Quote:
Happens between it’s the music, not the story and isle of misfit toys.
After the show at Scandals, Reiki honestly should’ve gone right to bed, not least since Mom and Dad expected him, Yuki, Haruhi, and Asher to come over for brunch (true, Asher was Jewish, but so was Elijah, and the Rokugins’ family brunch was significantly less religious in nature than it could’ve been, for happening on December 25th).
In deference to how much he’d put Yuki’s nerves Through The Ringer lately—and, naturally, in gratitude for Yuki’s help in making a rousing success out of Reiki’s (likely) last performance of his magnum opus number as Miss Sayuri Kurobara Disobedience—Reiki cooperated enough to let Yuki drag him back home. But……it was Christmas, and Reiki couldn’t help thinking about somebody in particular.
Multiple somebodies in particular, actually. Trudging back upstairs with a mug of tea and Cersei on his heels, Reiki tried not to let himself glance toward any windows, lest he get ideas about climbing out of them to abscond on a gift-leaving mission. That proved even more difficult than he liked when he and Cersei settled on Reiki’s bed with his laptop and his playlist of Game of Thrones episodes that didn’t make him want to explode in rage over how the show had wound up ending, how it had started with so much promise and potential only to fall apart in such a horrific manner.……
Trying to start one from the first season, Reiki made it through the other Cersei’s declaration that she’d wear a bruise on her cheek as a badge of honor; he could not, however, stomach hearing the self-righteous, pathetic excuse for a King who’d hit her telling Cersei “Wear it in silence, or I’ll honor you again.”
Not even the promise of Viserys Targaryen having his skull melted open with a boiling pot of gold could motivate Reiki to keep the episode on. That scene had been executed so perfectly, he knew how much he adored it, but he couldn’t get himself to focus. Everything under his skin itched too much with the frustration of having things he’d wanted to deliver sooner, but not having crossed paths with anybody to whom he could’ve given the gifts in question.
Unless Faustite somehow gave all youma in the Negaverse standing orders not to harm Reiki—which seemed extremely unlikely to happen, regardless of anything else, and Reiki didn’t even know if youma would be bound to heed that order because they certainly seemed to have free will of their own—it wasn’t as though he could simply waltz up to one like “Hi, excuse me, I know you would rather eat my starseed than do literally anything else I might ask for, but could you perhaps see these delivered to General-King Faustite? I promise there’s nothing untoward inside them.”
Next, he tried the episode that immediately followed that one……but everything after Lena Headey’s Cersei telling Ned Stark “Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We shared a womb. We came into this world together, we *belong* together” felt so superfluous that Reiki couldn’t stand it.……
After that, he tried skipping ahead to season three—but as much as he loved the episode he’d chosen, Reiki could only make himself skip ahead to the part he was really here for: the final scene, the monologue that could have taught a masterclass in the art of a villainous monologue and whose only flaw was that Reiki would probably never get to read a version of it in the books. Even if Grigor Mothman did finish The Winds of Winter before too long, given the way he’d structured the story in the novels, Reiki didn’t know that it would ever necessarily be the correct time for Littlefinger to explain the how’s and why’s of his everything for somebody in terms like “Chaos isn’t a pit; Chaos is a ladder.… Some are given the chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the Realm, or the gods, or love—illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”
Shutting his laptop, Reiki sighed.… The monologue wasn’t talking about Chaos as he knew it. How could that have been the case? Everyone who knew about everything with the White Moon and the Negaverse, the Dark Mirror Court and the assorted aliens—none of them had been at all involved in the production of Reiki’s silly fantasy show with the unfairly sexy people and the dragons.…… Still, hearing things spelled out in such terms, Reiki felt a chill biting at his insides as if he’d gone out in the middle of a blizzard.
Emotionally, it sort of felt as though he had. Except that the blizzard contained less snow, ice, and winds that ripped apart one’s inner being, and a good deal more turmoil over decisions that loomed in his future, and what they might mean for several relationships that, for better and arguably for worse, he had come to cherish—even acknowledging that there were inherent risks in doing so, not least of which came down to the whole “Faustite was far from emotionally stable, often temperamental and prone to choosing violence about it, and had more than ample power to back it all up” thing.
With a sigh—one that the Cersei curled up with her floppity-eared head in his lap echoed, her exhalation speaking to the unfathomably deep exhaustion of Being A Beloved And Most Very Cherished Dog—Reiki stared toward the window.… Tried to run the mental calculations on whether or not he could sneak out without Yuki noticing, and how much trouble he’d be in when Yuki or Asher or Haruhi inevitably came to check on him and found him missing.… Didn’t notice that one of said three had already come to do this until a sharp knock on the lintel made him jump.
Looking seriously other than impressed, Yuki slouched against the door-frame. “You’re thinking about taking out your magic pen and running around to do some magical girl s**t, aren’t you?”
Frankly, his tone made Reiki feel like he didn’t need to answer……but Yuki deserved better from him than stony, petulant silence, so Reiki sucked it up and nodded. “If it helps,” he ventured, “I’m not thinking about doing an actual patrol?”
“If you’re thinking about locating your little ‘it’s complicated, but for once in the entire history of people using that phrase, it actually happens to be true, rather than shorthand for romo people choosing to be stupid instead of communicating like adults’?” Making a throaty, dithering noise to suggest exactly how little he liked the idea he’d just proposed, Yuki shook his head. “I’m gonna chalk that up to a bad, self-destructive notion and tell you to get some sleep instead.”
“What if I don’t want to try and find him exactly,” Reiki asked. “What if I just want to take some Christmas presents for him and his other boys—” And Miss Jada, but haggling over the semantics felt like a waste of time, “—and put them at a drop spot, then send him a letter about it?”
“How do you propose to do said letter-sending?”
“Well, I don’t really know the mechanisms of how it works, but……” Reiki shrugged and allowed himself to put on some hopeful, pleading eyes. “The Knights I’ve told you about? They have these magic rings that can send messages to people. I’m gonna look around for one of them who might help me.”
Not every Knight in Destiny City hated Faustite. Statistically speaking, that couldn’t be the way things worked. It just couldn’t.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Yuki considered this idea in a way that made Reiki fear he would be told to go to bed—but ultimately, Yuki nodded. “Whatever, okay? Just be quick about it, and if your fire-starting squeeze shows up, you get the <********> out of there, like, immediately, you got it? I am not gonna be the one explaining ******** third-degree burns to Noshiko-mama and Obaasan at brunch tomorrow. Whether they came from him getting pissed off and fighty or from you trying to kiss him like he’s not actively on fire, I don’t care. I’m not explaining third-degree burns to the family.”
“Yes, Gorgeous,” Reiki affirmed, shunting his laptop to the side and grabbing up his henshin pen from the bedside table. He paused briefly to ruffle Cersei’s ears, and kiss her little forehead, and tell her that she was the best of all possible girls—but he still wound up on his feet. “Quick, five-minutes magical girl errand. Not even a proper patrol. And if Faustite shows up, I go in the opposite direction. Perfectly understood, I promise.”
With little further discussion, Reiki powered up and made his way for the window. Slipping out, he headed toward North-End Park. If he was going to find a knight, then historically, his luck in parks tended to be much better than his luck in random streets and alleyways.
