Letting Go (CLOSED/INVITE)

[Kevala Katashi]

OOC: Okay so originally this was gonna be open, but I decided, based on how the post went, that this is gonna be a closed thread. I mean, it is open to anyone who could have a very, very good reason to be in the place she is at, but that list is VERY limited. So yeah, I am pretty much betting this will be a single thread for my own personal character development.

It was late. So late actually, that one could consider it early. But for Kevala, it was just another part of the endless night that seemed to drag on forever and ever. She hated the dark and yet no matter how much she tried to run from it, it was the one place she constantly found herself in. The one place where she could be alone with her thoughts, alone with her inner demons which plagued her day in and day out. Every night it was the same thing. Lay in bed, tossing and turning. Get up, wander about the empty, seemingly desolate house. Get dressed, go for a run. Wander about the city for hours on end and then wind up sitting down somewhere to finish out the night, lost in her own thoughts.

Tonight was no different. She had laid in bed, tossed and turned, gotten up, gotten dressed and went for her usual run. Only this time, she had not wandered to some random park or some area near home to wait out the rest of the evening, but instead landed herself in the one place that she knew nobody could find her. Well, nobody save for those who knew her better than she knew herself, to which that number was growing increasingly smaller as the days went on.

No, tonight, she was seated within an old abandoned theater. A strange place one could say, but a place that she had found when she first moved to New York, and a place where she found she could be alone, lose herself in her thoughts, and not worry about some stranger walking up on her and interrupting what was undoubtedly a bad image of the past. It was a place she had been frequenting more and more often as of late, her mind having become heavy with thoughts of what was happening in her life, and of things that had happened in her past.

Tonight's topic? The very same one that so many of her nights, and days for that matter, over the past nineteen years had been about.

Gabriel Seran

Just the whisper of his name from the demon within her mind brought a groan to her lips, her head falling back into the old, dusty theater seat which she currently resided in. Eyes cast upward to the old, dilapidated ceiling which was so old and worn out that there were holes through which she could see the smog filled night sky outside.

Around her, the smell of dust and decay filled the air. The seats, those which still remained upright and bolted into position, covered in layers of dust from the years which they had remained here, forgotten by the world outside. All save for one, the one she current sat in. The one she always sat in.

In front of her, was a large stage. The curtain torn and riddled with holes from years of neglect, part of it fallen and the remaining bit barely managing to remain hung in a somewhat neat fashion. Boards and old theater posters littered the stage, as well as various trash and other such things left behind by vandals who had broken in over the years. Few knew it, but the place had recently been sold to one Mrs. Kevala Badoer. Though she had no intention of fixing it up.

No, she had simply wished to purchase it to install security to ensure that it was left alone, not destroyed any further than it already was. Also, she wanted it to remain a safe haven for her, since she had so few that she genuinely felt safe and comfortable within.

The entire theater was dark, save for a dull yellow glow which came from the sound booth up in the rafters, just enough light to keep her from having a panic attack, but not so much that it stole the comfort of darkness away from her. The contradiction not lost on her, though she had no room in her mind to dwell on it right now.

No, right now was about him and about the one thing she had been trying to do for the past nineteen years, ever since that very first day she laid eyes upon him as she sat there in the hallway, reading her book...looking up at that handsome, devilishly charming boy that came up beside her to get a drink from the water fountain she was perched beside.

She was trying, with every fiber of her being....to let him go.

The very thought causing her stomach to knot and her heart to struggle through its next series of beats, though her mind, for the first time in...well..forever...held strong to the idea. Her lower lip bitten roughly as she closed her eyes and let herself fade back into the past, back to another time and place.

Because, in her mind, she supposed that she could not let go of the past, if she did not revisit it at least one last time. Perhaps if she let go of one memory at a time, she could finally be free.....

It was worth a shot.

[Kevala Katashi]

Dressed in black, trying her best to disappear from the world around her, to fade into a life of non existence, Kevala leaned against the wall, her backpack by her side, and a book of photography laid upon her lap. Dark locks spilled down around her shoulders as she scanned the pages, enjoying the silence of the hallway. It was her off period, and though she could have been outside, she had chosen, for some reason, to stay inside, taking up a seat near the water fountain, of all places.

Small fingers would grasp the page, flipping it to the next one as her icy hues scanned over the page. Her mind a million miles away however as she thought about her new, strange, and somewhat troublesome relationship with that boy she had met on her first day here at Public High School 259. Knees drawn up just a bit, to avoid being stepped on by any random student that should happen her way, though no real attention being paid to anything around her.

Too easily she lost herself in thought, forgetting the world around her. So easily distracted that it was amazing she hadn't been killed by now....not that people had not tried, but still.

Letting out a soft little sigh, she would again move to turn the page, only to be caught off guard by the sound of a voice coming from somewhere to her right. That accent hard to mistake, though the voice itself was one she had never heard before.

Hesitantly, those pale, almost white eyes would lift upward to look toward the source of this voice. Yet what she saw, well it was nothing like what she had been expecting. To be honest, she wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but nothing, at least not anything in her wildest imagination...(something she sorta was lacking in) could have come close to him.

Those eyes.

That was the first thing she noticed. The first thing that caused her heart to skip a beat and her breath to try and lodge within her throat. She honestly could not place a time when she had seen a boy with more gorgeous eyes. Almost finding herself speechless as he spoke, especially once she caught sight of that grin. If it had been physically possible to melt, she would have right then and there. Yet somehow, she managed to recover from her momentary lapse in....well...in everything. Her own smirk curling upon her lips, her own words flowing forth as easily as they would to any other person...though unable to hide that tiny tinge of blush which formed on her olive complected cheeks.

Icy hues would flutter open, once more finding herself staring up at the ceiling as she felt her heart racing within her chest. Her breath a bit more heavy and her lower lip no being bitten so hard that the familiar copper tinge of her blood could be felt upon her tongue. Though it was soon released as a slow smile formed upon her face.

"You have the most amazing and heart-stoppingly beautiful eyes I have ever seen or ever will see in my life......" Southern accent rolling smoothly off her tongue as she spoke out in a soft tone, with nothing but the vacant theater and its rodent inhabitants to hear her, which was good...because she wasn't sure she could ever say that to his face...at least not in a genuine tone like she spoke in now.

Sure, she had spoken to him in a heartfelt manner before, but never on this level. She never spoke to anyone on the level which she spoke to herself when she was alone and lost deep in thought. She never let anyone know, that somewhere deep down inside of herself, she actually did have feelings, and she actually did grasp what they meant. If she did, well that would just mean she was capable of being hurt, and she knew far too well how deep Gabriel, above all others, could wound her.

So no, she would never say those words to his face in the manner which she said them now. Yet she said them, here and now, because she had to finally issue them if she ever wished to let him go. If she couldn't let go of the one thought that had crossed her mind the very first time she laid eyes on him, the one thing she had not said when it was the only thing she had wanted to say, then she would never be able to fully push her feelings for the man from her heart.

She would forever be trapped in those eyes...

[Kevala Katashi]

Deep within, hidden behind layers and layers of thick, concrete walls and years of neglect, abuse and pain...something stirred. It wasn't much, but it was an emotion just the same. She knew it, and as she often did in these moments of complete solitude, she allowed it to break free from its confines to work its way slowly through her heart.

For so many years, she had worked to seal it away, had worked to build herself around the ideal that she, Kevala Marie Katashi was incapable of any real, genuine emotion. It was the essence of who she was, the woman who could not feel beyond what logic allowed her to feel. The woman who had a very skewed concept of what love, guilt and longing really was. The woman who could blink and rid herself of any emotional tie within an instant. That was who she was, that was what the world knew her as, and that was what made her feel safe in a world that had so long ago cast her aside without so much as a second glance.

But it was not the complete picture of who she was, and as the feeling began to work its way through her heart, memories of her childhood came rushing back....Well, what few memories she still held onto. Images of herself as a little girl, starving for both food and for the attention of a Mother who never really wanted her. The people that came to the door, whisking her away, promising her a better life. Nameless faces, one Mommy and Daddy after another, each of them promising to be a loving parent, and each of them turning their backs on her the instant they discovered she was not a normal little girl.

With each passing face, with each broken promise of unconditional love, those emotions that kept her tethered to humanity began to fade. One by one, they started to disappear behind the walls that were built with the lies and betrayals of all those faces. Of all those families. And with each emotion that became buried, her concept and understanding of the word "family" became less and less until finally it was held in place by one single, solitary thing.

Hope...

Her demon hissed the word forth as she drew in a shaky breath, unable to properly handle the wave of emotions she allowed to spring forth through her heart and mind. Her little hands shaking softly as they gripped the arms of the rickety old seat she currently sat within. She hated that word. Despised it with every fiber of her being.

All too well she remembered that last, lingering bit of hope her heart had held. A child's foolish hope that someday, somebody....anybody would love her. That one day, what she was, would be enough for somebody, and they would love her and cherish her as their own, would give to her the one thing that she craved more than life itself.

A home...

A soft whimper released into the silence of the theater as she felt her eyes burning with tears behind closed lids. Thinking back to the day that the last bit of hope she had was shattered, to the night that she earned her first in a long series of scars which would forever be a reminder of the horrible existence she suffered, known as life. The night that the very people who had promised to love and protect her, turned on her with knives in an attempt to murder her for a family she knew nothing about. She had been only seven at the time, and had not known anything about the Katashi family or why they wanted her dead. She had just known that she had a home, and that once again it was stolen from her. Ripped away just like all the times before.

It was then, when she woke up in that hospital room, surrounded by doctors...her back in pain from the wounds sustained, that whatever hope she had.....died. That last emotion, love...disappearing behind the walls with the rest of those God forsaken things called emotions, and the emotionless, shell of a girl came into existence....Vowing never, ever to allow herself to feel again. To never allow anyone to stir those emotions forth. To never allow herself to open up to hoping for anything, on that level, ever, ever again.

It was late, and she was making her way down one of the rather deserted back streets of Long Beach, trying to clear her head, and working her way slowly back toward the house that she was staying at. At the time, she had no clue it belonged to her brother, in fact, as far as she knew, he was her boyfriend and nothing more.

Katsuri Katashi.

The name causing a strange flux of thoughts within her mind, yet that same numbness persisted. Oh sure, she had things that mimicked actual emotion that she showed to the world, things which she could easily turn off at a moment's notice if she really wanted to...But did she genuinely love him? No, she didn't. Not that she would ever actually admit to such.

Oh no. She knew first hand just how much a person would go through to obtain that mythical emotion called love, and if it would prove to benefit her to fake feeling such for somebody, then so be it. Yet as her mind continued through the thoughts of her false emotions, it suddenly became clear she was no longer alone on that street.

Icy hues would look up to a voice as it came from the darkness, one which she had heard only one other time, but one that she could not, for the life of her, get out of her head. Sure enough, as she stepped toward the light, a figure would emerge and yet again she would find herself looking into those eyes which quite easily could stop her heart on a dime.

Instantly her pulse quickened and her mind became washed of any thoughts that did not concern him. Gabriel, the one boy that she just could not stop thinking about, and the one that she wanted to put the most distance between. Still, even though she told herself a million times since their first meeting to stay away, that he had danger written all over him, she found that when faced with the moment, when confronted with that grin and looking into those eyes....well...there was no running. There was only here and now.

He offered to walk her home, discussing with her the relationship she found herself in, and though she carried on the conversation well enough, she could not help but get lost in the way he looked, the way he spoke and the strong scent of him that now enveloped her as he slid his jacket around her shoulders to shield her from the cool night air. But more than that, she was lost in the conviction of his words, the pure determination and stubborn will that followed his every sentence. She lost herself, in that moment, to how strongly he believed that he could truly make a difference in this world.

Her....the girl who had so long ago given up on hope, was suddenly enthralled with the boy who looked at the world with nothing but. Perhaps it was not hope that he would view it as, perhaps it was....but whatever the case, it was easy to tell what he longed for...To be the one who brought about change, who created a better existence for those around him and would do whatever it took to be that person. Even portray the bad guy if that was what the people around him needed in the moment to bring about change.

Then, it happened, just as they neared the entrance to the mansion gates. That sudden and unexpected fluttering of something deep within her.

At first she had been uncertain of what it was. At first, she had though perhaps she had imagined it. After all, it had been years and years since she had even gone near that part of herself which housed those long forgotten remnants of emotions. Yet, as they stood there, her icy hues looking up into his stunning emerald greens, it happened...that dormant part of her she had worked so hard to lock away stirred to life. For the first time since she was a child, since the night her "family" had tried to kill her....She felt something.

She genuinely, without a shadow of a doubt, beyond all reason and understanding, FELT something for the boy before her...and it took every shred of will power she possessed not to....

*Gasp*

Her nails digging into the old wooden armrests of the seat as her eyes flew open. Unaware until this moment, as she sat there staring up at the ceiling, that she had been crying, the heat of her tears as they streaked down the sides of her face an unmistakable sensation, even for her. All of a sudden she was consumed with that pure, raw emotion she had worked so hard to hide away, to mask with fake ones all these years.

Oh how she had worked and played and molded herself into the perfect little vixen. Always with the clever remarks and the quick little comebacks, always with the tried but true methods of making whatever shows of affection she gave come across as less then real. He had always known that she loved him, but even she had fooled herself into believing that it was nothing real. That it was nothing she could not do without and that it was by choice alone that she stayed by his side.

But now, sitting alone in this theater, with the memories of her past washing over her, surrounding her...consuming her...she had no choice but to admit, that in all her years of being on this earth...Gabriel Seran was the one and only person on this planet she felt any sense of genuine, real emotion for.

Which was all the more reason to let him go....All the more reason to finally kill off that part of herself once and for all....

[Kevala Katashi]

A strong hand clasped her about the back of her neck, her head slammed into the glass window...managing to cut her temple as she was forced to look out over the now vacant courtyard below.

She was on the second story of the school, having come here to grab a few things from the classroom where she held the meetings for her photography club. The very club that the boy currently holding her had given her to run. The sound of his growled, dark tone sending a chill down her spine as icy hues looked out over that darkened ground, her hands held so that she could not fight back and a sliver of concern seeming to dance across her features.

Of course, the natural response for explaining away her concern was to go to the fact that she was pregnant with twins. Five months along to be exact. But in reality, her concern had absolutely nothing to do with her pregnancy or the children within her. No, her concern had to do with one fact, and one fact only....If Katsuri ever found out about this, he would try and kill Gabriel...and to be honest, she wasn't entirely sure that she could handle seeing such a thing take place.

Did she think Gabe would lose? Pft...No. But that didn't mean she wanted to see him put through a fight with that rather large behemoth when the reasoning behind such was her and her alone. Still, she would listen to what he had to say, letting him threaten her, letting him make his demands, and nodding along slowly, agreeing without even really questioning any of it.

He had let her go that night...only to show up in her club meeting the next day. A dark cloud hanging around him which was evident to her from a mile away. So, she had waited until he took his seat, and had made her way toward him.

Perhaps it was not the smartest thing to do, considering the events which had transpired between them just a couple nights before. But if there was one thing that she was certain of, it was that she needed to say what she had been wanting to say since he threatened to throw her out that window.

So, coming to a stop in front of him, she would lean down toward him...her tone coming forth as nothing more than a mere whisper, as she kept her icy hues deliberately locked upon his own. Possibly the hardest thing she had done up until this point, but something she did none the less.

"You know, all you had to do was ask. I would have followed you anywhere."

A simple enough statement, but one which held so much weight behind it. One which she had meant, with every piece of her heart, at the time...

...one she still meant to this day.

Those eyes of her's once again fluttering open, the heat of her tears still present as they cascaded down the sides of her face. Yet this time, the look in her eyes was a mixture of both that raw, pure emotion she felt for him and determination. The very same determination she had in her eyes the day she had spoken those words to him, and the same look she had the day she swore to him that she would die for him.

Leaning forward in her seat, she would reach down to grab up the backpack she carried in with her. The one which held not only her bottle of water and her wallet, but also that box that housed her knife set he had given her, and a notepad and pen.

It was the latter two which she retrieved though, pulling the notepad into her lap and settling back into the seat, fingers wrapping about the pen as she stared at the blank lines before her and then closed her eyes. She wasn't entirely sure what she was about to write, but she knew, that it would possibly be the most significant thing she ever wrote in her life.

Perhaps, in the end, it would mean nothing to him, but to her, it was important that she do this, and so, with a deep breath, she would open her eyes and begin to write, just letting the words come from the one place she had never let them come from before....her heart. Allowing them to fall as they would upon the page and not stopping until she was certain that she had said everything she needed to say in that moment.

Maybe this was a cheater's way out. Maybe she should have gathered up the courage to say these things to his face. But despite all the strength that she seemed to possess, there were just some things she could not do. One of those was to hope, and the other, was to look him in those eyes that had held her prisoner for so long and tell him everything she had not had the courage to tell him all these years.

Sure, they were things he possibly already knew. Being Gabriel, he seemed to always know her better than she did herself. But that was not the point, and she could only think, that perhaps he would understand when she handed it to him, that this was something that she just had to do for herself. Something that she was only capable of doing now, thanks to everything he had instilled in her over the last nineteen years.

Slowly, she would fold up the letter, and slide it into her bag after writing his name across the front. Her notepad and pen dropped back into place, the bag closed up...she took one last look about the theater before standing up and heading out. It was still extremely early in the morning, and though she did not wish to anger him by waking him at such an hour, she knew that if she put this off, she would never get it done. No, once she locked herself back up within her little cubby of denial, she would remain there....possibly forever.

So, with every bit of determination and stubborn, foolishness that he had given her over the years, she would head away from the theater and not stop until she was at his door. Not entirely sure how this would go, or what was about to happen, but her little fingers clasping that letter firmly as she waited for him, or somebody to answer the door. For the first time, in a very, very long time...her stomach knotted with fits of nervousness and for the briefest of moments, her hands began to shake.