'cause I live for the fire | June Catch-all

[peripheries]

Who: Kaworu Nagisa, and buds
What: Memory share, Plinko recovery + more
When: June
Where: Throughout the trench

Content Warnings: Experimentation, medical, death seeking behavior, will add as needed.

Comments

for Deku

[peripheries]

[They're sitting in the yard near Bone House in gaze, stretched out in the grass, appreciating the change in seasons as insects are replaced by colorful fruit and warm sun.

It's a gentle heat, not the stifling heat that has plagued his world since Second Impact (since his birth). It makes him feel content and not lethargic like it did when he was in Japan.

Izuku is keeping him company. Or watching over him. Or both. Letting him do as he feels as they wait for Paul to return. Kaworu appreciates it. He doesn't like being alone and it seems as though Izuku has understood that without words being exchanged between them, which is its own kind of comfort.

He yawns and reaches near his side to pick up an apple, bright red like his eyes, and offers it to Izuku. It has a little bite taken out of it, just to be a little cheeky, but also to share food to show his affection.

When Izuku takes the apple and their fingers brush, a memory begins to play.]

lets go ladies

[wannasmash]

cw: ableism-flavored Quirk discrimination, harassment/bullying (verbal, mention of physical)

It's a scrubby dead yard with batcat skeletons in distant eyesight, but it feels like a garden with the fruit of summer and Kaworu here. Midoriya came over early knowing Kaworu would like company. To Midoriya, it's an easy sort of kindness done without thinking about it.

He doesn't see the bitten apple as cheeky. It's a kind of closeness. He thinks nothing of taking the fruit. With those who are close to him, he sheds his usual reserved habits and touches his fingers freely...

It's becoming quite rare nowadays, but... He possesses no Quirk at all.

The doctor's words from earlier that day are drowned out by the computer playing a video of a well-muscled blonde man carrying disaster victims out of a wreckage.

"A super-cool hero like that," the small child with green hair breathes as he shakily points at the screen and looks back at a diminutive woman. His eyes are brimming with tears at the prospect of his dream being crushed. "That's... what I wanna be."

The woman doesn't have freckles or a riotous bush of hair, but she is surely the mold from which Izuku was cut, right down to the open expression worn for others and closed gentle gestures. Inko runs and collapses against him and the chair. She wraps arms around them both and sobs,

"I'm sorry, Izuku. I'm sorry!"

It's a bright day. Five small children, as yet unmolded by the notions of good and bad, march across a large trunk bridging over a shallow creek. The foremost of them slips and tumbles in. Izuku, the last, is down wading into the water before he can think. He sticks out his tiny hand, eyes huge with concern.

"Need help? Can you stand? Hope you didn't hit your head!"

The soaked little boy with red eyes and ash blonde hair immediately grits his teeth in outrage.

An older version of the same boy wearing a black school uniform, a bit of smoke around him from his Quirk, declares with brash confidence, "You're totally Quirkless. And you think you can rub shoulders with me?!"

"Wa...Wait, no, Kacchan," a skinny, sweating Izuku stammers pathetically, scooting right up against the wall to and bonking his own head with zero dignity. (Why is he on the floor in the middle of class? Half the students are out of their seats. All order has been lost here.) "I wasn't... saying I could compete with you! Not at all! I mean it. It's just... been my dream. Since I was little. And well... There's no harm in trying..."

Lapsing into trembling appeasements and a defensive non-smile, he can hardly bear the air made stifling by his own improper breathing. His classmates seem to blend together in a single dark silhouette as they laugh at him.

"What can you even do?!"

Izuku is older, shoulders filling out his loose house clothes. He's smiling, bright with a quiet, sure confidence that more recent friends have come to know in him. He's showing a letter to a sweet-faced woman sitting on a cushion at a low table bearing half-peeled satsumas--his mother, plumper over the years.

She's sniffing back the tears pouring over her round cheeks. Her expression is an unfettered mixture of sorrow, happiness, and pride as she looks at the strong young man across from her with scars on his right hand.

"When you were little, you'd pretend to be All Might... You'd try to help people in trouble and come home covered in bruises... because you didn't have that sort of power. As your mother... I felt I had to protect you. That's how it was, for so long."

Izuku sniffs back his own tears as his throat tightens in sympathetic emotion. Inko continues,

"But now, seeing that look on your face… It's like I don't have to worry anymore."

They both burst into tears, absolutely comical in the amount of them, absolutely heartfelt.

Midoriya didn't have friends as a child, but he still had a loving home. He got good grades. He had a hobby, one which he threw himself into so much that, as he mentioned to Kaworu, he barely thought about how lonely he looked. That small, skinny Midoriya didn't have the weight he carries now. He's grown so much. He can cultivate healthy competition, he is no longer paralyzed or pushed around, and he can protect and care for others. The more he comes into his own, the more he can act on his primary motivation: saving people.

The memories dart past each other in a turbulent exchange. All at once, Midoriya is released from the killing hold of those giant hands, and he struggles for breath against present-Kaworu as he finds the weight of his own limbs again.

It's a horrible thing, to put that on someone, to goad them into killing him. It's a horrible thing to have that be his last wish. It's a horrible thing that Kaworu wanted to die. It must be the past, because it matches up with what Kaworu has told him. He cannot define Kaworu by it, he who always insists that his scarred friends can still have a bright future. Who he sees is not a cruelly (gently) smiling angel, but a person who desperately reaches for what it means to be close to someone and asks about human emotions with a genuine curiosity. This person has become very dear to him.

"Kaworu-kun--" It is both like and unlike the desperate protests of the other boy in the robot. For one, tears flow from Midoriya's eyes before he's quite aware he's shed them. Midoriya clutches him without thought, a hand cradling his head as if he can save him from being crushed. He collapses into unschooled sobs.

"Don't--Don't go--Don't die like that, please, no... no..." The apple lies forgotten.

[peripheries]

The memories blur the world around him, as though suddenly he doesn't know where he is in time and space. He doesn't even know who he is when Midoriya's memories come flooding in. It's like he's watching it and remembering all at once, he both is and is not Izuku Midoriya.

Then someone is touching his face and he remembers that he can't be Izuku because Izuku is right here in front of him. There are tears on his face, they drip down onto Kaworu's hand leaving a wet residue and there's a firm grip on his face. He blinks and stares into green eyes.

"I told you. I told you I was already dead before I came here." His voice isn't cutting, but gentle, as if reminding Midoriya of that simple fact that shouldn't be forgotten, though sometimes he forgets it. Still, he's more interested in other things-

"Hey Izuku, was that your mom? You look like her. Act a bit like her too. And how did you get a Quirk now."

[wannasmash]

If he stops clutching him, he will lose him. He will float into those killing hands again, and this time, Midoriya will not experience obliteration in memory, but have to watch, which is worse. This is what Midoriya's fingers tell him now as his thumbs desperately trace Kaworu's cheekbones. (He very carefully does not think of the black sand beach, which is easy, because he did not see it happen.)

Midoriya always lets people tell him things in their own time, for their sake. He reaches out a gentle hand to them, not forceful. It seems odd that the one who was hurt is the one trying to reassure Midoriya now. He holds Kaworu, but it's like holding air for all the good it does his heart as it collides with his ribs.

"--My mom? Yes--and my Quirk appeared late--Listen." The gush of tears won't stop, but he tries to explain despite his shaking voice. "Didn't I say I'd protect you? I haven't forgotten. I meant it. Why did you do that? You wouldn't do something like that again, right?"

He punctuates this last word almost forcefully, pleading.

[peripheries]

Kaworu makes a noise. It's not angry, or even annoyed, it's simply uncomfortable. It accompanies a jerk of his head as if to remove it from Midoriya's grasp even if he knows there's remotely enough force behind it.

It's apparent that he does not understand being held like this, both what he should feel and why someone would do it in the first place. It's impossible to explain the desire to keep someone present who didn't know people could find him lost in the first place. Someone who can't even think they don't need protection, because they've never considered it at all.

"It's already done. You can't protect me against it anymore." Not cold, factual, almost gentle, as if explaining it to a child who is unaware of the ways of the world. "Is your mom nice? What does she smell like? How do you know she's your mom?"

[wannasmash]

He drops his hands and lets him go immediately at the first sign of Kaworu's discomfort. Whatever relief he might feel from clutching Kaworu to him is superseded by not being a bother to him, or worse, giving him a touch that revolts somehow. It can stifle and smother, and Kaworu has had more than enough shackles in his past. Midoriya's hands curl in front of him instead, elbows close to his sides, a withdrawn, meek gesture.

"I--I don't want you to do something like that again," he blubbers, completely ignoring Kaworu's questions. "You're my--"

He doesn't know what precisely to call him, though he has let others use boyfriend and the like freely. It's adequate to describe him, but imperfect all the same. He's spoken with Paul about the inadequacies of language. Midoriya does friendship intensely enough that he was already mired (like legs tangled together) when Kaworu suggested giving him his first kiss.

But that word, my, carries a presumption. Midoriya has been shy about asserting what others do so casually--my friend, my husband, my daughter. Midoriya gives his heart, and, though it should be given freely, he forgets to ask for something back, something as simple as a word.

Perhaps it's for the best here today. If Midoriya fails him in some way, Kaworu should recognize his own worth regardless of him. Instead he says lowly,

"I don't want you to think of yourself that way, or take yourself away, or be lost. Making someone kill you is cruel. I think that person would remember you anyway. How could anyone forget you? And--" with an undercurrent of anger, not directed at him, he presses his lips into a line, "don't say the people who raised you did, they don't count. They didn't treat you like a person."

[peripheries]

"I'm... what?" Kaworu jerks further away, body tense like a spring about to uncoil. Or maybe a snake prepared to strike. "What am I to you? Why won't you say it? Am I only something if I can fight like you? Fight me now then."

There's a vague awareness that he's being difficult. But he doesn't know any other way to be. He wants Midoriya's protection, he wants his affection, he wants his attraction. He wants all these things and he doesn't know how to get them. Or know if he has them already. Kaworu's fingers curl and uncurl, gripping the air like giant metal hands wrapped around his body, gentle, until they weren't.

"Isn't it cruel to let someone suffer slowly if you could end things quickly? Isn't a fast end a kindness that you should endure for someone else?" He doesn't think Midoriya will agree, but maybe he can understand a little. Midoriya is good at understanding. "I won't go anywhere. Or be lost. You could keep me here..."

For Diluc

[peripheries]

[Kaworu goes to find Diluc in the usual spot, the Roost. It's been awhile since he'd seen the man and he had much to tell him. All about his improvement with the Lyre, about his new home, about Paul and Izuku. However, when he reaches the bar, he is told by the staff that Diluc is not in. Thankfully, a few recognize him as a personal friend and direct him to a rather grand looking house. Unlike the Bone Mansion, which can look forbidding and almost decrepit despite being well kept, it seems a touch more modern and welcoming.

Kaworu, confirms the house with the information written on his hand and then approaches. Despite his lyre playing improvements, his manners are still a work in progress. So when he reaches the door, he immediately tries to just... pull it open before even trying to knock.]

Hey! Diluc? Do you live here?

[searingwing]

[Something on the roof shifts. A large green dragon peers down at him just before the door opens. The first thing that could be noticed is Diluc is moving a little stiffly as he stands in the doorway.

His long red hair is pulled back in a high ponytail exposing the bandages around his neck. He brings up a bandaged hand to rest it on the doorframe.

Usually refined looking he has a simple shirt and pants on, yet he looks as noble born as ever. Behind him there is a soft warm light the edge of a couch with soft blankets on top.]

I do. Please come in, [He steps away from the doorframe but not before the faded hand print marking the side of his face is visible. He moves to allow Kaworu inside with his omen looking at them from his place stretched out before the fire. The dragon is about the size of a large cat right now.]

[peripheries]

[Kaworu on the other hand is looking well. He's grown a little taller and his silver hair is pulled back into a short ponytail at the base of his neck.

He smiles at Diluc, trying to match the nobility the man exudes though he can't quite get it right. Then he enters the house, looking around and taking in how it is large like the one he lives in but feels different. Quiet and like there's a certain amount of pride in how it's set.]

Are you well? Your movement is a bit stiff.

Apologies, I thought I hit this.

[searingwing]

A number of troubles came out of those portals that showed us our homes. I assisted with as many as I could and got injured along the way.

[Diluc says as he walks towards the kitchen. The living room is done in earthy colors with traces of silver and blue added in. The couch is suitable for many and the arm chairs for those who don’t wish to be next to someone else. It feels like a home.

He gestures for Kaworu to follow him.] If you would like a drink, I can make it for you. I’m glad you didn’t run into trouble while the portals were around.

no worries!

[peripheries]

I saw one of my brethren. Though it was much smaller than it actually was back home. Which is good, it limited the amount of damage it could do.

[At the mention of a drink, he thinks. In the past, he would have only drank water and only when he wanted, not when asked. But he's grown in the past few months, living in a house with others.]

Do you have tea?

[searingwing]

[His mind flashes back to the tower as he pauses at the kitchen doorway.] I have some tea, yes.

[Considering how resources are in this city. It is only the small amount he acquired from the portal to Mondstadt. As he turns there's a glint of blue and gold from a delicate-looking cuff on his ear. A faded hand print marks the side of his face.]

How small was it? Ruin Guardians were not diminished in size. Then again, it could deal with the power involved. The machines of the ancients are only so powerful. [He walks over to the pantry and pulls the sliding door aside. He selects a small canister off a shelf. There are small potted plants of unusual types sitting by a window. One looks like the only flower in the yard, a bell-like flower emitting a soft light. The others are delicate shades of white and orange.]

For Pal

[peripheries]

[The first time he touches something, a simple cart in the market, and the imbued with memories and feelings slip into his mind and heart like drowning wave (or perhaps a poison), he has to stumble to the side of the street to be sick. So many images, voices, feelings of someone and someone's he doesn't know. Paul had fretted and Kaworu couldn't explain how these emotions suddenly took over him like a demonic possession.

The second time, he managed to simply collapse against a wall and ride it out, slowly picking the stranger's memories from his own like fishing out smooth stones in a pool. That helps Paul realize he's seen this before and takes Kaworu to one Palamedes Sextus, who (disappointingly) does not have sparklers this time and but does have experience with this sort of thing.

So Kaworu sits in his bunker, watching Paul prepare to teach him... whatever this is.]

Paul said you talk to things. [That is NOT what Paul said.] But it's too much. It all comes in and it... hurts.

[megatheorem]

[When darkbloods start having a problem with psychometry, Palamedes doesn't notice it's happening other than a strange sort of uptick in how invasive his own has been. To have an ability that is sometimes purely involuntary has always been a reality, a fussy inconvenience whittled down with time and practice and polish into something that only sometimes punches him clean in the face with memories and feelings that aren't his own.

So he has that going for him, as teaching this to somebody else goes. Sixth psychometry is shaded with necromancy and so not quite one-to-one with, as far as he can tell, the unfiltered and untethered nature of the darkblood version, but the ideas are the same.

He's gathered a handful of things to set on the tiny, book-crowded kitchen table and explained none of them: a notebook and several pens, what appears to be a wind-up toy shaped like 'thing on wheels,' several of the odd ceramic figures appearing around down that he pointedly leaves clustered to themselves, and a mug with a cartoon squid drawn on it (Viktor's, famously full of tequila at the fireworks party). Here goes.]

That's— almost a decent approximation, sure. It's not like a conversation; you can't reason with the ghost-within-a-thing, which I'm sure you've figured out. [a little gesture from where he is fiddling with something across the room, which turns out to be a pair of gloves he brings over to sit folded neatly alongside the other things.] They're not even all ghosts.

[But he does talk to objects out of habit, that's true. He sits, arranging his mystery objects in a neat row, besides the cloister of weird dolls, which is for later.]

In my experience, there's no 'off switch.' Gloves can dull the immediacy and sometimes the urgency, but strong enough residual energies— from someone's memory or feelings— are going to get through, anyway. Still, you can have this pair, just in case. Let's start at the beginning: can you tell me what it's like for you when it "all comes in"?

[peripheries]

[Kaworu already has a headache. And so he tries to take everything that Palamedes is saying in, but he thinks he just ends up blinking foolishly at most of it. But the basics have come through at least: these are thoughts and feelings of others, coming through via the objects that mean or meant something to them.]

Like standing under a waterfall. It all comes in at once. It's not ordered in time or space. It's... driven by their feelings.

[megatheorem]

[He nods, accepting the metaphorical explanation like it's very good and technical, actually. Psychometry is not a very precise science, after all, laboring as it does under the lingering impact of emotion, of memory.

So actually, Kaworu is doing great, and Palamedes gives him a little smile and a nod like a proper schoolteacher impressed with his maths, or what-have-you.]

Good; you're understanding the basics. Emotion can sear the energy of a thing, more or less; usually, the more recent emotions will sit on top, but not every time.

[He picks up a pen and uses it to nudge the wheeled toy closer to Kaworu, so he doesn't spoil it overmuch with his own emotions.]

This is Rio's, you know, Viktor's omen? The lizard. Try reading this; I promise, it's only good things. Easy to get used to.

[It is in fact full of Happy Big Lizard Moments, because that's how Rio lives her life: enjoying wheeled toys and trapping Palamedes under her giant head when she's done with the former.]

[peripheries]

It seems like whatever is strongest rises to the top, regardless of when it happened. Powerful emotions leave powerful scars.

[That's perhaps a dark way to look at it but he doesn't necessarily mean it as only a bad thing. Humans are driven by their most powerful emotions, so it would make sense that that is what they would leave behind if one could see the traces of feelings once felt in a space.

He reaches over to touch the toy, his own fond feelings rising to the surface as he thinks about Shinji-kun in his little wagon. Perhaps Rio would also like a wagon...?]

[megatheorem]

I like to think of them as 'records'. 'Trace' is too soft.

[And "scars" is kind of dark, yeah, implied. Kaworu can call it whatever he likes, but in the interest of sharing this thing: records.

He shuts up though, after that, to wait for Kaworu to experience the toy. It's another rush of emotion and visions, clearer for how few of them and how fresh they are: being nudged around by the snout here in the bunker, bumping repeatedly into Palamedes' leg while he very earnestly tries to continue working; in the grass outside, abandoned on a tilt while Rio chases a bird around; then the simple feelings of fun and warm, all over the place until Kaworu is tired of it and lets go.

Palamedes waits, then,] So?

For Ammy

[peripheries]

[After returning from the Nephele-that-never-was, Kaworu collapses, exhausted from having the dimension seep into his mind and try to twist him into something that fit better into that world. Something that he never was or wanted to be. Every second was a fight.

So he sleeps, at least for a day, maybe longer. He's roused by Paul to eat occasionally, before returning back to dreamless slumber. When he finally is awake enough to get out of bed, the sun is shining in through all the windows in the mansion and he can feel the warmth through the glass. It's a comforting warmth, not the stifling heat of a post Second Impact world, and it draws him in.

He steps out the front door, blinking in the bright light which subsequently pulls a sneeze out of him. Rubbing his nose, then his eyes, he looks around only to see a familiar face(?) on the lawn that he hadn't noticed before. Or maybe she only suddenly appeared.]

Ammy?

[brushy]

[ amaterasu prides herself in visiting so many people from time to time, and the bone house with all it's rowdy boys (that she had once heard enjoy sloppy kissing, so she's sure she can give plenty of those) was no exception. she's found a tidy patch of grass to roll around in, rubbing her back along sprouting celestial bloons wherever she was and kicking her legs. stopping, for a full second— before going at it again and perking her head (and ears) up high when called.

she has quite the hair day, having just rubbed around a— oh, that explains it. raising herself, the mother wolf catches something between her teeth, the suspected unidentified object she was rolling all over, and bring it over to him with a little prance in her gate.

"good afternoon, kaworu!"

ah . . . he can't quite see what she's got in her mouth unless he reaches for it, and neither does she give it to him. she does come closer, but paces away with swaying hips and a lowered muzzle. haha, you can't catch her. you can't catch her.

(you can, it's just a game of hard to get.) ]

[peripheries]

[He watches her curiously for a few moments. Her desire to roll around in the grass would be familiar to anyone who has seen a dog before. Kaworu, though, has not seen many dogs in his lifetime so his interest in this seemingly odd behavior is quite piqued.

When he approaches, he raises an eyebrow when she dodges away when he tries to take what's in her mouth to see what it is. Surely, she brought it to show him?

He reaches for it, oblivious to the fact that she'll dart out of the way at the second attempt as well.]

What is it you have there?

[brushy]

[ correct! she's turning her head again when he comes too close, swaying her hips at this point and circling back to him. what confusing signals!

"i will allow you a look, if you promise to throw it."]

[peripheries]

Why would you protect something if the point is to throw it away? Shouldn't you hold it close?

[Well... he's clearly not quite equipped for this game. But he reaches for the object again, clearly still curious at least.]

[brushy]

[ ”it is fun to keep away, and it builds the anticipation for a good chase.”

ah— plop, drops a very slobbered thing into kaworu’s hand. it . . . .





it’s a shoe.







a chewed up, slobbery shoe. and for more laughs, it may be a bonehouse resident’s shoe. rip to whoever is missing a single shoe. ]