That's hitting unsettlingly close to home when he picks up his pocketwatch (presumably after he's back from the haunted house, and sitting behind the counter of the flower shop playing with plants) and sees the random message waiting for him...]
I believe it's possible for someone to be more than their nature, without losing that nature entirely. For their nature to become just one part in their overall gestalt, as it were.
[ Tonika decides to leave a video message instead of text, figuring she can always delete it and write it out if it comes off as too awkward or strange. She's sitting on her sofa and her watch must be on some coffee table facing her-- her clothes are simple but appropriate for the weather. She offers a nervous smile as the flowers he left her-- only just starting to droop-- sit in the background. ]
Hello!
[ Off to a good start, this time around. ]
First of all, I wanted to say... thank you. For the flowers. This is probably weird to believe but I'm not at all used to receiving gifts and I don't think I've ever been given flowers. It was a very welcome surprise!! So, thank you.
It... cheered me up a lot, in fact. I usually stay out of people's ways unless it's really necessary. That was one of the first times someone went out of their way for me when I didn't feel like I had a lot to offer in return. But I also realized, I wanted to offer something in return.
[ Why does she feel like she's making a business deal as opposed to her truest intent-- expressing gratitude for his kindness and wanting to throw her hat in to that cause. She said to Fugo earlier that art, in all its forms, was as much of a necessity as everything else here. What you could do for others that had no other purpose but to make them happy-- like a delivery of flowers, or the sharing of music-- you needed that to survive a place like this. The basket was a reminder that if nothing else, Tonika should try to be happy while she's here. ]
Please, let me work for you!
I don't want any wages. I just want to help do for others what you did for me. Please.
[Suffice to say, he's not particularly expecting this message when it turns up on his pocketwatch. His read of Tonika when he'd initially met her had been fairly accurate — shy, a little withdrawn, very much "someone who stays out of the way of others" as she'd just said herself. Maybe he'd found a certain level of familiarity in that; they're traits he's witnessed in his human mother, too, and there's something in her manner that reminds him of Yukina, too.
(He remembers how Yukina had borne up so bravely even after the most unimaginable torments had been inflicted on her. Don't kill him, she'd begged, because she would've derived no joy from Hiei's revenge, and in fact watching someone else die on her account would only have produced more nightmares. It's always interesting and curious to see, those people whose shyness masks an incalculable resilience, who aren't so much knowingly hiding those traits for the sake of deception as seemingly unaware of how strong they really are in the first place.)
And now here's Tonika, eager to make things equal, and moreover, finding the courage to pursue that even when by her own admission, her own inclination is to avoid and downplay, rather than to put herself out there like this.
Human beings are so fascinating that way. These are the sorts of traits that more often than not render them superior to demons, rather than allegedly inferior.
He's smiling a little, congenially, when the feed comes up to return the message.]
Well, I'm very glad to hear that the surprise cheered you up — and that you found them to begin with. I know my method of delivery was hardly the most...direct.
I recall you saying something about the flower shop, that first time we spoke — that it doesn't really serve a constructive purpose outside of simply existing to make people happy, or something along those lines? That's what you're asking for now — to be a part of an institution like that, and pay forward some of that happiness onto others?
[She arrives out of the blue, carrying the basket Tonika left her in one hand and the letter she left in the other. She looks between the card's writings and the shop's name to confirm that yes, this is indeed Kurama's shop.
Stepping inside she shakes some of the snow flurries out of her hair and looks around.]
[As always, Kurama can be found in the shop behind the counter, sparingly surrounded by flowers of a number of different colors and varieties — and it seems like today is a slow day, besides, because he's reading a book while he waits for business.
When Lapis shows up, though, it draws his attention, and he looks up from the pages at once.]
Hello. Welcome to my shop; is there something I can help you with?
[ A present, long and wide, sits wrapped on the doorstep of the flower shop, along with a few other small things.
It turns out to be a painting by someone extremely proficient. Tonika's noticeable handwriting says 'to add a little decoration to the shop. Not that it needs it, considering there are flowers everywhere... but I hope you like it!' There's also a little jar of hot chocolate mix next to it. ]
[It's a very large mansion Rosalind Astor, née Lutece, lives in. She's lived here near a decade now, and she's still not entirely certain she's seen it all (or at least, that's how it feels at times). Long hallways strike out from the central room, each of them containing any number of rooms, each dedicated to a particular pursuit. There's rooms built for dressing in, and sitting in, and reading in; rooms made simply to smoke in, a room full of the cars her husband so loves . . . and then there's the library.
It isn't the library, of course. Not the one furnished with proper books. That room Rosalind practically lives in. But it's the library, complete with significant emphasis, because while the books it's filled with are blank and empty, that isn't the point of it at all. It's a very cunning decoy, meant to misdirect any potential thieves that might want to try their luck at the Astor fortune.
Rosalind had expressed some doubt that a thief would be so stupid as to be deterred by a room of blank books, but had been firmly ignored on that front.
There's a clever hidden panel, you see. You tug on the Dickens book third shelf up and to the right, and suddenly the whole bookcase swings away, and there's the safe. It's a massive thing, waist high and with a ridiculous amount of gearwork installed into it. You need a key, and another key, and likely a key that bloody well opens a panel with a key in it. It's frustratingly complicated and needlessly irritating, but it does guard any number of treasures. Because once you've managed to open the safe . . .
There's jewelry there, enough that it glimmers and shimmers and lights up the entire safe the moment any light hits it. Earrings and necklaces and rings, all Rosalind's (kept there on the basis it isn't being worn either way, so it might as well stay safe instead of simply lying about and collecting dust on her dresser). There's bonds, of course, and deeds, more than there really ought to be. A few gold bars, because gold is, after all, a useful currency when one needs to make a point quickly. And lots and lots of bills: hundreds all tied together in neat, official bonds, certified straight from the bank.
There's another thing, too, but Rosalind doesn't talk about that. She doesn't dare. It isn't supposed to be in there. It isn't even supposed to exist. But there it is, twenty-five sheets of paper, innocently tucked in between bills.
(Or there were, anyway. Up until four days ago, they'd been there, and when she'd gone down last night to check--)
All those locks and keys and admittedly somewhat lackluster disguise isn't the end of what guards that safe, though. There's a few alarms, both obvious and silent, but it isn't any one of those that the thief managed to trip.
No, it's one of Rosalind's that catches him. It's a clever thing, an electrical current that hums in every window and point of entry. It's silent, and doesn't do a thing to a person as they enter. It just registers them, taking note of their personal DNA and cell structure. And if they're not on the approved list, once they try and leave . . .
She'd thought about it making it deadly. She'd thought very hard about making it deadly, but killing a thief wouldn't give her any answers. It'd likely raise more questions, especially ones like why is there a dead body in our library, Rosalind? So no, it doesn't kill anyone. But it does send a hell of an electric shock through them, the sort that leaves your ears buzzing and your mind desperately trying to see if you've, in fact, died.]
I should hold still if I were you.
[She says it carefully as she slips through the dark room. She can just make out the prone figure lying on her carpet. Surely he's out of commission, and yet she grips her knife tightly.]
[He's actually not sure what hurts more in this moment, honestly — his body or his pride.
It's nothing short of an insult to his prowess, to think that he could've missed a security system like this when he'd made his initial entry into the most obvious decoy of a room he's seen in a long time — and really, do the rich truly imagine that they're clever, setting up whole useless rooms in the hopes of disguising their valuables like this? — but somehow smacked facefirst into it on the escape. He'd checked that window as thoroughly as he'd cased the rest of the house in his preliminary inquiries. There were no wires, no bells waiting to ring. There was nothing save the usual latch and seal, easily maneuvered around — and yet now there's something new, something that's laid him out flat from the contact.
He's lying on a very nice carpet, he realizes. The thread count is marvelous, very plush. That's a good sign; it means he's less likely to be shot for this. No homeowner would go out of their way to shoot a downed intruder pro forma when it might risk getting blood all over their very nice carpet.
What's strange about the picture he makes, maybe, is that there are really only two things out of place in the room — himself and his bag of ill-gotten goods lying half-abandoned next to him. The rest of the false library is exactly as he'd found it when he'd come in — down to the last detail, books misaligned at fractions of angles and the grain of the carpet restored to wipe any signs that footprints might have shifted it. The room is perfect because he is a very good thief, except that for some reason the window has betrayed him on the egress, and now here he is.
And now, here he is. He hasn't bothered to cover his face or dress all in black, mostly because he's not an amateur. He is, however, wearing gloves, because that's just sensible, and his long hair is tied back neatly off his face so as not to get in the way. And then, of course, there's the part about how he's still vaguely convulsing, how all his nerves seem to be firing at once and making his skin buzz beneath the surface, and his eyes aren't quite focusing as they really ought to be, and oh, he'd better not end up dead from this. Prison he can escape from. Dead is rather a more permanent cage, and one he'd prefer not to try his hand at.
What surprises him, though, is that the voice that accosts him is that of a woman's. The lady of the house? Why should she be investigating an errant thief, with her husband nowhere insight?
He tries to answer, but finds that his mouth is working approximately as well as the rest of him — which is to say, not at all — and so he mostly just gurgles in vague reply instead.]
[So. So that was . . . what had Diarmuid called them? Magical incidents. Oddities, strange things that couldn't be explained, that the residents who had been here for a time chalked up to gods and magic. She'd been so scornful of it, and in truth, eager to see such an incident for herself: magic was a child's explanation, and surely she of all people could prove that. That whatever mischief was happening, she could show them all it was the work of science, not magic.
Now, Rosalind thinks, she simply wants to forget the entire thing ever happened.
The trouble is, though, that wanting isn't the same as being able to. She wants to forget, but that doesn't mean the memories of the past two weeks simply fade. She wants to simply move on, but her hands tremble all throughout the morning, and more than once she's had to run to the nearest mirror, hoisting up her shirt to stare intently at her torso.
It's ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous, the entire incident was ridiculous, some mass hallucination, she has to stop giving it so much thought, it's like it's a nightmare she's too childish to shake--
She needs confirmation, she decides, and sets off. That will stop her mind from wandering. She'll have that aspect of the hallucination put to rest, and she can shove it all firmly behind her. Rosalind crosses the city square (empty, now, and unnervingly so) and strides towards Kurama's flower shop, her expression set.
Confirmation isn't the only reason she wants to visit him. But it will serve well as the primary reason, and should they get to talking afterwards-- well. Who can say what the afternoon will bring?
Odd, how comfortingly familiar the plant shop is. She doesn't even like plants that much, but being in here signifies things like safety and comfort, and that's a great relief on a day like today. Rosalind shivers as the heat washes over her, the familiar scent of soil and sound of the chattering of his plants as soothing as any song.]
[Ros, as it turns out, isn't the only one stewing about the business of that...incident, in the aftermath. Kurama is too, albeit with understandably a slightly different focus to his contemplations. So much of who he'd been and what he'd done had remained the same — or at least, if not perfectly the same, then adapted to fit a different set of memories. That in itself had brought with it some ugly truths, and some uglier implications.
He had done hideous things, in that illusory not-life he'd lived for the duration. He has done equally hideous things in the one he remembers now. People who stood out in his recollections seem like shadowed echoes of people he currently knows, ones he cares for, ones who make up the story of his life that he currently recalls.
So. Whatever was done here, it had tampered with his memories.
If that's the case, if even that is within the realm of capacity for the overlords here — then what of the memories he's been so carefully protecting all this time? Are even they truly safe, or is he only lying to himself as much as he is to the world?
The bell on the door jingles, and he's not surprised to see Ros come through the door when he looks up. She's looking about as discomforted as he is at the moment, but it's always a pleasure to see her. He might as well enjoy that pleasure while he has it; soon enough he'll be back to his mulling thoughts, so the respite she's unexpectedly offering is probably a much-needed one.]
Doctor Lutece.
[It rolls off his tongue, smooth and effortless as always.]
He's here. Did you see him? He wasn't on the train station, not for long, and god knows he hasn't left our home often since then (and I'd be terribly sorry for my own absence for the past three days, except I was entirely preoccupied with him), but he's here and he's staying, half the city has left and yet he's still here.
[At first, Yusuke assumes that somebody must've had him clobbered on the head.
One minute, he's standing in the arena on Hanging Neck Island watching the cloaked figures of Team Masho whirl into the stadium while crowds of ugly sneering demonic faces jeer at him from all sides (“Kill Yusuke, kill Yusuke” – gotta hand it to demons, they sure know how to make a guy feel special); the next, he's swimming in and out, in and out, wondering through the leaden haze of a killer migraine who left the faucet on and why everything is so damn cold until finally, after what feels like centuries, he comes to for good and finds himself peering through burning, itchy eyes into a vast black darkness.
The first real, coherent thought he has is that everything hurts. His head, all his muscles, his arm (just the one, like he'd been cut – he HAD been cut, that stupid troll doctor nicked him after he'd mutated). The second is that he shouldn't be here.
The shock of that realization, block-headed and obvious as it would seem in retrospect, propels him into sitting and taking inventory of his surroundings. This is – a cave. No, it's a tunnel, grimy and musty and dripping, which explains why he thought he'd heard water running before. The air inside the tunnel is thick and oppressive; it threatens to choke him almost as badly as the hot, indignant anger that lodges in his throat. So after all the hassle of dragging him out to the island and all that talk of wanting to put him down, those bastards were so afraid to fight him they resorted to this to get rid of him. Had Toguro had a big meaty hand in this? Or were these just the slimy machinations of that stupid tournament committee?
It doesn't make a difference. Whoever did this, they're about to find out the hard way what a funny tendency Yusuke has of not staying gone.
So Yusuke thinks as he sets out to find the exit, and yet eventually his determination begins to give way to frustration. He doesn't know how much time passes as he wanders, using the glow of his Spirit Gun like a makeshift candle, through the darkness of the catacombs. Hours. Days maybe. He sees things – ghosts which whisper at his heels as he walks until he frightens them off with a few warning sparks of his Spirit Energy, and one giant slobbering four-legged motherfucker whose silence he ends up buying permanently – and at one point he comes close to slipping and falling into a hole which he swears hadn't been there the first five times he'd walked down that particular tunnel.
The longer he ends up walking with no sign of reprieve from the claustrophobia of the tunnels, the more pissed off and anxious he becomes. Forget what they'd done with him: what did they do to the others? Kuwabara, Kurama, Hiei, that masked girl whose name he still didn't know. Were they still at the stadium, forced to go on fighting without him? Or had they also been dragged out to some dark, stinking place and left for dead?
Where's Keiko?
The encroaching gloom of defeat recedes; in its place arrives the vehement refusal to let Keiko or his other friends down by abandoning them to whatever fates had befallen them, which motivates him to find his way out as surely as would fireworks lit directly under his ass. He expects to see a forest of towering thick-trunked oaks teeming with wildlife before him when he finally emerges, viciously triumphant, from the dank of the catacombs; what he sees, instead, is what looks like a park, the kind he might find at home on the mainland.
Yusuke – confused and hungry and sore and squinting to protect his eyeballs from being liquefied by the too-bright sunlight – feels a little bit like he's coming off a three-day bender. What the hell is this? Where is –
In the distance, he sees buildings clustered together on the horizon. A tower juts out high above them, glinting like a beacon. No, he realizes with a sudden burst of clarity. This place – he's been here before. Ruby City. He remembers now, he was here for months, he was brought here on a crappy old train and Kurama –
Kurama.
Yusuke's feet are moving before he even finishes that thought. They carry him past the city's outskirts down cobblestone roads lined by idyllic rows of buildings and trees with branches bare from winter's frost. His feet remember the path to his destination before his frazzled brain does; soon enough, he slams through the door of the Flower Shop with a shout, battered and filthy and wild-eyed.]
[...Well, that's an entrance, if he's ever seen one.
The thing is, Kurama's actually been holding it together pretty well in Yusuke's absence. He's been holding it together because he's had to, because one morning he'd woken up and Yusuke was gone, and that in itself wasn't so awfully alarming, except that then eventually he hadn't come back, which was. He's holding it together because Yusuke had disappeared and then there had been multitudes of people pouring in, and one of them was Rosalind's Robert, and another of them was Yusuke's Keiko, and none of them was his human mother.
He's holding it together because in the span of a day his whole world had gone and turned upside-down, but the problem is it'd gone equally topsy-turvy for plenty of other people, too, and it's always been his nature in a crisis to be the one person who manages to keep a level head and a reasonable outlook.
So he'd set his feelings aside, and taken care of it. He'd collected Keiko. He'd seen her comfortable in thei— in Yusuk— in the intact bedroom, and moved to the couch for the duration. He'd kept the flower shop open. He'd kept himself together.
He's been perfectly ready to keep holding himself together forever, frankly. He can do that. He knows he can, because single-minded devotion to one thing and one thing alone is something he's got centuries of experience at maintaining.
But then comes this morning, and the door slams open and there's a madman in his shop, reeking of dirt and damp and old hair gel and sweat and boy, and his entire world goes topsy-turvy again.
He's been steeling himself to handle just about anything that could possibly have come his way, lately, but this proves to be the one rare and armor-piercing thing he's absolutely not prepared for in the slightest.]
...You're back...
[It strangles out from his tight throat, so quiet it's honestly more meant for himself than it is for the boy at the door.]
[It's been a few days since her Robert arrived, and Rosalind finally feels secure enough to manage without him at her side.
Not for long, of course. Certainly not for more than a few hours. But she's been entirely wrapped up in him the past few days, reconnecting with her beloved in every which way they can think of. He's heard plenty about her students and her friends, not to mention all the more unpleasant adventures she's had here. They're becoming a unit again, and it's happening so fluidly that she thinks she can stand the separation now.
He wants to see the city, and so as he explores (careful, she'd implored him, and he'd kissed her forehead and promised he would be), Rosalind heads towards Kurama's flower shop. She'd managed a text to him over the past few days, which really is quite admirable. That's more than anyone else got. But texting isn't the same as a proper conversation, and she misses him.
She lets herself into the shop, glancing around. Parappa is, of course, ignored, no matter what childish antics he might want to pull.]
Kurama?
[He'll hear her (and smell her) (oh, dear, he'll smell Robert, won't he? Oh, well, it isn't as if the scarf at her throat isn't a dead giveaway already) no matter where in the building he is. So Rosalind waits patiently, examining some of the plants as she does.]
[The funny thing is, it's been just a little over a month now since their roles in this were a hundred and eighty degrees reversed.
It had been right around Valentine's Day, hadn't it? Yes, of course it had. He'd been looking forward to the vaguely giddy, anxiously thrilling prospect of a human romantic holiday with, indeed, a human to romance on the holiday, and Rosalind had been through to visit. He'd hurt her that day, being careless with talk of Robert, still absent after months and months that they should've been spending together. He'd consoled her with flowers in a whimsical magic show. She'd cheered, a bit, without ever really making it up into cheery.
And now here she is, smelling oddly of herself-except-not (because the base notes of the bouquet are all the same, but the trappings aren't — woody aftershave instead of light florals, plain soap instead of fine powder), with a scarf around her neck to preserve some illusion of modesty in hiding the bruises and bites he knows are there.
Good.
Because really, he's not so childish or petty to wish unhappiness on her just because he's been visited with a bout of it of his own. Good for her, that she's finally reunited with her other half. Good for her. She deserves to be happy; let her be.
But it's still an irony he doesn't miss, as he makes his way out of the backroom in a pair of jeans and a red flannel shirt that conspicuously doesn't belong to him, a soft smile already poised on his expression as he comes to greet her.]
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date?? time??
[. . . And hello, or whatever.]
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That's hitting unsettlingly close to home when he picks up his pocketwatch (presumably after he's back from the haunted house, and sitting behind the counter of the flower shop playing with plants) and sees the random message waiting for him...]
I believe it's possible for someone to be more than their nature, without losing that nature entirely. For their nature to become just one part in their overall gestalt, as it were.
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time is an illusion dates are a hologram
Hello!
[ Off to a good start, this time around. ]
First of all, I wanted to say... thank you. For the flowers. This is probably weird to believe but I'm not at all used to receiving gifts and I don't think I've ever been given flowers. It was a very welcome surprise!! So, thank you.
It... cheered me up a lot, in fact. I usually stay out of people's ways unless it's really necessary. That was one of the first times someone went out of their way for me when I didn't feel like I had a lot to offer in return. But I also realized, I wanted to offer something in return.
[ Why does she feel like she's making a business deal as opposed to her truest intent-- expressing gratitude for his kindness and wanting to throw her hat in to that cause. She said to Fugo earlier that art, in all its forms, was as much of a necessity as everything else here. What you could do for others that had no other purpose but to make them happy-- like a delivery of flowers, or the sharing of music-- you needed that to survive a place like this. The basket was a reminder that if nothing else, Tonika should try to be happy while she's here. ]
Please, let me work for you!
I don't want any wages. I just want to help do for others what you did for me. Please.
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(He remembers how Yukina had borne up so bravely even after the most unimaginable torments had been inflicted on her. Don't kill him, she'd begged, because she would've derived no joy from Hiei's revenge, and in fact watching someone else die on her account would only have produced more nightmares. It's always interesting and curious to see, those people whose shyness masks an incalculable resilience, who aren't so much knowingly hiding those traits for the sake of deception as seemingly unaware of how strong they really are in the first place.)
And now here's Tonika, eager to make things equal, and moreover, finding the courage to pursue that even when by her own admission, her own inclination is to avoid and downplay, rather than to put herself out there like this.
Human beings are so fascinating that way. These are the sorts of traits that more often than not render them superior to demons, rather than allegedly inferior.
He's smiling a little, congenially, when the feed comes up to return the message.]
Well, I'm very glad to hear that the surprise cheered you up — and that you found them to begin with. I know my method of delivery was hardly the most...direct.
I recall you saying something about the flower shop, that first time we spoke — that it doesn't really serve a constructive purpose outside of simply existing to make people happy, or something along those lines? That's what you're asking for now — to be a part of an institution like that, and pay forward some of that happiness onto others?
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[You would've had him at hello, Ros, if you'd bothered to say hello to begin with.]
I'd be happy to have another chat. When would be best for you?
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action; a day or so after tonika flower bombed her
Stepping inside she shakes some of the snow flurries out of her hair and looks around.]
Hello?
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When Lapis shows up, though, it draws his attention, and he looks up from the pages at once.]
Hello. Welcome to my shop; is there something I can help you with?
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[action, though she's already left]
It turns out to be a painting by someone extremely proficient. Tonika's noticeable handwriting says 'to add a little decoration to the shop. Not that it needs it, considering there are flowers everywhere... but I hope you like it!' There's also a little jar of hot chocolate mix next to it. ]
1920s au is a go
It isn't the library, of course. Not the one furnished with proper books. That room Rosalind practically lives in. But it's the library, complete with significant emphasis, because while the books it's filled with are blank and empty, that isn't the point of it at all. It's a very cunning decoy, meant to misdirect any potential thieves that might want to try their luck at the Astor fortune.
Rosalind had expressed some doubt that a thief would be so stupid as to be deterred by a room of blank books, but had been firmly ignored on that front.
There's a clever hidden panel, you see. You tug on the Dickens book third shelf up and to the right, and suddenly the whole bookcase swings away, and there's the safe. It's a massive thing, waist high and with a ridiculous amount of gearwork installed into it. You need a key, and another key, and likely a key that bloody well opens a panel with a key in it. It's frustratingly complicated and needlessly irritating, but it does guard any number of treasures. Because once you've managed to open the safe . . .
There's jewelry there, enough that it glimmers and shimmers and lights up the entire safe the moment any light hits it. Earrings and necklaces and rings, all Rosalind's (kept there on the basis it isn't being worn either way, so it might as well stay safe instead of simply lying about and collecting dust on her dresser). There's bonds, of course, and deeds, more than there really ought to be. A few gold bars, because gold is, after all, a useful currency when one needs to make a point quickly. And lots and lots of bills: hundreds all tied together in neat, official bonds, certified straight from the bank.
There's another thing, too, but Rosalind doesn't talk about that. She doesn't dare. It isn't supposed to be in there. It isn't even supposed to exist. But there it is, twenty-five sheets of paper, innocently tucked in between bills.
(Or there were, anyway. Up until four days ago, they'd been there, and when she'd gone down last night to check--)
All those locks and keys and admittedly somewhat lackluster disguise isn't the end of what guards that safe, though. There's a few alarms, both obvious and silent, but it isn't any one of those that the thief managed to trip.
No, it's one of Rosalind's that catches him. It's a clever thing, an electrical current that hums in every window and point of entry. It's silent, and doesn't do a thing to a person as they enter. It just registers them, taking note of their personal DNA and cell structure. And if they're not on the approved list, once they try and leave . . .
She'd thought about it making it deadly. She'd thought very hard about making it deadly, but killing a thief wouldn't give her any answers. It'd likely raise more questions, especially ones like why is there a dead body in our library, Rosalind? So no, it doesn't kill anyone. But it does send a hell of an electric shock through them, the sort that leaves your ears buzzing and your mind desperately trying to see if you've, in fact, died.]
I should hold still if I were you.
[She says it carefully as she slips through the dark room. She can just make out the prone figure lying on her carpet. Surely he's out of commission, and yet she grips her knife tightly.]
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It's nothing short of an insult to his prowess, to think that he could've missed a security system like this when he'd made his initial entry into the most obvious decoy of a room he's seen in a long time — and really, do the rich truly imagine that they're clever, setting up whole useless rooms in the hopes of disguising their valuables like this? — but somehow smacked facefirst into it on the escape. He'd checked that window as thoroughly as he'd cased the rest of the house in his preliminary inquiries. There were no wires, no bells waiting to ring. There was nothing save the usual latch and seal, easily maneuvered around — and yet now there's something new, something that's laid him out flat from the contact.
He's lying on a very nice carpet, he realizes. The thread count is marvelous, very plush. That's a good sign; it means he's less likely to be shot for this. No homeowner would go out of their way to shoot a downed intruder pro forma when it might risk getting blood all over their very nice carpet.
What's strange about the picture he makes, maybe, is that there are really only two things out of place in the room — himself and his bag of ill-gotten goods lying half-abandoned next to him. The rest of the false library is exactly as he'd found it when he'd come in — down to the last detail, books misaligned at fractions of angles and the grain of the carpet restored to wipe any signs that footprints might have shifted it. The room is perfect because he is a very good thief, except that for some reason the window has betrayed him on the egress, and now here he is.
And now, here he is. He hasn't bothered to cover his face or dress all in black, mostly because he's not an amateur. He is, however, wearing gloves, because that's just sensible, and his long hair is tied back neatly off his face so as not to get in the way. And then, of course, there's the part about how he's still vaguely convulsing, how all his nerves seem to be firing at once and making his skin buzz beneath the surface, and his eyes aren't quite focusing as they really ought to be, and oh, he'd better not end up dead from this. Prison he can escape from. Dead is rather a more permanent cage, and one he'd prefer not to try his hand at.
What surprises him, though, is that the voice that accosts him is that of a woman's. The lady of the house? Why should she be investigating an errant thief, with her husband nowhere insight?
He tries to answer, but finds that his mouth is working approximately as well as the rest of him — which is to say, not at all — and so he mostly just gurgles in vague reply instead.]
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Now, Rosalind thinks, she simply wants to forget the entire thing ever happened.
The trouble is, though, that wanting isn't the same as being able to. She wants to forget, but that doesn't mean the memories of the past two weeks simply fade. She wants to simply move on, but her hands tremble all throughout the morning, and more than once she's had to run to the nearest mirror, hoisting up her shirt to stare intently at her torso.
It's ridiculous. It's completely ridiculous, the entire incident was ridiculous, some mass hallucination, she has to stop giving it so much thought, it's like it's a nightmare she's too childish to shake--
She needs confirmation, she decides, and sets off. That will stop her mind from wandering. She'll have that aspect of the hallucination put to rest, and she can shove it all firmly behind her. Rosalind crosses the city square (empty, now, and unnervingly so) and strides towards Kurama's flower shop, her expression set.
Confirmation isn't the only reason she wants to visit him. But it will serve well as the primary reason, and should they get to talking afterwards-- well. Who can say what the afternoon will bring?
Odd, how comfortingly familiar the plant shop is. She doesn't even like plants that much, but being in here signifies things like safety and comfort, and that's a great relief on a day like today. Rosalind shivers as the heat washes over her, the familiar scent of soil and sound of the chattering of his plants as soothing as any song.]
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He had done hideous things, in that illusory not-life he'd lived for the duration. He has done equally hideous things in the one he remembers now. People who stood out in his recollections seem like shadowed echoes of people he currently knows, ones he cares for, ones who make up the story of his life that he currently recalls.
So. Whatever was done here, it had tampered with his memories.
If that's the case, if even that is within the realm of capacity for the overlords here — then what of the memories he's been so carefully protecting all this time? Are even they truly safe, or is he only lying to himself as much as he is to the world?
The bell on the door jingles, and he's not surprised to see Ros come through the door when he looks up. She's looking about as discomforted as he is at the moment, but it's always a pleasure to see her. He might as well enjoy that pleasure while he has it; soon enough he'll be back to his mulling thoughts, so the respite she's unexpectedly offering is probably a much-needed one.]
Doctor Lutece.
[It rolls off his tongue, smooth and effortless as always.]
Good afternoon. What can I offer you today?
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2/26
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Dr. Lutece?
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3/21, 7 AM
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You're giddy.
Why, Dr. Lutece, giddiness becomes you greatly, I must say.
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ACTION
One minute, he's standing in the arena on Hanging Neck Island watching the cloaked figures of Team Masho whirl into the stadium while crowds of ugly sneering demonic faces jeer at him from all sides (“Kill Yusuke, kill Yusuke” – gotta hand it to demons, they sure know how to make a guy feel special); the next, he's swimming in and out, in and out, wondering through the leaden haze of a killer migraine who left the faucet on and why everything is so damn cold until finally, after what feels like centuries, he comes to for good and finds himself peering through burning, itchy eyes into a vast black darkness.
The first real, coherent thought he has is that everything hurts. His head, all his muscles, his arm (just the one, like he'd been cut – he HAD been cut, that stupid troll doctor nicked him after he'd mutated). The second is that he shouldn't be here.
The shock of that realization, block-headed and obvious as it would seem in retrospect, propels him into sitting and taking inventory of his surroundings. This is – a cave. No, it's a tunnel, grimy and musty and dripping, which explains why he thought he'd heard water running before. The air inside the tunnel is thick and oppressive; it threatens to choke him almost as badly as the hot, indignant anger that lodges in his throat. So after all the hassle of dragging him out to the island and all that talk of wanting to put him down, those bastards were so afraid to fight him they resorted to this to get rid of him. Had Toguro had a big meaty hand in this? Or were these just the slimy machinations of that stupid tournament committee?
It doesn't make a difference. Whoever did this, they're about to find out the hard way what a funny tendency Yusuke has of not staying gone.
So Yusuke thinks as he sets out to find the exit, and yet eventually his determination begins to give way to frustration. He doesn't know how much time passes as he wanders, using the glow of his Spirit Gun like a makeshift candle, through the darkness of the catacombs. Hours. Days maybe. He sees things – ghosts which whisper at his heels as he walks until he frightens them off with a few warning sparks of his Spirit Energy, and one giant slobbering four-legged motherfucker whose silence he ends up buying permanently – and at one point he comes close to slipping and falling into a hole which he swears hadn't been there the first five times he'd walked down that particular tunnel.
The longer he ends up walking with no sign of reprieve from the claustrophobia of the tunnels, the more pissed off and anxious he becomes. Forget what they'd done with him: what did they do to the others? Kuwabara, Kurama, Hiei, that masked girl whose name he still didn't know. Were they still at the stadium, forced to go on fighting without him? Or had they also been dragged out to some dark, stinking place and left for dead?
Where's Keiko?
The encroaching gloom of defeat recedes; in its place arrives the vehement refusal to let Keiko or his other friends down by abandoning them to whatever fates had befallen them, which motivates him to find his way out as surely as would fireworks lit directly under his ass. He expects to see a forest of towering thick-trunked oaks teeming with wildlife before him when he finally emerges, viciously triumphant, from the dank of the catacombs; what he sees, instead, is what looks like a park, the kind he might find at home on the mainland.
Yusuke – confused and hungry and sore and squinting to protect his eyeballs from being liquefied by the too-bright sunlight – feels a little bit like he's coming off a three-day bender. What the hell is this? Where is –
In the distance, he sees buildings clustered together on the horizon. A tower juts out high above them, glinting like a beacon. No, he realizes with a sudden burst of clarity. This place – he's been here before. Ruby City. He remembers now, he was here for months, he was brought here on a crappy old train and Kurama –
Kurama.
Yusuke's feet are moving before he even finishes that thought. They carry him past the city's outskirts down cobblestone roads lined by idyllic rows of buildings and trees with branches bare from winter's frost. His feet remember the path to his destination before his frazzled brain does; soon enough, he slams through the door of the Flower Shop with a shout, battered and filthy and wild-eyed.]
Kurama!
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The thing is, Kurama's actually been holding it together pretty well in Yusuke's absence. He's been holding it together because he's had to, because one morning he'd woken up and Yusuke was gone, and that in itself wasn't so awfully alarming, except that then eventually he hadn't come back, which was. He's holding it together because Yusuke had disappeared and then there had been multitudes of people pouring in, and one of them was Rosalind's Robert, and another of them was Yusuke's Keiko, and none of them was his human mother.
He's holding it together because in the span of a day his whole world had gone and turned upside-down, but the problem is it'd gone equally topsy-turvy for plenty of other people, too, and it's always been his nature in a crisis to be the one person who manages to keep a level head and a reasonable outlook.
So he'd set his feelings aside, and taken care of it. He'd collected Keiko. He'd seen her comfortable in thei— in Yusuk— in the intact bedroom, and moved to the couch for the duration. He'd kept the flower shop open. He'd kept himself together.
He's been perfectly ready to keep holding himself together forever, frankly. He can do that. He knows he can, because single-minded devotion to one thing and one thing alone is something he's got centuries of experience at maintaining.
But then comes this morning, and the door slams open and there's a madman in his shop, reeking of dirt and damp and old hair gel and sweat and boy, and his entire world goes topsy-turvy again.
He's been steeling himself to handle just about anything that could possibly have come his way, lately, but this proves to be the one rare and armor-piercing thing he's absolutely not prepared for in the slightest.]
...You're back...
[It strangles out from his tight throat, so quiet it's honestly more meant for himself than it is for the boy at the door.]
...Yusuke...?
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3/?? post fourth wall, post Texting Incident
Not for long, of course. Certainly not for more than a few hours. But she's been entirely wrapped up in him the past few days, reconnecting with her beloved in every which way they can think of. He's heard plenty about her students and her friends, not to mention all the more unpleasant adventures she's had here. They're becoming a unit again, and it's happening so fluidly that she thinks she can stand the separation now.
He wants to see the city, and so as he explores (careful, she'd implored him, and he'd kissed her forehead and promised he would be), Rosalind heads towards Kurama's flower shop. She'd managed a text to him over the past few days, which really is quite admirable. That's more than anyone else got. But texting isn't the same as a proper conversation, and she misses him.
She lets herself into the shop, glancing around. Parappa is, of course, ignored, no matter what childish antics he might want to pull.]
Kurama?
[He'll hear her (and smell her) (oh, dear, he'll smell Robert, won't he? Oh, well, it isn't as if the scarf at her throat isn't a dead giveaway already) no matter where in the building he is. So Rosalind waits patiently, examining some of the plants as she does.]
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It had been right around Valentine's Day, hadn't it? Yes, of course it had. He'd been looking forward to the vaguely giddy, anxiously thrilling prospect of a human romantic holiday with, indeed, a human to romance on the holiday, and Rosalind had been through to visit. He'd hurt her that day, being careless with talk of Robert, still absent after months and months that they should've been spending together. He'd consoled her with flowers in a whimsical magic show. She'd cheered, a bit, without ever really making it up into cheery.
And now here she is, smelling oddly of herself-except-not (because the base notes of the bouquet are all the same, but the trappings aren't — woody aftershave instead of light florals, plain soap instead of fine powder), with a scarf around her neck to preserve some illusion of modesty in hiding the bruises and bites he knows are there.
Good.
Because really, he's not so childish or petty to wish unhappiness on her just because he's been visited with a bout of it of his own. Good for her, that she's finally reunited with her other half. Good for her. She deserves to be happy; let her be.
But it's still an irony he doesn't miss, as he makes his way out of the backroom in a pair of jeans and a red flannel shirt that conspicuously doesn't belong to him, a soft smile already poised on his expression as he comes to greet her.]
Rosalind. Only half of you today, I see.
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That was Youko Kurama.
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I suppose I should start by extending an apology.
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4/14; text
[guess who's back to being BIG, BAD, AND MAD]
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...And I am, of course, terribly sorry.
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