You Can Only Be Brave When You're Afraid

((OOC: So I'm replying to this post after a millenium. Even though you probably would want to drop it now. Heh.
Also, I read the story mentioned in this post somewhere, so credit where credit due and all that.))


Through vision that seemed more opaque than anything else, Rika watched the slender shaft of wood rise through the air, long fingers tipped with blunted nails wrapped around the base. Waited for the explosion of fear to come, with a patience that seemed almost unworldly. But apparently blood loss was good for something other than crippling weakness and knocking her to the ground- it also seemed to leave her devoid of feeling. So large, pain-ridden eyes watched the wand swish through the air, some part of the mind aware that there should be the sensation of fear clogging her throat, that goosepimples should pepper her skin, that her heart should speed and tongue dry. But her skin was already sweat-sodden, left ventricular walls pushed to their limit. Maybe there was only so much fear the human mind, body….could take. Maybe she’d already reached the end line.

Her tongue slipped out, futilely licking at the cracks on habit-bitten lips- almost mustering a smile. The thought was so impossible that it was almost cheerful.

But then……even if she had failed. Even if she had fulfilled every single low opinion of herself she had ever entertained. There had been something. Something that had motivated her to step into this nightmare of trees and mud and moon in the first place. Something that had held her hand steady as she had hacked at her other arm.

”…..but I do know my fair share of healing charms……so if you hold out your arm, I can sort it out….”

What had that something been?

She was tall, and athletic, and almost refreshingly pretty. Brunette, with a long ponytail that swished back and forth as she gestured enthusiastically over her breakfast in the Great Hall, dark, long-lashed eyes alive with a gleam that seemed impossible to look away from, impossible to quench. You couldn’t have found a girl more different from Rika if you’d gone searching with a candle in the streets of Surrey- but there she was, still sitting beside the Ravenclaw, back stiff and teeth worrying away at her lower lip like she had something to say.

Rika bent her head to the table, and went on scratching patterns in the dust.

“So.” Alisha Merchant said, after an hour of lip-worrying, and sneaky side-glances that couldn’t have been less subtle if they tried, voice simply bursting to the full with Important Things To Say. “So.”

Rika scraped out a triangle with her index fingernail, then inscribed a circle within it. She almost cocked her head to the side, waiting for the snide voice inside her head to reply, “So what?” But Bren was gone. Had been gone, for weeks. Hearing the voice would just make her break down now, and she still had a drop of energy left to maintain the denial of the fact that she had no dignity left- which would be confirmed if she started shaking and shivering to pieces in front of random Hufflepuffs, even those who spoke kindly and boosted her courage to attend stupid parties, even those parties in which Henrietta-I’m-a-changed-person-now-lip-wibble-Finch announced her return.

“So there’s a story.” Alisha said next, finally progressing beyond monosyllables. Rika’s lip almost twitched. Isn’t there always?

“Of a man.” Alisha said next, and then finally seemed to break some internal barrier, because the next words came spilling out of her like water gushing through a hole in a dam wall. “Who locked himself up in a room. And never left it. He was afraid, you see. Of everything in this world.”

Yes. A voice echoed somewhere in the confines of Rika’s head. I do see.

“A bus might run him over.” Alisha continued. “A man might breathe Dragonpox germs on to him. A Hippogryff might kick him to death. Lightning might strike him down, or he might love a girl and she might leave him, or he might fall off a broom, or slip on a banana peel and everybody would laugh their heads off at him. So he went into this room, and locked the door, and sat on his bed, and stayed there.”

There was a pause there, then; and Rika realised, for the first time in what seemed like years, that this was a social obligation right here- that she was supposed to ask- what happened then? But her mouth appeared to have other ideas. Or maybe, the right idea. “Stayed there…..forever?”

Her voice croaked, like it was barely used. Alisha barely held back a wince, Rika pretended not to notice. It was remarkable easy. But then the girl’s lips moved, almost murmuring, “For a while.”

Rika surprised herself, by finding a tiny ember of curiosity lit within her mind after all. Her nail stopped scratching. “And then?”

“Then a picture fell off the wall on to his head and killed him.”

Silence, for two abrupt moments. Her chest was vibrating, shaking with something that her throat was finding hard to contain. It gushed up behind her sternum, pressing into her ribs, peeked through the crevices in her pharynx and bubbled up into her mouth, looking for a way to escape. Mirth.

Rika threw back her head and laughed.

Yes. I do see.

The memory flashed past her eyelids, as clear as watching through the glass panes of a window. Eyes glanced up again, scoping over the figure of the man stepping forward to offer his assistance. Clear eyes- hardly any concern, mostly curiosity. Tall. Fingers gripped with an easy assurance over the wand. Gentle voice.

Rika almost blacked out from the pain that came from jolting her right arm, but she still raised it. Against the inexorable force of gravity, inch by inch, mind just exhausted enough to dull the sharp edge of fear, just awake and……alive enough, to hide the remnants of it under a blanket of fake courage. It didn’t even feel like courage, at this point. Didn’t feel like the milestone it was, allowing a stranger to perform magic on her, through the thick and woolly cotton that covered and obscured her thought processes. She just lifted her arm, blood dribbling out of the sleeves, and smiled an exhausted smile that pared wearied pain down to its very bone.

“G-go on, then.” Something said, using her voice. Spots danced in her vision, flickering past her eyelids and then chasing away, causing a riot of dark and light to break across her field of view. Through the haze, she was only aware on the most distant level that her lips were still moving. “Thestrals like meat, even…….” The words broke off, to draw breath into her heaving chest, to still enable speech. “..even though they don’t…don’t feed on human flesh. The bloodier… the better.”

She had no more energy to lift her chin and look up, her gaze was fixed to the vicinity of his knees, right arm still upraised, left clenched around the hilt of the dagger buried in the ground, the only thing still holding her up. There. You got what you wanted. I’ve released you from your curiosity now. You can go if you want to.

She shook her head weakly side to side, the gibberish like words bouncing within the confines. Delirium was a strange state of mind.

Darren wasn't sure if he was relieved or confused by the girl's decision to trust him, even with something so minimal, so simple, so obvious. If she really didn't want to deal with him any longer, wouldn't she have told him to shove off? If she didn't want it to be sorted, as he had first assumed, she would not have extended her arm towards him, would not have presented the opportunity for someone to approach. She was vulnerable, but a part of her had opened itself up to a potential aggressor - not that he was one, of course. But the chance was there, and she had to know it existed. He was a near perfect stranger, but being fixed was more important than avoiding the chance that said stranger would inflict further harm.

Normally, he would have just reached out to take the girl's wrist or hand, to hold it up where he could easily cast the spell. But it felt wrong somehow to breach the invisible wall that he could feel she had put up. What the hell was wrong with him? He didn't care about boundaries. That wasn't him at all. It wasn't right. Darren didn't understand himself for a moment, and it made him hesitate. And that, unfortunately, only made him flustered, and made him bristle. So he reached out to take up her hand - gently enough that it wouldn't cause her further harm, but perhaps a bit too quickly for her to feel prepared for his grasp.

She was talking about the Thestrals again, but Darren ignored her to some extent, muttering a cleaning spell and then one that would close up the wound. He got the gist of what she was saying, of course, but he didn't see why multitasking was a bad idea. When she finished, he had as well, and Darren released her, stepping back to provide that distance again, half curious as to if she would be affronted, or if she would appear thankful that he had given her that space back.

"That's mental, you know that?" he asked, shaking his head. "If you knew they wouldn't..." Darren paused, deciding to change tacks. A rather brilliant, if he did say so himself, idea came to mind, and there was no stopping him once an idea had hit. It would need to be seen through, if she let him do so, and there was no time like the present, right? It was just going to have to be said.

"Okay. You've been through... something that brought you to this point. And I'm insanely curious as to what that is. So I have two suggestions for you. First, though, you've got to tell me your name. Any name. I need to know who I'm addressing," he explained, realizing he should have asked but had forgotten in his attempts to dig into her brain. So far, it had not been going too well.

So he waited until she found it in her to reply before continuing with his options. "Right. So, this will sound a bit mad, but after what's happened here, I think we can stomach a bit more of the ridiculous tonight. I want to understand. That's practically what I'm built for, the desperate attempts at understanding. So you can either ignore me and walk away... or we can help each other. You help me with my practical - my project for class - and I'll try and help you in whatever way you want me to. You seem to be in some kind of... pain, aside from the obvious, physical sort. It's possible that I can help you figure how to deal with that. But not unless you let me. Not unless you agree to try and learn to trust me."

She didn’t quite comprehend what was happening, for a second.

It was almost understandable, really. It was known. Prisoners who’d been stuffed into dingy cells and oubliettes for years, spent minutes staring stupidly at the bright white circle in the sky after they’re first let out, as if they’d quite forgotten about the existence of the sun. People starved of food, with starched taste buds, would waste time tracing over the shape of the bread loaves, sniff at the oily scent of scraped butter in spite of all the days their stomachs spent screaming at them to just shove the food in, force it down their craggy throats before it all vanished for good. Under the circumstances…….it was almost obvious that she’d forget. Be unable to understand human touch, to be unable to grasp the concept of a human hand wrapping around her wrist.

It had been so long.

She stared for interminable seconds, spots still blinking in and out of her vision, an endless pressure building at the spot above the bridge of her nose, just between her eyebrows- like something blunt and sharp was trying desperately to bore its way out through her skull. What seemed like antbites peppered up and down her arm, brief little flashes of pain that scurried their way under her skin as the wound knit back together- and still she stared, unblinking, until he let go of her hand, the edge of his thumbnail grazing past her wrist as those baton-like fingers moved away.

That did it.

Reality crashed into her mind like a speeding train and her head whipped forward as she hurled, bile scorching against the raw remnants of her throat, tears blinding out vision as what seemed like her guts splattered on the Forest floor. Long, slick strands of hair clung to the back of her neck with sweat, even while shivers worked through her thin frame, strong enough to jolt bones out of their sockets. It hurt, it hurt, and Rika lost a number of seconds as sheer blackness swept over her brain- then she was looking up at the sky again, eyes rolling back into her head, as she tried to suck in breath through dried, burning lips, gasping uselessly. It was the blood loss, the sudden plummet in adrenaline, the heart palpitations, the fear, the pain…….and that hand had been the last straw that broke the Hippogryff’s back, that nail scraping down her wrist, someone tou- her stomach roiled again in nausea, and Rika’s fingers clawed into the dirt, willing breath, willing stability into a useless heap of scraps.

“N….next…t-time,” And it was a miracle her vocal chords worked at all, burned by bile. “….th..three foot…distance while you do that. Or… gloves.”

Slowly, inch by tremulous inch, she shifted her weight, from kneeling to feeling the jolt as her tailbone impacted the ground, and cool forest dew started soaking into the backpockets of her jeans. Her gangly knees drew up and folded, and pale, nail-chewed fingers that were still shaking with tremors drew along the length of her thighs to tuck themselves into the crook of her knees. She let her face fall, chin impacting the patellas, then turned her face to the side to feel her kneecaps digging into her right cheekbone. This felt…..she felt…..well, not safe. Never safe.

”That’s mental, you know that?”

A slow, spiritless puff of breath breathed past her lips, in the facsimile of what might have been amusement. Her lids closed slowly over the world, then opened again. “….mental. Well. Never……got a strict medical opinion on it I s’pose.” Though I’d agree with you. Without reserve.

”…been through something that brought you to this point……and I’m insanely curious as to what that is.” Well. This fellow certainly didn’t soften the blows, did he. Insanely curious. Through the mindnumbing exhaustion, and the upchucking of all the contents of her stomach, the healing of the wound was beginning to take effect, and Rika could feel something almost like clarity knocking into the furthest recesses of her brain. She could……think. Through a thick fog that seemed to coat every inch of her head, true, but……something like the semblance of thought. Insanely curious. Not concerned, or sympathetic or pitying…….this fact seemed to bring curious relief to a part of her, for some reason. Just curious. It was such a clinical emotion too, if it could be called an emotion at all. Curiosity. She could……she could deal with that.

“Erika Dixon.” Something said, using her voice. She closed her eyes again, and felt the moonlight like a distant shadow on her lids. “You…..can call me Rika.”

Nothing sounds mad to a mad person. The words almost dribbled out of her lips, but he rambled on, and the part of her that was still registering thought and logical reason frowned, pulling up her eyebrows in consternation. What practical? What class, what project? But then a memory knocked on her head like it was just waiting to be unlocked, and the half-remembered words seeped into her ears- ’I’m a Psychology major at University now…….name’s Darren Isaacson….”  

She set her chin straight then, and with far more effort than it should have taken, lifted it to look at the ma- at Darren, and found her lips tilting upward, stretching tight and uncomfortable over a skin, as if a smile, even the ghostly imitation of one, didn’t quite fit over her face anymore. “You can’t help me.” She said, quiet, almost gentle. Stating a universal fact. It was……sweet really, even if it was born of curiosity, but he didn’t know. He didn’t know that some causes were futile.

“But…..that doesn’t mean I can’t help you. And I…..” A remnant shudder twisted under her skin, at the thought of someone else’s ….magic, working into her veins, but she froze tightly for a second, bringing it under control, then exhaled even tighter out, tongue stroking mindlessly into the fissures that had made their home into the skin of her lips. “..I…..appreciate what you did…for me here. Tonight.” She didn’t say- I’d have probably died of blood loss if it wasn’t for you. It wouldn’t have been right, to express gratitude for that. She wouldn’t have meant it.

”You seem to be in some kind of….pain…” He said, chewing the words out almost carefully, and Rika resisted the urge to bare her throat to the sky and let laughter gurgle within its walls, except she wouldn’t be doing herself any favours, and it really wouldn’t be laughter now, would it. She wasn’t in pain. She was built of it, carved delicately and surely of its essence like any sculpture, bare parts threaded together by it until she wasn’t aware of its presence anymore, hadn’t been for five..six years running, its presence an almost comfortable ache in her bones. But this person…..Darren….he…..he was a stranger. A stranger whom she had spoken more words to than she had to anyone alive in the past six months. A stranger who looked at her like she was a guinea pig under a microscope, but…..didn’t look past her, through her, like everyone else seemed to do. He looked like she was tangible.

So she didn’t let disbelief colour her tone, at pretty-sounding words like ‘figure out how to deal’ and ‘trust’. Just humouring words threaded through with exhaustion. “I guess….you know what they say about rock bottom. Maybe I’ll hit it one of these days and spring up like a bouncy ball.”  Even though every time she felt like she had, she discovered a new low. Even though she was in freefall in space, and it would never end.

“Al….right then. Fine.” A cough worked its way past the itch at the back of her pharynx, and bile crawled up the trachea again- Rika brought her knuckles up into her lips and bit clean through, tears stinging at the back of her eyes, breathing deeply to maintain the illusion of control. She smiled blearily up, words a bare croak. “Wh..what did you have in mind?”

Darren's eyes widened dramatically when she leaned over, and he took a step back as though he expected her to be sick on his shoes. What would it have mattered, though, really? He was a wizard, though he often forgot that, and he could deal with it if he had to. Still, his concern was genuinely for his shoes for a moment, until he realized that the girl in front of him was actually feeling ill. She spoke and he nearly flinched. It wasn't her tone, of course, so much as the acknowledgment that he had caused this without intending to.

"I-" he attempted, cut off when she warned him to act differently the next time. Physical touch, clearly, was not something that was allowed. He was immediately interested in knowing if that applies to strangers specifically, or to men, or just to people in general. Surely he hadn't done something to harm her in holding her wrist still?

"You don't need to feel obligated," he returned, surprising himself. She had said she appreciated his help, and wanted to do him a kindness in return. But she didn't really know what she was asking, did she? The whole point was that he was meant to mess with people. The project was based in whether or not he could solve the issues of another by putting them through more stressful situations. Whether or not anxiety about something else calmed the worry about the other things they usually fretted over. It wouldn't be easy. But usually, he wouldn't have told them so before starting the experiments.

He managed to stop himself before he explained. They were never supposed to do so. It didn't keep the experiments clean, or keep the statistics accurate. He shouldn't, and he knew that. So he kept his mouth shut and listened to her instead.

Erika. Somehow the name fit her, and it made Darren wonder if his fit him. But then the moonlight speckled across her face, and in those slivers of light he caught a sort of amusement he hadn't expected from her. He couldn't help her, if she was to be believed, but she was neither surprised nor disheartened by this, it seemed. Perhaps he read her wrong. Darren wasn't sure. But he could typically pick out expression. In particular, he had a massive love of trying to read the micro-expressions of others, even if they were quite hard to catch. He couldn't help himself when it was just so fascinating. So, really, he liked to think he had caught the proper expression cross her features.

She wanted to know what he needed, and Darren faltered. "I need to test reactions to stressful situations," he uttered blankly, unsure how to make it sound more appealing than it probably did. Or, realistically, didn't. "Preferably ones that you do not already find painful or irritable," he clarified, figuring that might settle her slightly. "If you have time after the end of the school year, I have a reserved lab at the university that would be the best place to go through with things. But you'll have to be open to filling out a sort of list of things I ought to avoid.

"That is, ...I mean, if you want me to try and help with the things that do bother you, I can try. But it isn't required," he added. In truth, Darren would be disappointed if she said no, but he wouldn't be surprised.

Focusing on words, individual syllables, the slither of the ‘s’ as it made its way out of his lips, the bite of the ‘t’ as his teeth came close together, distinguishing sounds into meanings, was the only way Rika could combat the lightheadedness right now; it felt like her limbs were leaden and sealed to the ground but gravity had ceased to operate on her head, like it would detach from her body any minute and go floating into the air like a particularly ugly Cheshire Cat. Assigning meaning to words, finding place from them in sentences, were an anchor in the midst of the cheek still pressed to her sweat-soaked knees, the drill boring holes into her forehead, the coppery tang of blood and forested mildew and human musk clogging her nostrils. A distant part of her noted that it was almost refreshing. To exert oneself so much, to not go floating about in a state intermediate to dream and reality. To feel detachment fade, to feel like she owned her skin, lumpy bag of bones though it was, even if it was because pain riddled every inch of it. She almost felt……here.

“Preferably ones that you do not already find painful or irritable.” He clarified, as if meaning to reassure her. The thought sent a flood of bitter-sweetness cascading through her mind. How cute. Her voice still rasped against the requisite organs, a bare thread of sound borne on the night air, but not the croak it had been minutes prior. “Not painful or……irritable,” A little exhale of air tinged with amusement, frail though it may be, honestly, irritable, what an understatement, “-would practically knock off all the items on the list. No point to doing all this if I don’t…..push myself a little.”

And ‘pushing herself a little’ had also led her to lying on the ground of the Forbidden Forest at ass o’clock at night, woozy, bled dry and running from Thestrals. You give a little, you take a little. Ha.

“But,” Her tongue started on a new sentence without any permission, and Rika blinked, because she thought she’d left behind opinions, preferences, behind a long time ago. “I don’t want…..” to be a lab rodent she wanted to say, but that would be a lie, so it had to be amended to, “-to feel like a lab rodent. No sterile white walls. I get the safe environment thing but……” Another fraying exhale. “No walls.”

Though walls would be conducive to the whole stressful situation thing- but no. She wasn’t that brave. Not yet. Probably not ever- though a halfway intelligent thought crossed Rika’s head that informed her it would be prudent to keep that little fact away from Darren. The fact that she was walking into this with zero expectations…..the fact that in the end she might not find the strength to walk into this at all. That every experiment would be a failure, that she’d crumple at the first sign of strain like a brittle sheet of metal that had been hammered too long. And….well. Who would want a guinea pig who couldn’t even run on the wheel?

But…..she’d agreed. And if she had agreed….what was a couple of steps more? “Stressful situations.” She tested the phrase on her tongue, tested the weight of the implications. “Suppose…..hypothetically. If I were to be terrified of heights. If I wanted to be exorcised of that fear……but unable to find a challenging, yet safe enough way to do it. But you could make that environment for me.” The words came stronger now, faster, the images taking shape with perfect clarity in her mind. “A really tall cliff maybe, somewhere. I’ve always found the sound of the sea waves crashing on jagged rocks to be petrifying. And you’d make a safety net, something to make sure I don’t dash my brains against the rocks at the bottom. But you’re a stranger, and I can’t trust you to keep my life safe. So the fear would be there.” She raised her chin, up, up, looking at the wreath of silver and shadow that made its home on his face. Maybe this was recklessness. She didn’t know. It had been so long since that particular bug had crawled its way beneath her skin. “But then I’d jump anyway.” A quieter exhale that made a play at amusement but fell somewhere in the realms of desperation. “And then fill up your little questionnaire on how close I was to passing out in fright if I survive it.”

Pale hazel eyes pinned another pair, sheer, transparent, almost glowing in the light. “You think that would count as a stressful situation?”

You wanted a close up look at insanity? You've got it.

Darren could have pried right then. He could have asked what she was so afraid of, or what would be so painful for her. Usually, he would have done it no matter who he was talking to. But she was agreeing! She was going along with what he wanted, and he wasn't about to just turn around and convince her not to do so. Working up into things, that he assumed could work. But pissing her off right then wasn't a good idea at all, and Darren knew that.

"No walls," he repeated, nodding. It was something of a lie, of course, because when she said she didn't want it, Darren knew he had to bring it in. He wouldn't be able to resist when the option became available, and it would be fascinating to see what she did with that.

When it came to a fear of heights, Darren couldn't say he was surprised or unfamiliar with it. Immediately, he had an idea, and although he wasn't convinced that she would actually want to go through with it, something told him she'd manage it. This girl was so determined to - what, feel something? - that she had come out in the middle of the night and cut herself, only to flee from or be rejected by the thing she thought would hunt her. All kinds of madness wandered these woods. Darren obviously knew as much, or he wouldn't have been out so late or alone or, really, out at all. He did have sense, a decent amount of it. But sometimes he let his curiosity and quiet drive for adventure get the better of him.

Nevertheless, he had to reign in what he actually wanted to say, which was What makes you so sure I'll have anything to catch you at all? and replace it.

"I can't promise a net. I wouldn't tell you what it was, down there." Obviously, Darren wasn't awful enough to let her jump with nothing at all to save her. But he did like the idea of seeing her reaction, which did not belong in that moment at all. "If that concerns you, then yes. That would definitely count."

Taking a moment to gauge her reaction, Darren gave something that was nearly a smile, but also wasn't. If he had read her right, he was quite possibly about to get into the most interesting and amusing experiments of his life. And, somehow, this girl had just fallen into his path - almost literally, considering - and was willing to put up with him long enough for him to either figure her out or (at the very least) complete his project. In a matter of weeks, he could complete university and move on. The only question was, how long would he be willing to take in helping this near-stranger, no matter how interesting she might seem upon first meeting her. Really, he should have handled it all more gracefully. But he had never been known for his tact.

"Does this mean you're in, then?"