Flashback Father-Daughter Moment

[Kit Rowan]

Day 40, Season of Summer, 507 AV

Kit woke up itchy.

She hissed, curled into a ball in bed, scratched at the back of her neck, under her stomach, at her legs, and still it wouldn't stop. She clawed at herself, and still the itching would not stop. Harder, harder, harder!

The itching didn't stop, but Kit felt a liquid something rolling down her side, leaking into her bedclothes. She surpressed the urge to scratch long enough to throw off the covers and lift up her shirt. She saw her handiwork; red streaks across her body. In places, her nails had broken through the skin. Gods above, she was crazed now. Magic had made her crazed! She raised trembling hands to her face and let her head rest in it, praying for the itching to leave her be.

But of course it didn't.

She distracted herself with a daily stretch, hoping to lose herself in the good strains of a morning well spent. She bent over forward, till she wrapped her hands around her heels. Her back and legs screamed in pain and pleasure at the same moment as she pushed further forward, till her slim torso pressed up against the her legs. She shut her eyes, wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled them as close as she could manage. Still the itching distracted; Kit needed more!

Still wearing her nightclothes, Kit swung her window wide open. She sat herself on the edge with her back to the street, digging her thumb into her neck and digging a deep line across it in a moment of nervousness before she started. Kit pressed her hands gently against the age, sent her tumbling back into the open air above the pavement.

Her legs caught her, curling up around her knees and catching the thin sil of her glassless window, holding her suspended above about ten feet above the ground. Kit peered down, saw dark, empty, glittering streets, absent in the morning. The early morning. Had the itches woken her up? Kit sighed, crossed her arms in front of her chest and curled.

Oh how her stomach muscles struggled! She felt them go tight beneath her shirt, struggling already. She lifted herself an inch up, another inch . . . The struggle to get up chased away the itch for a few precious ticks, and Kit reveled it. She raised her body, till her eye level was at her knees.

"Kit!" A voice said. Her father's voice, from somewhere below her. "What are you doing?!" She gritted her teeth, cursed him in her mind and kept on.

She could have just let go then, let her body tumble back into position so she could try again but no. Kit uncoiled the muscles in her stomach slowly, and they expressed their hatred to her in protests that she cease, cease this very tick! And if she gave, if she released and let her legs fall free she would fall and die! She felt her body shake and tremble. Kit gave a shaky smile at the exertion, at the effort that touched the edge of pain. Reveled in it!

It was the proof she was alive!

[Kit Rowan]

She was pulling herself up for the third time when she heard her father again, muffled behind her door. There was a sound of a door swung open. "Kit!" He said, and she could here the panic in his voice. At least . . . At least he was using her name this time! She felt hands seize hold of her legs, pulling her back inside. Kit hissed, struggled kicked, but though once she was sure he was about to let her go he kept on pull, dragging her back into the window. "LET. ME. GO!" Once Kit was all the way through the window she had a clear view. She raised her foot ans smashed it into her father's chest. He let her go, staggered backwards, and Kit fell down into her bed.

Kit's 'room' was not big enough for much staggering. He took a few steps back and hit the walls while Kit clawed backward, putting as much space between her and her father as possible, grabbing her blanket and holding it up between them like a fabric wall. Kit had avoided her father ever since the incident in the garden, talked to him never and escaped whenever she realized he was coming close. She had thought he'd enough sense to leave her alone. "Get out," she snarled, her knuckles turning white.

He didn't leave. Her father stood up straight as he could—which was not tall, with the way the roof sloped too low for anyone but Kit to move with ease—"I think," he said, slowly, eyes looking over her, seeing the accusation in her eyes . . . and the fear, too. "I owe you an explanation."

Kit stared through narrow eyes, chewed that thought. She scratched idly beneath her shirt, behind her head, at her heel. "Talk," she spat. "Now."

Sad eyes blinked at her, eyed the side of her bed. "May I sit down?" Her scowl was enough of an answer; he raised his hands in acquiescence. "Okay, okay . . ." He knelt down instead, gave his head enough room to turn without hitting wood. "Overgiving. I told you about overgiving, right?"

"Yeah," Kit said, and without the distraction of activity the itch was coming back. She wanted to scratch and scratch until she clawed herself apart. Of course she knew overgiving; she was intimately familiar with it at that moment. Kit tucked a hand under her shirt and scratched again . . . but she'd gone too strongly again, and felt her skin tear. She shut her eyes and breathed through her nose, tried to forget the pain and force her hands to stillness. "Yeah. I know."

"The things you see, the strange . . . feelings you have." He breathed, his hollow face seeming pained. "They don't always just go away."

That got her attention. Kit sat up straight and curled back her lips in a snarl. "You mean I could feel this way forever?!" She threw her blanket at her father, stood on top of her bed so her head just barely skirted the roof. Her hands curled into little fists; she had too much to do, too much to live for to live forever with this damnable itching haunting her!

He shoved the blanket away, let it fall to the floor. "I think you're fine," he said. "You never pushed yourself too far. Didn't even begin to bleed, or hurt. Yours should fade, with time. But . . ." He hesitated.

Kit had gotten all fired up and had the reason for it stolen. She fumed silently up on her bed, raked her fingers over her rear and fell back onto her bed, crossing her legs with a huff. "But you did."

He closed his eyes, sighed. "I did."

[Kit Rowan]

"You've heard the stories?" Her father asked, did not waiting for an answer. "A good man learns magic, pushes too far, changes wholly. As though the magic planted some . . . seed of malevolence in them, waiting to sprout. That's not how it works."

"Overgiving is what happens when there is not enough of your soul left to remember what you were before. Some personal magics are slow, are controlled, are at least safer. Do you know what Res is? Djed? Everything is djed. What is Res?

Kit did not answer, but her father did. "I don't know, not really. But I think it's our soul's blood, dripping from a wound cut in our selves when we were . . . Cut open for the first time." Kit clenched her hand, remembered the shape of her initiation's scar.

"What do you think happens to us when there isn't enough left? I think . . . I think our djed starts to scar over. Try to push pieces of ourselves that don't belong together. Magic doesn't make you evil, no. It makes you an abomination of yourself. I once knew a girl a girl who studied hard and long every day, the soul of work, then she pushed herself too far. She didn't go crazy, she didn't murder. She huddled away in the library, never eating, barely sleeping until they dragged her away, limbs like sticks, begging for something, anything to read.

"A mother learned magic to protect her son, pushed herself too far, and for a while it seemed there was nothing wrong. Days went by and she acted as she always had, till her son ran up and complained of a scraped knee, and the mother smothered him beneath a pillow to make certain nothing would ever harm her son again.

"Another man spent himself to try and protect his lover, and . . . began to see her face in every woman he saw."

Kit shook her head, gently at first, then most insistent. "Shut up." She murmured, running her hands through her hair. "SHUT UP!" Kit cried, her shoulders shaking. "So what, I'm just . . . Just a littler mama to you!?"

"It comes and goes," she stared up through thick canopy of hair at her father, looking to the side, away from Kit. "Some days are better than others. Today is a good day, but even then, you are so like . . ."

Kit had seemed a compliment the first time her father had told her, but now she didn't want to her it. "Shut UP!" She stood up from her bed and shoved him, but there wasn't enough room for it to mean much; mostly he just collapsed awkwardly back. It lacked the noise, the impact, the force Kit wanted, needed.

"You never said!" She all but shouted.

"I told you," her father said, his voice suddenly sharp. "I told you it was dangerous."

"You said I'd be fine, long as I didn't make a mistake, long as you were helping me. You said the stories of madness were just stories!" She speared her father with a finger. "And now, you've fouled up your own head?" Kit threw her head back in a desperate laugh. "How can you keep me from it, if you can't even do it yourself? How can you be sure I haven't done it already?! I'm never using magic again."

If there had been some malevolence in her father's eyes, Kit could have shrugged it off. But his face was plain and neutral as his mouth opened, said a word; "Liar."

". . . What'd you say?"

Her father stood as high as he could and peered down at Kit, looking slightly ridiculous with his head turned at an odd angle to keep from brushing the ceiling. "Don't pretend you don't know," he said. "That moment, when you've got a spell in your fingers? The way the magic seeps from your hands, dancing at your will? I've seen it in your eyes, Kit. I know it. I feel it, always."

When Kit only stared at him he kept on talking. "When I stopped here, when I stayed here . . . Maybe you were my blood. But you weren't by daughter. You belonged to your mother, you bowed to her god, you chased her shadow. There was nothing of me in you. Now there is. I know that spark in your eye when you cast a spell, when you find your grip on magic. You're not just her daughter anymore; you're mine too."

He bent down, his face barely inches from hers. This time his eyes did not fog over; he stared straight at her. Not at some phantom of his lover, not at some half-seen delusion, but at his daughter, at Kit. "That's why I know you'll never give up magic. Just like me. You could never bear it."

And Kit kicked him right between the legs, hard. Her father doubled over, grabbed hold of his privates and moaned his pain. "Get out of my room!" Kit screamed again, and this time he finally let her be, descending slowly down the steps into the main house.

Only when he was long gone did Kit plop back down on her bed, scratch her cheek and stare. She breathed, tucked her foot behind her neck and tried, tried tried to forget the itch.

[Elysium]

Kit Rowan

XP:
Interrogation +1
Acrobatics +2

Lore:
Acrobatics: Aerial Crunches
Overgiving: Permanent Effects
Overgiving: Examples
Lore of Self: Daughter of Two Worlds

Notes: Not much experience to be had, but this thread was awesome! I loved the post-overgiving development. Kit is really starting to abhor her Father! If you have any questions, let me know.

and so, the journey continues...