CLOSED STARTER for @steelbuilt, at the wake.
It’s an ugly thing, to feel like this. Restless in her lack of sadness, restless in her frustrations, restless in the way this house seems to breathe with the past and Mila thinks she would rather choke. It isn’t as if she looks back on her time with the academy as bad, but life has taken such a turn since her years of donning superhero clothes that it’s hard not to wonder if Harold would judge her for it. The unadmittable truth is, of course, that she cares for his judgement.
Either way, she is itching with it, the pressure for goodness and the desire for bad. When there’s yet another masked figure entering her peripheral, Mila gives in. Pheromones spread, like muscle memory or riding a bike, the mental flex of it so natural. How often had she done this before, in this exact room? Letting the chemicals spread, treating the power like a toy rather than something deserving of responsibility. How often hadn’t she been chided by the recently deceased for misusing it?
The masked Enigma comes her way, as they always do. Attracted, like following a scent, a comic book character floating after freshly baked pies. Mila stands, leaning against a high-backed arm chair, watching them come closer and closer, drawn like moth to flame before doing that little mental flex again, the pheromone dissipating, the spell undone. “Shit, sorry,” she says, surprise on her face as if she’s only just realised what she’d been doing, “I didn’t mean to — my, er, powers. They tend to have a mind of their own when I’m especially emotional.”
