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 Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2023 3:43 pm
Strictly speaking, Reiki’s mood was Not Great as he picked up the offering he’d take to North End Park tonight. Things had stressed him out a lot of late, and trying to listen to Haruhi—trying to give himself room to just feel upset even when he knew that Fang hadn’t meant what he’d said under the influence of Valjean’s magic—was not helping in the immediate sense. Overall, Reiki expected it to turn out similar to listing all of his cognitive distortions in therapy, where it dragged his mood down in the short term but ultimately helped him feel better in the long-term.
Still sucked in the present moment, though, which made one of Reiki’s visits out to Kerberos at his bench feel even more necessary. Being with Kerberos……made a lot of things make sense in ways they didn’t otherwise. He felt grounding, stabilizing. He gave Reiki hope. And it felt good, knowing how much others like Amsvartnir looked up to Kerberos, to be someone who treated Kerb like a normal person—complete with Reiki inviting himself to open their conversations with “What’s up, slut” and complaining at Kerberos about everything from how much the House of the Dragon (Hot D) fandom wanted Henry Cavill to play Aegon the Conqueror, to how Rupaul’s Drag Race had completely changed the economy of drag artistry.
Yet, as Reiki approached the familiar bench in North End Park tonight, something felt……off. He didn’t know what, or how, or why. But the air felt heavier, and something about Kerberos, or maybe about his demeanor, felt like he had something impossibly heavy weighing him down. Like Atlas, left to bear the weight of the universe, all by himself. Not that Reiki never felt all that responsibility emanating off Kerberos because he did, but……something about it felt different tonight, and Reiki couldn’t tell if it was a different that he liked.
“……Blossom?” He came up slowly, keeping his voice gentle. “How are you doing…?”
Open-ended question without the social expectation that tacitly mandated pretending to be okay.
Because Kerberos……did not seem like he was.
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Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2023 2:35 pm
In the aftermath of Faustite's loss. Kerberos found himself...
Well. Grieving.
It was silly, wasn't it? He and Faustite had only spoken a few times, but Kerberos had sort of developed a fondness for the fiery General, and his loss weighed on Kerberos's heart. He found himself staring at his hands, quite often--they'd been burned by the heat of touching Faustite, but between his healing magic and Ida's, there was only the faintest of scars on his palms. But at least they were there. A reminder, for him, that Faustite had lived, and been a person that he knew.
Murikabushi's voice jolted him out of staring down at them for what felt like the millionth time,a s if looking long enough would roll back the clock, give him and everyone else there another chance.
"Hi," he said, and he knew his smile was strained and he had to look tired. "I..."
He could have lied. But that would be pointless. Murikabushi deserved his honesty.
"...Not great, honestly."
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Posted: Sun May 21, 2023 9:10 pm
That answer……was far from unexpected, but also far from reassuring. More than anything else, it made Reiki even more concerned that something terrible had happened. While he wasn’t afraid of Being There for a friend while something terrible was happening or in the aftermath of something terrible (on the contrary: he arguably put himself into that position far more often than he actually needed to), Reiki just……worried. Worried about whether or not he could actually do anything to help (even simply listen). Worried about everything being broken beyond the point of repair. Worried that, in his attempts to help—however well-intentioned—he might only succeed in making things So Much Worse Forever because something about him personally felt broken beyond the point of repair.
Worried that someone he cared about was suffering, and maybe all that he could offer was ******** bubble tea.
Nevertheless, Reiki came closer to the bench. He moved carefully about sitting down, and about holding out the boba he’d picked up for Kerberos (and keeping the oversized cup of green tea for himself). “It’s honey milk tea today,” he said gently, keeping his voice soft and low. “I know it’s not much, and I picked it up before I knew anything was wrong, but……still.” A deep breath and a sigh. “Do you want to talk about it? About whatever’s going on that’s making you feel honestly not great, I mean?”
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Posted: Sat May 27, 2023 3:24 am
Kerberos took the boba tea with a genuinely grateful smile. There was something lovely, and calming, and normal about this--like it wasn't weighed down quite so much with the ache of grief and loss.
But it was, in its way.
"Thank you," he said, seriously. "I appreciate it. You're probably the most consistent friendly face I get, here."
He took a sip of the tea. Considered, as he bit into the tapioca balls that came up his straw. Finally, decided to just tell the truth.
"We tried to save Faustite." He knew Murikabushi knew him, cared for him. "It was all set up. Court and Princesses--two of them, as it turned out--all at the ready." A soft, bitter laugh. "His team was there, too. Planned to ambush us. I'm not surprised, not really--they all seem deeply loyal and unlikely to want to give him up. But one of them blew it early, before the Court and the Princess could do their thing. And he's--" Kerberos swallowed, tightly.
"He's gone, Murikabushi. He was youmafying, right there in front of us, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. They took him back before it finished, but--" He sagged forward, buried his face in his hands. "We failed him. Every single one of us there, who just wanted to help."
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Posted: Mon May 29, 2023 8:05 pm
As much as Reiki wanted to clap back like “Well, that’s kind of a depressing thought, considering how much s**t I regularly talk whenever I come visit,” he bit his tongue for now. Everything seemed so……wrong, tonight. Even without knowing what the problem was, Reiki could only hope to keep himself from completely fearing for the worst, then digging himself a hole of anxiety about it. Wrong time to deflect with humor. Wrong time to try and make Kerberos laugh.
Instead, Reiki shifted closer and gently put a hand on Kerberos’s back. Part of Reiki marveled at how he’d heard what Kerberos had said and still found this so easy, but……of course this came easily to Reiki. Why wouldn’t it?
Realistically, he didn’t think he had the right to be all that surprised about the news? Maybe a bit of wiggle room to allow for how Reiki certainly hadn’t predicted the exact circumstances, but……it wasn’t as though Faustite being gone counted as a surprise, right? Faustite had seemed bad enough when they’d encountered each other in January, and even more worse off—a stark deterioration in just a few weeks—when Reiki had rushed in to save him from Cybele. If Faustite’s health was leaving him so quickly, then of course the big rug-pull was probably going to happen sooner rather than later.
While the two situations weren’t entirely comparable, part of hearing this news felt like grim resignation: Faustite was gone, and Reiki had known how incredibly likely an outcome that had been, and now it had come to pass, exactly as Faustite’s fast-deteriorating health had indicated. On the other hand, though, the news still hit Reiki with an abrupt shiver and a sensation like someone had replaced his heart with a black hole, freezing cold, empty, and perpetually hungry.
“I don’t……” He started, trailing off as he couldn’t bring himself to say that, for once in his life, he didn’t know what to say. Probably better to admit that out loud, he supposed. But regardless of how often in his life Reiki had felt this way—regardless of how often he’d felt like this in the past few months alone—it was always such a weird experience, to feel so much, so loudly, and all at once, that Reiki came up feeling nothing, or at least feeling in the moment like he felt nothing. Swallowing thickly, he tried to turn his feelings over in his head and shake them for any verbal spare change.
He felt like he was coming up with nothing.
“Struggling to really see it as loyalty on the part of whichever slut ******** things up,” Reiki said in a flat, removed voice, after a few moments of consideration. About the only part of it that sounded normal for him was that slut ever remained a value-neutral description of someone when Reiki said it. Whichever member of Faustite’s team had made the mess, they were only a slut because Reiki generally referred to Faustite’s boys as his harem of cute sluts, and while Miss Jada, formerly Lilith, and any other girls kept the venn diagram of Team Proper and Harem Of Cute Sluts from entirely being a circle? As far as Reiki knew, the overlap was…………considerable. “Even with all of the risks—the memory damage, losing his singularly unique experience as a half-youma—letting him go full youma like that……when they had to have known that it was a risk…? When that’s the real way that anybody loses him permanently?”
Reiki shook his head. “Even if everything went wrong? That sounds like it’s on whichever of his minions ******** up, Blossom. Not on you, or anybody else who was involved in trying to help him.”
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2023 4:56 am
Kerberos shook his head, a little. "Whatever it was, it was definitely a ********," he said. "Loyalty. The desire to not lose someone you love. Panic. Who even ******** knows," he sighed. "But we also failed pretty ******** spectacularly to get our s**t together. Two Princesses, a whole Court, and assorted escorts, and we couldn't accomplish one damn purification."
He smiled wryly, bitterly.
"But they couldn't accomplish one damn ambush, so that's something, too." Not that they hadn't taken losses, beyond Faustite. Lysithea had gotten wrecked. Kerberos had been injured. He was sure others had been, too. "I don't know, Muri. It was all a complete ********, and Faustite paid the price."
His shoulders slumped. "And even knowing it's not the end? Even knowing that we can save a full youma, too? It still feels like....it was already a struggle to get him to try this. Now he's got nothing else to lose and no reason to trust any of us again."
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