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tampered2008-01-25 08:21 am
legislated.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2008-01-25 08:21 am
Log; Complete
When; January 25 [3 AM]
Rating; PG-13 [Minor Blood and MAJOR Crazysauce]
Characters; Nina Fortner [![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
legislated] & Johan Liebert [imputing]
Summary; After learning more about her borrowed powers, Nina asked Destruction to drop her off at Johan's, but it seems she overestimated her ability to stay calm. No coffee mugs were injured in the making of this log. ...Oh wait, yes they were.
Log;
Nina wasn't sure if this was the smartest idea...but she and Johan had been getting along well since his arrival. He hadn't done anything sketchy aside from that acorn incident, and that had been more...odd than sketchy. Sure, she wondered if it was true that he was really tutoring children like he said... Part of her hoped that was a lie, because she was terrified just what a man like Johan could fill young and innocent minds with.
Suicide 101? Really.
Taking a deep breath to steel her nerves, Nina reached out to knock the door, but on the second knock she found her hand phasing through it. With an alarmed gasp, the young woman stumbled and fell right through the door like it was nothing before she fell with a clatter onto her hands and knees. Oh God, she really couldn't get used to this... Especially when she couldn't control her powers.
Realizing that she was now sprawled in Johan's foyer, barefooted and in her pajamas, her cheeks flushed at how ridiculous she felt. What would Johan think? She couldn't take care of herself? It wasn't that at all. That was why she was coming here, after all... She didn't want to run to Tenma to fix this problem. Even if he was the person who was probably the most calming, Nina didn't want to risk putting him in danger.
But Johan... What if she put him in danger? No, she wouldn't. She could control this.
~*~
When he heard of what was happening to his sister, Johan felt something very similar to fear, but it was not that, of course. At the least, she agreed to come to him. He would prefer her coming than her going, despite of whatever she was capable of doing to him.
Still, seeing her phase through the door was quite surprising.
Johan, still completely dressed, put aside the mug of chocolate he had in hand. He walked towards his sister, completely unfazed by the sight of her sprawled on the floor in her pajamas. Kneeling in front of her, he offered a hand with a smile.
"You must be cold."
~*~
Looking up at his voice, Nina offered a sheepish smile before reaching out to take his hand. "Oh, I guess... I must still be in shock. I'd barely noticed." Carefully, she stood up with him before looking down to wriggle her toes. "I'm glad you were awake at this hour... But, ah, I hope you didn't stay up on my account!"
The blonde eyed his ensemble before blinking. "You aren't even ready for bed! Johan, when do you sleep?" Really, though, she was just teasing, hinted by her smile. Now that she was actually in a warm room, her body was starting to shiver, but she felt oddly comforted in his presence. Strange, that. This was someone she had been prepared to kill only a couple of years ago.
~*~
Johan helped her up once she took his hand. Another might think it strange how they were still exactly the same height, but Johan knew it was inevitable. How can the same person be different to each other?
He laughed a little at her teasing, walking back to the kitchen counter where he left the mug. While she might thought it strange for them to act so much like normal siblings, he would hardly acknowledge it. Even when she was pointing a gun at his head, she was still his twin. It did not matter what she did, it would not change who she was; who he was.
"I made you something warm," he brought the mug towards the living area, gesturing for her to take a seat with the other hand. "It would help you sleep," he said with a smile too honest for someone like him.
~*~
Nina took the mug from him with a grateful smile, but stopped herself mid sip. No... Johan wouldn't poison her with anything fatal. She was sure of that. But what if there was something that would make her sleep? Or something that would disorient her? She couldn't forget what kind of person Johan was... This was a curse after all. What if he had gotten someone's powers? With her out of the picture for a day, he could do what he wanted with them.
"...Um." She lowered the mug to stare at it for a bit before glancing up, looking sincerely apologetic and hopefully not as suspicious as she felt. "Actually, chocolate really gets me wired. It has ever since high school! Funny, though, because regular sugar doesn't affect me so much..." She was blatantly lying, but hopefully he wouldn't know that. He had no reason to suspect, right?
"What about you? You aren't going to bed?" Curiously, she held the mug back out towards him.
~*~
But of course, while everything was the same for him then as it was ten years ago, it was different for his sister. He never changed. He suspected that she did. Still, the fault was not hers, or theirs, it was the fault of the monster who created them.
Taking a seat across from her, he took the mug back from her with the subtle smile still gracing his lips. He had no reason to suspect, but he did not need that to tell that she was not telling him the whole truth. No matter, it was so trivial.
"Not yet," he pointedly took a sip of the chocolate before placing it down on the coffee table. "I can make you some tea."
~*~
Nina watched him take the sip, almost feeling ashamed of herself suddenly. He was drinking it... It wasn't laced with anything. When would Nina start trusting him? Could she start trusting him?
"I don't want to be a bother..." And then she winced at the sudden voice in her head. It sounded like...Johan's? But she was looking right at him, and his lips weren't moving! With a shudder, Nina dropped her head and covered her ears. It was so disconcerting... Were these his thoughts?
Something about a monster... Oh. Suddenly she was looking up at him, eyes full of unintentional pity. She wasn't sure what to say.
~*~
Johan looked up at her with caution. He still did not know what the matter was with her. A curse was most likely, but it was too early to tell just what the curse was. She only seemed disoriented for now, but there must be more than just hallucination. She did phase through the door, after all.
He met her eyes when she suddenly looked up, her eyes filled with something he did not understand, but he did not like it. A name came to his mind: Wolfe. He could remember a handful of people who looked at him with the same expression, but he did not let them die looking at him that way.
Standing up from the sofa, he walked to the kitchen to escape her eyes. "I have your room prepared," he said in monotone, colder than necessary. Then, trying to undo what he said, "you need something to help you sleep."
~*~
Nina bit her lip as he stood up, and she reached over to take the mug he had left on the coffee table. Maybe if she drank some, it would appease him. And so the young woman took a sip of the hot chocolate, and she was immediately pleased by the flavor and warmth. But even that couldn't calm her nerves.
There it was again. She twitched. "...Johan?" She was ignoring any mention of getting ready for bed at the moment, standing up to look at him. "Who's Wolfe?" Of course, if she'd had more time to ponder on it, Nina could have figured it out. She could have remembered on her own. But even now, the girl still had memories that she was not familiar with, or that she did not recognize even existed. One such memory was of General Helmut Wolfe, but she had been just a child then...
~*~
Johan stopped walking at the mention of the name. He wondered if she came here to ask him of the name, perhaps Doctor Tenma told her of the General. Still, he did notice that he was only thinking of him when she then brought up the name. Turning around, his expression was unreadable as he considered his reply.
Smiling, he asked in return, "you don't remember him?"
He reminded himself that he should be careful of his own thoughts, but controlling expressions of them was one thing and absolutely not thinking of them was another. "How did you hear of him?" There was still the off-chance of coincidence.
~*~
"I..." She hesitated. Would he be angry with her? "I'm not sure, but... I think I'm reading your mind. Just, randomly...I hear your voice in my head, and..." Her gaze drifted downward and her voice softened. "Remember him? Wolfe..."
...Oh. That's right, there had been four men that were grooming Johan. She had learned that the first time she had confronted one of them. General Wolfe. Why was he more important than the others... Why was he...
Suddenly, her hands trembled, and the mug in her hands cracked and shattered from the strength that surged through her. She hardly even seemed to notice the hot chocolate burning her skin or a stray shard cutting through, especially since it barely had a chance to turn pink before it was already healing. "The one who gave you your name. Johan."
~*~
Johan's expression did not change at her revelation. Reading thoughts was not really that unbelievable in comparison to her phasing through solid objects. What else was she capable of? Perhaps even more importantly, whose power was it originally?
He was surprised at her breaking the mug, but it did not show. How she had enough power to shatter a porcelain mug with her bare hands, and look, she was healing in a matter of seconds. He noticed the wound on her hand close up, the stray shard falling out of her hand and onto the floor. She was revealing more and more abilities by the moment. He was barely listening to her words.
"The name was chosen, not given."
~*~
Nina quickly shook her head, but she knew he was right in a sense. Even before Wolfe had distributed such a name to her brother, he had been killing people for...what? For their safety? That nice couple that had just wanted to help them?
"What about Anna? Who chose that name for me? Was it me? Was it you? Was it him?" She couldn't remember... The stress was beginning to show suddenly as her hands began to shimmer in a mixture of red and yellow light, and she gasped and clutched them to her chest. There was that heat again... Oh God! Her skin all over was beginning to glow, the radioactivity flaring up against her will.
Ollie had told her she needed to stay calm. Calm. B-but... "Mother! It was our mother's name! Why do I have it? No! I'm Nina. Nina!" And as she shouted her name, the broken pieces left over from the mug rose into the air and shot off in different directions. It was a small miracle that none of them hit Johan. "Call me Nina!"
~*~
Before, she only had a one gun and a trembling finger on the trigger. Now, Johan knew that she could kill him with whatever method pleased her at the moment. Even if she was hesitating, the chances of her succeeding was likely. Yet while he felt something akin to fear in the discovery of her abilities, he was not scared of this. Perhaps it was what he wanted.
Johan simply kept his eyes on her as she seemed to struggle with her own powers. Even from where he was standing, he could feel the heat emanating from her hands. He wondered if there was anything she could do next that would surprise him further.
"You said names didn't matter."
~*~
It made her flinch, and she froze up, her hand twisted up in the fabric of her pajama shirt. Of course, her hand was just seering right through it, but she hardly noticed. "Th-they don't... It's just... A name is just a name." Wasn't that right? It wasn't who she was. She wasn't Anna. She wasn't Nina. She was nameless and that was fine.
Oh, oh, but even trying to calm down with this realization wasn't helping. It wasn't stopping the heat from spreading up her arms and down her torso, making her cry out in shock and stumble back. "Oh!" She didn't know how to control it. She didn't know how to use it so that it didn't hurt. "Johan, I can't... I can't stop! He said... He said I should stay calm, but it's not helping! You have to stop it... I don't know how bad it could be!"
But she could hear those thoughts of his...that it didn't matter if he died. And it hurt her soul for him to think such a thing, but she knew she had to work around it, and so she screamed what she thought would make him act, even though she didn't know if it was true or not. "I could die! Doctor Tenma could die! Please shoot me!" Maybe she would heal. Maybe it would just knock her out and she would be fine, and there would be no explosion. Oh please please please...
~*~
Johan would never shoot her, no matter what she said or did.
He did ponder on how she said it would kill her, that perhaps he should shoot her to save her. But it seemed incredulous, even with her healing instantly. If they were to die then so be it. And while she seemed incredibly powerful right now, he doubted that Doctor Tenma would be hurt when he was so far away. Besides, he would never shoot his own sister for the sake of someone else.
Perhaps she was suggesting that she would take the entire City with her if she went, but she was still human, wasn't she? He was doubting everything he saw, or heard.
"No."
Instead, he continued walking to the kitchen counter without glancing back at her.
~*~
Nina couldn't blame his doubt. Even she really doubted the blast could be that powerful. But still, if she exploded...what would happen? How bad would it be? Would it really kill her? Even with her enhanced healing capabilities, how could she heal if she was blown apart? And what if she took Johan with her, or this whole floor?!
The very thoughts that raced through her mind were causing her to panic, and logically she knew that would make it worse. Could she call Ollie here? He said if she called out his name, he would show...but for some reason she was wary of letting him meet Johan. Someone with a true name like Destruction.... No no. It wouldn't do.
As he turned his back on her, Nina's eyes widened, and she dropped to her knees. All alone... Was she all alone in this? She had to fight it all by herself? With a choked sob, Nina shut her eyes and clutched at the coffee table, the wood sizzling beneath her grip. She tried to count backwards from ten. It was easy. It was easy because she didn't want to hurt anyone, and so she wouldn't.
~*~
If he had felt a twinge of pain at her sob, no one would know, not even Nina. After all, feelings were not in the form of words.
Johan took two pieces of cloth from the kitchen cabinet, then walked back to her without any wariness. He knew, of course, that she could lash out again with the slightest provocation, and that perhaps this time it would actually harm him. Perhaps even kill him or the both of them. But he also knew, with a certainty, that it would not matter. It was just like when she actually shot him, at the Lieberts'
He placed one cloth beside her on the sofa. Then, kneeling, he dilligently mopped up the shards from the table and the floor.
~*~
The sound of glass clinking as Johan cleaned up the mess alerted her to his presense, and Nina slowly opened her eyes to look. Cleaning up... He was cleaning up the mess she had made as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. It was...absolutely absurd, and yet she couldn't tear her eyes away.
It was with this oddly domestic act on his part that she actually began to calm. He was acting normal because there was nothing abnormal going on. Her skin didn't feel like it was on fire. She couldn't read minds. She couldn't phase through doors. What else...'couldn't' she do?
Finally, Nina's breaths slowed, and she slumped against the coffee table, cheek resting against her charred sleeve. Aside from virtually wrecked pajamas, she once more looked normal. She was feeling light-headed, though, and the soft buzzing in her mind was a warning that she knew all too well. She was about to pass out. This was a good thing, wasn't it? It meant Johan would be safe, and that Tenma would be safe, and... Tybalt. She wondered if he was safe.
At the very least, she was already down, so the only sign of her losing consciousness was her eyes slipping shut and her fists unclenching.
~*~
At her slumping against the coffee table, Johan looked up. She finally seemed tired as she should be. He finished his cleaning up before walking away to throw the shards away and placing the cloth in the sink. When he returned, her eyes were already closed and she was breathing deeply, asleep. After what had just happened, there were a million things he could have thought of, but the only thing he noticed was how he had no pajamas to spare in this apartment. Of course, it was absolutely nothing to worry about.
When Nina woke up tomorrow, she would be in a bed with perfectly new pajamas. There would be no trace of what had happened, only the memory, if that was anything to rely on.
Rating; PG-13 [Minor Blood and MAJOR Crazysauce]
Characters; Nina Fortner [
legislated] & Johan Liebert [imputing]Summary; After learning more about her borrowed powers, Nina asked Destruction to drop her off at Johan's, but it seems she overestimated her ability to stay calm. No coffee mugs were injured in the making of this log. ...Oh wait, yes they were.
Log;
Nina wasn't sure if this was the smartest idea...but she and Johan had been getting along well since his arrival. He hadn't done anything sketchy aside from that acorn incident, and that had been more...odd than sketchy. Sure, she wondered if it was true that he was really tutoring children like he said... Part of her hoped that was a lie, because she was terrified just what a man like Johan could fill young and innocent minds with.
Suicide 101? Really.
Taking a deep breath to steel her nerves, Nina reached out to knock the door, but on the second knock she found her hand phasing through it. With an alarmed gasp, the young woman stumbled and fell right through the door like it was nothing before she fell with a clatter onto her hands and knees. Oh God, she really couldn't get used to this... Especially when she couldn't control her powers.
Realizing that she was now sprawled in Johan's foyer, barefooted and in her pajamas, her cheeks flushed at how ridiculous she felt. What would Johan think? She couldn't take care of herself? It wasn't that at all. That was why she was coming here, after all... She didn't want to run to Tenma to fix this problem. Even if he was the person who was probably the most calming, Nina didn't want to risk putting him in danger.
But Johan... What if she put him in danger? No, she wouldn't. She could control this.
When he heard of what was happening to his sister, Johan felt something very similar to fear, but it was not that, of course. At the least, she agreed to come to him. He would prefer her coming than her going, despite of whatever she was capable of doing to him.
Still, seeing her phase through the door was quite surprising.
Johan, still completely dressed, put aside the mug of chocolate he had in hand. He walked towards his sister, completely unfazed by the sight of her sprawled on the floor in her pajamas. Kneeling in front of her, he offered a hand with a smile.
"You must be cold."
Looking up at his voice, Nina offered a sheepish smile before reaching out to take his hand. "Oh, I guess... I must still be in shock. I'd barely noticed." Carefully, she stood up with him before looking down to wriggle her toes. "I'm glad you were awake at this hour... But, ah, I hope you didn't stay up on my account!"
The blonde eyed his ensemble before blinking. "You aren't even ready for bed! Johan, when do you sleep?" Really, though, she was just teasing, hinted by her smile. Now that she was actually in a warm room, her body was starting to shiver, but she felt oddly comforted in his presence. Strange, that. This was someone she had been prepared to kill only a couple of years ago.
Johan helped her up once she took his hand. Another might think it strange how they were still exactly the same height, but Johan knew it was inevitable. How can the same person be different to each other?
He laughed a little at her teasing, walking back to the kitchen counter where he left the mug. While she might thought it strange for them to act so much like normal siblings, he would hardly acknowledge it. Even when she was pointing a gun at his head, she was still his twin. It did not matter what she did, it would not change who she was; who he was.
"I made you something warm," he brought the mug towards the living area, gesturing for her to take a seat with the other hand. "It would help you sleep," he said with a smile too honest for someone like him.
Nina took the mug from him with a grateful smile, but stopped herself mid sip. No... Johan wouldn't poison her with anything fatal. She was sure of that. But what if there was something that would make her sleep? Or something that would disorient her? She couldn't forget what kind of person Johan was... This was a curse after all. What if he had gotten someone's powers? With her out of the picture for a day, he could do what he wanted with them.
"...Um." She lowered the mug to stare at it for a bit before glancing up, looking sincerely apologetic and hopefully not as suspicious as she felt. "Actually, chocolate really gets me wired. It has ever since high school! Funny, though, because regular sugar doesn't affect me so much..." She was blatantly lying, but hopefully he wouldn't know that. He had no reason to suspect, right?
"What about you? You aren't going to bed?" Curiously, she held the mug back out towards him.
But of course, while everything was the same for him then as it was ten years ago, it was different for his sister. He never changed. He suspected that she did. Still, the fault was not hers, or theirs, it was the fault of the monster who created them.
Taking a seat across from her, he took the mug back from her with the subtle smile still gracing his lips. He had no reason to suspect, but he did not need that to tell that she was not telling him the whole truth. No matter, it was so trivial.
"Not yet," he pointedly took a sip of the chocolate before placing it down on the coffee table. "I can make you some tea."
Nina watched him take the sip, almost feeling ashamed of herself suddenly. He was drinking it... It wasn't laced with anything. When would Nina start trusting him? Could she start trusting him?
"I don't want to be a bother..." And then she winced at the sudden voice in her head. It sounded like...Johan's? But she was looking right at him, and his lips weren't moving! With a shudder, Nina dropped her head and covered her ears. It was so disconcerting... Were these his thoughts?
Something about a monster... Oh. Suddenly she was looking up at him, eyes full of unintentional pity. She wasn't sure what to say.
Johan looked up at her with caution. He still did not know what the matter was with her. A curse was most likely, but it was too early to tell just what the curse was. She only seemed disoriented for now, but there must be more than just hallucination. She did phase through the door, after all.
He met her eyes when she suddenly looked up, her eyes filled with something he did not understand, but he did not like it. A name came to his mind: Wolfe. He could remember a handful of people who looked at him with the same expression, but he did not let them die looking at him that way.
Standing up from the sofa, he walked to the kitchen to escape her eyes. "I have your room prepared," he said in monotone, colder than necessary. Then, trying to undo what he said, "you need something to help you sleep."
Nina bit her lip as he stood up, and she reached over to take the mug he had left on the coffee table. Maybe if she drank some, it would appease him. And so the young woman took a sip of the hot chocolate, and she was immediately pleased by the flavor and warmth. But even that couldn't calm her nerves.
There it was again. She twitched. "...Johan?" She was ignoring any mention of getting ready for bed at the moment, standing up to look at him. "Who's Wolfe?" Of course, if she'd had more time to ponder on it, Nina could have figured it out. She could have remembered on her own. But even now, the girl still had memories that she was not familiar with, or that she did not recognize even existed. One such memory was of General Helmut Wolfe, but she had been just a child then...
Johan stopped walking at the mention of the name. He wondered if she came here to ask him of the name, perhaps Doctor Tenma told her of the General. Still, he did notice that he was only thinking of him when she then brought up the name. Turning around, his expression was unreadable as he considered his reply.
Smiling, he asked in return, "you don't remember him?"
He reminded himself that he should be careful of his own thoughts, but controlling expressions of them was one thing and absolutely not thinking of them was another. "How did you hear of him?" There was still the off-chance of coincidence.
"I..." She hesitated. Would he be angry with her? "I'm not sure, but... I think I'm reading your mind. Just, randomly...I hear your voice in my head, and..." Her gaze drifted downward and her voice softened. "Remember him? Wolfe..."
...Oh. That's right, there had been four men that were grooming Johan. She had learned that the first time she had confronted one of them. General Wolfe. Why was he more important than the others... Why was he...
Suddenly, her hands trembled, and the mug in her hands cracked and shattered from the strength that surged through her. She hardly even seemed to notice the hot chocolate burning her skin or a stray shard cutting through, especially since it barely had a chance to turn pink before it was already healing. "The one who gave you your name. Johan."
Johan's expression did not change at her revelation. Reading thoughts was not really that unbelievable in comparison to her phasing through solid objects. What else was she capable of? Perhaps even more importantly, whose power was it originally?
He was surprised at her breaking the mug, but it did not show. How she had enough power to shatter a porcelain mug with her bare hands, and look, she was healing in a matter of seconds. He noticed the wound on her hand close up, the stray shard falling out of her hand and onto the floor. She was revealing more and more abilities by the moment. He was barely listening to her words.
"The name was chosen, not given."
Nina quickly shook her head, but she knew he was right in a sense. Even before Wolfe had distributed such a name to her brother, he had been killing people for...what? For their safety? That nice couple that had just wanted to help them?
"What about Anna? Who chose that name for me? Was it me? Was it you? Was it him?" She couldn't remember... The stress was beginning to show suddenly as her hands began to shimmer in a mixture of red and yellow light, and she gasped and clutched them to her chest. There was that heat again... Oh God! Her skin all over was beginning to glow, the radioactivity flaring up against her will.
Ollie had told her she needed to stay calm. Calm. B-but... "Mother! It was our mother's name! Why do I have it? No! I'm Nina. Nina!" And as she shouted her name, the broken pieces left over from the mug rose into the air and shot off in different directions. It was a small miracle that none of them hit Johan. "Call me Nina!"
Before, she only had a one gun and a trembling finger on the trigger. Now, Johan knew that she could kill him with whatever method pleased her at the moment. Even if she was hesitating, the chances of her succeeding was likely. Yet while he felt something akin to fear in the discovery of her abilities, he was not scared of this. Perhaps it was what he wanted.
Johan simply kept his eyes on her as she seemed to struggle with her own powers. Even from where he was standing, he could feel the heat emanating from her hands. He wondered if there was anything she could do next that would surprise him further.
"You said names didn't matter."
It made her flinch, and she froze up, her hand twisted up in the fabric of her pajama shirt. Of course, her hand was just seering right through it, but she hardly noticed. "Th-they don't... It's just... A name is just a name." Wasn't that right? It wasn't who she was. She wasn't Anna. She wasn't Nina. She was nameless and that was fine.
Oh, oh, but even trying to calm down with this realization wasn't helping. It wasn't stopping the heat from spreading up her arms and down her torso, making her cry out in shock and stumble back. "Oh!" She didn't know how to control it. She didn't know how to use it so that it didn't hurt. "Johan, I can't... I can't stop! He said... He said I should stay calm, but it's not helping! You have to stop it... I don't know how bad it could be!"
But she could hear those thoughts of his...that it didn't matter if he died. And it hurt her soul for him to think such a thing, but she knew she had to work around it, and so she screamed what she thought would make him act, even though she didn't know if it was true or not. "I could die! Doctor Tenma could die! Please shoot me!" Maybe she would heal. Maybe it would just knock her out and she would be fine, and there would be no explosion. Oh please please please...
Johan would never shoot her, no matter what she said or did.
He did ponder on how she said it would kill her, that perhaps he should shoot her to save her. But it seemed incredulous, even with her healing instantly. If they were to die then so be it. And while she seemed incredibly powerful right now, he doubted that Doctor Tenma would be hurt when he was so far away. Besides, he would never shoot his own sister for the sake of someone else.
Perhaps she was suggesting that she would take the entire City with her if she went, but she was still human, wasn't she? He was doubting everything he saw, or heard.
"No."
Instead, he continued walking to the kitchen counter without glancing back at her.
Nina couldn't blame his doubt. Even she really doubted the blast could be that powerful. But still, if she exploded...what would happen? How bad would it be? Would it really kill her? Even with her enhanced healing capabilities, how could she heal if she was blown apart? And what if she took Johan with her, or this whole floor?!
The very thoughts that raced through her mind were causing her to panic, and logically she knew that would make it worse. Could she call Ollie here? He said if she called out his name, he would show...but for some reason she was wary of letting him meet Johan. Someone with a true name like Destruction.... No no. It wouldn't do.
As he turned his back on her, Nina's eyes widened, and she dropped to her knees. All alone... Was she all alone in this? She had to fight it all by herself? With a choked sob, Nina shut her eyes and clutched at the coffee table, the wood sizzling beneath her grip. She tried to count backwards from ten. It was easy. It was easy because she didn't want to hurt anyone, and so she wouldn't.
If he had felt a twinge of pain at her sob, no one would know, not even Nina. After all, feelings were not in the form of words.
Johan took two pieces of cloth from the kitchen cabinet, then walked back to her without any wariness. He knew, of course, that she could lash out again with the slightest provocation, and that perhaps this time it would actually harm him. Perhaps even kill him or the both of them. But he also knew, with a certainty, that it would not matter. It was just like when she actually shot him, at the Lieberts'
He placed one cloth beside her on the sofa. Then, kneeling, he dilligently mopped up the shards from the table and the floor.
The sound of glass clinking as Johan cleaned up the mess alerted her to his presense, and Nina slowly opened her eyes to look. Cleaning up... He was cleaning up the mess she had made as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. It was...absolutely absurd, and yet she couldn't tear her eyes away.
It was with this oddly domestic act on his part that she actually began to calm. He was acting normal because there was nothing abnormal going on. Her skin didn't feel like it was on fire. She couldn't read minds. She couldn't phase through doors. What else...'couldn't' she do?
Finally, Nina's breaths slowed, and she slumped against the coffee table, cheek resting against her charred sleeve. Aside from virtually wrecked pajamas, she once more looked normal. She was feeling light-headed, though, and the soft buzzing in her mind was a warning that she knew all too well. She was about to pass out. This was a good thing, wasn't it? It meant Johan would be safe, and that Tenma would be safe, and... Tybalt. She wondered if he was safe.
At the very least, she was already down, so the only sign of her losing consciousness was her eyes slipping shut and her fists unclenching.
At her slumping against the coffee table, Johan looked up. She finally seemed tired as she should be. He finished his cleaning up before walking away to throw the shards away and placing the cloth in the sink. When he returned, her eyes were already closed and she was breathing deeply, asleep. After what had just happened, there were a million things he could have thought of, but the only thing he noticed was how he had no pajamas to spare in this apartment. Of course, it was absolutely nothing to worry about.
When Nina woke up tomorrow, she would be in a bed with perfectly new pajamas. There would be no trace of what had happened, only the memory, if that was anything to rely on.