View source for 2286/Other Kinds Of Love

{{Log Header
|Date of Scene=2017/01/01
|Location=Kunzite's Palace
|Synopsis=(Content warning: language.) Mamoru and Kunzite fight over what happened with Lacrima. This time, the world does not actually end.
|Cast of Characters=109,38
|pretty=yes
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{{Poses
|Poses=:'''{{#var:109|Kazuo Takeba| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>The quality of the air, the feel of the mattress, these things would tell Mamoru where he is on waking without his powers ever being invoked. No hint of the ocean: not Tokyo. No lush green scents of growing things: that rules out two out of four/. The bed that he's on is comfortable, but not hedonistic. Kunzite's palace, then.<br /><br />Which means that the localized weight distorting the mattress, the person sitting silently on the edge of the bed, unmoving, not even making a sound when he breathes ... well. Three guesses who ''that'' is.

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>And it's honestly not very long at all that Kunzite's kept waiting-- Mamoru's estimate was under thirty seconds before he woke up again, but he'd misjudged how short on energy he was beforehand, which means that it's instead only under thirty seconds after Kunzite brings him to the sand and stone fortress with its warnings written in beauty.<br /><br />For what it's worth, Kunzite can see the automatic cringe /even as Mamoru's breathing shifts/, before he's even properly awake. And Mamoru's hands come up to cover his face, which is when he remembers he's wearing the ugly hoodie on top of everything else, and he turns on his side and curls up. There is a quiet, muffled, "I'm not sorry I fed her, I won't lie. But I'll promise not to offer again."

:'''{{#var:109|Kazuo Takeba| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>There are several seconds of silence. Kunzite does not move during them.<br /><br />And does not move when he speaks. "Why do you think that's important?"

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>That sounds like a trick question. Mamoru turns his head slightly and partially lifts one hand to peek at Kunzite's face, and immediately thinks he was better off not looking-- but now he's stuck. No! No he's not! He can be a weaksauce little sh-- no, he's stuck. He brings his hands down and curls them up against his chest and gives the only answer he has, voice small. "Because it makes you worried." A beat. "And it's an avoidable worry."

:'''{{#var:109|Kazuo Takeba| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>Kunzite is still in uniform. Sitting quietly, back straight, looking directly forward. The lack of expression is nearly carven into place. He might have been ready to wait for hours.<br /><br />When Mamoru answers him, he does not so much as blink in acknowledgment.<br /><br />He is, however, breathing. The silent rhythmic motion suggests that he does so twice, before he speaks again. "What does Lacrima feed on?"

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>"Energy. She mostly took magic energy and some life energy. I also gave her a tarball of pre-packaged identity and emotion, which I figured out how to skim off when I was putting myself together after last time, and I locked the rest away like I keep meaning to teach Naru to do. I--"<br /><br />Mamoru swallows, and looks away from the face that's not looking at him; he focuses on Kunzite's chest instead. "I wanted to give her positive reinforcement. I wanted to hug her, but it wouldn't have done anything for her, not like it does for-- for a lot of people. She's trying so hard. She only wanted to ask for my help for her friend, and we talked about that a bunch, and I said that what she wanted-- what was wrong-- also needs your help. Because of the things you can do that I can't. And the way she was talking-- she holds herself in so little esteem, Kunzite. She doesn't think she even deserved to ask me for my time, to listen to her. We were talking about love, and-- what she's doing for this friend of hers, that's definitely love and I wanted to encourage it. And I took precautions! And I wouldn't have offered if she was hungry! She said she wouldn't be hungry unless she didn't feed ''tomorrow''..."

:'''{{#var:109|Kazuo Takeba| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>There is no interruption. Kunzite lets him speak. Lets him say as much as he wants. He may even be paying attention. He doesn't show any sign of it. But he doesn't show any sign of impatience, either. Only sitting. Until Mamoru finally trails off.<br /><br />"Energy," he says quietly, "is secondary. Part of the package. The part that is important to her is identity. Your identity is more ... extended than most others'. We've already seen that it's possible, when she's exposed to you, for her to lose self-control. Unfortunate things happen when she loses self-control. There was a girl that Kukai knew whom she drained into a coma. It's lasted for six or seven months now. Six or seven months that Lacrima's spent experimenting with her powers, extending them, learning different ways to use them.<br /><br />"What would happen, I wonder, if the Earth lost its identity for half a year."

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>Mamoru's face runs through a wide range of emotions in a very short span of time. Colors, too, though that range is significantly more narrow-- mostly red and white and shades between. He curls up tighter and tighter as he listens, shame winning out the more Kunzite says, until the very end.<br /><br />Then he goes white.<br /><br />First it's with horror, but that is very, very brief, because it's quickly flooded out with a bottomless, unsteady anger. It's an almost-fury that Mamoru visibly fights with, and fights ''hard'', because if Kunzite can be calm when he's obviously that mad, then so can Endymion. He pulls himself up so that he's sitting on his heels on the bed, and he moves closer to Kunzite, and his ocean-blue eyes are windows to a hot mess of appreciation and love warring with rage and injustice and a very teenaged, very out of place, very-in-a-chokehold hint of indignation.<br /><br />After a moment, face pale but color still high in his cheeks, Mamoru asks very evenly, "What happened when it lost its identity for eleven years? Or for three months? How was it doing before I was born? I will grant you that it did not occur to me that even an out of control Lacrima could put me in a coma, and if she went breaking in to what I locked away before Zoisite could stop her then I could have gotten fucked up like last time but for longer, and I already promised not to offer again and I ''meant it'', but there are a bunch of ways in which this planet is not Actual Me any more than the moon is Actual Usagi. You have enough to worry about without adding something like ''that'' to the pile. And I'm not gonna do it again anyway, so you can cross it ''entirely'' off your list and just be mad at me for this time instead of being afraid I might go for seconds."<br /><br />He hunches down, hands almost disappeared in the hoodie's sleeves, his knuckles white where he's braced his hands against his knees. "I'd decided halfway through not to do it again ''anyway'' because I don't like when it's not you," he mutters.

:'''{{#var:109|Kazuo Takeba| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>There are answers to these questions. False parallels; if Mamoru is a conduit, then not everything that affects him will affect what he draws from; but something that is actively trying to draw ''through'' him has the chance to --<br /><br />-- and even one of those things that ''wasn't'' trying sparked a ripple of nightmares across the city that lasted for days.<br /><br />There are answers to those questions. But the question themselves, the challenges Mamoru chooses to make, are enough to hold back the sharp answers that might have been there. Long enough for the words to make it clear that that's not the point Mamoru needs an answer ''to'' anyhow. That nothing they're saying is. Kunzite begins, almost, to turn; there's a slight shift in his shoulders, an aberration in the straight fall of his hair that hints at an incipient turning of his head -- but Mamoru adds that last sentence, and the motion is interrupted. He doesn't flinch, no. He doesn't even go still, not properly. He only stops, just for a moment; his hands go slack; nothing else changes, or nothing evident.<br /><br />Then he stands.<br /><br />"I'll be back in an hour," he says, and of all the ways he has of keeping emotion out of his voice, this is a new one; heavy, but not leaden; damping echoes and resonance, lacking coldness, lacking disapproval, lacking anything at all to read him by. "Maybe less. If you decide it's time to go back, no need to wait." And he walks toward the door.

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>"I DIDN'T MEAN IT LIKE THAT!" yells Mamoru suddenly, desperately, scrambling to the end of the bed and reaching, and hand closing on empty air. He scrambles ''off'' the bed, then, and stumbles, and catches himself on the bedpost before he can completely fall. "Do you need me to SAY it? Out loud? Do you need me to? She doesn't love me and I don't love her, so it was only me letting her take energy so she could live without taking from someone who didn't agree, for another few days-- it was only me showing her I really meant it that I had no hard feelings, that I would truly support her effort to be a good person-- and I didn't like it, and it felt ''wrong'', instead of--"<br /><br />His voice cracks on that and he falters, and he's crying silently, so if Kunzite's not looking then at least he won't see that. "Instead of being another kind of love, which it /is/ with you. Which is... and you're... you won't even-- I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I've fucked everything up now..."

:'''{{#var:109|Kazuo Takeba| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>"Endymion." Kunzite pauses with fingertips on the door, and he looks back, and there's nothing in his eyes; but the nothing deepens, somehow. Reaction even when there's nothing there to react with. "You could carve out one of my kidneys and still not have fucked everything up. But I need a little while that we're not gouging at each other's eyes, first."<br /><br />Before either of them finds the wrong thing to say ''again.''<br /><br />It does not take an hour. It does not even take ten minutes. He tests the door again, cautiously; glances inside to check on Mamoru's state.<br /><br />And if it's much the same, or even half the same, as it was when he left, then he does not say anything, and does what in all reason he should have done instead of leaving: comes back, and takes Mamoru into his arms.

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>The name calms something screamingly frantic in his soul enough to make the teenager ''listen'', and he stops short with a fist clutching the hoodie over his chest, and he swallows back the taste of bile and gives a silent nod of his tear-streaked face.<br /><br />After Kunzite leaves, he sinks to the floor next to the bed and curls up to wait there, hugging his knees to his chest.<br /><br />When Kunzite comes back, the hood's up, too-- but Endymion lifts his face from his knees, and seconds later Kunzite's holding him and he burrows into the man's chest, gripping his jacket and trying very hard not to start crying all over again.<br /><br />He'll undoubtedly fail.<br /><br />He'll certainly eventually fall asleep, too, and someone else will have to give Usagi and Makoto and Naru a ride home. He's too tired to drive, after all.<br /><br />Even if they have a few unresolved issues they'll actually have to face at some point soon, now, the contact is at least enough to reassure them both.
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