990/Knight of Endurance
From MahouMUSH
Knight of Endurance | |
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Date of Scene: | 04 February 2016 |
Location: | Earth Court Frat House |
Synopsis: | Makoto drops by to see Jadeite with cookies and awkward questions, and learns a little about what he has endured and what he continues to endure. (Technically in Mamoru's temporary apartment.) |
Cast of Characters: | Makoto Kino, Jadeite |
- Makoto Kino has posed:
Cleanup efforts and rebuilding in the wake of the catastrophic storm that was Walpurgisnacht are still ongoing, but bit by bit life is returning to what passes for normal in Tokyo. Which is admittedly 'not very'.
In between her own efforts to help around the Hikawa shrine and wherever else the witch-storm left its mark, Makoto has had a lot to think about. She would've been by to see Jadeite soon anyway, but with everything that's happened - before the battle and after - it's felt more and more important that she talk to him.
So now, after an entirely uncharacteristic amount of fussing and backtracking and looking over her shoulder like she'd be able to see a Dark General if one was monitroing her, Mako taps a polite knock-knock-knock at the door of Jadeite's current residence. "Hey, are you there?" she calls hopefully. "I made too many cookies."
'Made too many' is Makoto's favorite excuse for unloading baked goods and other foodstuffs on Jadeite. It may or may not coincide with late-night sprees of stressbaking, but at least the results are pretty much always delicious.
- Jadeite has posed:
It doesn't take too long before Jadeite is answering the door, a smile already on his face. He seems warmly amused, because this is probably not at all the first time she's used him to hide the evidence of her stress-baking. He doesn't really mind. Instead, he takes a step back, opening the door further to allow Makoto in. "Hello! I am here. I would tell you that you have really got to work on the portions your recipies make, but honestly I don't think I want you to. Come in, make yourself at home!"
- Makoto Kino has posed:
"Hi." The smile with which Mako greets him in turn is bright and unreserved and only very slightly embarrassed. She's carrying a large plate covered with foil, which she holds out to him as she comes in through the door he's holding open for her. "It's not the portions, really," Makoto protests with a little hitch of laughter in her voice. "It's just when I get on a roll I forget about stuff like where I'm going to put everything after or, you know, who's going to eat all of it."
The cookies this time were rolled up with cinnamon and brown sugar, sliced into swirls and glazed with icing, like someone married a sugar cookie to a cinnamon roll. All the rolling and cutting and careful doling out of icing was pretty cathartic. "How've you been doing?" Mako asks, looking at Jadeite over the plate with an expression of honest concern in her bright green eyes.
- Jadeite has posed:
"It's good to have a hobby, I think." Jadeite decides, as he closes the door behind Makoto and accepts the foil-covered plate. His immediate objective seems to be to take them to the kitchen and set them on the counter, rolling the foil back to peek at the contents beneath. "It helps to take your mind off of things. I like to work with clay. That's probably not too different from cookies, except the results are a lot less tasty."
The concern she seems to be feeling isn't lost on him. His smile goes a little subdued, head dipping in a nod. "I'm...as well as I think I could expect to be, considering. I knew I was turning my face from my brothers, I suppose, but to be so viscerally reminded..." He sighs, reaching up to touch at his chest as if it had been his actual body that Zoisite's crystal had pierced. "I must keep reminding myself that it will be better for us all when this is all over."
- Makoto Kino has posed:
Something in Makoto's face brightens when Jadeite mentions taking one's mind off of things, and his own work with clay. He understands. "Yours last longer, though," she observes. "The things I make aren't meant to be saved for very long, no matter how nice they look."
The bright sparkle in her eyes dims moments later, her smile fading only a little after his does. She's tried to imagine what it would be like to have, for example, Rei suddenly turn and stab her, but the idea of it is so foreign that it won't even compute. And even that, she knows, is only the tip of the iceberg of what Jadeite has had to endure. "It will," she says softly, a promise with little basis other than hope and determination. "I'm sorry it's taking so long, but..."
Here, Makoto trails off briefly, and her gaze shifts away from Jadeite towards nothing in particular. She seems to wrestle with her own thoughts for a moment before coming to a decision. "Actually, I'd like to talk to you about that a little, if it's all right."
- Jadeite has posed:
"Perhaps," Jaedite agrees, sneaking one of the cookies like he thinks he's being subtle. "But less necessary to survival. Food is critical, and it bonds people together. Clay is just art, and it isn't for everyone." He doesn't seem that upset by it. It is perhaps one of those things he's just accepted about his life.
"I believe you." He decides after a moment, head still bobbing. He hasn't started in on the cookie in his hand, but Jadeite knows when he does, it will be delicious. "I believe you. I can wait. I've waited a long time, even though I didn't always know what I was waiting for. I can wait a little longer."
There's a pause, as she asks to talk about that tender topic. They're already on it, and he supposes it can't be much worse to continue on it. There's another incline of his head, and Jadeite moves a little, as if to indicate he means to go sit on the couch and Makoto is welcome to come with him. "I can try to talk about it. What do you need to know?"
- Makoto Kino has posed:
Mako takes the unspoken invitation and trails after Jadeite as he moves toward the couch, linking her fingers together behind her back for no other reason than to have something to do with her hands. She falters a little, not sure how to ask, not sure if there's any way to ask what she wants to know that won't rub salt in open wounds.
"...Nephrite," she says at last, a little reluctantly. And then explains: "Before Walpurgisnacht, Kunzite asked me to save him. We're going to save everyone, but--"
("...shut up in his observatory again, I take it?" The princess of Jupiter raises her eyebrows a little and smiles as though in commiseration, her expressive green eyes filled with fond exasperation and a trace of concern. "That won't do. Shall we go and lure him out?")
"--I might have a chance to get through to him. Or at least, to make a start at it. But I need to know what I'm up against." Self-directed frustration twists Makoto's mouth at the corners as she struggles with what she's trying to say. "I guess what I'm asking is really just... what was it like for you? The Dark Kingdom?"
- Jadeite has posed:
The question merits a lot of thought. Jadeite sits and considers it, his eyes on the swirls of his cookie as he does. His fingers trace the pattern without him seeming to even notice it. "As cheap an answer as this seems to be...dark."
There's a long sigh before he looks up at Makoto's face, as if guaging her reactions to the things he says as he says them. "There is something about me that isn't the same as my brothers, I suppose. Beryl found me when I was young. I must have had a family beforehand, before she took me, but I don't remember them at all. I have better memories of our time before than I have of my family in this time. I don't even have very reliable memories of everything that happened to me while I was a part of them. Mostly because there was always something inside of me that didn't want to be there. I was constantly coming close to or actually breaking free of the brainwashing, like there was always a part of me that couldn't accept that world as my reality, that *knew* we didn't belong. No matter how many times Beryl took it from me, it always came back. None of my brothers needed so much...washing. They always seemed more willing to believe that was where we should have been, what we should have been doing. I learned not to say anything because I disliked losing time but I knew I couldn't leave them without any hope of being saved. That was the only thing that mattered. Keeping them safe."
And now he feels like he's betrayed that, somehow. Jadeite's heart lurches a little, mouth tipping towards a frown. "It changes you. The Dark Kingdom's power. Twists what you are inside, makes it harder to see the real you. It makes you stronger in some ways. There's magic I can't do, now, that I once had."
- Makoto Kino has posed:
Makoto listens silently, watching Jadeite as he speaks, even as he watches her. She has no control over her expressions, and so every little reaction plays out over her face: questioning when he says he's different from the other three. A twinge of sharp pain, almost a flinch, when he mentions not remembering family. Quiet, aching horror as he describes the state that he lived in, the lost time.
As he finishes, Makoto closes her eyes for a few seconds.
"Usagi-chan and Rei-chan and I were wondering, just recently," she murmurs, "why Sailor Moon's Escalation didn't work on Zoisite like it did on you. We thought maybe it was because you already wanted to be healed, and he didn't. Not yet."
- Jadeite has posed:
Jadeite lets his expression go thoughtful, eyes slipping from Makoto's face as he does. "I think that is basically it. Before I came to you, all of you...things had changed. Things were changing. I'd had no memory of the time before, or of our Prince, and then..."
There's a gesture Jadeite makes there, ridiculously with a *cookie*, to imply that Mamoru's presence had changed everything. "I broke through again, but this time...Kunzite was with me. He didn't think we could both escape, so he stayed and I...fled. With the mission of freeing the others, too. But if I hadn't broken out of Beryl's conditioning...I don't know if it would have worked. If I hadn't stood in it until I knew it had cleansed me, maybe it wouldn't have worked. So, I think you are right. I wanted to be free. Zoisite doesn't even know he isn't, as far as I know. And at this point, with what happened at Walpurgisnacht...I doubt we can expect that *any* of them do, any more."
- Makoto Kino has posed:
"Yeah." Makoto's head tips downward in a small nod of acknowledgement. She has no notion of what might have been going down in the Dark Kingdom following Walpurgisnacht and its aftermath, but she's certain that it can't be anything good even by their standards.
Having lost Jadeite, will Beryl tighten her leash on the other three Shitennou? Probably. "It'll be even more dangerous for them, trying to get through to them enough to save everyone," she says, a troubled expression darkening her eyes. "It makes things more difficult. But we will have to try. Whether they know that's what it is or not, there's no way I'm leaving anyone in slavery to her."
As she makes this last statement, Mako's voice becomes stronger, the words firm with a determined certainty. She may not know how they're going to extricate Mamoru and Jadeite's brothers from Beryl's grasp, but she has no intention of giving up.