I've hungered for your touch [closed]

[chiefdefense]

WHO: The artist currently known as Godot and ghost formerly known as Mia Fey.
WHEN: pre-mission
WHERE: Casa Coffee
WHAT: A long overdue reunion... and airings of things left unsaid for too long.
NOTES\WARNINGS: Angst, yearning and discussions of death, poisoning and ongoing chronic illness. Also coffee.



[There's a certain irony to being alone and waiting, Mia thinks early one evening as she sits - or imitates sitting - at a table in an apartment that isn't hers and Maya's. She's wanted to have the conversation she's about to have for so long that now it's about to happen she can't quite order the words she needs to say in her head. Her mind's a blank.

It's a good thing she doesn't have a stomach or she'd feel sick.

Looking around the empty living area, it strikes her how she should feel so at home somewhere she's never been. It's all so painfully familiar: the accumulated coffee paraphernalia, the taste in decor, even the way a pristine white cup has been left out beside a percolating coffee machine, set up to a timer and brewing even before the owner's had a chance to walk through the door.

She doesn't need to be able to smell to know that the space will smell of a combination of coffee, overpowering the subtler undertones of soap and aftershave she might find on the collar of a shirt if she went looking.

That would be weirdly intrusive. She might have technically gained entry to this place without permission but it's not like one can break and enter when being incorporeal means one can simply enter. She draws the line at rifling through his wardrobe.

So Mia sits at a table, listening to coffee drip into a pot, and waits for Godot.]

Comments

[beenwaitinglong]

[He can feel the presence even outside the door. Doesn't know what it is, exactly, but there is the sense of someone else being inside his apartment. But knowing there's no reason for anyone else to break into his apartment, nor to mean him any harm, he has a theory before he even opens the door.

The door opens. The aroma of #102 fills the hallway as he steps inside. All the lights are turned off, but he can see her sitting at the table as clear as day. Even though it's not as surprising as it might have been, he still pauses as the door closes behind him.

He's silent for a long moment as emotions boil over inside him.]

So you are here.

[He smiles. His tongue wets his lips quickly, and he lets out his usual soft scoffing chuckle.]

A regular sight for sore eyes.

[chiefdefense]

[She looks up at the sound of the door opening and takes an unneeded deep breath. It's funny how she automatically defaults to these actions she's been used to taking her whole life, ghostly though she may be right now.

It doesn't escape her notice how he pauses at the door, how he stands there with that visor casting his face in an eerie glow. With his face half covered she can't see how that smile reaches his eyes, if it does at all, and it puts her on her guard, just a little.]

I'm here.

[In a sense. In a way she hasn't been able to say to him since he woke up. She smiles back, but hers is open and tinged with a bittersweet sadness.]

Hello Diego.

[beenwaitinglong]

[He gives a practiced response to the name: none at all. With a soft sigh he steps across to the kitchen, to one of the multiple coffee machines he's scrounged up, the one that's already brewing. He grabs a mug and prepares it by putting hot water in it to heat it up.]

Would you like a cup?

[chiefdefense]

[She watches him carefully, watches how he doesn't react to her calling him by his name and follows him with her eyes as he walks to the coffee machine. This close she can see the weight that he's lost, the way his face has thinned somewhat. Imperceptible differences perhaps to someone who hadn't spent hours memorizing every detail of his face and body intimately and attentively, but obvious enough to her.

She's lost count of the number of times she's cursed Dahlia Hawthorne.

He offers her coffee, as she'd suspected he would do at some point, and shakes her head.]

No thanks, I'm afraid it'd go right through me.

[In more ways than one.]

How are you?

[beenwaitinglong]

[He thinks he knows what she means by that. But it's a notion so cruel he'd rather remain in denial about it for the time being.

He fills his cup from the pot and tries to think of an answer to that question that isn't immediately alarming.]

I'm alive. [He says after a moment, in a very neutral manner.]

At great expense and effort. A very near thing. Miraculously, they tell me. But I'm alive, apparently.

[chiefdefense]

You shouldn't take that for granted. It's a pretty great thing to be.

[Says the ghost at his table.

She rises from her supposed seat and moves towards him, wanting to be nearer in whatever way she can.]

I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you when you woke up, Diego.

[beenwaitinglong]

Ha...! At what cost?

[He looks away, shaking his head softly when she apologizes.]

You can't apologize for that. Circumstances being what they were, I don't want an apology for that.

[chiefdefense]

Trust me, the alternative isn't what it's cracked up to be.

[It's funny how people don't seem to want to hear your apologies once you're dead. It's like dying absolves a person of any and all wrong they might have done and Mia for one thinks it sucks.]

Those circumstances shouldn't have been what they were. I should have been more careful.

[beenwaitinglong]

I don't particularly want to tally up the pros and cons.

[He goes quiet. He takes a big bracing swig of his steaming hot coffee, not even flinching at the temperature or the bitterness. Then he turns around again. It's hard to tell with the visor, but he can't quite seem to look directly at her.]

That's my line. I should have been more careful.

If I had been there...

[chiefdefense]

Dying is the ultimate con, I can assure you.

[That's unkind and she balks, even as he turns around. He might not want to hear apologies from her but he's getting another one anyway.]

Sorry, that's pretty tactless of me. I kind of- it helps if I try not to take it too seriously.

[But she's not about to let him get all protective and macho on her, especially when he's about to go down a line of thinking that she herself had embarked upon on August 27th 2012. If I had been there..]

Thinking like that doesn't help, baby. It just makes you feel worse.

[The pet-name slips out automatically. She doesn't even realize she's said it.]

[beenwaitinglong]

[He shakes his head to dismiss the apology, yet again.]

You have the right.

[It's whatever people need to do to cope, isn't it? That's the same way it is for him.

He resists the urge to tell her that he could not possibly feel worse no matter what he thinks or does. Knowing Mia, it'll only be a matter of time before she realizes that for herself.]

I should have been there. You should have been there. "Should have" and "could have" are as useless as a day-old used filter. There's nothing but what happened, and what's left.

[chiefdefense]

Regrets seem to stick with you, even in the afterlife. The discarded grounds of the bitter brew that is life, I suppose.

[This is the part where she squares up. It's easier to say without him looking at her.]

My death shouldn't have made you bitter. You had to have known that's the last thing I'd ever want for you.

[beenwaitinglong]

[He nods with sage understanding at her metaphor. Truly, she speaks his language like nobody else ever has or ever will.

Beneath the visor his eyes close, and he lets out another soft exhale.]

How could it not?

[chiefdefense]

Because losing someone you love shouldn't mean losing yourself.

[She would know. It could have been easier to let herself waste away in the hospital with him on his bed and let Dahlia win, but she'd known he would never have forgiven her if she'd let herself be defeated. Even now she can't quite believe that he'd let himself be defeated, that he'd fall to the depths that he had and lost himself to grief and revenge in a snowy courtyard up a mountain.]

We can't cry until it's over, remember?

[beenwaitinglong]

Ha...!

[He's touched, hearing his own advice echoed back at him. Too bad it rings so hollowly.]

When I opened my eyes, it was already over in every sense but the physical. And even that has done its best to give up since.

[He turns away, setting his hand on the kitchen count for something to brace.]

There was nothing left to lose.

[chiefdefense]

It's not over as long you're breathing.

[Mia doesn't mean for her tone to sound quite so sharp, but she can't help it. Does he not realize how lucky he is to still be alive? To feel the sun on his face, to touch another person?]

Diego Armando is a hell of a man to lose, Mr. Prosecutor.

[beenwaitinglong]

Yes. He was.

[He walks back to the table and has a seat, doing his best to steel his tone and his expression-- what of it can be seen, anyway. It's moments like this when it's the most difficult to keep his composure. But he must. That's the only way it works.]

It was easiest to let him go. A mercy, in a sense.

[chiefdefense]

[Mia remains where she stands, watching him walk back to the table to take his seat.]

You know there's something deeply unsettling about hearing you talk about yourself that way, Diego.

[Unhinged, really.

And it worries her.

She drifts back to where he sits and positions herself opposite him.]

Talk to me.

[beenwaitinglong]

[This was the part he knew he'd never be able to adequately explain to her.]

I would rather not be him anymore. That's all there is to it.

[He knows that's going to be impossible to understand. Nobody's understood it so far. But then again, nobody has lived through the fathomless agony that he has. The bleak, unending misery of a life so ruined it's easier to start over and leave most of it behind.]

When your coffee goes bad, throw it out and get another. That's one of my rules.

[chiefdefense]

[It's worse than she thought.

Not being able to touch Maya had been painful enough; being unable to reach across and put her hand on Diego's or touch his cheek or wrap her arms around him to show him some physical comfort is like torture.]

But you're not coffee, and you can't be thrown out.

[It's debatable, his blood has to be about 80% coffee at this point, but the point still stands. He can throw the metaphors at her all he likes, she's not buying them.]

You're still you, no matter how many masks you put up or how many times you try to change your name, you're you.

[She refuses to believe that it's as simple as that, that the man she cares so deeply for could be nothing more than a mere memory when he's sitting there talking to her. She moves to be nearer, trying to do anything to bridge the awful distance between them that can't be closed.]

What can I do? I know there's not much but I want to be here for you, now that I can be.