Twinges and Chaos

The Purple Suitcase

“The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.” 
― Margaret Atwood

After carrying in her bags Twitch had been aware of the delicacy which the little purple suitcase was handled.  He had let it go with an odd look in the begining, but it never truly left his mind.  Even if he outwardly acted apathetic, curiousity was prevelant --especially when it came to people.  Or person.  A very blonde, very crafty, very infuriating person with eyes bluer then he'd never seen on a real person before.  

What truly struck him as odd about the purple suitcase, was that after they left it in her room, the next time he poked his head in was that it was gone.  Not a trace of it anywhere.  She had pushed her bed into a corner, attached hooks and a beam to the ceiling and set up some sort of crazy jungle-gym. Besides that, her room remained completely impersonal.  He knew she had a sizable collection of clothes, because it wasn't like she wore the same thing everyday.  

However, all her clothes, perfumes (He knew she had at least 3 of those, the citrus one was his favorite.), and anything that wasn't part of her gear was always shut up neatly in drawers or the closet. Nothing to give away personality or taste beyond her work.  That is, besides the speakers she had set up, she liked to play music loud enough to shake the floors when she danced.  

He never saw the purple suitcase again, the grey suitcase showed up ocasionally, so did the two duffle bags, but not the purple one with the tiny shamrock charm.  

She had a lot of secrets. Twitch found that it both made him extra cautious but also ...intruiging. Everyone on the team had secrets, had history, no one even seemed especially comfortable with their own name.  The way Mayhem kept hers, well she did it religiously.  That was the other thing, she had the tiny celtic-cross tattoo on her side.  It was positioned just under her armpit, behind her left breast, right in a place where you couldn't see it unless she was stretching her arms up in the air and wearing one of those sports bras she kept showing up in.  It was distracting.  

Twitch was familiar with tattoos, people with tattoos, tattoos told stories about people.  They sometimes told lies too.  His own were a shield to block out and protect him from... ...from before. In his experiance however, Twitch found that people who got religious tattoos were generally religious themselves.  May never mentioned going to church, he had seen her working out or cooking big breakfasts and using Goldilocks as a test-taster on Sunday mornings, and he'd never seen her pray.  Then again, she didn't seem like the type to do anything that personal whenever there was a chance of her getting caught.  

Still, there too many pieces that didn't add up about her.  The purple suitcase, the unmentioned tattoo, the way her room just looked like a (albeit wierd) public gym with a bed...  It was as if worked very hard to keep herself hidden.  Anything that would make her a full person, she locked away out of sight.  

He never asked her about the purple suitcase.  Even years later, she didn't talk about it.  However at that point of years later, she had pictures of Kaylee framed and on a desk, and her mother's mug sitting pretty as a book end, even the small jewelry box from when she was little --the one with the ballerina that played 'Danny Boy', she even let that sit out in plain sight.  He even caught her twisting the knob and listening to it sometimes.  Years later he figured out what she had locked up in the purple suitcase.  Even though she never told him and he never asked.  

It had contained all that made her human.