Room 504, Sunday Night

[intraspective]

She'd been alright getting back to the island. Holding it together and keeping a bounce in her step. She'd managed, even, to get through a shower--and was she ever glad to have a real shower again--but it was looking around her room, her things just as she'd left them--

Less than a week ago. More than seven months ago.

--that was making it hard for her to keep her composure. Ino settled herself--thinner than before but still herself--gingerly on her bed, her unfamiliar and yet almost too familiar bed, in a plain white shirt and grey leggings. Ino shrugged a bit, picking at the shirt.

She wasn't ready to sleep yet. Not now.

Not when things kept swirling around in her head. The quick patter of thoughts, persistent and aching, not letting her close her eyes and relax. Ino hadn't relaxed in months, not really, not daring to.

She was glad to be back. Seriously.

But it'd take time for her to be comfortable again.

[Door closed, post is oh so totally open!]

Comments

[intraspective]

That got a half-shrug. "We all went our separate ways after a while. It was easier, I guess, than seeing people that reminded us of home."

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"I guess it would be, if you didn't think you were getting home", he said quietly. "And that was before the message to go to London?"

[intraspective]

"Yeah," she said with a carefully nonchalant shrug, "Jeff pretty much gave up in the first week, and Romeo took off to Italy to see if he could track down his ancestors and stop them from doing something stupid or whatever, I just sort... wandered."

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"Jeff left you?" he demands incredulously. "Your brother?"

[intraspective]

Another careful shrug. "It was... rather a mutual parting? I... I wasn't going to stick around when he was just giving up like that, and me refusing to give up only distressed him."

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"Still", Michael said, clearly unhappy with the thought. "Your brother. You never heard from him again after that?"

[intraspective]

"No," Ino said, "but it wasn't like I was in much communication with anyone either. And we're not, you know, sibling by blood or anything."

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"Shouldn't matter. Max and Isabel and me, we only think we're blood-related. We don't know."

[intraspective]

She glanced down. "That's just the way in happened, okay?"

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"Okay", he relented. He'd been more annoyed at Jeff than her, anyway.

[intraspective]

Ino leaned a bit more against him. "Thank you," she said, smiling slightly.

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

His arm went more tightly around her. "Anytime."

[intraspective]

"Yeah...." Ino looked sideways at him. "What did you do with your week?"

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"Not a whole lot", he said with a half-shrug. "Went to classes when they were on, didn't go to work."

He so was not volunteering the fact that he'd tried to blow up the angels.

[intraspective]

She laughed a little, softly, almost under her breath. "Must've been boring, I guess."

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"Well, everybody was worried about you guys. Looking through history books and stuff once we knew you were in the past, trying to find out where you'd gone."

[intraspective]

"Yeah," she blinked up at him, "it just seems rather boring to me, I guess. Not much with researching. I'm glad though that they got us back. So glad."

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"You and me both", he said sincerely. "I heard some people found stuff that said people'd died in the past. Not gonna happen now, anyway."

[intraspective]

Ino shuddered a bit. "That would've been awful if we'd been stuck there permanently. I can't imagine it."

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"You don't have to", he reminds her. "But you'd have got by."

[intraspective]

"Maybe," she said, "but there's a different between living and living."

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

"Sometimes you have to take what you can get."

[intraspective]

"I'm bad at that," she retorted amicably.

[rebelheartalien.livejournal.com]

Michael laughed.

"Then you'd have found a way to get yourself living, wouldn't you?"

[intraspective]

"It would suck," Ino said firmly, "because there's no way to replace people that you miss. But I'd, yeah, probably. Lived a little anyway."