let me look at the sun | open

[terriblepurpose]

Who: Paul Atreides, open
What: Event catch-all
When: Month of December
Where: Archaic Archives, streets of Trench, the forest's edge, memories
Notes: Go ahead and contact me at terriblepurpose or by PM if you'd like to discuss any starters or suggest new ones! For tagging in your character's memories to Paul, feel free to start with whatever your preference is.

Content Warnings: Violence, body horror (lockjoint), death, religious extremism, extensive Dune spoilers, suicidal ideation, funerals, grief

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

Paul notices and appreciates the subtlety of respect, more important than any words - and there's a way about the shyness and observation in his posture that makes him feel...something. A mirroring shyness, perhaps, as if Midoriya's change in manner means Paul can do the same.

He pats the back of the most comfortable chair as he looks at Midoriya, inviting him to it. It's an ancient squat thing with a modestly high back and armrests, broken in over years and refurbished at least three times, barely any of it original. Right now, it's upholstered in a worn blue velvet, the springing insides stuffed with some material that conforms instantly to weight and pleasantly captures the heat of the body. He sits down in another chair, his an alarming green, and sinks into it readily.

Neither mother or son speak for a while, but this silence is much more comfortable than any that proceeded it. The door slides shut as Jessica opens a cupboard, produces a locked box she opens with a press of her fingers, and leans over it to breath in - an open mouthed thing that also involves her nose, like a cat scenting for prey. Paul seems to think nothing of it (used to his mother's constant watchfulness for poison, and her skill at detecting it) as he turns to Midoriya and says:

"Is there any kind of tea you like? Or at least a kind of tea. We have green, black...some floral, I think."

"We have it," Jessica confirms, setting the box down and produces a literjug of water she performs the same ritual over before pouring it into a black, square kettle. "No caffeine after sunset. It's a dependency."

Paul pulls a face behind his august mother's back.

[wannasmash]

His smile grows. He sits, as a guest. The chair is incredibly comfortable, but Midoriya doesn't slouch. It's not his habit. Nor is filling silences unnecessarily.

He is just wondering if Paul's mother is really into tea, judging by Paul's lack of reaction to her nearly inhaling it. He blinks away from staring when Paul directs a question at him, which Lady Jessica answers. The face Paul pulls is a stark contrast from the troubled one he wore when he was preparing to face down a terrible memory. Midoriya feels like he's been given a glimpse of the real Paul, not the one life battered about. He squints back at Paul in gentle amusement.

"Your mother's right, Paul-kun. I've pulled too many late nights myself studying."

Sorry Paul, Midoriya is a good boy. A good boy who lied on his government records about his Quirk, broke his own fingers one by one to give his friend a message, violated a well-known physical assault law, agreed to the subsequent coverup, party-crashed a raid on a villain hideout, and got into an all-out unsanctioned superpowered fight with another student on school grounds. A good boy.

[terriblepurpose]

It's pleasant to sit here as if there was never anyone waiting for Paul in the library, listening to his mother make tea while the rain pours outside. Paul feels like the last time he felt anything like this was years ago, but that can't be true. He smiles as if he's trying not to at Midoriya and crosses his ankle over his knee, one hand on the chair armrest next to him, the other brushing back his hair.

"You're both against me?" Paul says, as the kettle begins to whistle, heated almost instantly by induction. "I can't beat those odds."

"You should listen to him more often," the Lady Jessica says, mildly, combining water with a packet of tea that fills the air with the smell of a lush tropical fruit. Paul knows it's part of the memory filling in from somewhere else, words taken from another place and time, but it still gives him a little pause.

"What's your favorite thing to study?" He asks Midoriya, both because he wants to know and wants to change the subject.

[wannasmash]

As he looks at Lady Jessica when she speaks, he misses the slight shift in Paul. Midoriya is aware that the memory has constructed or is constructing a place for him, but the specifics of what that is and how the blood magic works are vague to him. He may as well try to blend in and not cause a scene.

"I try to do my best in every subject..."

It's true. He wouldn't have his good average otherwise. But it doesn't feel right blathering about Japanese literature or hero informatics to people from a very different world. He may as well talk about what he studies most fervently.

"I study other people, in a way. Heroes I admire and want to be like. I write down anything that can help me in the future. There's not enough time to learn my friends' moves in regular class." ...Or steal his rival's. Imitation is his sincere form of flattery, but it's also his intention to surpass the people he learns from.

There's a slight inflection on the word hero. It's borrowed from English, due to the US's influence on the Pro Hero career, though the word can be traced to Greek. In his world, it carries a more specific meaning.

[terriblepurpose]

Paul listens thoughtfully, noticing the particular stress on a word that happens to mean something specific here too. A hero is a figure of legend and prophecy, laden with the power to change a culture - or ruin it. But it's difficult to imagine Midoriya as a destroyer.

He walked into Paul's memory, looked at him for a matter of minutes, and disarmed the bomb he was making of it with a handful of words. That's a kind of heroism found in folktales, not epics. He changed the story that Paul was unfolding simply by choosing to remain in his own, one with a kinder ending, and there's a power in that Paul will have to remember.

"I don't think we've ever had the chance to spar," Paul says, couching what he means in the fabric of the memory, "If you have time, I'd like to, some other day. For keeping me company."

Jessica sets two steaming cups of faintly sweet, fruity tea down on a table between them and retires to a high-backed rose-velvet chair, but not before gently brushing her hand across the back of Paul's neck.

[wannasmash]

All Might, arguably the greatest hero of all time, became the Symbol of Peace by defeating more villains than anyone else could hope to. In other words, the current era of peace was bought with violence. All Might gave Midoriya his superpower, an unusual Quirk passed down a line of successors in secret. He chose him because Midoriya, scared and powerless, had jumped to save someone without thinking. Kindness, something for which Midoriya was picked on most of his childhood, was always at the root of what he did. People on TV or online usually don't discuss that when listing what makes a hero strong.

As much as he takes inspiration from others, cobbling together any experience he can, he's learning to be a hero in his own way, in the only way he can. The struggle of starting from rock bottom to managing a large, unwieldy power in an unprecedented time of rising villain activity is uncharted territory.

"Of course!" He flashes Paul a ready grin. "I've been looking for more sparring partners. I've got to practice against all kinds, or else I'll develop stale habits. I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do." The odds of Midoriya starting a new page in his notebook with Paul's name on it are very strong.

He accepts his tea with a more polite but no less warm smile. "Thank you very much." He feels calmer after the first sip. He takes his time with it, because that's what one does with tea. It both is and isn't like fruity teas he's tried before. By default, he and people around him back home serve green tea to each other, but, as Lady Jessica said, they'd be up all night.

[terriblepurpose]

"Likewise," Paul says, there's just a touch of cockiness in his half-smile. It's not that he doubts Midoriya's skills, but that Paul is so confident in his own. (He's going to be not unpleasantly surprised.)

There's quiet after that as they all sip their tea, two real boys and a memory of a mother. Paul closes his eyes as he savors the taste, and for once he doesn't think about how this tea must be filling a Harkonnen looter's bags, that this hidden room belongs to another set of strangers. He's home, warm in the heart of a storm.

When he opens his eyes and sees the ethereal stag standing behind his mother, both of them looking back at him with calm eyes, he accepts it.

"It's time." Lady Jessica rises from her chair and walks over to Paul, seemingly unaware of the stag's presence. He sets his teacup aside just before she sets her fingers against his temples in a specific pattern, pressing gently on this nerve bundle and that tension point, and Paul leans into her touch, eyes hidden behind his messy hair. His shoulders ease down his back, but there's a tremor in them as they do.

"Go back to bed," she says, stepping back, and looks at Midoriya with an odd clarity - surely a trick of the memory, to better simulate Jessica's perceptiveness, "Make sure he doesn't wander."

With that, she returns to her chair, still not reacting to the clearly visible stag that whuffs softly and shakes its massive rack of antlers at them as if agreeing with Jessica: it's time to go. When Paul gets up to approach the stag, he waits for Midoriya to join him. He looks a world apart from the rigidly tense and miserable young man being woken from sleep; his expression is not precisely happy, but it's wistful instead of bereft. He mouths thank you in the instant before they depart, and he means it.

[wannasmash]

Midoriya doesn't default to throwing challenges around, but he catches the hint of one in Paul's smile and reflects it back. He's glad to have found a confident sparring partner like the ones back home. Midoriya and his class grew a lot this year. They had little time for self-doubt after everything they went through together.

Lady Jessica touches Paul's head tenderly, and Midoriya misses his own mother with a sharp ache. He has to look away. He's surprised when Lady Jessica speaks to him, caught off guard by the calm in this room and his own yearning for home. He feels like he's on the receiving end of one of his homeroom teacher's penetrating looks.

"Yes ma'am," he blurts out, which is fine in most cases, but not formal enough if he's going to be cast in a period drama filled with nobility. Then he rises and bends at the waist. Some things don't change.

"Thank you very much for the tea."

In Midoriya's mind, the stag is no doubt the donor of Paul's antler, a local god, or both. He glances behind him at Lady Jessica to make sure she's not watching, then offers the stag a bow. When Paul's mouth moves, Midoriya wonders for a second if his hearing has been taken. He's about to ask Paul when he's whisked away.