[FIN] Best Kinds of Presents

[BlackFireKitsune]

At some point after Alyssa left, Abel had moved to one side of the couch and leaned into the armrest, his forehead resting on it while he hugged his pillow to his abdomen. Sonia had brought it out for him after Alyssa left; she'd tried to bring him his pain medicine too but couldn't find it, so he merely slouched into the corner of the couch, seeking whatever solace or comfort he could. It wasn't much; his ribs ached terribly and he still felt vaguely nauseous, but he wished it was more. If only he could turn the emotional pain, the misery, the anxiety into physical pain - he'd be able to deal with it so much better. Unfortunately he couldn't, so all he could do was wait there, the picture of misery; his fingers gripped his pillow tightly, a fine mist of sweat lingered on his temples and his face a shade paler than normal, his heart pounding so hard in his chest that he suspected it might burst at any moment. Alyssa had left hours ago now, but he felt just as trapped, if not even more so, as he did when she was still there. What was he going to do? Things were only getting worse, and the worse they got, the more he felt like his life was falling apart all around him, and there wasn't a single thing he could do about it. The blond squeezed his eyes shut again and tried to focus on his uneven breathing rather than continue to agonize over the crumbling remnants of his life, but it didn't work too well.

Taavi would be back at some point too. What was he going to say? What could he say? When would Alyssa drop her bomb on him? He didn't know; he didn't want to know. He didn't want to think about it.

Sonia whined softly, her ears slicked back as she curled up on the floor in front of her trainer, her chin resting on his knee. He barely noticed her, and she didn't like it. What had that female done to him?  

[TawnyAngel]

It was good to have a job again. Really good. The place made him seriously uncomfortable if he stopped to think about it but so long as he kept moving it was fine, and so far as he could tell Chris approved of him always being on the go. The day of hefting things around had left him feeling tired and achy in a good sort of way and the cold winter air was still, making for a pleasant flight back to Abel's place.

As they approached the building Taavi peered down over Valour's shoulder to see if Abel's window was open; it wasn't and so he directed his friend down to street level and slid to the ground with a contented sigh. After some parting affection with his feathered friend Taavi headed inside rolling the shaft of a large flight feather between his fingers, it was always hard to resist keeping the impressive ones even if he didn't have a use for them.

Taavi reached Abel's floor still playing with the feather and entered the apartment with a smile. "Hey, how was-" He stopped mid sentence; Abel was sitting hunched up over a pillow on the couch, asking how he was was obviously pointless and so instead Taavi asked; "What happened?" as he hurried forward.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Abel's eyes snapped open when he heard the door unlock, but he didn't move from his spot on the couch. Ah, yep; he must've looked like s**t if Taavi was so concerned so quickly. Or he probably would be anyway, even if he didn't look like s**t. Thankfully being alone and in pain for several hours had left him plenty of time to think of a convincing lie. "Stumbled and hit my ribs on one of the chairs," he said, his voice hoarse and strained. Don't be so worried about me. Please don't be so worried about me, not after what I've done. "Hurts, but s'fine. How's work?" The blond asked, hoping so hard that Taavi would just move on to something else - anything else.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Ah, s**t." Taavi touched his friend's shoulder briefly, his brows knit with a frown of concern. "You taken your painkillers?" It must have been a hell of a crack to his ribs to leave him so pale and to put a sheen of sweat on his face like that. Abel had asked about work though; Taavi guessed his frined was probably pretty tired of being fussed over so he'd just have to try to fuss quietly, and definitely not let him do much tonight... And make sure he didn't fall out of the window when he went for a smoke or anything. Abel really did look awful, was it just his ribs? Probably not. If he'd been asked to bet Taavi would have put money on the blond having been thinking about Isaac. He and Valour had been out looking every day but they hadn't found him and while he'd never say so to Abel honestly he was starting to think they never would, when people were missing for this long and had vanished under violent circumstances....

"Uh, work was fine though?" Taavi said after a pause, trying to wind his mind back to where it had been before he'd seen his friend curled in on himself like that. "You know, um, moving stuff around and cleaning mostly...." He wished there was something he could do to make all of this better but he couldn't, Isaac was gone and no amount of prayers or wishes could change that.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

He flinched a bit at the touch. "Yeah," he lied, "waiting for them to kick in." He wanted to go smoke so much but he didn't think he could handle standing up at the moment, let alone climbing out his window. There went his main coping mechanism.

"S'good," he said when Taavi answered his question, latching onto it with all his might and trying to focus on that and nothing else. The job did entail mostly physical labor, if only because working in other areas required more training or specialized knowledge, like the specifics of various models or how to disassemble them for cleaning. "Getting more comfortable with it?"  

[TawnyAngel]

Taking about the Donphan in the room wasn't going to make it go away or help at all so far as he saw it, best to just leave it he guessed.

Taavi gave a wan looking smile and shrugged as he moved to the other side of the couch and perched on the arm. "Ah, comfortable... I wouldn't really say comfortable but so long as I'm busy it's fine, and being busy is what I'm there for! Um.... Thanks, again, really. I mean it ah... I might not be that comfortable there but I'm really grateful to have a job for a while." A couple of months, maybe more, and that should be enough time to find another job right? He was working now and Chris might agree to be a reference for him once he knew him a bit better, and all of that was good but.... Okay it was dumb but he felt bad for having something good for him come out of something so terrible for Abel. He wanted to say- he wanted to say something like if he could go back to having no job in exchange for Isaac still being here that he would without even thinking about it. Abel knew that right? Probably, yes, he must right? Right.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

As Taavi spoke, Abel's eyes slid closed and he simply listened. It was somewhat calming, and he could feel himself start to relax just a tad. He tried to think of what to say, but before he could, there came a brief knocking on the door.

Well, so much for calming down; his heart rate spiked and he felt cold again. That wasn't Alyssa, was it? Right?

No one was visible through the peephole in the door, if Taavi chose to look, but if he opened the door he would find a plain-looking manila envelope sitting mere inches from the door, with his name written on it in smooth, looping letters.  

[TawnyAngel]

With no response from Abel Taavi decided to try to fill the silence; there were comfortable silences and then there were silences like this one, not fun. "Um, and everyone seems really nice so far, it seems like a great place to work," if you liked guns, "I mean, who you work with is as important as what you're actually doing right? I-"

The knock at the door interrupted Taavi's steady ramble and brought a brief frown to his face; who was knocking? The only person he'd known to visit was....

"I'll see who it is," he decided aloud, a feeling of dread abruptly churning in the pit of his stomach. When he went to the door and nobody was visible however he relaxed a bit. "Hu, kids?" he wondered aloud, opening the door and peering out in case he could catch a glimpse of somebody running away. What he saw instead however made him tense up again.

The envelope looked normal, completely normal, but it shouldn't be there. Who knew he lived here? He hadn't told Sasha Abel's address so who could-?

Feeling as though he was being pulled forward more than choosing to walk Taavi stepped outside and stooped to pick up the envelope. With the innocent looking package in hand he stepped back inside, closed the door quietly, and moved back into the living area. "Um.... Abel?" he held the envelope up for inspection. "Would... would Chris have had any documents dropped off for me? He didn't mention anything...." And another thing, he didn't like to stereotype but he couldn't imagine Chris having writing like that or just having something dropped off without explanation either.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Oh no, oh s**t. s**t s**t s**t s**t s**t. "Uh, no," he replied, keeping his eyes shut for the moment; he didn't want to look. He already knew what it was, anyway. "He'd just give you stuff before you left."

Inside the thin envelope was a single sheet of paper with a short note, the handwriting on it similar to that of the outside but smaller:

Tsk tsk tsk! Team Plasma, Taavi? I was curious about what you did that you had to run away from so quickly, but that's worse than I thought! Oh yes, I know all about it; I heard it from a reliable source after all. I'm sure there's other people that would love to know all about it, too - the police for instance, both in Unova and here in Kodo. Especially here! They probably wouldn't react too well to someone who was in a Team given all the atrocities Team Rocket's committed. I'm sure they'd love to hear all about it though! ;) But you don't want that, do you? No, of course you don't! I'm sure we can come to a nice financial agreement though ;) We can work out all the nitty-gritty details later!

______________ - Alyssa

PS - Oh, and I know you're smarter than to try to involve the police in this or run away in the meantime - you know it wouldn't end well if you did!  

[TawnyAngel]

"...Hu."

Taavi hesitated for a few moments but it wasn't like he could not open it and so he headed over to the table, sat down and peeled it open. He took out the note. He read the note. He read the note again just in case it had changed or he'd imagined it. It didn't, and he hadn't. His blood turned to ice, his heart froze and he suddenly felt faint, sick, weightless, unreal.

Wide-eyed, rigid in his chair, and completely silent he read the note again and again and again and the words burned themselves into his mind.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

When the silence stretched on, Abel opened his eyes to find his friend sitting at the table. He looked... rather stiff. Concern mixed with fear knitted his brow; he should say something, but what should he say? What could he say? "...Taavi?"  

[TawnyAngel]

How had she found out? How had she found out? It wasn't possible, the only person here who knew was Abel! Had she traced somebody he'd known back then? But how?

He realised numbly that it didn't really matter how in the end, what mattered was that she knew and that she was going to use it against him. He'd thought he was doing the right thing, it had seemed like such a noble cause and then when it had all gone wrong he'd tried to make up for it, he had! And that didn't matter either, all that mattered was the letter. It felt like it was smirking at him.

Unable to find any words to respond to Abel with Taavi picked up the letter, got to his feet, carried it over to Abel and held it out wordlessly in one trembling hand his face a mask of horrified shock. As soon as it was taken from him he turned as if to walk back to the table he couldn't seem to take a step and instead he ended up first leaning against the wall for support and then sliding down against it when his legs decided they didn't want to work at all. He hadn't meant to do anything wrong, he'd meant well, but intentions didn't count for anything in the end either.

When you did wrong you paid sooner or later. He shouldn't have tried to run away.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Abel accepted the letter when it was offered to him, but he didn't look at it yet. He was pretty sure he knew what it said anyway, more or less. Instead he watched Taavi, his heart sinking down to his feet as he watched him... practically stumble away. "Careful," he couldn't help but say, not wanting him to fall or anything. He wasn't going to pass out, was he?

Since he did have the letter in hand, he lifted it to glance at it just long enough to recognize the handwriting and see Alyssa's name there before he lowered it again. What could he say? There wasn't a damn thing he could say that could change any of this, could make any of it better. He'd sold his friend out, all for just a chance he'd get his Espeon back; it wasn't even guaranteed. "I... I'm sorry," he finally said quietly, still slouched over in his corner of the couch. Well, that was it; he was officially the worst person in the world.  

[TawnyAngel]

"I knew she knew something," Taavi murmured distantly, "that's... that's why I told you. She must have...." He trailed off, words and thoughts slipping away from him. What was he going to do? Whatever she told him to he guessed, she must have some kind of evidence right? And even if she didn't if she told somebody they could investigate and they'd find out.

A soft whine and a nudging nose dragged Taavi's attention sluggishly down to Swift; the Vulpix was looking up at him with confusion and concern. Taavi pulled the fire type into his lap and hunched up around him but he could hardly feel the warmth of the fox pokemon's fur, he could hardly feel anything, everything was distant, it was like reality was out of focus.

"Why is she doing this?" Why was Abel with someone like her? Why didn't he sound surprised, actually?...

Why did Abel never have any money?  

[BlackFireKitsune]

He licked his dry lips, but it didn't help much when his whole mouth was dry. What could he say? He had to say something, but what? "She... does like to know things," he said lamely. Surely there was something better than that he could say, but he couldn't think of anything...

Why was she doing this? He'd asked himself that very same question so many times before and while he knew it was because she wanted money and she loved to mess with people, he didn't really think it a good idea to say that at the moment, so he merely wilted and remained quiet for the moment. He wasn't surprised, he wasn't shocked; he was upset, of course, and he wanted to be angry but everything hurt far too much for that.