deercountry | Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

Entry tags:

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

Who: Johnny, Daniel, Ortus, Gideon Nav's Exquisite Corpse, Paul, Kaworu, Deku, Harrow, Maybe more?
What: Kidnapping, Forced Adoption, Getting these kids away from the Emperor
When: Shortly after boatgate
Where: The Bone House and Cobra Kai

Content Warnings: Probably references to Murder, Manipulation, Johnny Lawrence.

Prompts and Mingle will be in the comments.

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His throat works as he swallows several times, his hand burning as if touched by angelic fire. He wants to take Kaworu in his arms. He does not. There is an ocean between them, an impossible stretch of water Midoriya struggles to find a way to cross as he breathes quickly through his nose as if readying for a sudden escape. He hears, as if through cotton, Paul leave the room.

He has no notion of how many moments it takes for him to follow, stepping backward through the door, then looking over his shoulder, unable to take his eyes off Kaworu. Losing that line of sight is a blade released to fall and cut part of himself away. He walks slowly down the hall with a new wound and stops when he finds it blocked. (Really it's not, but he would have to go around, close, and he wants to know why.)

"Yes," he says with the immediacy of sure (obvious) knowledge. His thick voice does not match Paul's fervor. Paul is looking back at him in a hallway. There is nowhere else for Midoriya to look except at the slim black-sheathed blade of a person. Yet somehow Midoriya has perfected the art of looking straight ahead at him without looking at him.

"You proved it on the ship."

[The arrow passes through him like air. There's a hideous freedom to feeling nothing. He does not even want to reach out and wipe the tear stains from beneath Midoriya's moon eyes flooded with an echoing hollow of grief.

(His fingers keep twitching at his side. A tiny pulse, one-two-three-four. He matched those freckles to the stars.)

The manifestation of this freedom is that the idea that has taken shape in his mind doesn't concern him as it once would have, for the sake of not introducing an uncontrolled variable to an already volatile situation. For the sake of sense, of reason, of bald self-preservation.]

We're calling the Reckoning.

[He turns to continue down the stairs, no longer blocking Midoriya's way, adding his coda over his shoulder. He might be heard by other ears, far from this place. He hopes that he is.]

And we're putting a curse on this house.

He closes his scarred hand over his, strong and sure. He's never been able to refuse someone clutching him and needing to be saved, and he can't let Kaworu fall into an abyssal sky. He pulls Kaworu to him in a swift but gentle movement, enveloping him with his other arm like a blanket on a cold day. (It's the height of summer.) He cradles his head where the softest hairs meet the nape of his neck.

"You don't need to be worthy or deserving. I don't think that's how love works. You're a person, Kaworu-kun. You're my person," he says fiercely. "So I have to protect the good I see in you. Don't throw it away. I don't want to fight you. I want to be with you too."

Edited (lord have mercy on the punctuation) 2022-08-01 19:24 (UTC)

[ Daniel's lip twitches.

Because it's so very hard to hear someone say the words leaf flavour with such seriousness without laughing. And he doesn't want to laugh, since it'd feel like a pretty insensitive thing to do when Gideon only just returned from the dead and is clearly still not fully back to herself. But god, it's hard. It's really hard. He struggles, but Daniel does manage to keep the laugh to just that lip twitch.

Mister Miyagi would be proud, he tells himself. ]

Don't worry, I'll pick a good leaf.

[ .. okay, he couldn't fully resist that. But it doesn't sound like he's making fun of her as much as he's just having some private amusement - and he is already getting to work, putting some water into a kettle onto the fire and moving to grab some of the teabags he's been moving into the dojo. Because it's not like Johnny would have tea at ready. ]

You should sit down though, to spare your energy. [ He gestures at a few nearby chairs. Nothing fancy, given that it's a dojo and all, but it's a space to sit. ] You're not feeling any side effects?

[ He figures that it's probably safer to talk about the physical aspect of it than the mental or emotional one, so he doesn't feel as bad about bringing this up through that question. ]

On the ship, Paul went against everything Midoriya believed in. Midoriya would have stopped him by force without hesitation if he had been able to at the time. Now Paul comes to his defense against the fear that Midoriya will be seen as weak, in a reflexive manner imprinted on him by how he was raised, as if that vigilance will protect anyone from the pain within.

It's Midoriya's kindness that gives him strength, not weakness, but it hurts so much.

He still feels terrible for being a bother when he originally came along to help. Instead, he failed to get Kaworu to leave with him, and now he's crying in the back of this man's truck. With Paul so close, Midoriya's body expects to be enveloped in the arms of someone who loves him. (And Paul still loves him, or he would not have spoken these things at all.)

Inertia wins out. He doesn't want to get into it with Paul here in front of poor Daniel, because he doesn't know if he will hurt Paul with words or--what he wants more--weep in a clutching embrace unable to let go. He wraps his arms more securely around his buried head as if that will make up for the absent hug his body craves. He has told Paul this very thing, that it's okay to cry. Midoriya tends not to hold things in. If he does, something is terribly wrong, and there are too many things wrong already today.

He does as Daniel suggests and lets it out.

[ Big Boy is the manifestation of a locked door's soul. She's also a rather curious horse. The warning does not stop her, but where Gideon would aim straight for the source of those thoughts, Big Boy takes her time, as if trying hard not to spook someone.

One corner smells a little different. Fortunately, horses see a little better in the dark, and Big Boy catches a small, out-of-place shadow. She bows her head once again, letting it rest close to the bricks, thinking something like a concerned hello. ]

[ When you spend enough years living in a ruined shack, without luxuries like plates or utensils, your eating habits assume a certain form, as Kainé's have. She clearly likes it though, as she devours the rest of it quite quickly. ]

I thought it meant it'd have hair.

[ She doesn't like the idea of having to rely on somebody's charity for her food, but with the locals suddenly acting so hostile to Sleepers, and in particular to Vilebloods... she has to make do somehow. ]

If you need meat, I'll go hunting.

Now he is reminded that it is the seventh month. That doesn't mean anything definite, but the confluence of a Sleeper's birthday and Blessed Day happens often enough to set a precedent for the chance. He'll know in a matter of days if the Reckoning is his Patron. He thinks of Cloverfield, the lost almost childlike Pthumerian who gave him that picture of his mother. Midoriya regularly visits him when he can find him on the Farther Shores.

He does not entertain the vain notion that his possible Patron is like Cloverfield--or that he really knows Cloverfield well to begin with.

It doesn't matter if anyone hears the half-formed plan, because who can stop them? (Plenty of people in the moment, but the two of them would simply rise up and try again.) Midoriya can stop them, the two boys hurrying down the stairs. He knows what it is to be possessed by something inexorable: the need to do something to save someone.

"You'll die."

He's never so blunt when shooting a strategy down, but he's picked it up from others. Midoriya calls on that clear sight now, the focus that does away with his overthinking and lets the conclusion rise on his lips in protest. It's exhaled from a knot of life, not hollowness, a life that is desperate to protect another. (It wasn't enough during the storm.)

He's had no time to process anything that happened. Anger, sorrow, love, and betrayal fight for prominence in an uncertain future. He brushes aside the thought of what could have been in favor of what could still be, and what is. He sucks in a quick breath.

"She'll just curse or kill you as punishment. Then what's the point? It's the same as me staying here."

His voice shakes at the end, growling through his fangs. A life lost in this house or on its lawn to one god or another, and either way Kaworu has one less protector. That is not a victory. (And there is always the chance someone cannot come back.)

[ There's a moment, as the Saint of Patience regards Ortus's hand, stretched out before him — a moment of expressionlessness, a moment of befuddlement, a moment of sheer and uncomplicated surprise, a moment of doubt that compassion might be so readily offered, after so many conversations in which Augustine only pretended to be unaware of how uncomfortable he has, surely, always made poor Ortus Nigenad —

There's a moment, as he stares, and then he puts his cigarette in his mouth, shakes his hand in midair as if attempting to be rid of a cramp, or stray dog hairs, or maybe just the very fine cloud of tobacco particulates drifting away on the breeze outside — and then he clasps the hand of the Ninth (Secondary) in his own, holding it with a firm affection that lasts several seconds longer than the gesture actually requires. ]

There was a language, once, that I think I knew, as a child, [ he offers, in an all-too-casual tone — just making conversation, as you do. ] It made a point of differentiating between different forms of farewells, different closing statements — highlighting the differences between what you'd say to someone you expected to see in a few hours, or the next day, or at some uncertain point, or not until after you had both died and found each other somewhere in Heaven's copious acreage.

[ The expression on his face might, charitably, be called a smile. On the other hand, Ortus is assuredly no stranger to the rictus grin of a death mask. Perhaps this is somewhere between the two. ]

Au revoir, then, my dear boy; I do look forward to the recital — probably more than to the dinner party, unless young Paul recovers enough to take charge of the kitchen.

[ His accent's not bad, on the French; he has no idea at all if the words will translate, but that's not the point, now, is it? ]

Don’t be sorry for feeling sad.

Midoriya told Paul that once. Hearing a version of it echoed back by this stranger he’s heard so much about, but knows so little of, who looks at him with gentle understanding (because he doesn’t know what Paul has done, that he’s the architect of Izuku’s misery) before he devotes his attention to the wounded hero – it’s almost too much. The feelings he’s been holding down by the throat buck under his grip, and hot citric salt opens on his tongue.

He watches Midoriya bury himself in his folded arms, weeping in a loneliness that is untouched by being around so many people, and he remembers the closed swelter of a tent at the end of the world.

Paul doesn’t say anything as he slides down the truck bed, letting the rattling of the vehicle conceal most of the sound of his movement. Midoriya had been the only one who knew he held back to protect them. Everything Paul had done, and he had told him to go before anyone tried to kill him. He hadn’t listened. He could walk away only so far before he turned back.

He's the last person who should be doing this. There is no one else. He has always been so much like his mother.

He touches Izuku’s shoulder with a delicate lightness, breath stilled in his lungs.

[Paul lapses into silence. His mental scrawl stills. He can sense Oscar’s withdrawal, close enough to his own feelings he has to suppress the instinctive buck of his defensive conditioning against planted emotion, but he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Oscar isn’t a guest. He’s a shipwrecked soul cast up on an unsuitable beach, and there is no pleasantry that can erase the circumstances of how he came to be here. Paul worked too much havoc to pretend at being a good host now.]

You’re not a problem.

[That’s the only other thing he writes. There’s nothing else to say.]

[In the shadowy crevice, a light flares, blue and sickly pale. The ghosts of tiny claws scrabble at brick and crumbling mortar, Sophia rendering herself corporeal in her alarm, and that is not how it should be, but none of this is how it should be.]

I beheld a dark horse, and upon her back a rider raised a sword, a pair of scales falling from her eyes-

[A very mouse-like squeak follows, piping distress, and Sophia thrusts her head into the light to stare up at Big Boy with blue-stained glow where wholesome eyes should be.]

That catches Paul up in a pause. His shoulderblades flare as he pulls them back, his head tilting as if he might look back.

"Maybe.” He doesn't.

He starts as smoothly as he stopped, pushing on through the house and towards the open front door. His explanation flows from him lightly and with sureness. He knows these gods as he knows any adversary.

"There's a ritual to call her. A sinner's blood spilled alongside a punishment, and she can be appealed to by her supplicant to intervene on their behalf. Most people inflict it after a violence against them. We're going to use it to prevent a violence against someone else. It's not as though she doesn't have reason to scourge the head of this House. All we're asking for is a more specific set of conditions."

He's practiced deference here, sheathed his most decisive actions in discretion. He's doubted himself, mistrusted directness. All of that exists somewhere outside of him now. His marrow hums with rightness.

“I can’t call on her. You’re right.” He pauses in the open doorway, his hand resting on the frame. “But if someone else does, if they punish me first, she may accept it. And if not, if I’m wrong – if she curses me, or kills me – she’s going to do that whether she comes here or not. The Reckoning takes her due. It might as well be worth something.”

“It doesn't have to be you,” he says, softly, and this is when he looks back, eyes shaded like the dark, lonely green water of a mountain lake, because we is more a broken hope than it was a promise.

"But I left you. I stayed behind in that house..."

There's an intentional miserable opening for Midoriya to call him out, like he deserves. He feels guilt for things he shouldn't and not for things he should. It's so hard to understand all these emotions swirling inside. He lets himself be held all the same, trying not to think about if he never got to feel this again. A scarred thumb rubbing a gentle stroking a soothing sensation at the base of his neck.

"But if it's not about worth then... why would you stay? What do I have to offer? I failed keep up with you like I said I could."

[ Big Boy is not nearly as put off by prophecy as her Sleeper is. She doesn't need to be. It's easier for her to feel afraid. ]

It's me.

[ Big Boy makes herself smaller, in an effort to make the tiny mouse more comfortable. She shrinks herself down to the size of a little pony, keeping her head bowed in case there is something the other Omen wants to inspect. ]

You know me. My name is -

[ The thought goes unclear, fuzzy. It is the warmth of the afternoon sun, the feeling of having told a joke just right. It is something far away and lost and still here. ]

Oh, good, I'm glad you're not gonna pick a shitty leaf.

[ Gideon doesn't quite smile back, but a corner of her mouth does twitch upward. Just a tiny bit, like a weed pushing through the sidewalk. It's easier to make a dumb joke than it is to admit that maybe she does need to sit down, that dying is upsetting and exhausting and is never as cool as it is in the comics. She still sits, more out of an effort to not upset Daniel than anything else.

While Daniel makes the tea, Gideon picks at a scab on her knee instead of answering his question. When she does finally respond, she's quieter, her voice weighed down by shame. ]

They're not so bad, anymore. Mostly I'm just. Cold. [ numb. feeling nothing, at last, and somehow that's worse. ] And I bleed a little easier. It's not a big deal.

[ To be looked after is to be studied, Gideon has always figured. She doesn't need Daniel looking too closely, lest he realize how rotten and pathetic she is, deep down. ]

[ Gideon fully believes every word Johnny says, including the bit about manwiches being the best and that Daniel literally cries over them. He's probably a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Gideon takes her time. She stays there for a while, letting herself be held, letting herself hold Johnny, someone who is dead but isn't. Someone who's just like her.

Quieter, just for the two of them: ]

I know what happened. It's okay if you feel like shit, too.

[ He's trying so hard to not laugh here.

Because he doesn't want to. Since Kainé is clearly serious, and she definitely doesn't seem like the type who'd appreciate someone laughing at that assumption - even though the idea of hairy breakfast is.. well, it sure is something, isn't it. He's being good though, surpressing the urge to a mere twitch of his lips as he tries to redirect his brain to focus on the other part of what Kainé is saying here. It's a little more productive, and less likely to make her feel like she's being made fun of. He wouldn't want that. ]

That might actually not be a bad idea.

[ Sure, the idea of directly hunting for meat is.. well. Also sure something. But Daniel has slowly been accepting the fact that there are no convenience stores here. You have to make do. Row with the paddles you've got, and all that. ]

What kind of meat can you usually find here? [ He's still new enough to not really know. And hey, it'll give her a chance to show she can still teach him stuff too. He isn't all-knowing.

Just all-knowing about fluffy breakfast, clearly. ]

[Ortus has been more ill-treated for far longer by those more dear to him than Augustine. It has been little obstacle to his affections for them. It poses little obstacle to his consideration of Augustine, whatever discomfort has arisen at the Saint's overfamiliarity and innuendo.

There is more than one way to construct a barrier between oneself and the world. Ortus attempts to imagine the Saint as a child, all those thousands of years ago, and finds that he may not, because the image that comes to him of a child is one that is small and knobby kneed and skull-painted, with wide eyes of indeterminate color and a muss of pale hair.

The gift of translation in this world smooths the edges of the foreign words, this language that the Saint once spoke, a language as long dead as that imagined child, and Ortus comprehends.

He thinks that over a myriad, one must say goodbye many times, and always knowing that one such time will be the last.]

Au revoir.

[He echoes the words with utmost gravity, which ought to be unsuited to their lightness, but he finds a way to make them suit. He did not aspire to the title of bone skald unready for it.]

I will see to the well-being of my charges, in the meanwhile. [Not quite what Augustine has said; not quite implied, but perhaps meant.] May you find your own such duty not so onerous.

[Sophia knows this name, as sweet as summer. It lures her out in hesitant, shivering hops to approach the nose of the little pony, her ears flicking back and forth in indecision before she sits back on her long hind legs.]

I know you.

[Another Omen, another bit of soul-stuff intermixed with celestial magics, a part of and apart from their Sleepers. The presence of another is a balm against the fever. She presses up, paws outstretched, and touches the horse's muzzle.]

I am afflicted, sister. [She tells her, small and woeful.] I am beset by flames.

I should have listened to them.

[He says like he understands. And he does, but perhaps not entirely. He knows how to regret but not how to move forward.]

They may care but... what if they can't forget what I've done? That I didn't listen in the first place?

The last time he held him, Kaworu was scuffed by sand and blood. Midoriya's body remembers this familiar press of a slim one against him (over and over, so many times) and drinks it as if parched. He lets go of his hand and clutches him with both arms. Something missing slots into place. It's an incongruous, almost traitorous rightness in the face of everything that has gone wrong.

"Same reasons I've always stayed. You've been kind to me and to others. I think you could extend that to more people. See how important their lives are like I do. I know a lot of people would hate me for even thinking about helping you. But that's the same thing that ignores people's lives and takes them. It's something that abandons people."

He knows that now, having seen it reflected in the exposed flaws of Hero society back home, whereas before it was just an abstract concept. He presses his wet cheek to Kaworu's temple and closes his eyes. In the days Kaworu was gone, Midoriya would smell his scent out of nowhere. His body was trying to seek comfort in what wasn't there. It's real now.

"I've seen you grow and love. Keep trying. We'll help."

It's automatic to say we. When one of the three is gone, there is a gnawing empty space in what should be a stable, three-sided unit. Midoriya doesn't know how Kaworu feels about Paul now.

Edited (tfw u do a tag and walk away but then suddenly a thot) 2022-08-04 04:00 (UTC)

In the same place Midoriya picked up and carried Paul and Kaworu upstairs while laughing, Paul acknowledges the possibility of being killed. Midoriya clutches we like a promise. He will not simply follow in Paul's wake. He will act.

Midoriya doesn't so much choose what comes over him as it chooses him. His eyes widen and he bares his blood-lined fangs. His claws tense at his sides. One For All remains unsummoned, save for the Danger Sense he keeps on at all times while here.

"No," he growls. "She hasn't killed you yet because I'm punishing you, not her." Punishing with what exactly, he's not sure how to articulate. "With all the hard things you have to do."

The world is shaded in grays, a blend of fear and anger. Forgiveness can be granted easily, too easily, but the path of trying to change, atone, and redeem is long and arduous. Midoriya has seen the start of the long road ahead before. If it's something he wants them to do, he's got to be there to watch and extend a helping hand. He will solidify this sunburst of thought more clearly later. Right now his head is clamoring with outside threats and how to keep people safe.

"She puts a finger on either of you, I make her stop," he says with the same cold vehemence he turned on Paul when he warned him not to interfere with his UA friends if he called them during a rescue. Needless to say, this goes for John as well.

Thankfully Daniel does have some sense of tact and what's appropriate. Sure, sometimes he can still be a little bit out of touch with these cues, being an old man and all, but this time he fully understands it the moment he sees Paul moving closer to Midoriya to touch him like that.

So Daniel, of course, goes silent. This isn't a moment to ruin with talking. There's probably not much he can do anyway, being a stranger to them and being busy driving the car.

He'll leave these two to hopefully find some comfort in each other, gaze lingering only a moment before he instead focuses on the road ahead.

[ He hums. ]

I suppose it doesn't sound like too big of a deal. [ He'll have her have that much, though he's pretty sure that Gideon is severely understating it all here. Isn't that what kids always do when talking to adults? He doesn't even think that the fact she doesn't know him well matters in that. His own kids often have trouble telling him stuff, after all.

He's kind of used to it, hence why he's trying to go along with it in this sort of way. Not pushing hard enough to break, but instead trying to gently bend along with the turns of conversation.

Yet not entirely giving way. It's why he says-- ]

But it would be completely fine if it were a big deal, you know. I sure wouldn't mind. [ He's giving her the mercy this time of not directly looking at Gideon, instead focused on grabbing some cups for the tea and mumbling under his breath that this place is a serious pig sty-- ] Or rather, I'd mind that it happened to you in the first place, but I've got kids back home. I'm used to constantly dealing with big deals.

[ Especially when you live in Extreme Anime Karate City. ]

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Page 7 of 10

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

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oh no i think he's done... rip broccoli boy...

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