled up with her obscene number of pillows to make up for the lacking. Z is for zing. The way it still gets her, even when she's trying to get over it.
...won't you play with me? |
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