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Post by Ylanne on Sept 18, 2020 18:11:22 GMT -6
Ahmad frowned, moving slightly away from Aerilyn, the better to get a good look at her. "You don't want to come? I mean, you don't have to, but..." He shrugged, pressing his hands together, as if he could push out everything that suddenly rose into his throat. "She likes you. She approves, you know. Not that you need her approval." When had Aerilyn really needed anyone's approval? She'd been a soldier long before she'd attempted to settle for their odd approximation of a home life. "I'm sure you'd be welcome though. More than welcome." He hesitated, looking earnestly at Aerilyn. "If you wanted to go, I mean. Maybe you could go to target practice, or do tactical drills together, or something. That would be fun, wouldn't it?"
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Post by demikara on Sept 18, 2020 18:21:32 GMT -6
She laughed at this and smiled. "Alright, I'll come." It was an easy change to her weekend plans. "She and I do get along well after all. Though I don't think we're going to do tactical drills together on a casual visit." Her husband was adorable but a bit of a dork. That was at least part of what attracted her to him though so she was perfectly fine with it. "I just didn't know if you wanted time alone with your mom for once." She usually came along, if she had the time off at least. And he job was being fairly lenient with her when it came time to when she worked at least. It worked out well enough. It would be a more full time job once the trial was over with, but for now picking up a few hours a week was more than enough for her.
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Post by Ylanne on Sept 18, 2020 19:08:53 GMT -6
"I mean. I like going with you. And maybe we could both use the break." Ahmad shivered, already imagining the morning. He wouldn't be there - but he suspected Aerilyn would go, again, probably all week. No matter what the old woman wanted. After all, she couldn't exactly ban a friend from a public courtroom. "You never know... Maybe my mother will take you out for combat drills. She's done tactical competitions too. I never went." He hated the sound. He'd barely finished the training he'd gone through at the Bureau. "I just want... I just want to pretend we can be normal. Even if we all know it's a bald-faced lie." Ahmad had left normal behind before he'd even made it to adulthood. He'd left whatever passed for it in Sanaa. And for all the life they'd been able to cobble together in the years since, he knew that game nights and movie nights could never replace what they'd lost to the traumas they picked up like dust coating the landscape.
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Post by demikara on Sept 18, 2020 19:14:00 GMT -6
"Then this weekend, let's pretend everything is normal." It could be good for them, to at least pretend a bit. "And you never know. We may manage normal again, some day." Though she suspected it would be more that their normal will have permanently shifted after this. Normal was relative, right? They had a normal before the trials, and maybe they'd find a new normal after them all, even if that normal meant visiting their friend in prison. she smiled to him. "And she may. You'll have to sit back and watch if we do that. Somehow I doubt you'd join in after all." She teased gently.
Her husband was wonderful, but he most definitely was not one for combat at all.
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Post by Ylanne on Sept 18, 2020 19:35:11 GMT -6
"Well, if you insist on it, I guess I will," Ahmad said, rueful, remembering the last time he'd even seen his mother at a competition or whatever it was they called them. So easily she transitioned from the boardroom to an outdoors range or an academic classroom at whichever college she was teaching at now. The women in his life all roundly rejected whatever was supposed to be normal. He was just along for the ride. "I don't want to talk to my mother about ... about what's going on here. She was... angry about it. She's never liked the Bureau or the thought of me working there. But she's also my mother. And right now ... " He trailed off. He didn't quite know how to say that the weight of the last ten months had given him a longing for the nearly glittering pavement leading to his mother's front door, the scents of jasmine and lilies in her hallway, the feeling of being held. There wasn't really a way for an adult to say they wanted their mom. But with the old woman kept away from him, who else did he have?
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Post by demikara on Sept 18, 2020 19:44:22 GMT -6
"Then we tell her we don't want to talk about it." Aerilyn pointed out. "And I'm sure she'll respect that. We're right in the thick of things." They could use a break. "It'll be good to see her." Besides, she was his mom and right now, she had a feeling he could use his mom. She could only do so much, she supposed, given she was equally in the thick of things. Having someone a step outside of everything would be good for both of them. She grinned and tugged on him. "Right now, you need your mom. I understand all too well." there were times she still needed her mom. The main difference was he could have his, when he needed to, and she couldn't. Arianne had become close to a mother figure for her at least, and that was going to be enough for now. It had to be.
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Post by Ylanne on Sept 18, 2020 19:52:13 GMT -6
Ahmad nodded. He felt a wave of distant nausea pass through him, taunting him like it always did. "Then we'll go." He moved to return to the house, the neighbors all long retreated to their own places of refuge. His hand rested on the handle to the sliding door. "Are you going downtown tomorrow?" he asked, something straining in his face as he spoke. He couldn't imagine being there all day. Every day. He couldn't imagine not going if he could, either. "I think it's supposed to be another week. Maybe two. Until it's all supposed to be over, I mean." He couldn't quite remember what the prosecutor had said. He couldn't even remember exactly how to pronounce her name, though he'd tried. What loomed over him was the seeming inevitability of the outcome - the whole affair seemed a terrible farce.
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Post by demikara on Sept 18, 2020 19:57:05 GMT -6
Aerilyn hesitated a moment. "I hate to say it, but I could use a break. It's kind of exhausting." She may also be avoiding having to explain herself just yet. "I think I'm going to go to the range tomorrow instead. Work off some of the tension." She needed to do something other than attend every day and torture herself by doing so and at this point, it felt like nothing more than the worst sort of torture. She already knew what the sentence would be. Life in prison. Even if they somehow decided it was less than life, she'd be there until she died. She didn't have that much longer left to live.
She couldn't, given her age and her condition. It was stubbornness that had kept Arianne alive thus far, Aerilyn was sure. With her in prison, maybe she'd relax enough to let her responsibilities to Terra go for just a little while at least.
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Post by Ylanne on Sept 18, 2020 20:24:13 GMT -6
"Makes sense to me," said Ahmad, nodding assent, though the words felt hollow to his own ears. What would the old woman make of this? It couldn't really be an abandonment, not when she had wanted both of them far away from the court to begin with. But that's how it felt, any moment he let himself think about it before attempting to force such thoughts out of his head again. "And I guess you have the time off to do it." He still didn't know how Aerilyn had wrangled that many days off from work, not entirely, and he wondered how he could try to do the same. Probably not all that effectively. "I'm sorry you won't be able to help by going to get those ashes. But I'm not sorry that you won't die there. I don't know what I'd do." He offered his hand out to Aerilyn, and then opened the door.
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