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10.06.2015
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10.08.2015
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Leif made it to the gym without another incident. She plugged her music in to the stereo so it would play loud, dusted her hands, and then turned to the uneven bars. She was practically shaking. Slipping off her shoes, she set them aside, as well as her dog tags.
Stripping out of her shirt, she wore just her green sports bra and shorts. Folding her shirt, she put it aside as well, then went to stand on the mat beneath the the lower bar. She looked up at it, staring hard as she contemplated what she wanted to do.
Josh stood against a wall, hands stuffed into his pockets as they seemingly always were. He'd never seen somebody actually do the uneven bars in person... or the parallel bars, for that matter. He couldn't even do monkey bars without hearing the protesting creaking of playground-grade metal... cheap stuff, that.
This was what Leif did every day? Dang. He was set to intently watch her, but his eyes had also caught the glint of a set of dog tags. Interesting... Leif hadn't struck him as military.
Leif took a deep breath. Then, she moved the board that would help her get to the top bar into place. "Do me a favor?" she asked, without looking back at Josh. "Move the board once I get up there?" She lightly kicked it, then backed off a bit.
Waiting for her song to start, she took a running leap at the perfect time, easily getting up to the bars to start her routine.
Watching Leif rock, flip and turn around up there was hypnotizing, but Josh shook it off long enough to do the job she asked him to do. He took a hold of it and pulled it away like Leif asked, then covered his mouth with his hand and backed off to watch the rest of the routine.
Resisting the urge to shout or loudly gulp down air whenever Leif did something to defy gravity was a toughie, but the guy managed. Seriously, though, Josh was built for power. Not... not this.
It was obvious that the longer the routine went on, the more relaxed Leif became. This was her element. This was her passion. By the time she caught the lower bar her last time, she was smiling again.
Flipping like she needed to, she launched herself into the air, away from the bars, and spun through the air. Her landing didn't stick, however. She stumbled a step, falling into the mat. Her weight, however slight it was, worked against her sometimes.
Still, she was chuckling, having rolled onto her back on the mat as she tried to catch her breath.
Josh ran up to her, worried for all of a second and a half before Leif began chuckling. Man, that scenario played out like four different ways in an instant in his mind, and all of them ended with her breaking something.
"Wow... you're impossible, Leif..." Josh said, standing over her and holding his knees. "If you stuck that landing, I woulda called like... I woulda accused you of using cheat codes for the game of life or something!"
"But to support your weight like that n' throw yourself... that's not fair!" Josh laughed. "You've got both. Relative to your size I guess, anyhow. ... Maybe you have like, ant-powers."
"Yeah, no problem. Leaving already?" Josh walked over to her stuff, seeing her shirt and everything else... as well as those dog tags. That's right... he'd just caught notice of them earlier, but had lost track when he thought he was about to see somebody become a quadriplegic.
He brought the necklace back, frowning a tiny bit as he handed them to her. It reminded him of the earlier... 'event' with himself, her and Lucien.
"I'm..." Josh hung his head. "Man... that really sucks. I'm sorry, Leif."
That was really putting the conversation with the three of them back in the hallway in a whole new light, but he didn't dare mention anything even tangentially related to Lucien. That wasn't going to be good for Leif's mood.
"... Y'know, I think... you don't really need me to tell you this," Josh scratched his chin. "But I think he'd be proud of what you're doing right now. Don'tcha agree?"
"Well, I mean..." Josh stretched out one of his legs. "Being here, it gives us a chance to do something useful with our powers, I guess. I mean, we got 'em, might as well rock 'em. If the Justice League was real, I'd join that but this seems like its the next best thing."
He looked back to Leif. "And hey, gymnastics is something to be proud of. So's standing up for what you believe in, even if it ain't the easiest thing to do."
Less than a year. So it was a fresh wound, a recent loss. He wondered if it was that or if she had lost a much older brother as a younger girl.
"I see." Josh crossed his legs and placed his hands on his knees. "Can't even imagine what it must be like to lose your best friend like that. I'm an only child. But if I had to take a guess, it's that kind of sadness that makes you feel like you'd never be happy again for the rest of your life. Am I far off?"