1914/A Rose Arose
From MahouMUSH
A Rose Arose | |
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Date of Scene: | 06 September 2016 |
Location: | Jadeite's Palace |
Synopsis: | Messy conversations about magic, identity, fear, lies, and mud. Lots of mud. |
Cast of Characters: | Mamoru Chiba, Naru Osaka |
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The 'front' door opens, it shuts; there is a distracted teenager toeing his shoes off, briefcase over his shoulder with a backward hand, other hand holding a book he's in the middle of reading.
For once, Mamoru is coming home alone. It feels weird. Everyone's out, it seems, and that feels weirder when he lowers his book and confirms the silence that'd intruded on his absorption of written information.
How quickly one can become accustomed to new routine.
He puts his briefcase down with exaggerated loudness, stops, listens, and frowns slightly to himself. His people still exist; he can sense them, off wherever they are, but they're not here. That's some consolation. There's no existentialist crisis oncoming. Still, though, the quiet he'd been used to for so long is an unsettling thing now, and he closes his book and thumps it on the table, then pads toward the kitchen to make coffee. On the way, he scoops up a remote and turns the television on, leaving it where it lands -- whatever Nephrite was watching last. Something inane in English he'd recorded on the DVR.
It's some noise, but it's not the same. Maybe, he thinks with mild amusement, Fiore wants some coffee. Or coffee grounds. Mamoru'd read somewhere that they're excellent in gardens. Still, there's--
He won't think the word. He won't think the word 'lonely'. He gets precious little time to himself these days, after all. It should be savored.
- Naru Osaka has posed:
Not quite alone. The house is silent, indeed. There's no one in the living room, there's no one in the kitchen.
There's coffee in the kitchen, but the autoshut off of the pot has already kicked in leaving the pot half full, and still warm. Someone was here not so very long ago, the warmth of their beverage choices still present.
There are an extra set of shoes by the door, but amongst all the other things there, not so very noticible.
The balcony door is closed, not latched, just closed and its hard to see the petite figure that is curled up in one of the comfortable chairs out there. Harder to hear the quiet voice that is holding a one sided conversation with Fiore, now that the TV is chatting away.
Naru peers around the edge of the chair, missing seeing who has arrived home by moments as Mamo heads to the kitchen. Her attention turns to the plant again. "Stupid, I know. You don't need to tell me that."
Because clearly, Fiore is passing judgement with his leaves.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
He is very judgemental.
Mamoru pours himself a cup of the cooling coffee and scoops up the filter in his other hand, then goes out past the television and -- expecting the balcony door to be unlocked anyway -- automatically goes to open it with his elbow. About halfway through the motion's when he spies Naru out there, and the most ridiculous look of profound relief crosses his face.
Of course he immediately denies anything was wrong in the first place, and it's only with reasonable good cheer that he greets her. "Naru-chan! Did you make the coffee? Thank you-- look out, I've got compost or something for Fi."
He is, of course, still in his Infinity uniform; his glasses are still on; his tie's already untied. That probably happened the minute he got to his car.
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"Oh its you!" Naru twists at the sound of the balcony door opening and the introspection is quickly replaced with a smile. "I heard someone come in, but didn't see who." She explains briefly.
School uniform on her too still, her skirt tugged down to cover her legs as she sits with her arms wrapped around them. "I made the coffee, yes." Naru nods her agreement, and her own coffee is on the table next to her as proof. Only half drunk, and cold now, but present.
Naru resettles in the chair, resting her chin on her knees. "How was school?"
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Dumping the contents of the coffee filter into the pot of dirt, then running his fingers through and through again in order to mix it up a bit, Mamoru glances to Naru and gives her a lopsided smile. "It was school, and therefore a primarily enjoyable experience that involved a decent amount of learning and a fair amount of pulling Zoisite's hair. He decided he was going to sit in front of me. Now he's stuck there unless one of us calls attention to serious misbehavior."
Then Mamoru glances down at his hands, pauses, starts to move for the balcony door again, stops, then aggressively wipes his coffee-and-dirt hands off on his uniform trousers and deposits himself on one of the chairs with its back to the wall instead of at the table, but near enough for him to lean over and pick up his coffee again. "What's up with you?" he asks, and somehow it's gentle, maybe a little teasing, but warmly so. Then it's a little more teasing, offering an out if Naru wants to take it. "No paint, no Usa, no pretty German boy, no Kunzite..." There's a pause, and he looks skeptical. "No homework?"
- Naru Osaka has posed:
There's a soft snort from Naru at the notion of Zoi getting his hair pulled every day at school. "You need an ink well to drip it in, just to firmly embrace the stereotypes."
The listing of all the things that Naru isn't doing, or isn't spending time with and there's a touch of a breath. Slowly drawn in. Held just a few moments, and let out just as mindfully. Meditative, centring, and probably without realizing that she's doing it.
"Usa's got detention, cause of course she does. I don't know where Kunzite is. I'd lay money that pretty German boy is also in detention, but not right now. Homework can wait for later." She pauses and then shrugs a touch. "Paint is proving problematic."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
That's interesting. Naru's stressing out over what he thought were light questions about things she enjoyed doing, people she enjoyed spending time with. He doesn't call attention to it, but he watches a little more closely -- and Mamoru gestures absently in a somewhat westerly direction. "He's that way. He's probably getting in trouble and claiming it's social networking. It's a grand tradition."
He's quiet for a moment, sipping his coffee and lifting up a foot to inspect the sock. Balcony-walking this far up does not, in fact, instantly dirty it. Touching it with his dirty hands does. If he's diligently careless, he can accidentally smudge his face at some point as well. Then, "How is paint problematic?"
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"Is that what I get to call it these days? Social networking over youma threats?" Naru flickers up a smile at that idea. "I really do meet some very interesting people that way, and not all of them are trying to chew my face off."
Which really could sound bitter and jaded, but it sounds oddly sincere.
Naru watches the edge of the balcony rather than Mamoru managing to artfully decorate himself with dirt smudges, quiet for long moments. "I don't understand it at the moment." She finally decides on. "And I could use the distraction, but I can't distract myself from it, with it."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Well how else do you meet people who aren't already in your friend group? Get attacked together, or rescued, or do some rescuing. That's how it works, right?" Mamoru could be teasing, but-- that's really honestly how he's made most of his friends, so it's hard to tell whether or not he actually thinks that's normal.
Again, he's briefly quiet; at least the question seems to have been rhetorical.
"You don't understand how it could be magic?"
There, he's come right out and said it.
Finishing his coffee really quick, in an alarming swig of warm unsweetened caffeine, Mamoru hauls himself to his feet and henshins mid-motion, then holds out a hand. "Let's distract you by scaring the hell out of you while catching pokemon," offers Tuxedo Kamen. "Or we can go to out of the way places that'll drive Kunzite crazy to get to and you can paint flowers and flying paper butterflies with mud on the sides of trees, and we'll see if media has any bearing on it. And we'll see if intending something to be a representation of a representation creates the first iteration of representation or a living replica of the original."
He smiles, and his eyes are the same as ever behind the faint and luminous mask. "We can distract, or we can try to understand pieces until there's enough to get an idea of the whole."
- Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru does smile at the rhetorical comments about attacks and rescuing, even if she meets almost as many over milkshakes. Silly girl, meeting people in conventional ways.
The very /word/ 'magic' brings just a faint twitch and Naru nods at that. "That's not .." Naru starts to reply and then Tuxedo Kamen is looming over her with his hand extended and she blinks up at him.
"I.. don't know how to control it." Naru points out, as she uncurls a little. "I don't know how I /do/ it. I don't get it, it doesn't make any sense and it's /not me/."
The words are one thing, a rush of stress and nerves and concern and fear, a whole lot of being scared, but her movements are entirely different as she stands to reach for his hand.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"It's okay," the high-schooler assures Naru. He takes her hand and steps up onto the balcony railing, half-crouched as he helps her step up. "The first two parts are why we're going to experiment, and we're going to experiment with harmless things, things that don't take much energy to sustain or will run out on their own, things that can't hurt anyone. The last big mishmash of 'oh no I didn't ask for this I was deliberately trying to avoid it and it happened anyway--' well. You know better than a lot of people what is you, don't you? But everyone who's alive grows. And if this really isn't part of you, hadn't you better find that out for sure?"
He's a real jerk, that Tuxedo Kamen. He says things and then he scoops and jumps off of forty-seventh floor balconies. At least this time Naru doesn't have to hold onto his back and wear his cape, he's got her in a pretty damn secure princess carry-- and once they're in a less tall area, the jumps aren't nearly as breathlessly death-defying.
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"At least.." Naru was going to start saying something, but the jerk scoops and jumps and any fear Naru has about art and energies and magic and her own self is lost in a haze of brain melting.
Mamoru /did/ say he'd offer a distraction. For the moment at least, the death defying leap from the forty-seventh floor balcony is plenty.
Charge towards Wraiths armed with a book bag? No problem. Heights, and most especially jumping from them? Problem. At least she doesn't scream, but as always, she's not looking, hiding her face with her eyes screwed up tightly shut.
"I swear, I might be as scared of the idea of jumping around like most of you do as I am of my own damn paintings." Naru mutters against his cape.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Well that's the thing," Mamoru tells her as they keep going -- one thing that can be said for Tux-jumping is that there isn't a lot of jarring or rollercoaster-stomach. If Naru hides her eyes, it's almost possible to pretend that they're not really high up in the air and doing a godawful lot of falling. "You might be wigged out about it because all you've really been exposed to, magic-wise, is fighting and dangerous sports. You don't have to fight, and you don't have to be a daredevil. Maybe that's not even in your wheelhouse, who knows?"
Finally there is a little jarring, and it's because of running footsteps -- and then one more sailing silence and a rushing sound, then darkness and the feel of cape around Naru, and what sounds like a torrential downpour -- and then the cape comes away and everything is really very damp, and bright, and very very loud. They're in a spacious cave, and one of the walls is a waterfall with the sun shining brightly through it. The floor is quite muddy.
"So forget about the scary stuff. Just think about the secret things, and the beautiful things, and the special things that only belong to you and that no one can truly take, and that no one can make you use in a way you don't want to. Think about what you love, what interests you. What subjects you like to paint, what things you find so pretty you have to try to recreate them. Are those things yours? Or are your ideas of them yours?"
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"If there's magic out, I'm generally hurt, about to be hurt or someone I love is hurt. For a wide variety of options in hurt." Naru agrees, as suddenly magic is a WAY better distraction than thinking about how high up they likely are, although she is not going to look.
Once they stop, and there's the rushing sound of water and sunlight, Naru dares to peek. A step or two back and she blinks, letting her eyes recover from going from dark to light, and then she laughs softly, although it's not quite filled with humour yet. "Appropriate, all things considered." She gestures at the water cutting them off from the world, hiding them in the cave that sparkles with the light through the water.
"I paint.." Naru starts and then she has to pause, thinking on his questions. She's quiet as she does, letting her hand settle upon the wall of the cave, feeling the damp there. "I had this conversation with Kunzite once, you know." She answers without answering per se. "About the moments that touch the soul, that take you away from that specific spot and time and things are just .. perfect for that one breath in time, that feels almost outside of time."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"They feel like that, so you put them there," says Mamoru as he lets his henshin melt away, and immediately has to take his glasses off because they're quickly covered in mist and spray. "Outside of time, like the oldest pictures that still live in this world. They're hidden away in pockets like this one, and still look like the artists left just minutes ago, even though they're 35, 40,000 years old." His own hand's up on the damp cave wall now, and at the end, his voice trails off a little -- but then he looks at Naru again, and he grins. "That kind of thing is where magic comes from. Moments that touch the soul so deeply that you need to keep them and share them and make them last. Love of all kinds. That feeling when you're so happy you can't breathe, or you're so scared that you can't think-- it's reactions, responses. It's your heart and its strength, its ferocity in what you believe."
He pulls his hand away from the wall, and there's the impression left of his hand in the negative. It'll fade soon, since it's only water and the lack thereof, but it's-- "The mark you make on the world. You just had something precious taken from you, and you were able to keep enough of it because of the strength of your heart that you could rebuild. You did that. You painted in the missing parts of yourself. Maybe you were using a lot of energy from me, but it was you that worked the magic. And the more strongly you feel, the stronger your magic is-- the more lasting a mark you can make. It's not inherently a weapon, but it is inherently power to change things."
- Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru is listening, that is clear by her body language, little half noises here and there as she listens to his assessment of ancient cave drawings. She's not watching, per se, her attention upon the light playing with the droplets of water, the way that moves and dances and sparkles.
"Keep them, yes. I don't like sharing them." Naru comments quietly, thoughtfully. "I /hated/ sharing them." She clarifies. "It was terrifying."
Naru is quiet again as Mamoru describes the strength of will and emotion and heart that is required to rebuild your own thoughts, your own emotions. "The power to change things." She repeats thoughtfully.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"You hated sharing your paintings?" Mamoru asks, blinking at Naru. "Then why'd you enter that competition?"
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"Not those ones." Naru shakes her head and turning to look at him. "I've whole sketchbooks that I dont mind sharing. Drawings, and doodles and a few paintings that are perfectly adquate."
Naru turns back to watch the water falling again, as if that chaotic movement of spray and tumbling droplets provides some sort of awareness. "I've a whole other set. They're much more real. Or dead, for the ones I painted after the first time with the wraiths. I didn't think those needed to be out in the world /either/, for different reasons."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The older boy nods, then, and turns back to looking at the wall. He agrees with the amendment. "Keep, then. At some point you may want to share some, and that'll be okay, and if you don't, that'll be okay too."
One corner of his mouth turns up. "I really do love the one of the castle that you gave to Kunzite."
He's silent for a moment more, and then another.
Finally Mamoru crouches down, nearly slips in the mud, then gives up and kneels in it and starts scraping up little handfuls of it. "This stuff is pretty tacky. Almost like putty. Clay I guess? Makes sense 'cause of where we are, but still. Think you can paint on the walls with it? Maybe a little further back so the water doesn't wash it off right away. Not a lot of colors, either, but-- bet you could figure something out if it frustrates you enough."
That's-- that's a sidelong Mamoru grin right there, trollface mctrolltease. He splats his handful of clay-mud against the wall, then pokes two eyes and a smile into the splat, then gets up again and once more wipes his hands off on his increasingly-filthy school uniform pants. "Can you paint a picture of a paper crane that can fly even though it's made of paper? Or hmm, maybe an orchid. Orchids like waterfall rocks, right?"
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"The castle one that I gave Kunzite is from that other set." Naru notes, probably without actually needing to. It has life, and energy and emotion and so much more than what usually lives in her sketchbook.
The quip about frustration is met with a sidelong look and a smirk and Naru scoops up a handful of mud to lob in the direction of that grin.
"Orange was bloody /hard/." Naru comments as she eschews drawing on the wall, but instead crouches down and smoothes the patch of mud that she just stirred up. "It kept sliding away from me while I was watching it." She doesn't always work in colour, she's often just in pencils in her sketchbook, and she is working just in finger and clay for the moment.
There's muscle memory here too, much as there was when she was painting her own emotions, the casual swoop of her finger into the mud to draw out a curve as naturally as many people breath. There's a lot of muddy school uniforms in progress here, as Naru kneels over the flower that's emerging in her finger painting. Different fingers, fingernails too, to adjust lines, finding the thick and thin that's needed for shading and definition. Not an orchid, but a rose.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
For a dodge tank, Mamoru gets splattered with a wad of mud pretty readily, lifting a cape he's not actually wearing, then sputtering laughing. He wipes most of it off and flicks his hand in Naru's direction, sending a smattering of it back where it came from most recently -- then wanders closer to Naru and half-crouches half-leans against the wall, wedging himself there against a ridge on the floor, out of Naru's way. He watches.
He watches a shape he knows intimately take form in the muddy clay under Naru's skillful fingers, and he's hushed to avoid interrupting her concentration, her reverie. Even if it's not magic the way Naru's thinking, what she's doing is magic to him.
- Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru laughs, accepting the splatters as her due retribution. Laundry is going to suck.
Naru mms softly as she watches the flower emerge under her tuteledge, a little dig into the mud that she's using to give it more depth, more dimension in the petals and start to come away from the mud.
Still monochrome, there's no colour in it yet.
"It's not magic." Naru points out quietly. "It's just knowing where to put the lines to make it look right." A little flick of the muddy clay, getting it under her fingernails as she deftly adds thorny bits, not too many. "The ones that are most alive? I can't generally control that. Usually I'm too wired on something.. too much of some sort of emotion to relax, or something wont leave my head, and then I get a good painting that I'm not .. usually.. willing to share."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru should be saying something here, offering some sage observation or advice, or trying to get philosophical over practicalities. He normally would be. He's not, though; he's silent, still watching Naru's hands--
--no, he's not watching. His eyes are unfocused; he's daydreaming. Absently, he picks up a lump of the mud-clay and starts rolling it around in his hands, making it into a ball.
"Don't tell anyone," he says really quietly. "But you can borrow this."
Slouching down a little further in his nook between ridge and wall, Mamoru props his forearms on his knees, and pinches and twists the ball of clay into nothing-shapes; he's no sculptor. He's no singer, either; his voice is an unpracticed and uncertain tenor, but it knows the notes and it hits them surely.
The words are foreign, all unfamiliar phonemes and combinations; the meter and melody are strange and kind; the scansion is strict and the inflection forgiving. It's something that goes bone-deep, and even if the words are unintelligible, the meaning is communicated so clearly by the context of the song. Home and safety, bounty and wealth, just laws and wise judgement, bright honor and cherished dreams, love and lucidity, protection and peace. It's sung with the unmistakeable flavor of a lullabye, and tastes like the scent of the air at Zoisite's palace when the sun hits a patch of grass and burns off the dew.
It sounds like the texture of fresh rose petals.
It's only one verse, and Mamoru ducks his head to rub at the back of his neck and looks away when he finishes. "Um-- very not magic. But your mud rose made me think of it again."
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"Mmm?" Naru turns to look at him as he settles against the wall and fiddles with clay in his hands.
Her own hands still as she listens, letting the nuances of the language settle upon her, the sense of moments being shared, expounded upon, familiar and new, all at once.
Naru turns back to her rose as the music lingers in the air, caught upon the rippling sunlight, settling upon the earth.
"It's pretty. It's.. soothing." Naru decides, the word not quite right, but close enough for words. She reaches down to scoop a finger under the rose in the mud, to pull it from two dimensions into three, no matter that the third didn't exist until she plucked it from the ground to be able to offer to him.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The black-haired teenager blinks as Naru pulls a sculpture of a rose out of a picture of a rose, and his eyes widen in pure wonder as she hands it to him. He accepts it like it's a fragile thing made of spun ice and spidersilk, hands cautious and reverent. He just looks at it for a moment, and he says with a half smile, "My mother sang it to me when I was very very small. Before I even met Kunzite. I only remembered it recently."
The eyes part of the smile is more pronounced than the rest of it, and it goes a little rueful. "I don't know the language if I think about it."
It's just that it matches the cadences of the mind-to-mind speech that the Endymion part of him used with Naru when she painted her emotions back in.
He looks back at Naru, and he holds the rose out back to her. "Let's try something. Close your eyes, hold it in one hand. Point at each part you want to color, in turn, and I'm going to put paint in that hand, and it's going to be the right colors you need for the parts that you're working on."
And now he's grinning.
He's grinning because if she does as he says, he's going to put water from the waterfall in that hand.
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"When you don't think about it, do you just understnd it, without actually knowing each word?" Naru asks as she watches him hold the bit of scuplture that shouldn't exist out of a finger painting in mud. "It's pretty, it .. feels like you."
Naru reaches for the rose as he passes it back to her. "I know you didn't bring paint with you, you know." She points out, although she closes her eyes even as she says it. "I also know that if you teleported back to my place to get paint, you'd come back puking."
Someone is unfortunately very good at thinking these things through.
Still, she holds out her hand to him, no matter that she's already logiced out of how this could possibly work. "Besides, I am going to bet that you suck immensely at blending colours, hmm?" Her voice is amused, gently as she draws her hand back, with or without water, to feel the edges of the petals, not looking at them, using her finger tips to brush along the clay surface, as if smoothing over.
It's less like the paint icon of photoshop, and far more subtle shifts in the colour of the clay, darker where the shadows are, lighter at the edges.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"You don't know where we are," Mamoru points out, "and I could have lifted what colors you want from the rose itself." If he sounds a little petulant it's because she's not humoring him. "And give you terribly blended weird looking mud. But the point's for you to not think about it, which is why I sang to you, too."
She can hear him get up, and then hear the waterfall get louder and change quality briefly, and then yes: he pours some water on her hand. And a little on top of her head. "Either way, how could you not love this? How can you be scared of this? You're making a beautiful thing. How is that not you? Also here, I put it in my hat, I'm setting it down next to your knee. You can just reach in for it."
He's silent a moment more, and then, "Yeah. When I don't think about it, I understand it."
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"I have no clue where we are." Naru admits, and his petulance at her logic ends up being distraction too, letting her fingers work without the hassle of her attention upon them. "Although behind a waterfall, we're likely high enough up that I really shoudn't tick you off /too/ badly."
There's a soft squeak as Naru ends up with water on her head, ducking down a bit as it runs down her back. "Gah, it's cold!" She turns towards where she thinks he is, flicking more water back in his direction, her eyes still closed.
Naru is thoughtful as she considers his questions about being scared, a highly effective distraction from the fading of the dark brown into lighter brown into beige that's happening under her fingertips. She periodically dips into that offered water, without really realizing that she's doing it.
"It's.. a lot of things." Naru finally decides on. "It feels like a lie. Like losing control. Like a clay flower won't help much."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Pff like flicking water's going to do anything when I just stuck my head under that waterfall," gloats Mamoru, which will also tell Naru she absolutely hit him. And then his voice is coming from in front of her again, where he'd been sitting before.
"A lie?" he asks. His voice is interested, a little skeptical but open, certainly. "Losing control I can get. Losing control is what happens whenever you start learning anything new. It's like if you've been getting good grades forever and nothing's a challenge and then something comes along that you have no idea about, and even reading up on it on the internet's not helping you understand it, and you feel like since you can't do it on your terms right now this minute, you'll never be able to. But a lie? How?"
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"It's the principle of the thing." Naru harumphs softly at him as a momentary distraction from her distractions.
The colour keeps fading out of the rose as she manipulates it blindly, leaving it looking more like porcelain than pottery, the edges growing faintly translucent. A brush of her fingers along the stem, just a casual flick brings out the green that feels like it was always there, and she jumps a touch as she pricks herself on an unseen thorn.
Finger into her mouth a moment, it delays the answer, a convenient pause.
"I can't do it on my terms, I can't even not do it when I'm not meaning to." Naru addresses the control thing first and then considers her answer for another moment of quiet, one that finds her fingers smoothing warmth into the white that the rose has become. "I'm the mundane."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Nice to meet you, The Mundane, I'm The Orphan," says Mamoru gravely after a half-second's pause at the end. "I have a name that doesn't feel like it's mine. I'll never have friends, I'll always be strange, I'll never touch anyone. But I don't need to because my grades are good enough and my behavior's good enough that I can get myself and my inheritance out of the system a little early and buy a big empty space to live away from everyone. The parents I don't remember provided me with more than enough to make sure no one ever tears me away from my books, if that's what I want. But I'm still an orphan, and I'm still strange, and I have no friends, and people sometimes don't believe I'm real, and I mostly don't believe I'm real. Just an example or a stereotype waiting to lose my mind in class sometime or a hero or whatever. It doesn't matter what story anyone tells because it always starts the same way."
His voice gets careless and dismissive. "A prince? Yeah, okay, sure. A reincarnated prince of the magical heart of the whole planet? Pull the other one. And wait, okay, you're saying that that girl you dreamt about when you were little and got sent to the shrinks for when you insisted she was real-- she is real? And she's the moon princess? And now you're dating her and she's Sailor Moon and you also helped save the world and you got your ancient guardians back and-- okay, you know, Chiba, this was funny for like a minute like five minutes ago before you started talking, you shouldn't lie like that."
His voice is abruptly closer, and it actually sounds a little aggravated. Not angry, not rough, just-- maybe impatient. Impatient's a good word. And Naru gets her forehead flicked. "People change, dummy. Things about you change. Things you didn't know turn up. It doesn't make any of it a lie."
- Naru Osaka has posed:
There's no reply from Naru as Mamoru gets going on his roll of reality from his perspective. Her fingers still on the rose, holding it gently, and a little tighter as she shrinks into herself, shying from the tirade that she's unleashed. She silent, her eyes still closed, but there is no doubt that she is listening to him, no doubt that she can feel each word and the sentiment behind it.
Naru's eyes snap open as he flicks her forehead, and she gets the full weight of that impatience upon her, the two of them close. There's a flash of her own frustration, her own impatience. "You asked how it feels. It feel like a lie. Am I cursed again? Possessed? The last time I did anything like this, it was because someone fed me dark energy without my knowledge. What is it this time? How is it about to go horribly horribly wrong? When is it just going to vanish and I will get to try and figure out how to create without it again?"
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Ugh, okay, okay, sorry, yes, you're right," says Mamoru, looking away and backing up, holding his hands up for a second. "I'm sorry. Let's call it a trick then, instead of a lie. You're waiting for someone or something to pull the rug out from under you, and that's part of--" he's glancing back at her again, and his impatience is gone; he looks mildly cranky, but it's definitely not aimed at Naru; none of his body language is aggressive or even overexaggeratedly sarcastic or anything. "--why you think it can't be yours. That's legit. I thought the entirety of your argument was based on you defining yourself as the mundane and objecting to anything that challenged that. Sorry I misunderstood."
He curls back up against the wall, crossing his arms in front of him, across his chest and under his arms, legs drawn up in front of him. So much mud. He doesn't look away again, but he also doesn't come any closer anymore. "There's no dark energy in you. There's no darkness. Do a mental self-check: you have the yardsticks now to make sure you're not possessed, not unduly influenced, not hosting something bizarre." His eyes flicker down to the rose in her hands, then back up to her eyes. "You make beautiful things out of dreams and skill, and you have the power to change the world. That's the same whether or not you have magic."
- Naru Osaka has posed:
Naru lifts a muddy hand up to brush at her eyes, wiping them with the almost clean back in a still impatient gesture and she settles back from kneeling to sitting in the mud with a soft sound.
A slow breath, inhaled somewhat shakily, and held a moment before exhaled slowly, more calmly.
Naru looks odwn at the white rose in her fingers, with translucent edges and fully depth of tone, hints of creamy yellow in the centre of the flower. "I know." She confirms with a little nod, her voice quiet. "No dark energy. I think I've only asked Kunzite to check twice so far. I can't feel anything or anyone else in my head." She takes another of those slow breaths. "Y'know, at one point, someone told me that I was being irresponsible in knowing about the magical world, and not being a magical girl to help with the threats. It wasn't quite what they meant, I found out later, but that's what I heard. I have magic, temporarily or otherwise, and I'm no more help than I was before. Some, these days, not much but some. It's interesting."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Well someone was a complete dick," mutters Mamoru, sinking further into the muck by the wall as if he could make himself smaller by force of will. But he's no Zoisite. "Are you sure it wasn't the United States government? Or maybe Kyuubey? Telling you something like that?"
His eyes drift back to the white rose, and he makes a small abortive motion like he's going to sit up, maybe reach for it. In the end he stays where he is. "Magic isn't made for fighting, you know," he finally says. "It's not made for fighting any more than sticks are. Or stones, or water, or electricity. Do you think you should use it for that? Do you think great composers should be forced to fight in wars because they have hands that can hold guns?"
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"It was perhaps not one of their finest social moments." Naru agrees quietly, calmly now. It's past, she's worked through that. "No. I've never met Kyubey. I think the comment on that was that I 'didn't have potential enough for him to notice', or something similiar."
Naru leans over, offering him the rose. "When the flowers were taking over Tokyo, and my friends were saving the world again, even those of us who fought with garden clippers were called into it. How did you feel, being too ill to help? Helpless? Ineffectual?"
Naru settles back again, without the rose if he takes it. "I don't know what to think, most of the time." She admits quietly.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
He takes it when it's offered, and he cradles the delicate thing in his muddy hands, looking at it. He's silent for a long moment, the spray in the air preventing any of the caked mud from drying, the heaviness in the air preventing him from saying any of the things he feels.
Finally, Endymion glances up at Naru and says quietly, "The Shitennou are my hands and eyes, my ears and my voice, when I can't be there myself. I gave Kunzite my energy, my attacks, and my anger to use to fight in my place." His long-fingered hands turn the rose gently, and he inspects every leaf, every thorn, every fragile ruffled petal and serrated edge. "I used to feel helpless all the time. Then I found out I wasn't-- and then I was. And helpless wasn't having less ability than everyone else, helpless was--"
His words cut off and he shakes his head. "Helpless was temporary. Everything I tried failed, everything I had was taken away, and I kept trying, and nothing worked, over and over. I was terrified and I'd been gutted and I had nothing and then I was nothing. But it was temporary."
He unfolds his legs, and stretches one out to nudge at Naru's knee with his muddy sock foot. "It's always temporary. Sometimes it means you have to wait to be rescued. Sometimes it means you have to pull together the strength to rescue yourself, or to meet your rescuers halfway. Sometimes it means you have to wait for an opening to get someone out. Sometimes it costs a lot. But helpless and ineffectual is always temporary if it's something you don't like."
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"I don't have shitennou." Naru replies, with a quiet smile as she's nudged. "Nor senshi. Nor keepers, nor guardians.." She holds up her hand before he can protest. "I have all of those as friends and teachers and companions and protectors and mentors and more, and its not the same, but it shouldn't be. I can never claim to be alone."
"Helpless is temporary, and frustrating, and irritating, and changing." The last is more firm, emphatic, as if Naru is reminding herself. She probably is.
Another slow breath and Naru looks at the rose held in his hands and is quiet a few moments longer, letting thoughts swirl and settle and swirl again. "Hey. I'm getting cheated out of a cute henshin outfit here."
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's finally a firm nod from Mamoru, with a little smile. Then almost reluctantly, he offers the rose back. "Since I don't know if this is for sharing or keeping," he half-explains as he does so. And then the smile turns into a grin, almost visibly relieved. "Listen, you literally just helped Kyouko design hers. You're a designer. AN ARTIST. You like fashion. Design an outfit, for crying out loud."
Whether or not she takes it, he unfolds and starts picking himself up. "Then close your eyes and sketch it on yourself in your mind's eye. Fiddle with it until you get the details right, without looking. See what you see when you open your eyes. Wanna go de-mud?"
- Naru Osaka has posed:
"If you want it, you can keep it." Naru gestures at the rose, not taking it back unless he insists. "I am /trying/ to get better about showing my work.. the real stuff. Not all of it, but any of it."
Naru pushes herself up to her feet, and steps closer, to steal a hug, if he doesn't protest. "Thank you." She notes simply enough into that hug. Quiet.
- Mamoru Chiba has posed:
That hug is not at all protested: it's muddy and messy and it's returned, a warm enfolding thing full of relief and apology and the mundane kind of empathy. And yes, Endy very much keeps the rose. "Anytime. Though next time," he says with a self-deprecating little laugh, "hopefully I won't be such a jerk."
And it's repeated a little more quietly. "Anytime."
Then he grins, pulling away, and he scoops up his hat and dumps the water out, then very carefully places the rose inside it. "Time to leap extremely long staircases in a single bound. Usa probably has stuff left at the apartment you can borrow. If not, I'll raid Zoi's closet for you~"
And there, he's in henshin, almost gleeful about the prospect of scaring the crap out of Naru all over again.