Raleigh Harper / Emily Watkins (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
callmeemily) wrote2015-08-16 05:08 pm
callmeemily) wrote2015-08-16 05:08 pm
Entry tags:
I don't need fixing. [CLOSED]
"Look, so, I got your message," Raleigh started the second that she opened the door to her apartment and Joel was there. There wasn't even hesitation, and she didn't say hello, either. Honestly, she doesn't even care, but she just assumes that Joel's very normal sounding voicemail just checking in was related to the fact that his name was on lease for the bakery, and it hadn't even been open in two weeks.
Really, she didn't care. She was just so tired. Every day was a little worse, and she just was sleeping all the time, wrapped in an old t-shirt of Spencer's and a pair of oversized sweatpants she'd gotten from Goodwill. "Don't worry, I'm making the lease payments, I've got money saved up." Not a lot, and way less now than she had, but she'd not gotten around to canceling the autopay.
"I'm not feeling great, so it's nice that you checked in, but you don't need to-" Raleigh stopped in the middle of her sentence, because that's when she realised that Joel wasn't alone. "What's going on?"
She opens the door a little more - not on purpose, not to let them in, but so she can see into the hall. They can see into her apartment, too, and where Raleigh's in front of them with greasy hair, dark circles under her eyes, and a tinge to her skin that says not-good things, her apartment's worse. There's old pizza boxes, clothes everywhere, empty mugs, paper plates-- not weird for a bachelor pad, but even at the worst of times, Raleigh kept wherever she was neat and pulled together. Worse still is her aura-- it'd been brown before, with almost all of the bright bits gone, but now it was more grey than not, even the brown was leeching away. All that she knows is that she wants to go back to bed, to tell the truth.
Really, she didn't care. She was just so tired. Every day was a little worse, and she just was sleeping all the time, wrapped in an old t-shirt of Spencer's and a pair of oversized sweatpants she'd gotten from Goodwill. "Don't worry, I'm making the lease payments, I've got money saved up." Not a lot, and way less now than she had, but she'd not gotten around to canceling the autopay.
"I'm not feeling great, so it's nice that you checked in, but you don't need to-" Raleigh stopped in the middle of her sentence, because that's when she realised that Joel wasn't alone. "What's going on?"
She opens the door a little more - not on purpose, not to let them in, but so she can see into the hall. They can see into her apartment, too, and where Raleigh's in front of them with greasy hair, dark circles under her eyes, and a tinge to her skin that says not-good things, her apartment's worse. There's old pizza boxes, clothes everywhere, empty mugs, paper plates-- not weird for a bachelor pad, but even at the worst of times, Raleigh kept wherever she was neat and pulled together. Worse still is her aura-- it'd been brown before, with almost all of the bright bits gone, but now it was more grey than not, even the brown was leeching away. All that she knows is that she wants to go back to bed, to tell the truth.
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There had been a lot more esoteric solutions for problems they likely don't have that had required Latin or Greek, one in Arabic, things she could have helped with, verb tenses and datives and all the things she yells at the screen about when they pop up on her favorite shows (usually werewolfy; the alien ones mostly don't have Latin). This doesn't need her expertise, and she feels really useless, research girl though she may be.
Her heart picks up when the lights separate and she lifts her eyes to meet Coop's, thinking quickly through everything she's been studying. She's not possessed, then, she's not the victim of some spell -- or she is, but part of her is somewhere physically else. Maybe a lot of her. "That's you," she says, a little blankly. "Those are -- both --"
She furrows her brow at the map. "Where is that?" she asks Joel. "I mean, approximately?"
Maybe her Latin translation is going to come in handy after all. They're going to need more than a locator spell if they're dealing with something that can steal Raleigh.
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Parts of her, anyway. He doesn't think there's two versions of Raleigh, because if that was the case, they would have seen her by now. They wouldn't always be presented with this Raleigh who's angry and impatient, the Raleigh who doesn't understand what they're doing or that something with wrong. If two real physical versions of her existed in this town, someone would have seen the other one by now. There's the possibility she's being kept under lock and key somewhere, but Joel really doesn't think that's their problem.
"Its a locator spell, Raleigh," he says. "And it's telling me there are two of you in town." She won't believe it, but that's fine, at least they have their answer. Looking back to Coop and Mira, he says, "I think something or someone might be siphoning off her... what makes her who she is. I hate to use the word soul just because I don't necessarily believe one exists, but when I look at her aura, it's not right. The energy that makes her up has changed and that just doesn't happen to people. Something's been taken from her."
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In some ways, this is like how he'd felt when he'd realized someone had been responsible for taking away his powers on that island. He wants to destroy something, make someone pay, and he only ever really gets like this when it means his friends are in trouble.
"So we go to where the other one is," Coop says, stating it as a fact, as something that he won't let anyone argue with because what other option do they even have? Maybe an actual plan is necessary but hell, it hadn't taken all that long for Raleigh to degenerate into how she's been so logic says that there's a chance it could get worse. It could suck the actual life out of her, and Coop isn't going to wait for that to happen.
He points to the other light, the one on the northern edge. "We go there, and we get whatever it is that's been taken from her back." As far as Coop is concerned, he's willing to do whatever it takes to make sure Raleigh's whole again.
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That she's not all there. Not all herself. "Is that why I'm tired?"
That's all she can come up with, but she's not even angry. She doesn't have the energy to be angry, not anymore. She's just emotionally and physically exhausted, and maybe a little scared. She looks from Joel to Mira to Coop - to Coop who looks furious, and she's even more confused by that. She doesn't get why he cares so much, not after the last conversation they'd had. "How am I not myself?"
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Someone is doing this to Raleigh.
She's glad Coop looks so angry, because it helps her focus, and she meets his gaze with absolute certainty. Of course they're going wherever that is. Of course they're getting the rest of Raleigh back, whatever that means. There's no other option. And it feels better, almost, to be able to be angry at someone else, want to tear into someone for what they've done, instead of the quiet, sick feeling of watching someone she loves turn into a stranger. Horrible, but at least something she can do something about.
"Probably," she says, quietly, looking at Raleigh. "Someone's taking you by pieces." It feels unfair to talk around her.
She glances back up at Coop and Joel, jaw set. "What are we, realistically, looking at?" she asks. "When I was reading, I came across -- demons, spells, all sorts of possession. But this isn't possession. This is," she glances at Joel. "Siphoning. I'm all for going in guns blazing -- Raleigh and I went after Dav and Spencer with a baseball bat, for god's sake, it's good you found them first -- but we should know what we might be up against."
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"It's another witch probably," he says. "This isn't easy magic, you can't just... just take pieces of a person without some real power." Which also means they're probably not just going to be able to walk into this witch's home and demand he or she undo what they've done to Raleigh. It's more complicated than that. Especially since they don't quite know what has been done to her yet.