It Makes Me Feel - Like Giving Up

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

Corrine's back. Corrine is back and being Corrine and while Tara is very supportive of superhero weirdness screwing with relationships - after over two years of perfect memory it still makes no damn sense. Someone should be ecstatic! someone should be crying with happiness, dropping to their knees and thanking God that life goes on in this business and life is often GOOD. And wonderful and...

...and she can't sleep. Oh, she doesn't need much. About 4-6 hours a week generates all the chemicals she needs. But at best it's been 2 here and 2 there. You'd think with a Green Lantern space jockey boyfriend ex, she'd be used to waking up with ice cold sheets. she keeps looking for Christie, but she's a rotten detective to be completely honest. She cooked until the Outsider's headquarters smelled like an Italian restaurant in New York. Now with her still fractured arm cooking is more difficult. She can't distract herself with archery either. Much of the chemistry work takes two hands as well.

Soo she sits in the TV room at the base, watching some PBS thing with old blues singers from the '50's and '60's strutting their stuff for public funds at this ungodly hour. Unsurprisingly, a band she's been avoiding comes on. Worse, they're really, really good.

When you complain - and criticize
I feel I'm nothing, in your eyes
It makes me feel - like giving up ...

Oh, oh no!
Don't bring me down,

no no no no

Oh babe! Oh no,
Don't bring me down...

"Where's the damn remote?" she mumbles to herself.

Comments

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

Sand arches an eyebrow. "Maybe next time I should let you dig for it..."

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

"To shut off the Animals? I'd dig to China," she grumbles. Which is weird because she normally is listening to blues, R&B, and rock twice her age or older - and she has Animals CDs in her meager collection.

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

Sand walks over and sits on the couch. "Vent." He says. He says it NICELY...but it's still intended to be a bit more than an offer.

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

Someone is not swift on the uptake. "About..?" She moves the remote control around in her hand as an indication for Sand to keep talking.

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

"About whatever it is that you're apparently grumpy about." Sand says. "I won't put words in your mouth, but its patently obvious your out of sorts about something. Which means you get me and my insomnia to talk to. Especially since I don't want to roust Corrine from some much-needed sleep by talking to her."

"Now...vent...about...whatever you wish to, honestly." He smiles.

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

She looks at him blankly. "Please for the love of St. Matthew..." She flops down on the opposite end of the wrap around couch. "Don't fall into the 'I'll talk to her when she comes to me,' walking on eggshell dance, Sand. Bad enough watching it in Star and Portsmouth."

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

"She told me to give her space." Sand says plainly. "There's no issue there. She's been through an ordeal and needs sleep, rest and, by her request, space. Trust me, it's not the same situation. And don't change the subject." He pauses. "One of things I cherish about both our friendship and working relationship is and has always been your authenticity. That's because it's what comes naturally to you. Your current evasiveness of a direct question...doesn't."

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

"Had to try to adjust the subject a little - and it's not all that off topic." She sighs and rubs her temples with her right hand. "Look I want something happy for someone around me, okay? No, Sand...actually, at this point I need it. I am tired of the misery, crap explanations, and self-destructive distractions. I want some teeny sign other then memories I don't want to shift through that this business doesn't wreck everything we fight for other people to get."

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

"Two words...Detective Chimp." Sand counters. "Granted, his road is still long - but he's fighting. And he WON Cuba for us - he doesn't get that shield down, we don't get Fate, Tefe' and Corrine right when we needed them." He thinks. "The business doesn't wreck things half as often as the people in it sometimes do."

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

"Soooo, sobriety, we live to fight another day and Dr. Light is back." She is smiling, but it's mirthless. "I don't care who'd doing the wrecking, just that it's wrecked."

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

"And we saved millions of lives. Millions." Sand said. "Sometimes it gets harder before it gets better."

Sand takes a breath, then pulls something out of his pocket. "I made the decision that after I had come back from my dimensional travels, I wanted to give Corrine this." He opens it...and inside is an EXQUISITE 1.5 carat diamond set in a classic gold design. "It belonged to Aunt Dian."

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

But I can't save Mia...or Blane, or figure out what the hell is up with Travis.

She looks at it - and then back to Sand. "Was wondering what it was going to look like." She stretches a little. "She's still...finding herself. Sitting on this in the meantime has to be a pain." She shakes her head roughly, moves by him, and plops down. "Let me adjust that, Sand. Wow! That's incredible. No one else deserves it more. That's amazing and I'm being a pill."

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

"You're not being a pill, Tara...you're having a completely understandable crisis of faith." Sand replied. "Lets face it, the last two months have been rotten. But we've got the team back...and what happened with Travis isn't your fault, so please stop trying to figure out what you could have done differently. All you did was love him."

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

"We got the team. You know. I thought the Titans were nuts." A beat. "They're still completely nuts, but their family as team obsession...starting to make more sense. It's hard as hell to explain this to anyone who just wasn't there."

She stretches. "I need to let it go, but...Mr. T has a perfect memory too, right?"

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

Sand nods. "He lost his wife and unborn child in a freak accident...and he almost took his life over it before he decided to carry on Terry Sloane's legacy. What concerns me most about him some days is that I think that's part of what drives his disbelief in a higher power...despite all evidence to the contrary. He can't grip what would cause a God of love to take someone so randomly."

Sand smiles. "That's where you actually have an advantage. Your faith helps you to see beyond the here and now. It's something I admire in you, and something I wish you'd use more often."

He chuckles. "But you're young."

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

"T and I also have a problem in common. We don't forget. We can't. Things don't fade as quickly to the background, especially moments the feel like wrong turns. That's what random is to a scientist - a wrong turn and a time to write down the data, start over, and never do it again."

She's hoping this makes sense.

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

Sand nods. "Would you like to forget? I'm sure Hank..."

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

"I don't know, Sand. I just don't know. The mind is a tricky thing. Science barely knows how memory works. This is a tool that I have that we need."

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

"It wouldn't take away your photographic memory, I don't feel - just that particular one. Hank, scarily enough, is quite good at that."

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, but where would it end? What parts do I edit? Thanks but no thanks. It's just that...complicated." She gestures. "I mean if it was Corrine...you know."

[sand-hawkins.livejournal.com]

Sand nods. "Probably best." Did he just make her think through something? No, not him.

[green-shield.livejournal.com]

Orwell wrote the best books were the ones that told you what you already knew. Good leaders do too.

"Doesn't mean I won't want to avoid Blues music for awhile though. Why torment yourself when there's so many willing souls to do it for us?" The sardonic is returning. Good sign.