Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Five (section)

===Maternal Instinct===


As the girls and their families wandered outside, leaving the caterers to clean up, Farah and Remilia nearly raced off to their own homes to do last-minute packing and shopping, while the others left more sedately.  As they flew, Remilia and her mother avoided serious talk, just catching up on things.  It wasn’t until they were already in the Dorn manor and Remilia was unpacking her things that they finally broached the hardest subject.

Olivia mentioned it first.  “Sweetheart, I don’t want to ask this and I know you don’t want to answer, but…your arms,” she said hesitantly.  “Are you feeling better?”

“I am,” Remilia said resolutely.  She chucked a shirt in the laundry servitor’s bin before turning to face her mother.  “I’ve stopped.  Probably for good.”

“That’s reassuring,” Olivia sighed.  “Can I ask why?”

“Why…I did it, or why I stopped?” Remilia asked.

“Both.  Either.”

Remilia thought that one over.  She sat on the top of an unopened suitcase and pondered.  “Well, I guess…I did it because I just hurt that much,” she said softly.  “When Dad…hit me, when I was on the verge of failing that Collegiate Product Physics course…Morticia getting shot.”

Olivia looked away as Remilia recited the list.  Her daughter continued.  “As for why I stopped…Uncle Magnus helped a lot, Freya helped a lot, Jake helped a little…but I also got a new perspective.”

“What do you mean?” Olivia asked.

“I met a guy on the trip.  A really sweet guy,” Remilia said, half-smiling to herself.  “He was so smart…we just sat and talked for hours.  Turns out…well, it’s his business, but his little sister cut too.  She died, in fact,” Remilia said sadly.

“That’s horrible,” Olivia said with a wince.

“Yeah.  When he saw my arms…he got tense, yeah, but we just talked after that,” Remilia said.  “We sat in my room and talked, for hours.  I mean, we had to wait until he was off-shift, but we talked as much as we could.  Just…life.  His growing up on a farm, my growing up on Terra…it felt so good to just bare my soul to someone,” she said.  “And without psychics involved.”

Olivia nodded sagely.  “Well, as long as that’s all you bared to him,” she said.

Remilia struggled to hide an inappropriate giggle.  Her mother started.  “Remilia, you didn’t.”

She giggled.  “I didn’t say anything.”

“Tell me you didn’t have sex with some random crewer on the ship!” Olivia demanded, faint.

“Hey!” Remilia barked.  “He wasn’t some random crewer, he was some random officer!”

“Remilia!  I can’t believe you did that!” Olivia said, aghast.

“Why not?  He was sweet as candy,” Remilia said primly.  “Besides, four hours talking with him, seven times over the course of two months, did more for getting my head un-scrambled than a year in therapy could have.”  She smiled broadly at her mother’s horror.

“Remilia…oh, sweetheart, I thought you were going to choose better than that,” Olivia said.  “I know you were hurting, baby, but turning to sex for a passing relief doesn’t accomplish anything.”

“Mom, I already felt better,” Remilia said patiently.  “Shit, after seeing Jake bounce back from getting that badly hurt by a random asshole, I would have felt hollow if I just jumped in this guy’s bunk.  I made my choice and I’m better for it,” she said.  Her eyes narrowed.  “And here I thought you’d be proud of me for that.”

“Remilia, I’m…I mean, did you even know this man’s history?  You could have gotten sick with something, or pregnant!” Olivia said.

Remilia sighed.  “Give me some credit, Mom.  I wouldn’t have even considered it if we weren’t being safe.”  She crossed her legs on the suitcase and played with the hem of her fleece jacket.  “Besides, he needed someone to talk to as much as I did.  We spent hours just loafing around in my room, talking about school, about the news, about my trip…he was more than a pretty face, though he had that going too,” she added coyly.  “He was a friend.  Someone I could confide in.”

Olivia stared.  “Confide in?  Remilia, what if he tells someone?!”

Remilia shrugged.  “Who would notice, with all of Vicky’s tabloid dramabombs?  Besides, I never asked him to keep his mouth shut, and he was hardly the type to kiss and tell.”

“You didn’t even ask him not to tell anyone?” Olivia gaped.

Remilia finally let some of her mounting anger peek through.  “What exactly is the problem here, Mom?  That I had sex with a guy?  Or someone who wasn’t a noble?  Because I guarantee that he was better for my head than anything else that could have happened.  Is my mental health not more important than the family’s sacrosanct public image?”

Olivia snapped her mouth shut, fuming.  “Discretion is important, Remilia,” she said.

“And I was discreet.  Aside from him, the other four of us, the ship’s LO who was outright ordered to keep a lid on it by Venus, you, and Angela, not a soul knows,” Remilia said coldly.  “As for discretion being important, Mom, I think you should reflect on the fact that I felt that I had to leave in the first place because I couldn’t trust myself to stay here until Alanaster.”

“What has that got to do with anything?” Olivia asked.

“Forget it,” Remilia said in disgust, climbing off the suitcase and starting to unpack it.  She turned her back on her mother and pulled assorted clothes out of the container.

For a few minutes, Olivia was quiet.  When she spoke again, however, her voice was softer.  “Remilia, I’m sorry.  I just don’t want you to be hurt again.”

“I’m not expecting to see him again, Mom, if that’s what you mean.  He’s on Mars, right now, I could go see him.  But I won’t.  That’s what we wanted,” Remilia said, unpacking her jewelry.

“I mean…”  Remilia heard her mother struggle to find words, before finally sighing.  “Remilia, I just don’t understand.”

“What part?” Remilia asked.

“All of it,” Olivia said heavily, dropping onto the bed next to her daughter.  Remilia looked at her in surprise.  “I just don’t get it, baby.”

“Mom…”

“Like…like cutting.  Why do it at all?  And why did you go straight to Magnus instead of asking me first?  And why did you need to leave the house for three months?  And why turn to sex with a total stranger?  Isn’t that as bad as cutting?” Olivia asked, tears gathering in her eyes.

Remilia looked into her mother’s face and found her anger shrinking.  “Mom, I don’t know why hurting myself felt like a good idea at the time.  I can quote Magnus and half a dozen other people as to why they think people do it, but what the fuck do they know?  If there were a right answer, all of them would have said the same thing.”  She set her jewelry box down.

“Magnus…I didn’t go to him first.  I didn’t do anything of the sort, actually,” she said.  “I tried to hide it.  Dad confronted me and tried to scare me into stopping,” she said with a trace of old bitterness.  “When that didn’t work, I just kept hiding it until Freya figured out what had happened and outright ordered me to stop.  When I realized that the others were figuring it out, I went to Miranda.”

“Why?”

“Because I trust her, Mom, so deeply,” Remilia said quietly.  “My god, she can see into people so deeply that they literally can’t lie without her knowing…and yet she’s so sweet, so innocent, so kind…I thought if anyone could help me figure it out, it would be her.  She said her father had solved problems like mine before with people, so I went to him to figure things out.”

She sat down next to her mother, pushing the suitcase aside.  “Magnus said that I was hurting myself metaphysically, badly enough that my soul was in real danger.  That alone would have scared me straight, I bet, but he helped me a little.”