The concierge is less sanguine about letting Naru up than usual; there's no skipping steps this time, no not-bothering to call up to the apartment, and the look Naru gets is much, much warier than usual.
The elevator is fine.
The door is locked, but Kunzite lets her in and provides her with a pair of slippers. He looks all right, physically at least. The living room, on the other hand ... is dark. None of the lights are on; there's a couple of LED lanterns placed on a temporary basis. Even in that little light, the carpet is faintly glittery. Particularly by the balcony doors, which -- have -- cardboard taped up over them. There are, indeed, occasional scorch marks in places. The place is not in the best of shape. And there's enough damage to promise that it could have been much, much worse.
Coffee.
Naru arrives at the apartment with a take out tray that holds a trio of coffees in the 'bucket'o' size choice, and she's got a haversack looped across her, settled upon her hip, clearly holding more than just her sketchbook within. She offers the least threatening smile she can manage for the poor concierge. She's patient through all the steps, all the way up to the apartment.
Naru accepts the slippers, passing Kunzite the coffee to let her put them on and she considers the state of the apartment.
"I'm glad I didn't get around to starting sketches on the walls." Naru comments thoughtfully. "I'll help you start sweeping up after coffee."
Coffee is traded, and might possibly be indescribably precious at this particular moment. "This is after the sweeping up," Kunzite tells her. "Jadeite's looking for something to get the splinters out of the carpet. Fortunately, we have spares."
... they have spare living rooms. He is fully aware of just how ridiculous, in this era, that phrasing is.
The one he leads her to appears to be the one that the temporary furniture migrated to when they doubled the seating in the main one. Folding chairs. A couple of bookshelves that match the ones in the primary living room, and were probably evicted from it to create space. Its own set of glass doors, this time intact, leading out onto a separate balcony. It's not even university-student decoration, so much as university-student still in the process of moving in. But it's somewhere to sit that doesn't have glass everywhere.
(They drop off the coffee partway. Zoisite is seated on a chair beside the unconscious Mamoru's bed, holding his hand; it's been long enough since he's slept that even on him it's visible, and the avarice with which he greets the prospect of caffeeine is enough to make one count hands afterward.)
"Wow. That's a lot of glass." Naru whistles lowly at the notion of already swept up some. "You guys are probably replacing more carpet than just the missing chunk." She comments and then after a moment. "Laminate perhaps? Easier to get glass out of next time."
A generous sized tupperware tub is extracted from Naru's bag at the coffee stop to Zoisite and rice crispie treats that have been sculpted into cartoon animals are offered to add some sugar into the coffee stop. "I got bored." is Naru's only comment upon the moderately obsessive nature that sculpted rice crispie treats would require.
Naru sets the tub of non-glass contaminated treats on the mis-matched table before looping her satchel over her head and setting it on the floor. She's quiet, letting her thoughts run rampent for a while yet, rather than giving them voice just yet.
"We'll see what Mamoru decides, when he's feeling better. If we weren't also considering the number of medical emergencies that drop by, I'd suggest trying to bring mosaic floors back into style; but those are obnoxious to get blood off of." Kunzite retrieves his own coffee, and another measure of last night might be taken in that he's actually reaching for it to drink some of it, rather than to hold it for a while first.
(He does not reach for the sugar. This is likewise in contrast to the reaction that Zoisite had, which was first a delighted laugh, and then immediately to scan the visible critters for any hint of rabbits. Unsurprisingly, one of those was reserved for Mamoru, perched neatly on his bedside table, not among the two Zoi snagged for himself.)
When Naru lapses into quiet, though -- so does Kunzite. Perhaps considering exactly how to go into that longer story. Or maybe just considering the number of access points to the apartments.
Bunnies, of course! And bears and kitty cats and a few that are hidden at the bottom and probably were amongst the earlier attempts. They are best categorized as 'abstract vaguely critter-esque'.
Naru collects her own coffee and isn't above retrieving one of the abstract blobs for herself as she tucks herself onto a chair, her legs curled up under her. She lets the silence linger, sipping quietly from her coffee a moment and then setting it on the table with her treat on top to dig out her sketchbook from her bag.
The book isn't opened though, it sits in her lap, closed, like a security blanket, perhaps, or a talisman.
It's not so much that the silence is, eventually, broken. It's more as if the conversation had simply slipped underwater for a little while, swum a little ways, perhaps investigated a sunken log or an interesting turtle, and then casually come up for air.
"Two weeks ago," Kunzite says, both hands now wrapped around his coffee in his familiar fashion, "Takashi Agera took Kino captive." Makoto's name is granted an honorific. Takashi's is not. "I don't presently have details on when or how, and it will be some time if ever before there's an opportunity to ask. He replaced her with a thing created from dark energy, given Kino's memories and a semblance of her power, and animated, so far as I can tell, by a fragment torn from his own soul. That is the thing that fought with Mizuno that weekend." Ami's name is marked with respect, too. "Several days ago, the miko discovered that there was a deception. I'm not certain precisely when the girls figured out how deep it ran.
"Last night, the thing came to try to kill Mamoru, and presumably Usagi after him. Last night, also, Kino managed to free herself, and took exception to the misuse of her face and her name."
There is a lot to be said for the silence that often exists when Naru and Kunzite are together. It is its own comfortable thing.
Naru takes a slow drink of her coffee and she frowns as she listens. She holds her silence as Kunzite speaks, listening both for words said, and words not said, notions not put forth. She is frowning still as she considers. "Why?" She asks simply enough, quite aware of the complexity of that question, eternally.
"Is he working alone?" Naru's next question is a little easier, a little more pragmatic and tactical.
The questions are answered in the reverse order. "No. He has allies; Lacrima turned up to evacuate him last night."
It's several long breaths before Kunzite addresses the first question, the why, and he does that from perhaps an unexpected angle. "You've known Usagi for a very long time," he says. "Can you describe what she's like at her best?"
"Oh." Naru accepts that little tie of connection between different pages in her notes with a soft sound and a little nod. And silence as she considers the ramifications and fresh connections that need to be made.
"Usagi?" Naru quirks her head at home. "Warm, and generous and enthusiastically joyful. Unrelenting sympathy, and empathy for everyone around her, even to her own detriment."
There's a slight nod, no more than that. "I told you a little about dark energy's nature before," Kunzite says. That it enhanced negative emotions, diminished positive ones, interfered with the ability to work with other people. But that was academic. "But a better way of putting it, perhaps, is the direct opposite of Usagi."
Cold and selfish and maliciously bitter. Unable to understand others' feelings, unwilling to, like Lacrima ascribing the worst possible motivations. Dismissing others as unimportant at best; unrelenting in abusing them at worst. But those are words; those are only words.
The image of some terrible void mirror of Usagi might mean more.
"Mmmm." Naru listens, accepts that mental picture and sits with it a while, her expression thoughtful.
Its one of those pauses in the conversation that others might find uncomfortable, or worry that the thread of the conversation had been snapped, rather than accepting the reality that there's simply enough thinking to be done on the notion that words would interfere.
Naru puts her coffee down to be able to flip open her sketchbook and rifle to a new page. It's not notes, per se, but more of an abstract sketch, of intersecting circles, and different shadings, as if a venn diagram had illict love children with a pack of monocrome easter eggs.
"Unrelated to Fiore?" Naru asks after a while, looking up to Kunzite, her pencil momentarily stalled as she asks the question.
"That sentence needs a subject." It's not a reprimand. A casual note, a reminder that the things in her head haven't been voiced out loud. Dark energy? Riventon? Makoto, with all her flowers? There's any number of things she could be referring to.
"Oh! Right. Yes." Naru blinks a moment, as if the reality that Kunzite isn't actually psychic is, just a moment, a touch surprising.
"Takashi." Naru adds after a moment and then considers. "Fiore's energy is different, or at least it felt different when he was draining me, than Lacrima's did, so I am assuming that Fiore isn't dark energy, or at least a different subcategory. Although all the other negativity certianly fits. Or hers is. And they both felt dramatically different than the energy from the chocolates, but that wasn't taking away from me, that was adding to me."
"Coffee and granite have few qualities in common," Kunzite says, "but they're both matter." Not committing to 'different subcategory,' there. But certainly suggesting it.
His gaze drops down to the coffee in question, studying the glints of reflected light against the dark. "Agera is not directly related to Fiore. He's aware of the situation. He's probably experimenting on the flowers. But Agera at least believes he wants the planet to remain intact. So they're unlikely to be working together. He's not working with us against Fiore, either. He'll have his own plans in case we fail, but on the whole, it's a somewhat uncomfortable vote of confidence."
"Coffee and granite have more in common than most people think they do." Naru replies as she draws a few more lines on her abstract work and considers it a moment.
"At least they both didn't turn up at the same time. Not actively working together is some small mercy, I think. Except when it means you've got two groups both draining your resources." Naru reaches over to set her pencil down and pick up her rice crispie blob. "Was last night enough of a blow to Takashi that you probably will have a reprive from a follow up strike for a few days at least?"
"Agera isn't at war in the way some people might think." ... coffee, and a moment to recheck phrasing, but mostly coffee for coffee's own sake. "Agera thinks of himself as a researcher, and he's almost correct. In this case, the experiment was run on Kino-san. Once she came face to face with the construct, it was over; the construct's reactions wouldn't yield any more useful data."
He taps one fingertip on the side of the cup. "Also, if he's as usual interpreting everything in the broadest possible fashion in his favor, it's just barely possible that he might think the cease-fire Endymion agreed on with him still holds. Not that he's likely to consider himself bound by it, but he might find it useful enough not to go out of his way."
"Ooooh!" Naru ahs with understanding at that revelation and she reaches for her pencil to make some additions to her sketch. A few lines, one dotted that nearly runs off the page. "Does he have a specific end goal with his research? Do you know?"
Naru reaches for her coffee, to finish it before it gets cold. Colder. "What are you expecting to happen next?"
"I have guesses. But they're based on information he intentionally gave me, and estimates of how badly his thinking is warped and in what direction. And what he intends me to believe his end goal to be, which may even be what he himself believes, is not the path he's actually on."
Her last question draws an unusual response from Kunzite: he moves. Rises from his seat, and takes himself and the coffee over to the balcony doors, to stare through the glass out over the city or up at the sky.
"I don't have enough information to draw conclusions," he says finally. "Mercury may be more likely to talk, soon; she's the one trying to plan for Fiore. But she plans the same way she studies. She doesn't want to talk until she's sure she's right, and that sometimes means the rest of us don't know the plan until the last minute. Still. that will be soon. Mamoru's ... not incoherent, when he's awake, but not thinking about what he's saying anymore. I checked around your place for flowers, the other day, but there's been time for others to take root. Get rid of them as soon as you can, if you haven't already. Arm yourself as you can. If it reaches the critical point, there won't be a safe place for us to take you this time."
"I haven't seen any around my place." Naru confirms and nods a little at the mention of him looking around her place for flowers. "I've been keeping an eye out." She sets her empty coffee cup down and adds, quite calmly. "I am unlikely to be part of any plans Ami is working on, and I won't hear about them." She closes her notebook, setting it on the edge of the table, with her pencil. The Pencil no less, on top of it.
"What is the most effective against him? That is on my scale." Naru adds, with a barely there glance to the devistation wrought in the other living room.
The mundane in the room is quite aware of the fact that had she been visiting, she'd of been torn apart in the environmental effects, let alone any direct attacks.
She can see the slight nod, in response to her comment about keeping an eye out. She can see that there's no such nod, no motion at all, when she speaks about Ami. Only a completely noncommittal, "I see." Which doesn't even tell her whether he thinks her estimate is correct or not.
Not until he turns, and comes back to set what remains of his coffee down, and walks out of the room without a word.
It takes him something less than a minute to return with a single sheet of paper, which he offers to Naru. Again without a word.
Naru has acquired herself another rice crispie treat while Kunzite was out of the room and she sets it down on her sketchbook and wipes her fingers before she takes the piece of paper.
There's no redundant asking of what it is, or why he gave it to her. She simply reads it.
Twice.
"Who or what is Eclipse?" Naru asks after reading, looking up at Kunzite.
While she's reading, Kunzite has taken up his place at the glass again. "Corporation or conspiracy, depending on your choice of definitions, interested in staging a takeover of the planet. Subtle if possible, hostile if necessary. A couple of them can spell the word 'ethics' if pressed."
"Mmm." Naru looks back down. "Interesting." That's about all she has to say on the collaborative effort of a mega corp trying to take over the world.
Clearly it's a day that ends in 'y'.
"Fire seems a good bet, based on this, although possibly not mundane fire." She looks back down at the page and there's a soft hunh. The sort of sound where one is looking at the dragon and considering the choice of plastic knife or plastic fork at one's disposal.
Sometimes being a muggle sucks a whole lot.
"High energy food helps with energy drain? Calorie dense and the like?" Naru reconfirms, as if just assuming that there is more energy drain in her future. It seems really likely.
Kunzite's voice is likely calmly conversational. "Mundane fire burns them, if it's hot enough. I held one of the little ones down in a gas flame until it stopped trying to stab me."
There's a brief nod, afterward. "Usually," he says. "One form converted to another. Your body burns calories to live on; if your life energy is drained, it needs to create more for you to recover. If your emotional energy is drained, you still need to be able to muster strength. It's not the only route, and shouldn't be relied on regularly by itself. Sunlight helps. Music does, for some people. Being outside, around growing things that are not in fact evil. Close contact with people you care about often helps most of all."
"That's good to know." Naru nods, grateful that her plastics options have opened up a little. If not all that much. "That's how you lost your hair, isn't it?" She reconfirms after a moment and then considers energy.
"If this explodes to where I'm fighting things directly, then knowing how to at least have a hope of getting other mudanes back on their feet even a little might be helpful." Naru has few illusions that she is about to be the front line for much of anything. Seriously.
There's a pause before she adds. "Art was odd. I didn't draw at all when I was badly drained. I appreciated it still, but my own creativity tanked." She is almost hesitant to add, but does. "Extra energy? Excellent for creativity."
"Fiore teleported in behind me and decided to even things out, yes," Kunzite agrees. "Fortunately, Mamoru was on the other side of the room." Even for him, that wasn't a pleasant experience.
There's another short nod at her musing about getting mundanes back on their feet. "Kino-san had been starting to experiment on that principle," he says. "The two of you might consider comparing notes, when she's back in the kitchen." When Usagi and Ami and Nephrite are willing to let go of her for longer than five seconds between them. Might be a little while, even not considering Fiore.
The words 'art was odd' are finally enough to bring him to turn; he paces to the side of the glass doors and leans against the wall there, studying Naru. There's a brief, sharp nod at that last. "Temporarily," he says. "But if it's energy acquired from outside, rather than energy you generate yourself, there are risks involved. The potential for permanent burnout, for instance. Those stories about musicians who cut a deal that gives them inspiration for a year, then can neither write nor play after, have a core of truth."
"I'll try and remember to talk to her once she's recovered, and once things settle down a bit more." Naru considers a moment and then gives a little shrug. "I'm likely to be a better candidate for testing her experiments, if my trends continue."
Naru is quiet a moment as Kunzite turns to look at her and she considers her words. "I can see how someone might, at the time, think that the trade is worth it."
"The term is 'collaborating,' in this case. You'd contribute information she wouldn't otherwise have." He doesn't make too much of a point of it, beyond that. No particular emphasis. There rarely is.
As opposed to what he says a few moments later, when she speaks only after being quiet.
"That's Agera's mistake."
Naru nods at that statement from Kunzite. "I.. well. I can see where he's coming from." She replies, a moment of quiet vulnerability. "I expect its different for everyone though, like everything is." Naru chews a little on her bottom lip.
"If it didn't have that temptation for bait, no-one would ever deal with it," Kunzite says quietly. "What it offers you is less than you could achieve without it. Substantially so. It poisons your life. It poisons the lives of your friends and your family. It warps you out of true, until you can find no beauty in anything but the vile. In the end, it destroys you, and uses your shell as a weapon against what you loved enough to take the risk for in the first place. All for the sake of not having to put in effort, to take time, to work with others."
He lifts a hand, runs it over his face. There's no other sign that he might be tired. "Agera, if I am judging him correctly, thinks that he's doing what's necessary to save the world. That he needs the power and the creativity to make that possible. That no-one else understands the threats, or the work he's doing. But the work he's doing is damaging the world; he regularly uses passersby as subjects, or as victims, and if he drains enough energy from enough of them, it's liable to create conditions that larger threats can use to come in. The work he's doing is hampered; he loves science, but what he's doing is a parody of it. The power he's using to try to inspire himself is crippling both his inspiration and his judgment, till he can't correctly perceive the results of his experiments anymore, let alone interpret them. And if he continues on his current path, the endpoint of his work will not be saving the world. It will be becoming one of those threats. Wiping out everything he wants so badly to preserve.
"There is no other endpoint. There is no safe dosage. The lucky ones manage to hold on to enough of themselves that the people who care about them can pull them back only damaged. The rest lose everything."
Naru listens. Its that active sort of listening that Kunzite would recognize as such but others might not. Taking the words, the thoughts, the implicstions and slotting them into her own experiences. Into her own emotions.
"Barely any at all and I am fairly confident that I will never paint like that again. Which sound dumb coming from a teenager, but its true. I could essily see spending a lot trying to get that back again." Naru's voice is quiet, not really much above a whisper.
"What did it offer you?" Naru asks, just as quietly.
"In the beginning?" Kunzite glances toward her, and those gray eyes might as well be mirrors for all that they give away now. Nothing visible behind them, not even something as comforting as emptiness. "It offered me the power to keep three things safe. My prince; his princess; his world."
That's a story that Zoisite told her once, in a bright afternoon garden. A tale that went the way of Greek tragedies.
There is so much difference between Zoisite telling Naru stories in a garden to distract her, long before she has any context to fit those stories into, and hearing it here. And now. And from Kunzite.
"It's at least a more noble temptation." Naru murmurs with a dry note to her tone. "Do you miss it?" She asks, not shying away from the hard questions, the ones that keep the mirrors in his eyes, reflecting her own self back at her, as much harder as that is.
"You'll pardon me for not seeing particular nobility in betraying my oaths and arrogating my liege's prerogatives to myself. It starts with small things. It moves past them quickly." His tone is the same as it ever is; there is no anger in it, no bitterness. His expression isn't one. He looks, and sounds, just as always. Except for the eyes.
Does he miss it?
He lifts a hand, turning it over as if to study the palm and the inside of his fingers. But his gaze stays steady on Naru and does not drift down. "There are things about it that I sometimes think I miss," he says. "You protest about my lack of hobbies. I had one then, that brought me what I thought of as joy -- I climbed through worlds, tested myself against hell after hell, risked myself against unknown opponents and places where the creatures, the air, the laws of what passed for nature themselves could be deadly. Or, if I tired of dealing with others beyond myself, I had a place that I could retreat to. Cold enough to kill anything else that entered it. Absolutely silent. Dark as only a world that's never known a sun can be.
"Do you notice what these things have in common?"
Naru is quiet, watching Kunzite. She doesn't comment on the nobility or arrogance inherent in stepping out beyond expectations. Instead she just watches him, and her reflection in his eyes.
"Independance. Exploration. Tenacity." Naru offers a few things that she notes about his former hobbies. "Adrenaline, risk taking, courage, reflection, contemplation."
It's a good list, in some ways. But most of the items apply to one, most of the rest to another; only independence applies to both, and then in its form of isolation. He doesn't correct the list. He only adds to it.
"Death," he says. "The closest I had to joy was in seeking death. The closest I had to rest was in emulating it."
Naru thinks about that a moment. Quiet, letting Kunzite's words settle over the list. She doesn't protest, try and put a happy veneer over things, or shy away from the starkness of the idea.
"I'm glad you didn't find it." Naru replies simply enough. "Are you still looking for it?"
"No." That's straightforward, too; not a facile answer, but something he's considered over the last months, thought through. "I'm not what I was, true. My soul was poisoned, was eroded." As if that were something he could see and measure, like the length of his hair. "I have less power than I should have. I cannot create. I am missing pieces of myself. But I have my brothers again, and my prince. I can watch a sunrise without being repelled by its garishness. Touch things without destroying them. Eat and drink. I may never have back what I lost; but I am no longer losing more. And I can hope to recover, or to become something new."
"This is the only you I've known." Naru points out, apparently dismissing the brief interactions previously where his associates were kidnapping her. It wasn't him directly, after all. "Well, to any depth, or degree. I like this you."
It's a statement, simply put and simply phrased and potentially gossip worthy if taken out of context, but here and now, offered without guile.
"I like this you, too." Straightforward in turn. Heaven help them both if Ami has anything listening to this room. "I'd prefer to see her grow, rather than decay."
There's silence for a moment as he studies her, but his eyes are only gray now, not closed off. And he's just as straightforward when he says, "I'd be interested in seeing those paintings. If you ever reach a point at which you'd permit them to be seen."
"I don't think you'd like them." Naru answers after that quiet, her own thoughts turning inward. "They're not your style." The fact that she had enough wherewithall to note Kunzite's preferred art at the gallery is possibly unexpected.
"I.." Naru starts and then nods. "I think I'd like your thoughts on them sometime anyhow, though. I don't know what /I/ think of them, but I bring all the baggage in my head when I look at them. I know what I meant, which possibly isn't what I said, and might not even be anything like what others hear."
"If we only looked at things that were our styles," Kunzite replies, "we'd stagnate. And be deeply bored." Style is also irrelevant to why he wants to see them. But asking her is more polite than slipping into her apartment while she's at school, and involves less time spent avoiding leaving minute signs that someone's invaded. If it works, it's more efficient.
If it doesn't work, there's still the fallback.
... and then she makes the next gesture, countering her first, and that's interesting. That's interesting indeed. "It's hard, isn't it?" he says. "Practicing without being sure whether your practice is working, or whether it's taking you closer to where you want to go."
"Or knowing where you want to go." Naru nods in agreement at the challenges. "Or how you fit, or if you fit, and where to focus and how much I might like to starve later."
It's a good bet that the tumble of words and thoughts are probably not entirely about art.
Not at all. Kunzite's relatively certain that physical starvation isn't likely to be an issue for Naru; but there are other kinds, less grievously but more subtly damaging. "We all have to learn, sooner or later. Usually both. You might fit in one place when you're fifteen, and a different one when you're twenty." Most people do. Most fifteen-year-olds don't believe that.
"At the moment, my assumptions about the world get kicked about every week. Sometimes multiple times in a week." Naru twists a wry little smile. "I can't even begin to imagine how little I'll recognize anything about anything at this rate in five years." There's a little nod, and her fifteen year old self is in a position of not entirely believing him. "I might just be the odd one out eternally."
Such is the nature of fifteen-year-olds. Except for the ones who just presume they're going to force the world to do what they want. "Possible," Kunzite acknowledges, "but not likely. You make places for yourself as often as you make anything else." Does she not see that? Perhaps she doesn't. ... likely enough she doesn't.
Such is the nature of fifteen-year-olds. Naru doesn't look entirely convinced, but she nods anyhow.
Teenage years are challenging enough without world ending crises, discovering that you're prey, and that your best friend has a whole other life that you never knew about.
"What do you want to do?" Naru asks of him, a change of subject. "Like. Longer term. Bigger picture."
There's a little twitch of Kunzite's head to the side. He's still leaning against the wall rather than sitting, but Naru's seen him do that before. "How long term are you thinking?" he asks back. "i could give you the obvious answer -- that I already have the position I intend to retain as long as I'm capable -- but somehow I don't think that's what you intended to ask."
"When they're grown up? When they're married and there's little Endy and Usagi's running around?" Naru takes it as just a matter of course that this is a thing that will happen. "Forever?"
Naru shifts in her chair, tucking her legs up to be able to wrap her arms around them, curling up there in her seat, her chin upon her knees.
"As long as I'm capable." Kunzite shrugs slightly, and lifts a hand to sweep in a broad gesture, a half-circle arc around him. All the apartments, increasingly interwoven. "Mamoru chose this place for a reason, even before he knew what the reason was. They may very well decide to stay here. If so -- there's enough space for a couple of us to be out of their way, but still close enough to keep the children safe when something attacks. I'll see if I can go back to university when he does; that will let me help guard him there, and give me the basis for a more normal job if necessary. Not certain what, yet. We'll see what the others take up, and I'll find a space to fill in around them. Sociology, law -- I suspect ecology will be handled -- there will be something useful I can learn. Or I can always go back to teaching history. It might be more awkward when Endymion goes to medical school, but we'll think of something when the time comes. Though I imagine the honeymoon will be someone else's problem."
Naru is quiet as she considers that mental picture, of a future laid out so neatly. Plans and contingencies, lives entwined so tightly. She's silent as she imagines it, curled up as she is, her body language closed off, turned within.
The quiet holds a few moments longer before Naru comments thoughtfully. "I could see you in law. What would you pick first, if you weren't trying to fit in with others choosing?"
"I don't know." A straightforward blank, unworried and unashamed. "It was history, before. But I've found what I was looking for there. There were other things I knew once, but ... Endymion had a government to run. Mamoru wants to be a doctor. Relatively few doctors need armies, and in this day and age, if he did, he'd need more drones than horse-archers." Kunzite shrugs again, steady. No concern at all. "I made my choice a long time ago. Wondering what I'd want if I hadn't is long since pointless."
"The current you gets a choice too." Naru points out with a little shrug. "You got what you were after out of history. You don't need to go to university by rights, you could take anything. Something that you find brings you joy, one of those pieces that are missing. Purely for the delight of learning something new."
"The current me is also making a choice." Kunzite repeats that broad gesture. All the apartments, interlinked. "This is my choice. The others all have their minor obsessions. Mamoru is a healer by nature. Nephrite cannot be separated from the stars, but there are worldly things he delights in, too. Zoisite might go in any of a dozen directions, or all of them; but whatever he chooses will be something complex and beautiful enough not to bore him. Jadeite is a shaper of things. Maybe he'll settle into his art, or maybe be lured by the opportunities for shaping opinion instead, or perhaps politics. What I choose to do is to find a way to make their choices stable and sustained. To make certain that we're supporting one another in the long run, rather than finding ourselves inadvertently on opposing sides."
"That closeness is .." Naru starts and then shakes her head, changing her mind on continuing with that train of thought, or at least diverting it down a different track.
"Have you tried vacuuming up the glass shards out of the carpet?" Naru asks, a complete change of topic, jarring in the abruptness.
"Is out of fashion? Yes. But it's not fundamentally different from, say, a child being chosen to continue a family business, and needing to learn the skills to fill in that space. Except of course that I had, and have, more of a choice in the matter."
The glance Kunzite gives her a moment after might not be readable at the time; it's when he pushes away from the wall to come back to the chairs that it can be parsed as something like amusement. "We'll try it when we have a chance to make sure that the indoor lightning storm didn't do anything unfortunate to the wiring. I'd rather replace the carpet than set the building on fire. Again."
"I have one that runs off rechargeable batteries." Naru uncurls a little, loosening her arms to free her legs and stretch. "I'll bring it over to see if it helps get up more glass. Without burning the apartment down." She adds, because that is actually something relevant, as he pointed out.
A deep breath, drawn in and held for a few moments before exhaled. Centreing. Calming. Naru probably doesn't even entirely realize how often she does it.
Which raises, of course, the question of what she needs to calm.
He doesn't ask it. He seats himself again instead, careful of that stretching. "More than worth a try. Thank you." Does Mamoru have one like that? Probably. Somewhere. But he's not in condition to be asked, these last few days.
"You seem to have turned more toward art than fashion lately," he comments after a few moments. "Or are the two of them just facets of the same thing, for you?"
"I have." Naru agrees as she gives a little nod. "I.. No. Well yes. They are facets of the same thing, fashion is art, just with fabric rather than paint." She considers a moment, choosing her words as she attempts to express it without sounding like a hippie freak. More of a hippie freak.
"Fashion is a limited palette. A fun palette to play in, but I had more to say." Naru considers that a moment and then nods, letting it stand. "I couldn't find the words in fabric."
How does one say 'my best friend is a reincarnated alien and a plant dude is trying to kill us all' in clothing?
Chiffon, accented with a bronze leaf brooch enameled with a spot of crimson?
Okay, maybe not.
"That's reasonable." It means that Kunzite isn't getting what he was hoping for from that particular fishing expedition, but then, a one in five ratio is normally fairly good. "I imagine it's still more limiting to design against possible emergencies, too. Though some people say it's the restrictions that make things interesting."
"Restrictions make for amazing creative choices." Naru agrees and then gestures. "Trying to work in the restrictions of the apartment walls? Wow. It's stretching."
Naru chews on her bottom lip a little and adds. "Looking ahead too, though. The fashion industry is /brutal/. The art world is just kinda awful and I'm likely to need to become very fond of instant noodles." She is quiet, almost hesitant in offering thoughts about the future.
"Well. From the looks of it, you'll have at least one commission that will pay you for touch-ups as long as you're still inclined to bother." Possibly also borrowing rechargeable vacuums. "It might keep you in eggs to go with those instant noodles. Though you'd have to stay for dinner if you wanted obscure rarities like fruit." He's teasing her again, straightfaced as ever. But the casual certainty that she'd be welcome is there, as if it went without saying that her life and her choices were somehow part of that set that he considers in those plans and contingencies. Supporting each other in the long run.
"If you guys keep having electric fights, and fire fights, and just fights in the main living room, I am going to be able to try out every idea I've ever had on the walls and still need more when I end up repainting every couple of months." Naru smirks just a touch at his gentle teasing. "Oooh. Fruit you say. Possibly even the occaisional cookie, if I help with the dishes?" She laughs softly and then shakes her head at the idea.
"You bake," Kunzite points out gravely. "It's in our best interest to see to it that you have more than an occasional cookie. Sound investments."
Somehow he doesn't think it's wise to argue that only one of the fights this week actually damaged the decor. People always seem to focus in on the plural instead.
"Makoto's baking is better." Naru points out as counterpoint to keeping her around. "Although you guys eat enough that unless Makoto's stress baking, two cooks isn't a bad thing." Especially if the future vision really does include partners and families and just more people all over.
"When you guys get the walls fixed, or when you fix the walls, just primer them. Or let me know and I'll come put primer on them and then I can sketch there, rather than painting." Naru is optimistic that its worth fixing the walls.
"As one of the cooks, I can guarantee to you that two is insufficient." Particularly when people are running in crisis mode. So much takeout. So much.
Kunzite half-bows to Naru from his seat, then, maintaining the solemnity. "Do you have a preference? You are, after all, in charge of the project. Or perhaps you'd prefer to supervise." And have the opportunity to pull people off of painting duty when they start making it deserve hazard pay.
"Is that a hint that I should come over and cook more often?" Naru asks with a flicker of a smile on that notion. She saw the state of the fridge's condiment collection before she got baking.
"I'm in school when contractors would be working. If it's you guys doing it, then I'd be happy to help." Naru laughs softly. "My project doesn't include drywall repair. My project starts after that point."
"You may have noticed that we're only too pleased to provide ingredients." Since she's been on at least one of the grocery runs, Naru can verify that for herself. "Though when circumstances improve, we'd be just as pleased if you came over and were cooked for more often."
The mention of contractors prompts Kunzite's eyebrows to twitch upward. "Are you suggesting," he says, "that we subject innocent contractors to Zoisite's temper and Nephrite's sleep schedule? I'm reasonably sure that's covered in the Geneva Conventions somewhere."
"I'm still skeptical on you guys /actually/ getting more than three days in a row without something going horribly horribly wrong." Naru points out and then shakes her head with a little laugh. "Please feel free to prove me wrong and let Usa gloat and say I told you so."
Naru laughs brightly. "Zoi's always been sweet to me, I've never met his temper. Equally relevant, Nephrite and I aren't generally conscious at the same time, pretty much ever. So to my perspective, he'll just sleep through contractors. Easy peasy." She grins at him and then adds. "You guys get to do drywall. I'll help with primer."
It is not impossible that, when Naru comes over next, she will find a new counter magneted to the refrigerator. 'Days Since Something Went Horribly Horribly Wrong' requires relatively small print compared to the numbers, though.
"We have plenty of practice with drywall," Kunzite assures her. "Your only part in that one is making sure you're satisfied with the end product." Sleep through contractors. Suuuuure. Sleep like a cranky grizzly bear, maybe.
At least the counter won't need all that many numbers.
"I am having trouble envisioning you, or Mamo, letting anyone get away with doing terrible work." Naru points out and then hunhs softly, leaning back a little. "Although, if you dont start right away, and it seems unlikely that you will, cause things are still all a mess, then I might look up how to add some texture for the waterfall. I don't know if that's in the drywall later, or built on on top." She hunhs softly, getting a little more animated at the notion of doing something quite that dramatic.
It /is/ a little more interesting than clothes.