Post by Deleted on May 10, 2017 16:12:46 GMT -5
OOC: A joint Mandy-Eric RP
Amanda is in deep thought, her long red hair had fallen forward as she stares at her computer screen. Glasses perched on her nose as she chews the end of her pen. Her assistant Victoria had stepped out to get them some lunch and she was alone in the office. So she didn't hear anyone entering the building or see that person standing at the doorway of her office in the back.
It had been over a year since he had seen her. She had gained a bit of weight but it looked good on her. No doubt left over from her recent pregnancy. Her hair was still as vibrant as he remembered, he always thought it looked like a desert sunset.
He knew that he was unwanted here but he had to get closure before he left. Even if she threw him out, he needed to see her. Had to know that she was actually happy with Parker Wayde. He could go if he knew she had someone taking care of her.
She pulls the pen from her mouth but the fixation is replaced when her teeth pull on her bottom lip. A memory flashes in his mind about how many times he had seen that particular move from her in a variety of different situations and he sucks in a breath of air.
The noise causes Coop to speak. “That was quick, guess the line wasn't very long.”
Xandor freezes, not sure what to say. When Coop doesn't hear a response she looks up. “Vic...” her word is frozen in her throat when she sees her estranged husband standing in the doorframe, or rather, blocking the door frame. The expression on her face changes from surprise to anger.
“What are you doing here?”
She stands at her desk, revealing that as per her usual work attire, a black pencil skirt barely reaches her knees. More flashbacks cause him to close his eyes momentarily. They were all flooding his mind too quickly, like water coming through a broken dam.
She watches him, knowing him. Well enough to know something was wrong and for a brief moment, she is concerned until she realizes that this man was not the one she fell in love with. He was different. Even he knew that. The chip, the fighting over the littlest things before he left. Her words had haunted him until the MD’s chip had erased them. Her words... “...Maybe we need some time apart...”
“Xandor... or Azreal... fuck I don't care what you call yourself, just get out of here. I was quite clear on Twitter. I don't want to do this. Go be with your new angel.”
The word angel brings back a memory again, the night when he knew he had fallen for her in the desert. She had uttered the words... “Ange Noir.”
“I can't be with her” he says, realizing it's a struggle to make the words leave his lips. "Now that I have all my memories... being with her... feels like... I am cheating on you.”
There is a tear forming in the corner of his eye now. The pain of having their life together stolen from him was worse than any other pain. Physical or otherwise.
Coop smirks. “How convenient.”
She closes her laptop, it's a little too firmly and makes a loud sound when it closes. She starts cleaning up things on her desk, throwing them into a carrier bag. She then slings it onto her shoulder and walks toward the door.
“Let me by Xandor.”
He shakes his head.
“You never used to run away from difficult situations.”
His voice seems disappointed. She shrugs.
“I lost two husbands to death, Xandor. That is bound to have profound consequences.”
She is still avoiding his eyes though.
“Move aside.”
He rolls his eyes stepping into the office to give her a way to leave. She moves by him but he grabs her wrist, moving her back into the office where he shuts the door. Amanda breaks the hold on her wrist, letting the bag slide from her shoulder onto the floor. She moves forward, and without a second thought, she begins hitting him with hard punches to his chest.
There is no doubt that she had kept up with her workout routine. Her punches were hard and he would probably bruise because of them but that couldn't compare to the hurt he had caused her, not on purpose and not directly but he took responsibility for it. Her punches get weaker until she lets out a sob and turns from him, covering her face.
His first instinct is to comfort her. Tell her that everything was going to be alright and he takes a step to do so but stops himself. He had no right to touch her intimately again. Missio Dei had stolen from him the thing he wanted most. A real family. As messed up as the Cooper girls were, he felt like his whole purpose was to love and protect all three of them and he had failed at the task.
“I buried you!” she says this between sobs. “I put an urn of ashes in a grave. If it wasn't you then who did I grieve? Who did I put in your plot?”
“I don't know." X shakes his head. "MD could have put anyone’s ashes in that urn. I don't expect forgiveness. I don't expect to pick up where we left off. I know...”
He walks toward her desk. She has a few different photo frames. A very tired looking Amanda holding a darker skinned baby in pink. Another of Parker holding that baby while both of them slept. The most recent was the little girl in a pink floral dress, laying her head down on the soft fur of a now full grown Tango, Coop’s half wolf dog.
“I know you moved on. You have a daughter and you have someone else that loves you. He treats you well?”
Amanda sniffs. “Yes.”
“That’s all I need to confirm. But I wanted to tell you what happened. Why I grew so distant. Why I went to Israel at all.”
She turns, her blue eyes are red-rimmed, her nose and lips puffy. He had seen her like this many times. It broke his heart to know he was the cause of it.
“Well...”
He takes a deep breath.
“Pascal gave me a tip. That he had heard there was something big going on in this small town in Israel. I knew you wouldn't let me go, so I started picking fights, growing distant until I knew I had alienated you enough to agree we needed some breathing room...”
Her face ignites in anger, her fists clenching at her sides.
“I know it was despicable of me. But it was my only chance to get evidence on the High Brother that we needed to oust him from Missio Dei.”
Xandor’s only passion other than Amanda was restoring Missio Dei to its non-violent and egalitarian beginnings as established 500 years earlier. Under the leadership of a fundamentalist and militaristic leader, Missio Dei was turned into the World Council of Churches’ version of the Central Intelligence Agency. They carried out covert secret missions in the name of social justice but were in truth raping and pillaging the rich natural resources of third world countries. Xandor’s birth and adopted families were leaders of a resistance movement and were murdered in order to stop the truth from being exposed.
“Coop, we were double-crossed. It was a setup to get me within range of their brain scrambling shit. My contact muttered the words, ‘For Christ’s sake,’ and suddenly everything in my head went blank. It was like my mind was rebooted and all I knew was my training and survival instinct." As he recalled the experience, he meant every word. The experience was his truth.
Coop gives a half chortle of a laugh. It isn't out of humor but of the grief that still hung heavy on her heart.
“I thought brain chips were all science fiction bullshit.”
He looks at her with angry eyes but not directed at her.
“I wish it was, Coop. That's the evidence Pascal was trying to uncover. High Brother commissioned a group of Israelí scientists to do human trials. My training unit was the experimental group used without our knowledge. We thought it was a universal vaccine. When Pascal found out, he sent me to investigate. He didn't know it was a trap. Otherwise he never would have sent me.”
She sighs deeply.
“High Brother sent me to assassinate the leader of the Indonesian Islamic State. Missio Dei is not about murder and it was my memories of you that didn't allow me to kill him despite the mind control. I incapacitated the bastard and rescued an American girl sold to the sex trade in the process. When High Brother heard that I didn't kill the target, he recalled me to Israel. That's when I got caught by the car bomb on my way back to the hideout.” He rubbed his right temple as if he could still feel the concussion blast.
“I woke up in an Israelí hospital three months later. It was like I woke up from a bad dream into a nightmare. The doctors said they found the brain chip. It was damaged by the blast and they can't take it out without severing my brain stem.” He looks over at her, looking to read her reaction.
A tear rolls down his cheek. “I never stopped loving you, Coop. My memory was broken but you were still in there. When Xion told me that Missio Dei arranged ‘my death’ to cover their tracks, I wanted to find you but my injuries took time to heal. And they had given you an urn with the ashes of another poor soul who died in the blast. My DNA was mixed in to make you believe I was dead.”
“I couldn't come back as Xandor Kalel once Missio Dei learned I survived the blast. So I took the name Azrael Kahn. I went straight to our place looking for you but it was empty. So I asked Xion to search for you and your sisters and that's when I learned about Parker and Mara.” He looks over at the pictures of what could have been his life. Then his eyes fall on her.
“I’m not going to apologize for moving on with my life X. You were the one who taught me how to do that. In the desert... you remember... how Travis abandoning me without remorse almost broke me. You taught me how to deal with all those feelings. The repressed ones about Tommy too. But after the desert... you brushed it off when I tried to talk about them.” She shakes her head.
“I know that it was because you thought it would make me sad. And when you... when I thought you were gone and the last words we spoke were not the best, I felt responsible. You being back and knowing that... that fucking place screwed us both...” She shakes her head as her fists clench.
“But I can’t do that stuff anymore. I can't go on kamikaze missions. I have a beautiful little girl and a wonderful man back home that need me. I also know that you feel like you have nothing keeping you from destroying them once and for all. And that means even if you are successful, you likely won’t be coming back.”
He wipes a tear away and steels himself with the cold reality of life.
“I guess you’re not the Coop I fell in love with anymore. My Coop would know that eventually I would realize that she was worth giving up this stupid crusade. That I would do everything in my power to come back to her. That I would disappear with her right now if she still existed. But the woman before me is not my Coop. My Amanda Cooper is just as dead as Xandor Kalel. This Amanda Cooper belongs to Parker and their daughter.”
Xandor turns around to leave, his demeanor cold, but she knows he is emotionally destroyed. As he gets to the door, he looks back at her one last time.
“My Coop or not, I always knew you would make an incredible mother. Goodbye, Amanda.”
“I hope you find peace with this Xandor. Wherever that may end up being. I hope you know I never would ask you to do this, for me or anyone else. You have the opportunity to start over if you wanted but I respect your decision. Where should I send your family's money after...”
She can't bring herself to even say the words she is thinking. He doesn’t even look back at her.
“Before coming up here, I set aside a nice start up fund for Xion Ben-Judah, my protege, and one for Kaydence for her troubles. Other than that, my family’s money belongs to my family… even if I’m no longer recognized as a member. It’s attached to this business, Amanda. It belongs to you and your offspring as my beneficiary. Think of it as security from above.”
She looks up at him quickly, her blue eyes brimming with tears again.
“Try not to actually die, X. For what it’s worth.”
He doesn't look at her though and turns toward the door.
“In another time, it would be worth much more. Please take care of yourself Coop. And be happy, you deserve it. Goodbye.”
With that he walks away, leaving Amanda alone. She doesn't move until she hears the bell jingle, indicating that the outside door has opened. She knew it was the last time she would see him alive.
SAYING GOODBYE TO AN ANGEL
Amanda is in deep thought, her long red hair had fallen forward as she stares at her computer screen. Glasses perched on her nose as she chews the end of her pen. Her assistant Victoria had stepped out to get them some lunch and she was alone in the office. So she didn't hear anyone entering the building or see that person standing at the doorway of her office in the back.
It had been over a year since he had seen her. She had gained a bit of weight but it looked good on her. No doubt left over from her recent pregnancy. Her hair was still as vibrant as he remembered, he always thought it looked like a desert sunset.
He knew that he was unwanted here but he had to get closure before he left. Even if she threw him out, he needed to see her. Had to know that she was actually happy with Parker Wayde. He could go if he knew she had someone taking care of her.
She pulls the pen from her mouth but the fixation is replaced when her teeth pull on her bottom lip. A memory flashes in his mind about how many times he had seen that particular move from her in a variety of different situations and he sucks in a breath of air.
The noise causes Coop to speak. “That was quick, guess the line wasn't very long.”
Xandor freezes, not sure what to say. When Coop doesn't hear a response she looks up. “Vic...” her word is frozen in her throat when she sees her estranged husband standing in the doorframe, or rather, blocking the door frame. The expression on her face changes from surprise to anger.
“What are you doing here?”
She stands at her desk, revealing that as per her usual work attire, a black pencil skirt barely reaches her knees. More flashbacks cause him to close his eyes momentarily. They were all flooding his mind too quickly, like water coming through a broken dam.
She watches him, knowing him. Well enough to know something was wrong and for a brief moment, she is concerned until she realizes that this man was not the one she fell in love with. He was different. Even he knew that. The chip, the fighting over the littlest things before he left. Her words had haunted him until the MD’s chip had erased them. Her words... “...Maybe we need some time apart...”
“Xandor... or Azreal... fuck I don't care what you call yourself, just get out of here. I was quite clear on Twitter. I don't want to do this. Go be with your new angel.”
The word angel brings back a memory again, the night when he knew he had fallen for her in the desert. She had uttered the words... “Ange Noir.”
“I can't be with her” he says, realizing it's a struggle to make the words leave his lips. "Now that I have all my memories... being with her... feels like... I am cheating on you.”
There is a tear forming in the corner of his eye now. The pain of having their life together stolen from him was worse than any other pain. Physical or otherwise.
Coop smirks. “How convenient.”
She closes her laptop, it's a little too firmly and makes a loud sound when it closes. She starts cleaning up things on her desk, throwing them into a carrier bag. She then slings it onto her shoulder and walks toward the door.
“Let me by Xandor.”
He shakes his head.
“You never used to run away from difficult situations.”
His voice seems disappointed. She shrugs.
“I lost two husbands to death, Xandor. That is bound to have profound consequences.”
She is still avoiding his eyes though.
“Move aside.”
He rolls his eyes stepping into the office to give her a way to leave. She moves by him but he grabs her wrist, moving her back into the office where he shuts the door. Amanda breaks the hold on her wrist, letting the bag slide from her shoulder onto the floor. She moves forward, and without a second thought, she begins hitting him with hard punches to his chest.
There is no doubt that she had kept up with her workout routine. Her punches were hard and he would probably bruise because of them but that couldn't compare to the hurt he had caused her, not on purpose and not directly but he took responsibility for it. Her punches get weaker until she lets out a sob and turns from him, covering her face.
His first instinct is to comfort her. Tell her that everything was going to be alright and he takes a step to do so but stops himself. He had no right to touch her intimately again. Missio Dei had stolen from him the thing he wanted most. A real family. As messed up as the Cooper girls were, he felt like his whole purpose was to love and protect all three of them and he had failed at the task.
“I buried you!” she says this between sobs. “I put an urn of ashes in a grave. If it wasn't you then who did I grieve? Who did I put in your plot?”
“I don't know." X shakes his head. "MD could have put anyone’s ashes in that urn. I don't expect forgiveness. I don't expect to pick up where we left off. I know...”
He walks toward her desk. She has a few different photo frames. A very tired looking Amanda holding a darker skinned baby in pink. Another of Parker holding that baby while both of them slept. The most recent was the little girl in a pink floral dress, laying her head down on the soft fur of a now full grown Tango, Coop’s half wolf dog.
“I know you moved on. You have a daughter and you have someone else that loves you. He treats you well?”
Amanda sniffs. “Yes.”
“That’s all I need to confirm. But I wanted to tell you what happened. Why I grew so distant. Why I went to Israel at all.”
She turns, her blue eyes are red-rimmed, her nose and lips puffy. He had seen her like this many times. It broke his heart to know he was the cause of it.
“Well...”
He takes a deep breath.
“Pascal gave me a tip. That he had heard there was something big going on in this small town in Israel. I knew you wouldn't let me go, so I started picking fights, growing distant until I knew I had alienated you enough to agree we needed some breathing room...”
Her face ignites in anger, her fists clenching at her sides.
“I know it was despicable of me. But it was my only chance to get evidence on the High Brother that we needed to oust him from Missio Dei.”
Xandor’s only passion other than Amanda was restoring Missio Dei to its non-violent and egalitarian beginnings as established 500 years earlier. Under the leadership of a fundamentalist and militaristic leader, Missio Dei was turned into the World Council of Churches’ version of the Central Intelligence Agency. They carried out covert secret missions in the name of social justice but were in truth raping and pillaging the rich natural resources of third world countries. Xandor’s birth and adopted families were leaders of a resistance movement and were murdered in order to stop the truth from being exposed.
“Coop, we were double-crossed. It was a setup to get me within range of their brain scrambling shit. My contact muttered the words, ‘For Christ’s sake,’ and suddenly everything in my head went blank. It was like my mind was rebooted and all I knew was my training and survival instinct." As he recalled the experience, he meant every word. The experience was his truth.
Coop gives a half chortle of a laugh. It isn't out of humor but of the grief that still hung heavy on her heart.
“I thought brain chips were all science fiction bullshit.”
He looks at her with angry eyes but not directed at her.
“I wish it was, Coop. That's the evidence Pascal was trying to uncover. High Brother commissioned a group of Israelí scientists to do human trials. My training unit was the experimental group used without our knowledge. We thought it was a universal vaccine. When Pascal found out, he sent me to investigate. He didn't know it was a trap. Otherwise he never would have sent me.”
She sighs deeply.
“High Brother sent me to assassinate the leader of the Indonesian Islamic State. Missio Dei is not about murder and it was my memories of you that didn't allow me to kill him despite the mind control. I incapacitated the bastard and rescued an American girl sold to the sex trade in the process. When High Brother heard that I didn't kill the target, he recalled me to Israel. That's when I got caught by the car bomb on my way back to the hideout.” He rubbed his right temple as if he could still feel the concussion blast.
“I woke up in an Israelí hospital three months later. It was like I woke up from a bad dream into a nightmare. The doctors said they found the brain chip. It was damaged by the blast and they can't take it out without severing my brain stem.” He looks over at her, looking to read her reaction.
A tear rolls down his cheek. “I never stopped loving you, Coop. My memory was broken but you were still in there. When Xion told me that Missio Dei arranged ‘my death’ to cover their tracks, I wanted to find you but my injuries took time to heal. And they had given you an urn with the ashes of another poor soul who died in the blast. My DNA was mixed in to make you believe I was dead.”
“I couldn't come back as Xandor Kalel once Missio Dei learned I survived the blast. So I took the name Azrael Kahn. I went straight to our place looking for you but it was empty. So I asked Xion to search for you and your sisters and that's when I learned about Parker and Mara.” He looks over at the pictures of what could have been his life. Then his eyes fall on her.
“I’m not going to apologize for moving on with my life X. You were the one who taught me how to do that. In the desert... you remember... how Travis abandoning me without remorse almost broke me. You taught me how to deal with all those feelings. The repressed ones about Tommy too. But after the desert... you brushed it off when I tried to talk about them.” She shakes her head.
“I know that it was because you thought it would make me sad. And when you... when I thought you were gone and the last words we spoke were not the best, I felt responsible. You being back and knowing that... that fucking place screwed us both...” She shakes her head as her fists clench.
“But I can’t do that stuff anymore. I can't go on kamikaze missions. I have a beautiful little girl and a wonderful man back home that need me. I also know that you feel like you have nothing keeping you from destroying them once and for all. And that means even if you are successful, you likely won’t be coming back.”
He wipes a tear away and steels himself with the cold reality of life.
“I guess you’re not the Coop I fell in love with anymore. My Coop would know that eventually I would realize that she was worth giving up this stupid crusade. That I would do everything in my power to come back to her. That I would disappear with her right now if she still existed. But the woman before me is not my Coop. My Amanda Cooper is just as dead as Xandor Kalel. This Amanda Cooper belongs to Parker and their daughter.”
Xandor turns around to leave, his demeanor cold, but she knows he is emotionally destroyed. As he gets to the door, he looks back at her one last time.
“My Coop or not, I always knew you would make an incredible mother. Goodbye, Amanda.”
“I hope you find peace with this Xandor. Wherever that may end up being. I hope you know I never would ask you to do this, for me or anyone else. You have the opportunity to start over if you wanted but I respect your decision. Where should I send your family's money after...”
She can't bring herself to even say the words she is thinking. He doesn’t even look back at her.
“Before coming up here, I set aside a nice start up fund for Xion Ben-Judah, my protege, and one for Kaydence for her troubles. Other than that, my family’s money belongs to my family… even if I’m no longer recognized as a member. It’s attached to this business, Amanda. It belongs to you and your offspring as my beneficiary. Think of it as security from above.”
She looks up at him quickly, her blue eyes brimming with tears again.
“Try not to actually die, X. For what it’s worth.”
He doesn't look at her though and turns toward the door.
“In another time, it would be worth much more. Please take care of yourself Coop. And be happy, you deserve it. Goodbye.”
With that he walks away, leaving Amanda alone. She doesn't move until she hears the bell jingle, indicating that the outside door has opened. She knew it was the last time she would see him alive.