Enough for one [Erika]

Apparently empathy is a two edged sword.
Plenty of people seemed to forget that, or at least, tended to think of it so little as to consider it a granted thing to begin with. Leah had no such luxury, it wasn't every kid who started feeling faint when an old friend was talking about breaking his C3 vertebrae. And that didn't come from a distaste of pain or injury, Leah had been rough with himself when he was younger. A good way to express it had been "you either fall over, or run, jump, spin and twirl before you walk," which had been his mother's words. It had actually been a little hurtful at the time as he'd taken it the wrong way, but the message eventually came through sufficiently enough that there was no real lapse in communication for any length of time. Being able to sit down and properly discuss things generally allowed for more seamless transition from the rough to the better times.

As there didn't really seem to be much in the way of rules about actual conduct on the train other then "behave yourselves or the driver will come down and cuff your ears," Leah decided that taking stock of the scenic views outside the train possibly wouldn't be that bad. Could it? There was a mental shrug, better to ask forgiveness then permission. Even if it did leave something of a bad impression.
Striding down the rickety corridor, Leah began to approach the rear of the train where there was apparently a small platform at the back lined with a standard star picket railing for people to lean on. From an intial -superficial- inspection it certainly seemed stable enough. Time would tell however, as Leah clasped his hand around the handle and turned, stepping out onto the platform. It wasn't as loud as he would have expected- yes the rush of the wind certainly ruffled his hair nicely and he was glad he didn't have his Hogwarts robes on at the moment, those things would billow quite spectacularly and generally flap in his face- so he'd be quite indisposed to appreciate the dramatic effect.

A hammock. That's what life was. A nice, big, fat hammock where you lay and lazed and thought everything was dandy, then a storm came out of nowhere to dump you to the ground and left you with grazed knees and coughing up dirt.

Rika was fine with her life. Really, she was. When the Ministry rule compelled her to attend Hogwarts for her fifth year for her OWL's, she threw a tantrum of massive proportions (internally, of course, one simply did not do that in front of Great-Aunt Lucretia), but compromised with the fact that she'd be living in a....magical castle, with magical w-witches and w-wizards...and magic and.....but she was fine. Really. Apart from a punch thrown, a petty rival made, and one lone trip taken into the Forbidden Forest, Rika had managed to escape out of Hogwarts none the worse for wear. She had heaved a sigh of relief, scrubbed the magic out of her skin and burnt her clothes, and gotten ready to resume her normal, magic-free life.

Then came the storm.

Great-Aunt Lucretia was dead. That stubborn, obstinate, forever pursed-lip woman who hadn't allowed dragon-pox and a Great Bloody War to turn a single hair white, was dead. Died in her sleep. And Rika knew she should be mourning for a relative lost, but its difficult to muster anything but faint disquiet for the death of a woman who forced her into magical education, even if it was home-tutored. And now she, the home-tutor was dead, and Rika should be free, but her parents had apparently gone crazy and insisted she atleast get her graduation.

They just want whats best for you.

Rika scowl-snorted. Hard. It was quite an achievement. She strode down the corridors of the stupid magical train taking her to a stupid magical school, and god, did those kids have to bloody jostle and establish physical contact like that? Anyone ever heard of traffic control? She stomped out onto the rear platform, ran fingers wildly through her hair and let out a huffing breath. Fresh air at last. Now she deemed it safe enough to talk without resorting to screaming. "Best? Best? Really? When has magic ever, ever, like in the history of evers, ever been even remotely good for the Dixon family?"

[Oh boy- gotta lift my game here. See how much muse Leah gives me shall we?]

First rule of the human club was that on the first night, you fought. Second rule of the human club, you didn't talk about it. What did that have to do with Leah's current situation? Not all that much aside from the individual who was presently moving towards his location at a rather high rate of speed -assisted somewhat by the fact that the train was moving in the opposite direction she was travelling, which from Leah's point of view some what warped the sedate trot she was going at to an eerily fast paced sprint. If he could have jumped- he would have. Well- rolled or something, this particular individual looked like she'd had her night in the human club and now was following through with rule two and was distinctly displeased with that requirement.

Moving towards the edge of the platform -and hence roughly out of sight- the female burst onto the small area, exploding into speech which was pronounced in the same way one might a particularly vehement expletive.
Apparently some people had more vitriol in them then others, viz. Leah Valentai. Meekly wondering if the girl in question had been addressing him. Which did seem unlikely if it was reflected upon, but he wasn't too sure he really wanted to have been the recipient of that statement either. Questions about families could be awfully convoluted.

When in doubt, make hay. Or lemonade depending on your viewpoint. Or so his father had told him anyway. No reason not to give the old man's advise the occasional run for it's money now was there?

"Perhaps when it facilitated your birth, saved your life from that odd infection- neutralised the odd tumour in your organs. Never know really. It's a card from the deck o' life, we can throw it away or use it. Just depends what else you've got."
Leah shrugged from the other part of the carriage, he had shouted a bit- because of where they were, although it wasn't all that noisy. For it's archaic design, the locomotive was did not disrupt conversation, the wind had far greater potential then their vessel of movement.

"But what do I know about you? Nothing, pleasure to meet you."

"Perhaps when it facilitated your birth, saved your life from that odd infection- neutralised the odd tumour in your organs. Never know really. It's a card from the deck o' life, we can throw it away or use it. Just depends what else you've got."

"Oh, forgive me for my ungratefulness, really," Rika could not have stopped the caustic, mocking words from escaping even if her life depended on it. "But if I prefer any bloody tumorous growth in my brain to a twin dead, then I'm sure I'm committing no great crime."

Silence, except for the whistling of the wind.

Then Rika realised two things simultaneously.

A) Brenda did not have a male voice.

B) There was the tiny little detail about Brenda being inside her head. The voice just now was quite distinctly real, and from a tangible source.

"Oh shit."

Rika turned around, slowly, preparing for the worse. The reality wasn't much better. There was a boy her height, not much darker in complexion, looked to be younger than her, blonde with protuberant eyes. There was a Ravenclaw tie hanging around his neck. It wasn't very reassuring. Ravvies had a very, very annoying tendency of digging out and paring every single curious, inexplicable thing they could find. The only thing worse would be a Slytherin. Or Henri Finch. Rika allowed herself a second to shudder at the aforesaid girl's memory.

Darn it. It was all her fault.

"But what do I know abo-"

"Pardon me, I'm in the middle of something here," broke in Rika, quite brusquely now that she thought about it. But she had a score to settle. She enunciated the words, deep and measured and meaningful. "It. Is. All. Your. Fault."

Brenda sounded scandalised. Me? What did I do?

"You're the one who always passes smart-ass comments like that! And I was ranting to you and I thought you responded and I blabbed and...now he knows everything!!!!"

Deadpan. As deadpan as it gets. You're being melodramatic.

Rika was insulted. Wounded, deeply so. Here a stupid kid just overhead one of her best-kept secrets, and Bren was behaving like it was nothing. Her voice was indignant enough to rival a five-year old's. "Am not! Now you're making me argue and he thinks I'm crazy!"

Silence. Rika wasn't dense enough to miss what that meant. It meant that Bren agreed with him.

Her hand rose up of its own accord, and rubbed the back of her neck consciously. She was growing red. Double shit.

She cleared her throat and turned around again. "Um, yeah. Pleasure to meet you too."

{Need to remember to go through my spam folder more often...}

Leah mentally clamped up. She may just have been speaking out of reflex, or she might generally be that repulsed at the nature of magic inside her body that she would rather it turn on her and eat her out from the inside. A mental image of a shrinking, hairless, decaying skull flashed in his mind as he considered her words.

Good grief, he certainly hoped she was simply speaking without paying any heed to what she was saying, the mental image alone was enough to turn Leah's stomach (albeit, which wasn't terribly strong to begin with).

However at this point in time, it seemed that his presence actually registered on her mental radar as he spun to regard him with a somewhat startled look. Dear in the headlights had nothing on the brief flash of indescribable emotion that past across her face as she took in his presence.

The small bout of profanity she offered the empty space between them twitched Leah's lips, but he was busy analysing her statement -something seemed off with it. 'A dead twin,' she'd said.

Oh boy, he felt like lobbing the same same words she'd given him a few seconds ago (or what felt like it). His eyes danced around the platform for anything that could potentially be turned into shrapnel.

He was drawing from his own experiences, as he'd blown up the odd ballpoint pen or two when he had been younger and he wasn't even all that powerful magically. Someone who could channel larger amounts of 'horsepower' was probably very capable of using her emotions to turn anything into a nasty surprise.

However, there was nothing quite as powerful as the human imagination, and just as it could have been any other scenario or self-blame that turned the girl's attention on herself (Leah imagined he would hate his own magic as well if it somehow contributed to the death of someone close to him).

Leah wasn't entirely sure how to address the issue that had rather boldly shoved itself into the air between them. Quite frankly it was established that the girl had been talking to herself, that was reasonably assured. Secondly, she probably wasn't terribly inclined towards sticking around now that this rather unfortunate scenario had been established.

So Leah only really had one chance at changing that mindset with some quick and witty statement. Although it seemed that the repartee bank was closed at the moment, because nothing was really coming forth. Although he knew to avoid stupid statements like 'I sometimes talk to myself as well when I'm angry,' which came across as shallow and fairly blunt. He needed to, relax. Drop some of those mental walls he had erected to keep himself safe and on his toes in case action needed to be taken.

"If we could both pretend I said something witty and interesting that diffused and annulled everything I heard," Leah considered his next words for a second. "I'd be grateful." Somehow he got the feeling that shaking hands would be somewhat inappropriate given the terse nature of their discourse insofar.
Tapping wands? He hadn't seen that many people do it, so he decided to avoid that particular rite 'til things had cooled some between them.

"I'm Leah, or Mr Valentai if you like your formalities." Again he paused, nature kiddo, natural. 'Self-blame is the only way to make an improvement, but knowing the line between realistic reactants and carrying emotional baggage,' wanted to be said, but Leah couldn't pull it off. So instead he settled for: "I suppose saying that I won't tell anyone wouldn't mean anything to you, but there you go." Safer? Time would tell.