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[sub]A [@metanoia] & [@Venus] Collab
Featuring Mikhail Zima & Caitlin Cleary’s First Interaction[/sub]
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[right][i][b]M A R C H  2 0 1 8  |  S P R I N G  T I M E[/b][/i][/right]

Clear, blue skies with rays of warm sunshine balancing out the chilly breeze were gracing the small town of Edenridge during this lovely March afternoon-- and Caitlin Cleary was taking full advantage of the favorable conditions to indulge in a little outdoor reading. Wearing a pair of white leather combat boots, black leggings, a charcoal gray sweatshirt tunic and the denim jacket with the fur-lined neck that had matched David's, and her slim legs tucked underneath the plaid sherpa blanket she and David used to share, Cece was more than ready to enjoy her time in solitude. She sat under the shade of a tall oak tree near David's grave, her back resting against its thick trunk while all of the girl's attention was captivated by the pages of, of all books, Romeo and Juliet.

Ever since the passing of her boyfriend David O’ Hara in the winter of 2017 on New Year’s Day, Caitlin’s afternoons had undergone a major change in routine. What was once time spent at cheerleading practice in the Edenridge High’s gymnasium and football fields was now occupied by near daily visits to the cemetery in which her boyfriend’s body had been laid to rest. Cece would make sure that his gravestone was clean, his flowers watered, and that any weeds starting to grow around the area were removed from the soil by her own hands. She’d spend hours sitting in front of the young man’s grave dealing with her grief in her own strange, therapeutic sort of way. Sometimes, it was by speaking out loud to catch David up in what was going in her life or through her mind at the time. Other times, like today, it was just sitting in peaceful silence, taking advantage of the soothing solitude to do things like study for a test, complete her homework, or simply to admire whatever nice weather the town had on that particular day.

Could Cece partake in these activities somewhere else besides the town’s dreary cemetery? Of course she could. But no other place, or person, would provide her with the same level of comfort, safety and protection as David did, even after his passing. The solace of the moments spent at his graveside served to ease the pain of knowing that this was the closest she would ever be to her beloved again.

Unbeknownst to her, there was another in the cemetery and he was approaching closer to the very tombstone the redhead was sitting in the vicinity of. Mikhail Zima had decided to come on this day because, well, it was about time. For a while now, he has been getting to know his mother’s family. Slowly but surely, he was earning their trust and maybe even enjoying the feeling of not being judged. To them, he was just a rising star on the basketball team. He wasn’t the shooting guard or the captain, but he put in so much effort for the team and whenever he could, he’d grow closer to his family (even though they didn’t know he was part of it). It was a dangerous game, but in his head, it was worth it.

[color=C81935][i]David O’Hara.[/i][/color]

He only knew the little that his mother told him. Over the years, she would hear things about him and the only person who she would ever tell was Mika. Maybe that’s why he was finally here. But as he approached it, he noticed someone else was here and it wasn’t some stranger either.

[color=635687]“Cece?”[/color] Mika walked up to the oak tree she was sitting under. [color=635687]“Sure as hell didn’t expect you to be in a place like this.”[/color] Mika laughed somewhat, hands in his jacket pocket.

As engrossed as she was between the pages of the tragic story of two lovers separated by death that was Romeo and Juliet, Caitlin failed to notice the newcomer’s arrival. It was only after she heard her nickname being called out that she looked up suddenly, eyes wide with panic and her heart racing at the thought of being caught where she was and having to explain herself in any way. But when her brain registered the identity of the person approaching her, Cece’s fight or flight responses were ushered back into their cages.

[color=C81935]“Hey Mika,”[/color] came the girl’s feeble response as she folded the corner of the page she’d been reading and placed the closed book in her lap. She was afraid to say anything else in case Natalia Belmonte suddenly appeared from the shadows and tried to strangle her for purposely carrying on a conversation with her new best friend.

[color=635687][i]So much for conversation, huh?[/i][/color] Mika couldn’t remember if Cece was normally this quiet. He didn’t have it in his mind that she was ever a chatterbox like some of the other girls at Edenridge High were, but she seemed unusually mute - even for her. [color=635687]“So what’s going on? I didn’t take you for someone who liked to spend their afternoons at a cemetery. You aiming to join a cult or something?”[/color] Mika chuckled. He was hoping his bad jokes might lighten her lack of engagement to at least give him more than a simple greeting.

His terrible joke managed to turn the corners of her mouth upward, and motivated her enough to reply with one of her own. [color=C81935]"I'm actually trying to be the cult leader. One of the requirements is learning how to summon dead bodies in case of emergency, so I thought this was the best place to study the subject."[/color]

[color=635687]“Is that right?”[/color] He kept chuckling as he leaned on the side of the oak tree, looking down at Cece, trying his best to not accidentally look down her shirt. From the angle he could if he wanted to, but he didn’t, so he wouldn’t. [color=635687]“What’s the name of your cult?”[/color]

[color=C81935]"If I told you, I'd have to kill you,"[/color] she replied, in a feigned sinister tone before letting out a little chuckle and offering him her first soft smile. [color=C81935]"What about you? What brings you over here?"[/color]

Earning his first smile was actually kind of satisfying in its own way, but all good things must come to an end. And when he thought about why he really was here, Mika didn’t have an answer that made any sense. [color=635687]“To tell you the truth, I have no fucking idea”[/color] which wasn’t the total truth.

In recent weeks, he’d been really trying to process all of the thoughts in his head. Maybe ever since he and Natalia stopped fooling around, Mika had been attempting to process everything and especially when it came to the O’Hara’s. [color=635687]“I guess to see if being in front of this tombstone would give me a better answer.”[/color]

Mika's answer raised alarm bells in Caitlin’s mind, and she felt her body tense up. Shortly before his death, David had been incorrectly branded an abuser of minors. After his passing, there had been a wave of vandals defining his grave with awful slurs, insults and messages, which Cece had scrubbed clean each time. If she discovered that Mika had been one of these awful people, the redhead wasn't opposed to engaging in confrontation-- him being a Serpent and over half a foot taller than her be damned.

Before she jumped to conclusions, however, Cece decided to get more information about what could possibly have brought the young man to the gravesite of the son of one of Eden's founding families. [color=C81935]"What do you mean?"[/color] the girl inquired, a frown settling between her ginger eyebrows. [color=C81935]"I'm sorry for prying, but very few people that come to visit this specific tombstone do so with good intentions."[/color]

Mika half-chuckle and smirked, looking forward at the tombstone that read [b]David O’Hara[/b]. It wasn’t that Mika didn’t know David, but he didn’t have enough time to know him better. [color=635687]“Nah, you’re not prying…”[/color] Mika muttered. He thought about what his mother told him, though limited, versus the supposed rumors about him. Something didn’t add up. She told him about her family and how good they were. She lamented that hindsight allowed her to see that, but since he moved to Edenridge in the past couple of years, he saw that and the rumors about David in the past few months didn’t align with that. 

[color=635687]“I don’t doubt that some come here with disrespect on her mind. There are some pretty nasty rumors about him, aren't there?”[/color] Mika never once believed them, but he also didn’t know David well enough. He [i]wished[/i] he did. He only had a few months when David was the assistant coach and even then, he didn’t ever feel like he was in a position to ask all of the questions he wanted to ask David and John. 

The mention of the disgusting, incorrect rumors that had been a factor in David meeting his premature demise brought a wave of hot, burning tears to the young woman’s blue eyes. Everytime she thought she was moving on, something happened to remind her the pain was still as present as ever-- like sprinkling salt on the freshest of wounds.

[color=C81935]“Typical Edenridge behavior: people running their mouths and tongues about things they don’t know,”[/color] Cece stated in an unusually blunt manner, the hurt and bitterness dripping from her voice evident with each word she had uttered. The redhead turned her face away from Mika just long enough to wipe the tears from her cheeks with the cuff of her sweater before shifting her attention back to him. [color=C81935]“It’s all crap, you know? I knew David like I know the back of my hand. He’s nothing like what they say he is.”[/color]

He couldn’t help but look at Cece as she went on her mini-rant. He didn’t disagree with any of it -- at least, from the place that people who ran their mouths didn’t know who they were talking about. It was how Mika got into a majority of the scrapes he did. At least, in his case, if he heard someone was running their mouth about him, he had the choice of finding them. Maybe that was what Mika didn’t like. David was dead, so he couldn’t speak for himself. Whether it was true or not, it was pretty shitty to run his name through the mud when he was already six feet deep.

[color=635687]“So, I take it you and David were pretty close, then?”[/color] Mika asked. Her anger about the rumors seemed to point at that.

Caitlin nodded, wiping more tears away from her face. [color=C81935]“Our ancestors came to this country together, hoping to escape the famine that was tearing Ireland apart. Our families founded this town; with us Clearys and the O'Haras remaining tightly-knit to this very day. David and his sister Jamie basically grew up with my siblings and I.”[/color] Of course, there was another BIG reason for her closeness to David, but she wasn’t in a place where she could disclose it yet-- much less to someone she didn’t know well.

[color=635687]“Wow..”[/color] When she told him the history of her family and the O’Haras, which was his family technically-speaking, Mika didn’t know how to process it. All he knew or remembered was they were important to his mother’s hometown, but knowing the exact importance was something Mika needed time to process. But that wasn’t now. [color=635687]“So your family and his are pretty much Edenridge royalty, huh? Are there others?”[/color] Mika asked her. His curiosity came from a genuine place. [color=635687]“I mean, I’m from the Southside, so nobody has ever bothered to tell me shit about…what did you call yourselves? Founding Families? Did I get that right?”[/color]

The young woman nodded, but couldn't help but smile a little as she remembered something her former boyfriend used to say. [color=C81935]“David used to call us [i]Foundlings[/i],”[/color] she admitted with a small giggle, rolling her eyes at the absurdity of the nickname. [color=C81935]“Meaning us children of the four Founding Families: the Clearys, the O’Haras, the Callahans and the O’Briens. But there are a few more family names that have become pretty relevant to the town in the last few decades: the Sinclairs, the Belmontes and the Grimms. As grateful as I am for my family and their accomplishments, I can’t wait for the day these new families become the ‘royalty’ of the town. Living your entire life under a microscope can be exhausting and hard.”[/color]

Mika listened to all of what she had to say, but it was her last comment that stood out because he could relate to that more than she would ever know. It hit hard, mostly because of his father and his brother, Viktor, too, but mostly from Ivan himself. To be the son that he was constantly reminded he didn’t want (or that’s how it seemed to Mika, anyway), that feeling of being judged for every little thing you did took its toll. He didn’t know if it was the same in this town for those who lived here all their lives, but for him, it just made him have more anger he knew what to do with.

But that was almost three years ago and he’s been able to control it a lot more. [color=635687]“It’s hard to meet people’s expectations of you when they never tell you how high they are. It’s like climbing Mount Everest with no clear view of the top and having shitty fucking equipment.”[/color] Mika’s tone took a rather sharp, almost angry turn. His hands were in his pockets still but he was tightening his fists to not appear so full of ire.

[color=C81935]“I’d say it’s just hard to meet people’s expectations regardless of whether you know what they are or not, because they’re ultimately not your own,”[/color] Caitlin mused, thinking back to how the situation Mika was describing and her own were both rooted in the same concept: people expecting things from them with no care or importance given to what it was they really wanted. [color=C81935]“You can’t grow and blossom into your own person or the person you want to be if you’re constantly being stifled by those around you. I think that’s a concept a lot people misconstrue-- be it with the assumption that they have your best interests at heart, or because they desperately want to live through your experiences.”[/color]

Mika chuckled at her last comment. [color=635687]“Isn’t that the truth?”[/color] And that was a truth that Mika never quite accepted, even in the short time he’s been able to truly live outside of the shadows of people who tried to form him into the man that they wanted him to be. For dreadful or worse, he was starting to finally feel like he could be someone other than the evil blood that runs through his veins. [color=635687]“It’s not always easy for everyone to get out from under the thumb of those kinds of people. And, sometimes, life creates circumstances that allow imperfect seeds to flourish in a different soil-- like some twisted flower that is actually kind of attractive in some lights.”[/color] Again, Mika laughed more because he wasn’t sure if he just insulted himself or not.

Mika’s metaphors struck a chord with Caitlin. Before the start of her relationship with David, her biggest goal was to leave the sheltered cocoon that was Edenrige to build a life on her terms. Becoming David’s girlfriend had shifted her mindset, of course, as her new dream soon morphed into becoming his wife and dedicating her life to cultivating their relationship and raising their future children. But now that Dave was gone, there was nothing tying her to the town anymore. Her parents were healthy, well and financially stable. Her structured brother would take care of the business. Her determined, go-getter sisters would be successful in anything they set off to do. All that was left for Cece was a world to discover  beyond the borders of her hometown.

[color=C81935]“Maybe that’s what I need to do for myself someday: create the circumstances I need so I can leave Edenridge and become that ‘twisted flower that's actually kind of attractive in some lights’.”[/color] Caitlin teased lightly with a small laugh before getting serious again. [color=C81935]“It’s not an easy thing to do to stand up for oneself in order to grow, but when being utterly unhappy with your life is the other option, I’d rather take my chances and at least give it a try.”[/color]

[color=635687]“Do or do not, there is no try--”[/color] Mika muttered, hearing himself a half-second later after Caitlin’s giggle. Damn Katie and her one guilty pleasure of Star Wars. [color=635687]“Sorry, just a little something that came to mind. But it fits, doesn’t it?”[/color] He glanced at Cece with a smile. [color=635687]“I mean, if you want it bad enough, no amount of a safety net of the small town where you literally have decades of family history will stop you from going off on your own.”[/color] Somewhere in him, Mika wished he wasn’t born into the circumstances that created him, but it was kind of too late for him. 

The redhead grimaced at his words. She knew Mika meant well, but she hadn't thought about it in that way before. The words he used made her goal of starting over somewhere new sound so [i]daunting[/i]. [color=C81935]"It sounds so scary when you put it like that…"[/color] she admitted earnestly. [color=C81935]"I always get so caught up in the fantasy of how it would be that I forget about what I'm leaving behind."[/color]

[color=635687]"Sorry, I didn't mean it like [i]that[/i]."[/color] Having realized he may have messed up or said the wrong thing (a habit Mika had down to an artform at this point), he tried to go back a bit. To her, even in the hypothetical scenario of going her own way, it was painfully obvious to Mika that leaving was something she wasn't sure about (or why else would she do all but panic about what he said?)

[color=635687]"Maybe don't think about that then. The people in this town will still be here. If you wanna go to fuck-knows-where for a while, then do it!"[/color] That was much better. [color=635687]"That's what I was trying to say."[/color]

Caitlin nodded with a smile. Mika was absolutely right. When the time came, her sole focus should be solely on herself.

Before silence could settle between the two, Cece’s phone rang. [color=C81935]“I’m sorry. Let me just check this real quick--”[/color] she excused herself, pulling the device out of the bag next to her and glancing at the screen. It was her alarm, signaling that it was time to return to school before her ride got there. [color=C81935]“That’s my queue to leave,”[/color] she informed the young man, placing her book and blanket inside of her messenger bag before standing up and sliding the bag’s strap onto her shoulder. [color=C81935]“You know, it was really nice talking to you, Mika,”[/color] the redhead said softly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she gave him a genuine smile. [color=C81935]“I never would’ve guessed that you and I could have something in common. Just goes to show how you can’t judge a book by its cover, huh?”[/color]

He had to admit that he felt the same way. For as long as he had been in Edenridge and had been at EHS, he never thought that Caitlin Cleary was someone who also identified the same way he did with his own family. The reason he came here might’ve been selfish. Mika wanted to know if he could feel closer to the cousin he never got the chance to meet would make him feel better about some of the things he was going through, but he ended up having a solid time with the person he least expected to. Caitlin wasn’t anything like he saw at school. [color=635687]“Yeah, guess you’re right about that.”[/color] He found himself smiling, watching her pack up her stuff into her bag. [color=635687]“I’ll linger around for a bit. Kinda just want to spend some time alone. Maybe...”[/color] 

Mika bit the inside of his lip and looked forward to David's grave. He looked at it for what probably seemed way longer than he should have. He searched for…[i]something[/i] at it. Maybe some silent guidance from one O’Hara man to another. Or maybe it was just to take it in one last time, but Mika took a deep breath. [color=635687]“Maybe we can do this again?”[/color] He looked at Cece, half-smiling. The right side of his lips were curved up and the muscles twitched out of a new-found nervousness he was experiencing. [color=635687]“I mean, maybe not [i]here[/i], but somewhere else. Just to talk or hang or whatever.”[/color]

The young woman’s smile widened, and she nodded in agreement. [color=C81935]“Sounds like a plan,”[/color] she conceded shyly. Sure, Natalia might kill her if she found out about this potential friendship. But hopefully volleyball and her newfound popularity would keep her occupied enough to not notice.

[color=635687]“Cool!”[/color]  He said without even thinking. Internally, part of Mika was punishing himself for actually [i]saying[/i] that, but externally, he just smiled. [color=635687]“Well, guess I’ll be seeing you…friend.”[/color] 

Now beaming, Caitlin gave Mika a parting wave and went off on her way. [color=c81935]“See you around school!”[/color] she called out to the young man over her shoulder, that warm smile still in place.

A new friend… Maybe this was what David thought she needed right now.
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