Cracks in the Mask (Bloodline Assignment/Leon)

[Bailey Oleander]

Bailey was doing as she'd said and staying in the infirmary - where she should have stayed, if she'd listened to her more logical side. But it hadn't escaped her that she'd been reacting more on emotions lately, god or bad, or the lack thereof.

Looking out the window, her thoughts went to what Mathew and Leon had said. Energy she couldn't handle.; Another person behind the mask they wore. What was that supposed to mean for her? Had the energy on the battlefield been a fluke? People trusted the person she was, the mask she wore, and yet she was so certain that they had the wrong person. Was it just modesty, or a gut feeling for something else. And how she'd felt after the battle, reveling in that energy instead of finding somewhere quiet and peaceful as she normally would...

Was something actually wrong with her?


She palmed the fruit she'd taken during the mandatory testing, passing it from one hand to the other as she tried to sort her thoughts while working with a mundane task.

Leon

[Leon]

Leon had left the field and went to his office for a few hours to gather the information and read it over on what each person saw. A few stood out, but one he had experience with jumped into his lap. He'd sigh and leave his office knocking on Bailey's infirmary room door.

[Bailey Oleander]

She'd look to the door at the knock, hands falling still.

"Come in." She had no idea who was going to be on the other side of the door with Rhona being indisposed.

[Leon]

Leon would walk into the room with a smile and a wave. Moving to sit in a chair he was dragging over to her bedside once again.

"Well Miss Blake, how goes the healing?"

[Bailey Oleander]

Bailey gave Leon a small smile and wave of her own, her focus now on him with a bit of surprise, but only just.

"Slow," she said with a grimace. "But there's progress." She shifted a little to face him as he pulled the chair over to her bedside. It was safer than his camping out in the curtain like last time.

"What can I do for you, Commander?"

[Leon]

Leon would nod, checking her hospital chart and putting it down after a quick scan.

"Well, I came to talk about your bloodline Qi. You have tapped into it I heard."

He'd crack his knuckles casually one at a time, slowly, digging into the noise and making it apparent to see if he could annoy her.

[Bailey Oleander]

She gave a small sigh as he looked over her chart, nodding at his question.

"Apparently, yes." She laced her fingers laced together with a frown as he popped his knuckles, a small flicker of irritation on her face from the sound as well as the means how it had happened.

[Leon]

"So let me ask you. How did it feel to use it? Unleash it?"

Leon would scratch his nails on his jeans. Repetitive, consistent, continuous.

[Bailey Oleander]

The question made her pause, lips twisting slightly as she recalled the conflicting sensations.

"It felt...wrong? Sort of." Her fingers gripped each other tighter as he persisted with the minor and persistant noises. She almost preferred the quiet fo her almost-solitude.

"Different. Destructive. Though I imagine part of it is the fact most people don't enjoy being stabbed." She winced at a spike of pain from her right leg, the limb twitching faintly in response to the flare up of nerve pain.

"It felt odd to unleash it, like it wasn't me." She'd said it was wrong at the time. "But also freeing."

[Leon]

Leon would nod at that explanation, knowing it as he once did.

"Freeing. I know that feeling. What about using it? Why do it? What compelled the decision to use the power?"

Leon knew, his old ways demanded blood, he wanted to make others hurt, suffer. It would be entertaining, fun, see what his power could do, who could stop it. No matter the damage, no matter how deep down he would feel about it later.

[Bailey Oleander]

Her lips pressed together at the questions that came her way, for once on the receiving end. She closed her eyes and looked back, remembering how it felt like a bubble had been expanding inside her, growing even with her own panic, until it had finally burst. Something forced into hiding breaking free.

"I didn't intend to," she admitted, looking at him with a frown. "I went out to get some air, and wound up at the battlefield." Instead of somewhere more serene. It had been like a recharge to her own batteries.

"When Mr. Amtrum attacked, I noticed my own abilities shifting. Nothing stopped him, the pain got worse." She brushed her hands against the blankets instead of holding them in place.

"I remember being so confused and so angry, and nothing I did could stop him. It got to the point I couldn't take anymore and now." She lifted her hands, gesturing around the room before they settled in her lap again, thumbs shifting over one another in circles.

"I didn't even think about it. There was a sense of something else being available to defend myself, and I used it."

[Leon]

"Not until later when you could focus again. When you regained a form of control, but deep down somewhere you know it's just not right anymore, and the reason you are confused, or hesitant to acknowledge it fully is because you like it and it scares you to say that."

[Bailey Oleander]

Several seconds of silence followed before she swallowed.

"Yes." It was unnerving that he could pin it down so precisely. She looked at Leon, wary but still, always, curious.

"I take it you're familiar with the feeling."

[Leon]

"Intimately."

Leon spoke while putting his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together and resting his chin on his hands.

"My old qi used to effect my mental state the more I used it. Sometimes to the point I wouldn't even remember the things I'd do. The people I hurt, the innocent I had mowed down without even a second thought. The worse was when I could remember it, get to relive it all with a clear head."

Leon spoke saddened by the words as he remembered the war... Hell before the war.

"That's the power I saw in you. The same as mine used to be. Your bloodline must of been some form of harbinger of chaos. Because you embody it, contort it, mold it. Chaos it's self bends to your will."

[Bailey Oleander]

IT was a lot to take in. Bailey looked at her hands, dumbfounded as Leon explained his own experience with his qi, forcing herself to breathe as he spoke of things that worried her. Things that could potentially happen to or even be her. The last thing she wanted was to hurt an ally, or even just someone caught in the crossfire. To lose herself so completely that she blacked out and had to be told what happened.

To lose herself.  Swirls of red and black would start to appear, taking shape around her almost like an aura the more that she dwelled on the thoughts.

"Did you ever learn a way to control it? Or keep it from getting worse?" If that was what happened, she didn't want the power. Wouldn't use it. But if there was a way, any way, to control it and learn from it, she wanted to know how. If she embodied it, it might not be possible. But to mold it, to bend it to her will? It was a thought that put her current situation in a new light.