ONCE BURNED was made by MEL. Copying, altering, or stealing any of the site's content is prohibited. All of ONCE BURNED's characters are the original work of their owners and may not be replicated or stolen. All images and graphics belong to their rightful owners and ONCE BURNED does not claim to own any of them.
Alex pushed herself up on her elbows when he stood and she looked straight at him as he spoke. He was giving her an offer, an offer that she wanted to take. If she took him up on it, he would learn all of the things that she did her best to hide from people of power. If she didn't, she continued to struggle alone with her problems. Either way he was going to ask about her when he saw her and she knew that she couldn't very well avoid him forever, even if she tried to.
She sat up again and pulled her knees up to her chest, her eyes dropping. She wanted to talk to somebody, but she struggled with who she let close. Her trainer, she hadn't had a choice with. She had a choice with him and he was being kind enough to give her that choice.
"Answer my question first; why are you doing this?" She rephrased the question so that it didn't sound as harsh, but she was still hesitant. Alex had to believe that he would understand why she was hesitant in some regard. He didn't need to know the whole story, but there was enough there for him to get it. And he clearly wasn't dense. "I know it's your job to help students, but...but why are you trying to help me?"
He hadn't asked her to stop, but she was internally begging herself to stop. She'd been holed up for so long that any little attention made her unload and it was sort of terrifying. Alex didn't want people to know her, she didn't want them to know what her life was like before or during her time at the academy. If she kept on this track, he was going to know it all and then she'd have to stay away from him. There was no way she wanted to give him the ammunition to use against her all of the weaknesses that she had.
"I'm not your student. Why do you care?" She didn't look at him. Alex just continued to look up at the sky and did what she could to steady her breathing. The biggest problem with talking to him was that she didn't see him as an authority figure, she saw him as just a person. If she looked at him that way, she could get in trouble.
Alex sighed and laid her arm over her eyes, "I appreciate the concern, but it's not worth the time. I'm sure you have your own students to work on."
If there was a way to turn on her filter, she would have. It was likely that she opened up to strangers because she was looking for something. Some kind of help. Alex couldn't talk to her brother about the problems that she had because they were minor comparatively. Anybody that listened to her for longer than five minutes, she found herself unloading information without being able to stop. It had happened with the German man she met and it was happening with him.
At least he was part of the academy and she knew she should have been able to talk to him about it because he could help her. Or find someone that could help her. Even so, she was starting to become aware of the oversharing, another side effect that she had. Alex had clammed up, her mouth staying shut as he spoke. He'd drawn the conclusion that she was getting at and all she could do was stare at him. It wasn't fair that he understood, she wished that she was a computer that only spoke binary so that she couldn't do this as often as she did.
"Yeah, sure," She said stiffly. Alex sighed and laid back on the cement of the roof, looking up at the sky, "I'm sorry, it's just a side effect. I start going and it's hard to stop."
Ew was right. Alex had to laugh at his reaction though because she'd become so desensitized to it over time. It was a running joke that she'd made her twin brother's ringtone for her loud sex noises, but she was going to keep that to herself because she didn't want him to know what she was actually like further than this. Besides, if he was an official, she had to be careful telling him what kind of fun she had with her ability.
Looking at him made it difficult to consider that he was supposed to be an authority figure. He didn't act like one and he didn't look like one. But he knew enough about abilities as a whole to sound like one. He asked the right questions when he wanted more information about her circumstances. She could respect him for that. His suggestion was one she'd thought about every single day since she manifested. If not for herself, at least for Sam. Alex worried about her brother's heart condition more than she worried about her sanity. If she ended up in a padded cell, that was fine, if Sam's heart exploded from liars, well, not so fine.
"I don't sleep, but I also don't..." She cut off abruptly before continuing with how she didn't make friends. Her eyes dropped and she just shook her head.
Alex wasn't sure she believed him, but she didn't comment further on it. If he was as truthful as he thought, she figured she'd like him well enough. It'd been programmed into her to hate liars because of her brother's condition, even though she was guilty of it as much as anyone was.
"I've stumbled across plenty of porn and none of it has been all that good. It's usually fetish stuff, so, ya know," She shrugged. If Alex allowed herself to continue on the topic of porn, she had a feeling it would get either extremely awkward or a lot sexual, neither of which she'd come up to the roof for. If he asked, she wasn't going to not say anything though.
When the question turned serious, she shifted uncomfortably. She was twenty-three years old and after ten years of dealing with her ability, she still struggled with it. It's not something she often admitted to because admitting it made her seem incapable. "Not completely. I still struggle with it when it's in constant use among other things," She struggled with the side effects more than the control of the ability itself.
Of all the things of him to draw from her ability, he chose the one that showed her to be unintentionally intrusive. Alex looked at him, "Does that worry you?" Only people that asked that sort of thing had something they wanted to hide. At least, that was what she'd gathered from the people she came across. Porn was the common secret people had on their devices and unfortunately, she knew exactly what kind of porn they liked.
"I don't know everything about people from their devices, but I can get a general outlook of who they are. If you're hard on your cellphone, drop it a lot, get it wet, whatever, I know that. If you constantly get viruses because of websites you visit, I know that," She had to smirk at the most recent time she'd used her ability for some kind of vigilante justice. "I can access files from the device and open them sometimes, but it takes a lot out of me when I do."
Heavy, yeah that was one way to put it. Alex frowned, "It explains a lot though, doesn't it?" He had to see the way it effected her, she thought that it made more sense why people were the way that they were once she knew their abilities. The side effects could really do damage to someone's personality. She knew hers did. There were glimpses of who she'd been before, what with her attitude and all, but the truth of the matter was that she didn't feel like herself anymore. And she knew that her brother's side effects had done a number on him. She looked over the man in front of her and she wanted to know what his side effects had done to him.
Alex's eyebrows pulled together in response to his question. She wasn't in a coma because she didn't surround herself around people the way that he had to. "I come up here to sort of get away from everything. I only have to deal with one voice usually, but it keeps quiet when I need it to." She didn't feel it necessary to tell him that she'd been in her own form of isolation for the last few years. He didn't even know who she was really and she felt it was better to save that for later. Assuming there was a later.
Having a kinetic ability would have been easier, she thought. The ability she was given had painted a clear path for her perhaps career-wise, but it only made things complicated everywhere else. She learned things about people that she didn't need to know, she heard voices that weren't there, the only benefits she got from it were the ones that came with helping her brother and keeping him safe. If it weren't for that, she'd have looked for a way not to have the ability at all.
"Cyberlingualism. It's a form of technopathy. I speak binary code more or less, but I hear it in the form of voices. I can cause glitches, fix viruses and I can pretty much control any technological device that I want to," It was the most she'd said to anyone that wasn't her official or her brother. The ability that she had wasn't as cool as she'd initially thought. It gave her ways of cheating, sure, but it also gave her ways of making her want to bash her head into a wall.
She pointed to her temple, "And I don't even have to touch it."
She didn't like talking about her ability and when he asked, she knew that as a trainer he probably knew how to read people. His question was simple, but it held a lot of weight because he was able to draw the conclusion that her ability didn't manifest physically. Of course, it was also relatively obvious seeing as she didn't have wings sprouted from her back or a forked tongue. It piqued her interest however about his own ability, whether he was a sensor or a mimic. Clearly not a suppressor.
"No," She answered simply. What else was she supposed to say? That her ability was mental and made her feel like she was mental. Alex didn't know him, she didn't how him anything, he wasn't her trainer. But she was curious and her curiosity often got the best of her when she was around people.
Alex looked down at her hands and bit her lip, "It's mental, I guess. Although, it works in some kind of physical way. Sorta complicated." She shrugged, but didn't look back up.
Alex lifted her shoulders in a shrug. It wasn't like she gave a shit what people thought of her. And she only had one friend, really. Sam didn't much count even if he knew her inside and out, and he was typically the only one that she told she was right to. "Almost as much as your friends must like your high and mighty attitude," She shrugged again and started wrapping up her headphones, plucking them from the headphone jack.
As soon as she did it, she regretted it because now there was no muffled voice, it was on full force. Oh please, you two are just feeding off of each other with your attitudes. The sexual tension is palpable, can we please get that taken care of soon? I can't handle this. Alex pressed her lips into a tight line and wished that she could just turn it off, but then she realized that she could, so she powered down her phone and pocketed it.
"It's a shock they let you influence anyone," Not that she knew him all that well to judge. She couldn't imagine having him as a trainer. "And I guess I am, yeah," But with an ability like hers, she could use all of the training she could get. Otherwise she was going to end up in a padded cell after being diagnosed with schizophrenia.
His response, although not very eloquently put, made her smirk. She'd been right. He didn't think she was right before, but she was. And she liked being right. "I told you it was better than just 'very nice.'" She sat back up and pulled her knees to her chest with the smirk still gracing her lips.
Alex tapped her fingers against her legs and her eyebrows pulled together. "What'd you mean when you said you had to get back to the little monsters? D'you have kids or something?" Because she couldn't quite imagine the man beside her having children. He may have been the proper age, but there was something about him that just didn't seem right for a parent. Then again, what did she know about that? Her parents weren't really parents either.
She was taken back by his request. Alex had expected him to laugh at her and say she was crazy. It was how she felt, especially when she had the word gush happen. Something she found that she struggled with was how much to say and when. Most of the time she varied from saying nothing to saying too much all at once without even breathing.
He laid back and she scooped up her phone to rewind the song. "Pushy, jeez." Once she had it set up, she put the headphone back in her ear and laid down beside him. Alex kept the distance that she could what with being connected to him by the headphones. Her eyes closed as the song started from the beginning and she took a deep breath in, letting it out slowly and going back to how she'd been when he found her, perfectly still.
By the time the song ended, Alex had her eyes open and she was staring up at the sky. She hesitantly glanced over at him, trying to gauge his reaction this time around. When she couldn't read him, she prompted, "So?"
Alex took a deep breath in and let it out as a heavy sigh. Her hand on her forehead dropped to her fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. Maybe it was a British thing, they didn't know how to express their thoughts past pleasantries such as 'very nice.' She could blame it on that right? It wasn't as though she knew any Brits.
When he asked her to explain what she thought of Hozier in the rain, she froze up. He wouldn't understand if she did, so why should she try? Alex looked down, ignoring the rain that was slipping down her face and dripping from her nose. It was ironic that she was trying to explain music that she only ever listened to when she felt disconnected. Typically she listened to more techno and dubstep renditions of songs because they weren't as organic, they were more mechanical with audio adjustments and different sounds.
She bit her lip and looked up at him, "It's just raw. It's undeniably raw. Listening to Hozier in the rain is like letting all of whatever emotions you have pent up hit you like a train. Whether they're good or not, you feel everything all at once. And then it just stops and you feel calm and empty." She dropped her eyes again and laughed, "Which is all I ever want to feel."
His proximity bothered her more than his humor did. She supposed it made sense, the earbuds could only be so far from each other before they didn't reach. She dropped her shirt and glanced at him to gauge his reaction of the song. Part of her hoped that he hated it because then she could tell him to find another spot on the roof, but she also sort of wanted him to love it the way that she did because the rain and the music, it just fit. It was euphoric and the closest thing to human that she felt. It made her feel like a person rather than a robot, but he wouldn't know that because he didn't know her.
He returned the bud to her and she pulled the other one from her ear. "Very nice? That's it? Are you serious?" She snorted and placed the palm of her hand to her forehead, "No, you don't describe Hozier in the rain as very nice. That's like describing a haircut that you actually hate to the person who cut it. Hozier in the rain is worth more than a very nice." She pointed out plainly.
When he said that he was staying put, she shrugged and bit her lower lip. She knew that the social norm was to give her name back, so she reluctantly did, "I'm Alex and you can do whatever you want Wes. But only if you take back the very nice comment. I'm sorry, it's just how it has to be."
Alex was annoyed by the fact that she found him funny. She didn't even know him, hadn't seen him around, and she thought he was funny. What was with that? Instead of showing him that he was funny with a laugh or a smile, she just looked at him, stared actually. Alex could hear the mumbling of a familiar voice through the headphones that were dangling around her neck. As she lifted one back to her ear, she heard it a little clearer.
He's funny and cute and his accent is dreamy, just get over it already.
She lifted the other headphone to him when he asked what she was listening to, happy that he wouldn't be hearing the same thing that she was. "Hozier, Work Song. Ever heard of it? Or him? If not, I'm afraid we have nothing left to discuss because he's a god," She shrugged. Alex wiped the rain from her face and started ringing out her shirt, exposing a small strip of her abdomen. Frankly, she didn't really care or see that it would be distracting.
