deercountry | o5 . bone house mingle!

The sound makes Kaworu laugh. It's bit barking and a bit raspy but it's it feels light and easy. He often feels that way around Midoriya. And it's nice to have that brief moment as the conversation turns serious.

There's a frown as the angel sets the mug down and observes Midoriya, trying to calculate where that line of thought came from. "I won't let anyone hurt you or the people you know. If you need help, call me. I'll get rid of the villain."

Paul is right -- Gideon pretends not to hear that quaver, or see the blurry light that comes from Paul rubbing his eyes. She instead opts to give his salty hair another ruffle, because it really is quite fun, and then pulls away to go grab a few boxes of snack food from the cabinets.

"Aw, man, I'm so bummed," Gideon replies, very obviously joking. "Not one souvenir from the River Beyond? That's kind of rude, I was expecting at least a tee shirt." Once Gideon is satisfied with her collection of snacks, she starts making her way towards the door, motioning for Paul to follow. "Come on. It's up in the best room in the house."

That's Gideon's room, obviously, and she takes Paul up the winding, creaky stairs to the bedroom on the left. It's surprisingly neat, given Gideon's personality, with an exercise mat set out in front of the bed like a little rug, her sword propped up in the corner, and cutouts of various women from assorted Trench periodicals taped to her walls. Gideon really works hard to make this house a home.

Gideon makes a beeline for her bed, sitting cross-legged on top of it, with the snacks set down on the mattress beside her. She pats the space on the other side of the snacks, a clear come sit gesture. "I've eaten snacks in bed pretty much every day since coming here. It's the best. No one on the Ninth eats snacks in bed; you've got to try it out."

[ Kaworu might find that easy to say, but it still takes Gideon by surprise. People don't usually tell Gideon they're glad she's around, save for a few exceptions. (She does not think about Paul telling her things would be different here, and does not think about what different might look like.) ]

Oh - thanks? I'm glad you are, too.

[ Gideon is surprised to find that she means it.

Thankfully, Kaworu wants to hear a joke. Those are so much easier to talk about! ]

Right on, dude. Okay, here's one called a pun. Puns are always funny.

Do you know why skeletons are always so calm?

"Thank you, but it's not that simple, Nagisa-kun." He feels like he's explaining once again that Kaworu, who already died once, is not invincible. Even All Might is not invincible. "Someone can get the jump on you or anyone I know. You can't be everywhere at once. Neither can I. Preventative measures are better. We can't just react, because we'd always be one step behind."

He is taking someone who can kill with a touch very seriously, but he can't just tell people that. The moment someone looks at Shigaraki with recognition could be the moment they die instantly. Right now, there are only a handful of people who could out him. It could all come back to the UA students. He pokes his spoon fitfully in his bowl again.

"Anyway, you don't look like you're in the best shape right now. We're all tired. This world throws enough at us without having to worry about watching our backs too. I'll do that myself. Just don't tell people we're friends. Except those who already know."

Oh yeah? How are you finding it?

[The question is asked with genuine interest. With the loss of her own magic, she's already considering whether or not to try the sort that is native to this world.]

I guess you're right. The guy who brought me here - the Captain?

[Again, she finds herself wondering about his variety of titles as opposed to simply using a name.]

He said that the Pthumerians tend to like to mess with us sometimes. I guess this could be their doing. I'd bet on there being something more to it than just 'hey, here's weird mushrooms everywhere' but at least if we both see them, it's probably not just us?

[He smiles at her when she says that. It's good, he thinks, when two people are glad for each other's existence. So many humans (and himself) spend so much time wondering if their lives have value to others, that it's something that should bring relief.

He leans closer.]

Why? Because they're dead and have no emotions?

[ The kid curls in on himself in a truly pathetic, miserable huddle. The silence hangs for a long and terrible moment. Then John rises, quietly, before him. He reaches out, and smooths a hand across the boy's shoulder.

There is no lurch or steadying pain, this time: it's just a touch. ]

Easy. The fight's done, and Paul is here alive. The recovery won't be instant... for him or for you. But I am impressed with the both of you.

There is a stranger outside of the Bone House.

While this itself might not seem unusual, the nature of the stranger was. A young lad with a mop of disheveled hair tied back into a little tail, wearing an orange flannel button-up and sunglasses in the afternoon light looked around for a moment--as if bemused by the number of intact skeletons rather than the bones themselves, before shrugging and knocking at the door.

Whomever answered would meet one (1) Oscar Pine, waving awkwardly with a nervous smile.

"Uh... Hi. I'm Oscar, and... Paul invited me over for dinner?"

Feeling awkward, he held up the package he brought, the rainbow icing on an 18 pack of cupcakes obvious though the window in the packaging.

"I brought cupcakes?"

... And himself, a not quite sixteen year old boy with the souls of hundreds attached to his in a conglomeration that was hard to define the individuals within.

[At first, he flinches at the touch. Not out of fear of pain but out of fear that it might be something unkind. When there's nothing, he lets himself lean into it a little even though he's certain he does not deserve the comfort he deeply craves.

He shakes his head against his knees.]

I did nothing to be impressed over. [All he did was let that creature in. All he did was distract people from what was important. All he did was get in the way. And then the last few days... he can remember very little but he does know it's true, Paul is here or has been here, at least.]

...Is Paul angry with me?

Paul laughs, a bubble of hysterical, bruised joy muffled against Midoriya's hooded hair. The awkward shift into the house is one Paul should have conducted himself, since he knows better, even if the specifics of Midoriya's current concerns are unknown to him - but if there's any house where Paul feels secure on an open threshold or in front of an unshielded window, it's this one, most of the time.

"I know," he says, rushing to disarm that laughter, pulling back enough so that Midoriya can see his face, his bright shining eyes lit by nothing but the ambient glow of dusty sunlight streaming in through closed gauzy curtains, "I'm sorry I didn't chase you, but - don't. Please, don't - everyone keeps telling me they're sorry, and you don't have to be, even if you are. I don't need you to be sorry."

He looks at Midoriya's revealed face with no more true recognition than he had in the forest, but that's all right. He's adjusted since, he knows more, and it's why he finally releases Midoriya's shoulders, as much as he'd like to cling. He doesn't want to hurt him. He never wants to hurt him.

"You're better? You seem better." He must be, to be here. His teeth seem flattened, his skin not so cracked. "Would you like something to drink? I can make tea, or coffee, or get you water - or anything else, if you give me a little while to find it."

"I wasn't there for you," is his last weak insistence, but he won't burden Paul with his apologies any more. He will be here, now. He clutches his shoulders (his hands cramp) and conducts his own examination, a swift but specific search in the manner of his training. He already noted that Paul's eyes are returning to their normal state, but the color still glows bioluminescent blue in the dim entryway. He doesn't like the uncontrolled tripping of that laughter, the paleness of his skin, the broken sentences, the tears held back. He says nothing.

His release brings physical relief but also an emotional ache. Lately, for reasons that are obvious to both of them, he wants to keep the people he cares about close. He reluctantly lets him go.

"Yes, I'm better..." he murmurs with his new low quietness, wondering why Paul even has to ask. He shucks off his backpack and his jacket. Spring sun is warm now, but it will get cool later, he thinks. He puts his mask into one of its pockets, and removes his shoes. He has a plain, boring black shirt underneath, but this one is not borrowed and actually fits him.

"Tea. I brought you all something." He wouldn't come over empty-handed. He retrieves a pastry box from his backpack labeled Patisserie Lysitherie. Ever since that time Aoyama shoved cheese in his mouth, Midoriya has picked up the habit of surprising his friends with food when they're feeling down. He also produces a jar of ginger honey syrup--for the allergy sufferers.

"S-stop...!" He brushes her away without force behind it, instead taking the moment of contact to run his fingers through her soft feathers. Sometimes she lets him stroke her until he falls asleep. It's hard to be grumpy with her.

He pulls his head up, sneezes again, and grabs a sweatshirt that he tossed at the edge of the bed and pulls it back on, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Then he steps off the bed, feet so light on the ground it's like he weighs nothing. A yawn and a stretch before he turns to the funny bird offering his arm.

"Come on then."

She lifts her head into the friendly touch, antennae folding back like a cat's ears as his hand passes over them. maybe. comes the notion, answer to the thought she'd use someone else's notes--someone else's mementos mori--as a nest. It doesn't feel right. What does is the image that follows: her couchant on the pencil box to keep anyone else from touching it. It's as good a resting place as any.

She settles beside instead of on top of it now, folding her legs beneath her and tipping her head up to watch Paul's face as he speaks to her. This isn't how she listened prior to waking, that slow and listless thing that was almost more an instinct to follow sound; she comprehends, dipping her beak now and again in acknowledgement and spinning out a slender thread of presence, attention.

Was she here to haunt him? no. It's becoming her refrain. She sends more after it: Paul did not kill her Sleeper/she is here because she wants to be/she is here because she ??adores?? him and Kaworu. Higher questions about proper acts of grief and the distribution of a man's belongings are largely beyond her grasp, though you should give them to Harrowhark echoes back along the line. Notes are meant to be used, not kept--if the principle applies to hers, it must apply universally.

Her feathers ruffle up at the mention of Paul; she gives a warbling, gurgling chortle. The boy is admirably curious and she appreciates the comparison. (Even if she'd reverse it.)

She also appreciates the gift of precious meat, and takes it with the gravitas due such an offering. Though the gobbet's small enough for her to choke down entire, she pins it beneath one forefoot and takes the tiniest first bite as Deku answers her questions. Some of her questions; she's not one for big thoughts or prolonged interrogations, but she does notice things, now that she's awake.

careful. comes the echo, followed by a musical approximation of a snort. She rips up another tiny sliver of meat and tosses it back. Careful is a thing flocks do together (imagine: a dozen copies of her), watching for threats and splitting the strain of vigilance (imagine: guards watch all eight directions with their crimson eyes, while others sleep or play). Decoying a danger no one else knew about would come back to hurt them, if the decoy died.

As ever, she leans happily into the touch, exactly as pliant as the feline Shinji-kun. It's nice to be petted. It's nicer to see Kaworu finally getting himself up and ready for the day, even if she blows a credible raspberry at him for wiping his nose on his sleeve. Messy!

breakfast. she sends, spreading her wings and launching herself for his arm. Her little claws tickle as she grabs on and wraps herself halfway around his slender wrist, tendrils and antennae waving. Pictures of meat and berries and nuts quickly populate the psychic environment; she can't get hungry but she can sure pretend she is.

Midoriya asks questions, but unless he's in full fanboy mode (he hasn't done that in a long while), he politely keeps them one at a time. Midoriya doesn't know how much Iskierka's questions may prod and poke. Just to head her off so she won't press him, he supplies, "I have help. I can't say how."

He tries, and fails, to keep a small warm note from his voice. It shares the same pitch with which he refers to Paul or Kaworu, but those two are known to Iskierka. His help is from elsewhere. Those whose relationship to Midoriya is already known by the threat don't have to keep it subtle. It was something he couldn't help back home, being associated with UA High School when the Sports Festival aired on TV. Just by calling themselves Heroes, they made enemies without even knowing it.

Speaking of flocks: Because Kaworu cares about the Old Man so much, and because it was how Midoriya met Iskerka's person, Midoriya asks, "Is there anything you think Anon-san will need when he gets back?"

[ The flinch is absolutely tragic. But then this scrawny bird-boned child leans into his touch, and John thinks he might be doing this right. He's trying. ]

You stood up to something a thousand times your size. If that isn't bravery, I don't know what is.

[ He blows out a long breath, and, upon further consideration, drops to sit on the couch beside the boy. They make a funny picture, awkward but earnest, God sitting there not quite knowing how to comfort. ]

Paul's only angry at himself. Terrible choice of target, in my opinion. Personally, I'd be angry with the Leviathan. [ Or the gods. ]

Watching Gideon gather up an armful of food after ruffling his hair, Paul thinks of reversals and exchanges. He keeps thinking of them as he nods, mutely obedient, and follows her up the stairs when beckoned, a luminous shadow in her wake.

"No one on Caladan eats snacks in bed either," Paul offers, quietly, toeing off his boots by her bedroom door before he sits on the bed next to her. Before he can tell himself not to, he leans against her side, ever so briefly, and takes in the room around them. It reminds him of the way the young soldiers back home would decorate their barracks, all disciplined exuberance.

It's not the grim captive cell he pictured when he understood what was keeping her here, the devotional chain named Harrowhark that wraps around Gideon's heart, tethered in turn to a pair of endless black eyes. He draws his knees up to his chest and comes to bend over them, shifting slightly away to give her back her space, as if he's not already and still imposing on her generosity.

"I could go back for a shirt, if you really want one," he says, in an answer to her joke that comes late and soft, but there is an attempt, in those sibilant voices, to be joking too. "I think I saw a - gift shop? - by the mouth of the abyss. Just before the field of eyes. Hard to miss."

It's useful. I'm getting better at it.

[There was a time he would have said I like it, smiling with the warm, tentative optimism of an eager novice. He pulls together quiet pragmatism in its stead, as tight as the blanket wrapped around him.]

He's right about them, and you're right about there being more to it than that. There's always some theme. [Pronounced like a foul taste in the mouth.] Or a lesson, or a punishment.

[He reaches out for another mushroom, brushing his fingers through the here and not-here of it. Black breaks and sifts away under his touch once more.]

I used to think it was to control us. I don't think it's so purposeful as that. Or if it is, it's less...

[He curls his hand into a fist, staring past the skeleton at something else unseen. His jaw works silently.]

It's not anything you need to worry about.

Paul gets worse. John turns from the sea to that sick radiance, to the tangle and spill of a thousand voices in pain, and he aches with some new and hideous sympathy. He recalls the moment he wanted to kill the boy, there on his study floor. He feels it again now. It would be vastly simpler for the both of them— for a little while.

It's an absolute heartbreak, hearing Paul say fuck.

This boy is so small. He is so trapped, and he always will be, and there is nothing John could ever do to convince him otherwise. They are both too much of what they are; the point of no return was always too far back. For ten thousand years, John has fashioned that into his dogma: there was nothing else to be done.

"Palamedes was my responsibility, not yours," he says. It is maybe the only decent thing he has ever said to this boy. "But we are not infallible. We aren't in charge. We are hunted by bigger fish." He presses fingers to the crease between his eyes, then abandons pretense and runs a hand over his face wholesale. When he drops it to look at Paul, his eyes are the perfect inverse of Paul's light. "He went to that fight willingly. Every one of them did. You asked it of them, sure; you showed them the path; but they chose it. An unfair choice is still a choice... you have to leave them that."

He says, "Men feel like this. Gods don't. There will always be a body count— always— and it's up to men to feel it, and gods to watch it rise. It's a raw deal, being both. It hurts more to be both. But if you want it to be for anything, you have to... You can't stop caring. If you stop caring, they stop being yours."

He turns back, again, to the sea.

"Keep all of them, the lost ones especially. Honor them. Someone should."

"Do that yourself, huh?"

Despite his stuffy nose and itchy eyes, Kaworu manages a pretty good derisive squint across the table. "Isn't that just what you tried to do in the woods? That didn't work out very well, did it?" It's not really a question.

Then a sigh and the furrowing in his brow goes slack as he looks at Midoriya softly instead. It's easy to be annoyed, he's learned. It's easy to be annoyed instead of considering the other things you feel underneath the annoyance. It's often hard for him to name those feelings but now he knows exactly what it is: concern for Izuku-kun, who is a dear friend. "Even if we can't do as much as you, you still can't carry everything by yourself. I'll keep your secrets but I'm not going to let you take on so much. If there's trouble, I'm not going to let you do it alone."

Edited 2022-03-24 00:56 (UTC)

He can hear the narrowing of Kaworu's eyes in his voice. Midoriya stares at his cereal. It's swimming weirdly even though he's not stirring it, and his throat hurts. He, too, knows what's beneath the annoyance and even that jab about being in the woods alone. It's something that hurts more, something Midoriya always gave to others without thought and was surprised when they shattered.

He'd wince comically--like he did when being scolded by his mom, a teacher, Iida--but he's so tired... He knows that he needs to practice asking for help more. It was a slip in his way of speaking. It shows how little he did that when it really mattered, and how accustomed he grew to that.

"I have some help. It's not that you can't, it's about information. Back home, heroes are common, and thanks to everyone's support, we can work publicly. Here is different, I realize. For now, I want to keep it covert and see if we need to use that to our advantage. But..."

He looks up at Kaworu and knows he has to prepare not just for that, but also for the opposite: the eventuality of everything jumping out from behind dust and ashes to attack everyone he knows.

"Thank you, Nagisa-kun." There is a ghost of the old Midoriya, a slight, vulnerable widening of eyes and a soft lift of his voice as it constricts. "That means a lot." Then his eyes fill with tears in earnest.

"Well, if you've brought cupcakes," says God.

The kid he's looking at is a marvel. The kid is a bastardized nightmare of a soul melange. He can't even count the threads, but he can see the off-kilter way they fit together, as though this boy has left half his soul somewhere else and borrowed half of another's—

It isn't lyctorhood. It can't be. The dead-star burn of thanergy generation isn't here; this is something thalergy-bright, all life and soul and— incomprehensibly— more life. This is, in short, deeply fucking weird.

All that shows on his face is a furrowing of brows, an expression of half-unsettled, all-startled interest, and then the man in the doorway steps back to let Oscar inside. He doesn't look like much, really. Simple black clothing, no weapons to be seen... but his eyes are wrong: a burning white light on black sclera, monstrously dark.

"Come on in."

'He looks like Salem.'

It was Oscar's first thought when he looked into the man's eyes, with irises that gleamed like suns on a black sea. Suddenly struck with an uncertainty that froze in his gut and made him feel like he was standing on sand, he couldn't resist the call of those horrid moments in the belly of the whale. He swallowed nervously, and tried to push away the memory of her silken gaze-- soft as blood and vile as the black ichor that subsumed everything that she was.

--it was panic, born of his own torture and the pain of thousands of years that burned in the pit of his chest. Oscar recognized it, and impulsively wanted to flee.

But--

Paul had invited him, and there was no obvious danger... At least to Oscar personally. The man seemed mild enough of a host, and likely had earned everyone's high regard.

...Like Ironwood had earned their trust by instating everyone's licenses, and offering them both shelter and cake.

He shouldn't have ~~trusted~~ lied to James. Perhaps, he wouldn't be haunted by this fear of being ~~endlessly~~ hurt.

~~He could never forget that look in her eyes. The despair that was older that his civilization and the promise the she would destroy him for eternity.~~

Oscar's nervousness was obvious in the way he stalled, staring down at the sparkling cupcakes with eyes that were clearly looking at something else. It was only the sound of the man's voice that brought him back to the moment with a start.

"Oh. Um, sure!"

He chirped, with nervous cheer. This would be okay, this would be totally okay--

~~She was gone from the Dream, but she would always claw her way back to the remnants of what she had tried to destroy.~~

Edited 2022-03-24 19:48 (UTC)

At home, it was one of those things where the more you practiced, the better you got. I'm sure it's the same here, too. But yeah, useful's one word for it, sure.

[It's not exactly how she would describe magic, and truthfully, she did expect a little more excitement from him, but she's sure he has his reasons.

Her expression echoes his tone. Willow is also not thrilled with the idea of Sleepers being subject to the whim of more powerful beings like this. There doesn't seem to be much they can do to stop it, though, at this point. She can't help but wonder if losing her memories of Trench is just another game.]

It doesn't seem like there's much we can do about it for now, I guess. Whatever their motivations are. At least in Deerington, I don't think Julia was really in control of what was happening to us.

o5 . bone house mingle!

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Late March | OTA

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