deercountry | o5 . bone house mingle!

Kaworu shrugs a little. "I wanted to find you. I've endured worse." His tone is matter-of-fact, unconcerned, unaware that's an extremely odd thing to say even in the context of simple allergies. He watches Midoriya move the cereal around and feels he should say something.

"I'm glad you came to visit."

It is an extremely normal thing to say to the guy who broke his bones on purpose multiple times. Someone has got to join Kaworu in scar solidarity if they haven't already. Midoriya sets his spoon down. Kaworu is... glad. Midoriya doesn't know or care if it's a platitude. He'll make it true.

"That doesn't mean you should. Anyway," he says, rising and padding in his socks over to the boiling kettle demanding attention, "I hope this will make you feel better."

He retrieves a jar of ginger honey syrup he brought over for this specific purpose and stirs some into a mug of hot water. He slides this over to Kaworu ("Careful, it's hot.") and returns to his cereal.

"Thank you for having me over even after all that. It's probably for the best that I'm not spending a lot of time at home." He chews his Cap'n Trench thoughtfully.

[ The kid curls up, and he settles back in his chair in response. At least this might save them another embarrassing sprawl on the floor, for a bit. ]

Yes to both.

[ He says it low and gentle. ]

Paul went down a little after you, I figure. He got it right in the heart... but he didn't walk away. The beast fell not long after that.

But death is gentle, here. We just wake back up again... as though it were a dream.

Iskierka, in turn, adores Kaworu.

It used to be a subtle thing, before the last note--a preference for settling on his bunk, when she rested in his room with Paul; a little preening when his hair was in reach. Now she's awake and able to take care of him as he deserves, which includes a wake-up call when he's been in bed far too long.

She ducks the swat, putting her beak right by his ear and warbling directly into it. Get up!!

God puts his gentle hand on Paul's shoulder. He opens his mouth, and he offers him mercy, and all Paul can think, as his stricken face vanishes behind a flood of impossible, pulsating light, is that the weight of a kindly God is indeed a fearful thing.

He wanted this. He wanted this on the ship, even with rotten citrus and despair as unswallowable as dry crackers on his tongue. He wanted this in the study, even as he toppled God from his pedestal in black depths of terrified fury. He wants this still, and always, in every shivering beat of his collapsing fusion-heart, when it's far too late to matter, when it never mattered at all.

"I tried," Paul says, from the lashing, furious throat of a hurricane, "I tried to pretend. I tried to keep them close. Behold, lord - the fruits of my fucking trying."

His hand clenches around the tooth. Silver wells between his fingers, as incandescent as his obscuring corona.

"Palamedes is gone," and he wants, and he wants, and he wants, "Because I tried. Because I wanted to be human more than I wanted him to live."

"Where do I keep that?" He asks God, in a thousand joyless laughing tremors. "How would I forget?"

Midoriya has come over because the food situation is dire. He knows how to cook a couple things passably: Japanese curry, candied apples, omurice, and various permutations of the skills each of those requires. Today he is slicing ingredients for a hearty mushroom stew that can be saved and reheated over the next few days. He is surprised when a certain someone comes begging--no, demanding.

"Iskierka-san," he says gently but firmly, "they're worse at cooking than I am. They need to eat." Something besides bread, cheese, burnt rice (how???), or Cap'n Trench.

The young man Illarion met in winter looks markedly different now. He's more disheveled and understated, but calm and resolute. He's collected twice as many scars, still redly healing over.

"I'll give you some if you can pass a message," he relents, "in case I can't when Anon-san comes back." Omens are the most secure way he knows to get a message to someone, even if said Omen is a menace.

There’s a miserable sound when she warbles into his ear, something a yelp and a groan. He swats at her again (without malice) and then rolls over and pulls the covers over his head and tries to wiggle under the pillows to protect himself.

“Stoooooop.”

This swat sends her fluttering off the bunk to the floor, where she cranes her neck to watch Kaworu roll himself into a boy-blanket pastry.

She thinks about this.

She thinks a little more.

Then she stalks under the bed, rears up, and sticks her head ((around)) the mattress and pillows in 4-space to chirp softly next to his ear. Again.

Edited (i r bad at english) 2022-03-20 18:07 (UTC)

She has dim and positive memories of this fledgling human from her time asleep. Her Sleeper had thought well of him while also registering an intellectual concern at how quick the boy was to self-sacrifice. In that light his new demeanor, the scars, and the tidbits she'd overheard about his disposition after the battle are all their own reasons to worry (to fuss, like a mother should)--buuuut that can all wait until after she's given her rightful due of whatever he's cooking. His appeals to the pitiful state of the household's cooking are not lost on her, but Deku, please think of what that means for her getting fed properly--

The offer of a bargain shuts her up. She closes her beak with a snp, cocking her head at him with antennae lifted in interest. okay. she expresses, somewhere below the verbal. She'll accept that deal.

(Even if it may not pan out. She misses her Sleeper like all her soul and did--is doing--her part to get him back. But there's a reason why she woke up, and a reason why she shared her hidden name; a shrike was permitted that, when dying, with no other way to send home word of her death.)

Edited (added a word for clarity) 2022-03-20 18:24 (UTC)

He tries to placate her, a single pale hand reaching out to grope at the space around him to offer pets. Of course, his fingers only brush the soft cotton of his matress.

A grumble and he pops his head out from under the pillows, red eyes trying to seek out the red eyes of said offending creature. Of course, if she's under the bed, then he can't see her without getting up and that's being avoided at all costs.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

Him! A poor little meow meow.

He doesn't have the details, but the gist is that the others are going on a quest to retrieve him. Midoriya would like to see him again and make sure he's doing all right, but he has to be prepared that life might throw a wrench (two, actually) in that plan. In light of new developments Midoriya is keeping quiet about, he's elected to stay in Trench. He has to make sure there is still a Trench for them all to return to, even if that only turns out to be nothing more than being a watchman.

Iskierka's down-to-earth priorities concerning food amuse him. He doesn't have a pet, and he would never assume Omens are pets, but they can be animal-like in this tendency. His own Omen--distant, unknowable, and nonverbal--isn't, but they do share something else in common: this form of communication, somewhat visual, somewhat psychic. Midoriya is familiar with the that by now.

"I'm not sure what you like...?" He experimentally slides over some celery, different kinds of mushrooms, chickpeas, and carrots. He's pretty sure birds(?) nibble celery, but he's not sure about the rest. He resists the habit to pinch his lip thoughtfully, since he's in the middle of preparing food. He purses his lips instead.

"It's something I should have thought about, given there isn't a Pro Hero network or police here," he starts hesitantly. "I don't want there to be any chance of my friends getting attacked because I've made an enemy. Not that I have, it's just in case." He's not good at lying, but it's not a lie. It isn't. Technically. He didn't make an enemy. He was put on a kill list that one time. Nothing to worry about. It's fine.

"What I mean is, everyone who knows me shouldn't tell people they know me."

The offerings have Iskierka's whole attention immediately. She picks up a chickpea in her beak, turning her head this way and that, before tossing it back with relish. A mushroom is next, though she only gets as far as examining it before setting it back with the others. The carrot medallions--

She can multitask, as she picks over the food, sending her pleasure with the legumes as well as cascading images of what she likes best: Mostly meat. Fatty strips of bacon, ground meat, insect grubs... Oh, plant food is fine, and all, but few things were tastier than animals. At least, for the creature she resembles.

She scoops up another chickpea as Deku qualifies the message before delivering it, and squishes the chickpea in her beak when he does deliver. One half ends up back on the counter; she swallows the other.

A dense and wordless query follows: How did that keep him safe/is he going to vanish from the public eye/why is he deciding on this now? It's a braid born of concern, but for him, not for this fearless Omen and her denervated Sleeper. What's getting attacked over who they befriend, anyway?

There's a shrug, not dismissive but unconcerned, as though the idea of "doesn't mean you should" doesn't apply to him. Life is, especially his own, about enduring pain and confusion that come with being alive, so to endure a little more for someone he cares for is easy to do without second thought.

Even if hay fever is awful. He sniffles and takes the mug. The ginger spice manages to penetrate his clogged sinuses in a pleasant way (even if he has to grab tissues as it makes his nose start to run). He curls up around the mug like it's a little flame, holding it to his chest. Then he glances up at Midoriya, curious (or maybe he's just trying to hold back a sneeze).

"Why? Did you cover it in slime again?"

Iskierka chortles ~~fatly~~ from under the bed, muffled voice giving away her position. Yes, she IS down there, what's he gonna do about it.

Because she is not giving up on doing this, for his own good!! up. comes the not-quite-a-word, colored with shades of sunrise and morning birdsong that quickly slide into noon sunlight and daytime twittering. It's past time he be up and about! There is food to catch and mischief to get into and they need to go steal breakfast from Paul before he burns the toast.

[When he hears those words, he wonders if that's how it felt when Shinji crushed him effortlessly between the fingers of his Evangelion. The truth is, he doesn't remember any pain. Perhaps it was too quick or perhaps his mind spared him the memories.

But now there's an overwhelming weight that comes crashing down on him. It breaks his bones and smashes his flesh into bits. Was it his fault? Did he make that thing stronger? Make Paul weaker? He remembers calling the other boy's name in an unfinished apology.

Kaworu makes a low, pained noise and curls in on himself, pressing his knees to his chest and burying his face into the soft fabric of his pajama pants.]

A huff! Laughing like that is so rude. But it makes him feel light. It reminds him of the Old Man's low, easy chuckle even though they sound nothing alike. It's the spirit behind it not the pitch that creates the warm connection.

With a loud groan and then an even louder sneeze that can probably be heard from the kitchen, Kaworu sits up, rubbing at his face. Then he flops back down onto his stomach so he can lean over the bed and peer down at her.

"Hey. Get out from under there."

Paul bestows the pen with one hand and deftly plucks the pencil from her clasping feet with the other, because if anyone should understand the binding nature of an offer accepted, it's her. Iskierka, a name offered up without prompting, scattered across the mouths and ~~eyes~~ of all and sundry acquaintances.

He rolls the pencil between his fingers, inspecting it intently, and finding it unchanged, he lets out a soft breath.

"I'm not angry with you," he says, mildly, folding himself into a knee-clasped ball on the hard wooden chair, "But I'd prefer you not touch these."

His thumbnail fits into a soft, curved dent just below the metal ferrule that binds the eroded eraser to the whittled down body.

"The more people who handle something, the more difficult the signatures are to read," he tells her, in the quiet, informational tone he uses to tell Gideon and Harrowhark about different kinds of animals, or Kaworu about human cultural rites. "That's called psychometry. Did you know that? I didn't, before."

"You're like Paul-kun, asking lots of questions at the same time," he says, quirking a brief smile.

He looks away. He's not avoiding her beady gaze, not entirely. He's going to the fridge to retrieve his last ingredient, a container with a pig bone covered in bits of meat. (It's like Iskierka knew.) It will give the stew flavor, he remembers from watching his mom cook. Meat is more expensive in Trench, a city which tends towards fish and fungi, because it requires more resources from this unforgiving, blood-tainted land. He cuts off a piece of meat for Iskierka while he mulls over his answer.

"I already have ways to keep myself safe. So this is for the people around me. I'm not so sure I was in the public eye much to begin with. We don't even have TV, and I'm not internet famous. But yeah, I'll have to be careful. It's just something I've been thinking about."

He doesn't want to say why he's doing this now. Above all, he has to avoid escalation, and that includes not causing a stir. He continues chopping the rest of the ingredients.

She peers back at him, head cocked and antennae forward. At heart, while she's got a contrarian streak, she's not a contrarian creature-- So now that Kaworu's well and truly awake she's happy to skitter out from underneath the bed.

Or, at least, skitter close enough to Kaworu she can nibble on a beakful of his hair. So messy, this fledgling, but he's hers.

preen. breakfast. Time to get ready for the (rest of the) day!

The pen's accepted with grudging good grace, and so's the abrupt removal of ~~her~~ the pencil from her grasp. Paul is not wrong: While she'd had little, birdy designs on keeping both treasures (at least for a moment), her oversoul knows better than to renege on a fair bargain. She settles back with the pen in her beak and watches him--listens to him explain himself.

There is a grief here; she'd heard about it before waking, or sensed it, something. The absence of someone Paul needed--an absence not ameliorated by an Omen lurking about like an unshriven ghost. This, her Sleeper would say, is a species of mourning--this: I'd prefer you not touch these.

She sets the pen down and walks over to these, to the box of pencils that bear no signatures for her. She looks at them through the box with her head cocked, then looks back up at Paul, and through him.

Then, clearly, shakes her head. She hadn't known all that. no. comes a feeling, to add to the gesture. Then no. again, on the verge of a question, as she waves a forefoot at the box and projects an image of her (or anyone) taking ??any?? of its contents out.

Only since I came here. I've been learning.

[Whoever this is, there's something a little soothing about her calm equilibrium. It doesn't quite make Paul less unnerved by the concept that he's seeing mushrooms that may or may not exist, conventionally (and worse, that he didn't notice what he didn't notice, an unacceptable gap in self-awareness), but at least it reminds him to behave as if he is.]

That sounds about right. I suppose there's nothing we can do about it.

[He tries not to sound bitter. He tries not to sound angry. He tries, as much as he is able to try, to remember the point of this.]

So we shouldn't worry too much.

Paul's throat bobs. His eyes threaten a certain collapse at their corners, joined by the faint twitch of a muscle working in Paul's jaws. He opens his mouth. He closes it. He steps forward, and without deference or hesitation he pulls Midoriya into a fierce, crushing hug.

"I missed you," Paul says, voice tight and aching. With his eyes closed, there are no tangling hyphae, no skin-breaching fungal scales, no protruding bulbous spore caps. There's just Midoriya, warm and alive and returned.

"I couldn't find you again." He'd looked, with eyes and dreams, but the way closed off before him. "You can come in. Of course you can come in, you - I missed you."

Paul will have to let go of him for that to be possible, which seems unlikely to happen at once. Maybe they'll just stay here like this, threshold bound, in the moment of relief and reprieve. They'll stay here, and Paul won't have to think about the next part, when the guilt will creep back in like poison in his roots.

Paul lifts his thumb from the divot of someone else's nail, where it had dug in under the flash of some insight into the nature of Darkblood particulate dissolution. He leans across the desk and puts the pencil back with its fellows, then brushes his loosely curled knuckles over Iskierka's head.

"No," he tells her, shaking his head, which is a funny little echo, if he thinks about it. "There's nothing in there anyone needs. It's why I keep the notes in another box. He wouldn't have wanted those not to be used. But you wouldn't want those for anything but a nest, would you?"

"I know it's stupid," Paul says, small and quiet, "I can't read them. I'm not a necromancer. I keep thinking I should give them to Harrowhark, if she wants them. But I don't know if that's something they do. I don't know how they mourn each other. I don't even know if we should, because they already did, once, and - maybe he'll come back."

Paul pauses. He breathes in the pause, slow and steady. He drifts on the surface of his thoughts like cut flowers in a clear bowl of water, brushed this way and that by microcurrents of air.

"Did you know that ghosts can haunt the things that killed them?" Paul closes his eyes. He sets his forehead against his knees. He does not think about a pair of drowned swords. He does not think about a pair of broken glasses. He does not think about an empty yurt and a cold fire.

"Is that why you're here?"

He remembers the last time Paul said his name, just after the white-hot hope died in his eyes. He didn't know Paul kept looking. The urgency of not feeling safe on thresholds (anymore) wars with his hands coming up to clasp around Paul's back equally tight, as if that will make up for leaving him alone with his chorus of voices. Something in Midoriya that was torn apart knits back together like healing skin.

It's entirely different from the last time he held him. He can feel, past the zipper of his jacket mashed between them, the thudding of life and flow of breath. Paul moves even as he traps himself in the doorway of a house of death covered in vivacious spring growth. Paul is alive.

Still, Midoriya has to keep him that way. He won't allow sentiment to end with Paul disappearing in a gout of blue flame or simply turn to dust and then nothing. He firmly walks him indoors, even as he too is unwilling to let go. This results in an awkward shuffle even before the aches of his warmblood magnify with contact. He doesn't care. He pulls down his mask and draws in a clearer, shuddering breath over Paul's shoulder. This is not exactly how Midoriya supposes he should be making his very grave apology, but this is no less heartfelt.

"I'm so sorry, Paul-kun," he says, low and tremulous. The old Midoriya would have dissolved into tears already, but this new one is determined to get the words out. "I'm sorry I ran when you asked me to stay."

Edited (sits bolt upright, i forgot the warmblood effects) 2022-03-22 07:22 (UTC)

Life isn't fair. Midoriya learned that very young when a Quirk didn't manifest in him, and everyone thought less of him for the way he was born. A hero looks at an unfair world and protects people from it. Midoriya does this without even thinking, an urgency in him as necessary as breathing.

He makes a sound like a dying animal. "No..." he manages, pressing his lips together. Why this?! He's never going to live down the slime incident.

"I don't want people to find out where I live," he explains after swallowing the bit of cereal he nearly choked on, "or who I'm friends with. I've been thinking... that I should be more careful. I don't have my school or Pro Heroes or even the police to help. A villain could attack my friends. I can't let that happen."

o5 . bone house mingle!

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