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 Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 12:27 pm
Waiting until Valhalla had deemed it safe and released his hold on Ganymede’s train, the Eternal senshi took a few careful steps forward and followed the squire into the room. He kept the flashlight at the ready, for although there was enough light filtering in through the window to see most of the room, it remained dim and dusky. He almost wished for extra light, if only to be able to see things more appropriately.
Ganymede’s interest was captured by the furniture. He noted just as Valhalla did that the chairs and couches and tables seemed somewhat different than many of the other pieces they’d seen scattered around the fortress. Imported probably, and Ganymede had a pretty good idea he knew from where.
“It sort of looks like my sitting room, doesn’t it?” he observed.
Frequently he went back and forth when it came to claiming ownership himself or restricting it to the person he used to be. On the one hand, it didn’t always seem right to name something his when he’d never used it and was barely familiar with it, nor did he generally want any part of a past that should only matter as far as discovering a solution to the problem of the war. On the other hand, he was the only one who went to his world these days, and as he was really all that was left of it… if anything, it was less confusing just to call it “mine.”
“I mean, the furniture,” he clarified. “It looks alike. Even the colors....”
His rooms on Ganymede were decorated in colors he supposed represented his world—white, red, black, and gold, just like his fuku. As he cast extra light around this room, he thought he could see similar shades beneath years of dust, which dulled their vibrancy and gave it all a gray-ish tinge.
“What do you think this is? A guest room?”
It seemed the obvious conclusion. From the eagle on the door to the furnishings and the colors, he didn’t know that it could be anything else.
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 12:58 pm
"It does," he agreed, stepping around some of the holes that had been worn into the once luxurious carpet that covered most of the stone floor. "I haven't seen a lot of these colors elsewhere," he admitted, although he didn't know if he should come to that conclusion after only having gone to the castle once before. Even still, it was almost strange to see a room decked out in furniture and tapestries and light fixtures that was most likely brought from off-planet.
"Probably," was his simple answer, not knowing what else to say in response to Ganymede's questions. Of course it was a guest room, but why was it decorated like this if not for a particular reason...?
Of the two doors leading off the main room, Valhalla felt himself moving towards the one on the right. It wasn't because this set of doors looked any different from the other set in the room, but it was as though he knew something was waiting there.
He reached out his hand to touch the handle, hearing it click unlocked from inside, and was then able to slowly push them open. It was a bedroom, again similar to one he'd seen before. There was no balcony in this one, but the large windows, half covered in mostly deteriorated, heavy draperies, let in enough light for him to look around. Aside from the bed, there was also a set of chairs and a couch that faced a fireplace, a few small tables, a wardrobe, and a vanity table and bench, its mirror still intact.
Valhalla couldn't help but wonder if he should do something about the mirror, or if he should leave it there. He was pretty sure any intruder would get so lost that they would have to leave after a while, but he also didn't feel comfortable about the potential of others being in the castle without his permission.
Those thoughts were immediately halted as a sudden memory appeared in the shape of a young man with long blond hair, wavy and loose around his shoulders, sitting at the vanity and looking straight at him. The expression on the young man's face — prominently shocked and concerned — almost had Valhalla apologizing for his interruption, but as he stared in surprise, the memory spoke.
"Serge, you shouldn't..." was all he heard although the young man's lips still moved, as if completing a quietly mumbled sentence.
"Serge...?" Valhalla repeated, knowing very well that he was talking to himself and only Ganymede could hear him. Even still, he watched as the young man's eyes seemed to follow someone entering the room, and just before the scene faded, Valhalla caught sight of who he knew was his past self.
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 1:34 pm
Ganymede followed, not wanting to be left behind and finding little more of interest in the sitting room. The bedroom continued to house things that seemed familiar to him, not due to any memories of the past, but due to what he’d seen on his own world in the few visits he’d made. The coloring remained the same—rich woods with white, red, and black fabrics, and decorative, golden fixtures that looked so lavish against the roughhewn stone of the walls.
Feeling somewhat safer in the bedroom, Ganymede left Valhalla’s side in order to inspect some of the furnishings on his own. He found another door, still firmly on its hinges but hanging open into what appeared to be a washroom. There was a basin for water along one of the walls, and an old-fashioned tub situated in the center of the room. It stood solitary with golden, clawed feet, and it did not look to be shaped from any substance he would imagine a tub to be made of—enameled steel or cast iron—but gleaming black stone, veined white and cut smooth.
Marginally impressed, Ganymede flicked the flashlight around the rest of the smaller room but found little else to interest him, just shelves of dusty bottles and disintegrated piles of ragged cloth that he thought must have been towels, but which now looked like little more than old rags.
He left the door open all the same—one less room to unlock on later visits—and returned to search through the main room. Approaching the wardrobe, Ganymede gently gripped one of the door handles. He was careful not to break anything, not when it was so old and decayed and didn’t belong to him. He pulled slowly, opening the wardrobe with a creak of old wood and unoiled hinges.
There were a few pieces of clothing hanging inside, a bit less dusty than the rest of the room after having been enclosed for years. Jackets mostly, all in his own colors, and a few pairs of shoes—heeled and buckled like he’d expect to see on a colonial gentleman. He almost reached out to touch some of them, but thought better of it at the last second. There was no telling if anything would withstand being handled after so long.
Startled by the sudden sound of Val’s voice, Ganymede turned to find him nearby, some feet in front of the vanity. The squire looked somewhat surprised. Wary, Ganymede’s eyes flicked first to the mirror, but when he saw nothing but their reflections within it, he was slightly less concerned about any unwanted visitors.
“What is it?” he asked, approaching Val again. He bathed the vanity in light from the flashlight. There was a vase there, which might once have held flowers, along with a few dingy looking bottles that could have been fancy once, and a shape Ganymede thought looked like a brush.
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 1:48 pm
Still staring at the spot where the image had vanished, Valhalla slowly shook his head in response to Ganymede's concern, wanting to let him know that it was nothing to set them on the defensive. There was no one coming through the mirror, at least... Just the ghosts of a memory.
"His name was Serge, I think..." he explained, looking around the room as if looking for where the two had gone, or as if they'd suddenly reappear. Valhalla frowned to himself as he thought he remembered the face he'd seen. The one from his memory had seemed younger, as was Serge, but again... the coincidences were too much to ignore.
The eagle on the door, the colors of the room, the design of the furniture... the need to see this room out of all the other doors they'd passed.
Slowly, Valhalla reached down to unlatch one of the pouches that were buckled to his belt. He'd completely forgotten about it since the last visit — there wasn't anything really significant about it, until now. Sure, it was strange that the pocket watch had some kind of Latin phrase engraved into it, but that wasn't why he was pulling it out now.
"Your past life," he started, taking a step closer to Ganymede as he held the pocket watch open in front of him. "Did he look like this...?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 2:08 pm
Confused, Ganymede glanced down at the object being offered to him. The first thing he saw was a time piece on one side, ticking away with a few decorative hands to a time he didn’t recognize. The fact that it was working initially surprised him less than the fact that he couldn’t read it, but once he realized the watch probably hadn’t come from anywhere on Earth, the soft tick-tick-tick left him flabbergasted.
Something so old and it still functioned on its own?
“Where did you get this…?” he asked.
That was when Valhalla’s question registered, and Ganymede saw that the other half of the opened watch, the back of the front cover, was not without embellishment, though instead of jewels or gold filigree or an engraving, a miniature portrait had been stuck there—a young man with pale hair and soft blue eyes. If he hadn’t been to Ganymede he never would have recognized him. With the number of fragmented memories he’d gained, however, he knew who the man in the picture was at first glance.
“Yeah… yeah, that’s him,” he said. He took the pocket-watch from Valhalla to get a closer look. “His names was Liesel. I know he awakened when he was really young, but I don’t think he met anyone until a little later. I’ve seen you twice. Once they were talking in a courtyard, and another time… you’d snuck into his room. I… I don’t know where this came from. Where did you find it?”
He tried not to jump to any conclusions about the relationship between them in the past. As far as he’d seen, they were little more than friends. Thinking that Valhalla might have kept a portrait of him, however, not to mention the artfully decorated guest room—why should he go through the trouble to make it look so familiar and homey to someone who might only have visited a few times a year??—caused him to wonder if there might have been more there than he saw in the memories presented to him on his moon.
Ganymede felt a sudden warmth inside of him and looked to Valhalla with a smile.
“For such a grumpy looking guy, whoever you used to be sure was sentimental to keep something like this,” he said.
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 2:23 pm
"I don't know if 'sentimental' is the right word for it..." Valhalla mumbled to himself as he took a step towards the vanity to inspect it, and then when he decided that the objects there were not his property to touch, he took a few steps more towards the window. He could tell that Ganymede was at least a little excited to know that Serge and Liesel might have had something of a relationship beyond friendship, but something about it bothered him.
The way Serge had looked at the picture in his memory might have been that of longing, but Valhalla thought he might have seen a bit of possessiveness in his eyes. He doubted that Liesel had been mistreated, at least physically... but... why as it that these memories filled him with regret, rather than warmth?
"I saw them just now," he said softly, yet loud enough to be heard over the distant rumbling of thunder. "Liesel was at the vanity... he looked almost scared... I don't know what kind of friendship they had, but apparently Serge was doing something he shouldn't..." At least that's what it seemed like. Liesel might not have sounded all the confident in scolding Serge for his presence, but he had voiced it.
Serge, on the other hand, had a reputation for doing whatever the hell he wanted... at least that was how it seemed.
Valhalla didn't know if he should share the bit of violence he'd witnessed with Ganymede, or if he should let his boyfriend continue to be happy that there might be something more binding them in the past. If anything, it was a little scary. What if they really were bound by fate?
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 2:50 pm
“I haven’t seen anything here. I don’t think I can, but he never looked all that scared on Ganymede,” the Eternal senshi replied, watching his boyfriend oddly. “If anything, I think he was scared of getting caught. You weren’t supposed to be in his room that one time. He was locked in because of some festival, and you came in and Liesel was worried about someone noticing. I think there were people close to him that didn’t like you. He and you argued about his government… how they liked to control him…”
Ganymede didn’t like to think that their lives were controlled by fate or destiny. Maybe things like that were the reason they’d become what they were, but he refused to believe that it had anything to do with them being together now. They’d made that decision on their own, not because of anything that happened between them in the past, but because they cared for and relied on one another in the present.
If they’d had a relationship in the past, it was nothing more than a coincidence. It had no bearing on their relationship now. They weren’t being forced together by cosmic powers, nor did they have to remain together for something so unpredictable as fate. They were not the same people who’d lived hundreds of years ago. They made their own way.
Even still, there was a small part of Ganymede that liked to believe in soul-mates. A year ago he would have scoffed at the idea and thought it was little more than nonsense, but there was something comforting in the thought of their souls being connected somehow—like they’d always have one another, like they’d always find one another, no matter what troubles or how many years separated them.
He didn’t say anything about that to Valhalla, however. He was very conscious of the fact that the love he felt for Chris might very well be horribly one-sided.
“The time before that, he looked pretty happy to be around you,” he continued, trying to be reassuring, “or whoever you were. You said his name was Serge? He seemed to know some of the secret passages on Ganymede. It’s how he got into Liesel’s room, but seeing how this castle is laid out… I mean, I guess figuring out ways to get into rooms on Ganymede must have been a piece of cake. Maybe he had a habit of doing things he shouldn’t have. None of my memories of you have ever made me feel uncomfortable, though. Just sort of… warm and light. Last time I thought I could feel him touching my hair when he touched Liesel’s. It was pretty gentle for such a boorish looking guy.”
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 3:13 pm
Valhalla wrinkled his nose, not convinced of the innocence of his past self. Maybe it was because he hadn't seen anything really solidifying yet...? He'd only seen bits and pieces of memories with no context and no understanding of the people he'd seen. He didn't want to upset Ganymede, though... It would be stupid to worry him about things that had happened hundreds of years ago.
He remained by the window for a few more moments before letting out a long sigh and turning back to his boyfriend, lowering the arms that he hadn't even realized had been crossed over his chest. Reaching out, he placed his arms around Ganymede's shoulders, drawing him closer to embrace him. "Maybe I just need to see more, huh...?" he wondered out loud, lifting a hand to place on Ganymede's head in response to the comment about his own memory, careful not to knock off the little hat.
Maybe he was just taking all of this too seriously. It was obvious that Serge had some kind of fondness for Liesel, otherwise why put the effort into trying to make his room look similar to the one on Ganymede? And what about the pocket watch? Why have a picture of him when there could have been a picture of just about anyone?
"Sorry," he mumbled, pulling back just enough to get a glimpse down at Ganymede's expression. "I think I might be channeling his boorishness." He grinned sheepishly, obviously a bit embarrassed by his stick-in-the-mud attitude. They had so much to learn about their past lives, about how the war started and how they could somehow bring it to an end, but he was stuck on his suspicions of Serge's sincerity. How lame was that??
"I guess you'll have to take a raincheck on seeing more of everything here," he suggested, lightly massaging his fingers against Ganymede's scalp. "We should get home and eat soon, I think..." If the sudden grumbling of his stomach wasn't enough indication that he was hungry.
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 3:57 pm
Ganymede kept a hold of the watch after shutting it, slinking his arms around Valhalla as he was pulled closer. He wasn’t too worried about the limits or the extent or the potential complications of his relationship with Valhalla in the past. All of that was over and done with. There wasn’t anything they could do to change it, and even if there was he didn’t think he’d bother to try. What would be the point? Nothing they had now would ever be affected by it. They were looking for a solution for a much larger problem. Whatever their past selves did or said to one another couldn’t have been any more important than that.
It was interesting, yes. Ganymede wasn’t against observing. He even sort of liked it. Sometimes it was like watching a movie, but he’d already decided to separate himself from Liesel as much as possible. Liesel was Liesel and Paris was Paris. Maybe their souls were the same, but how much did that really have an effect on the person he was today?
It was their experiences that mattered, and the people around them, more than a couple of visions that made so little sense in the first place.
“And here I was hoping we could stay a little longer,” he teased. He wasn’t particularly hungry himself—he wasn’t very hungry at all these days—but the noises issuing from Valhalla’s stomach were amusing, to say the least. Ganymede gave it a playful pat through layers of tunic and chainmail.
“We’re the only ones here,” he pointed out. “Nothing stopping us from enjoying ourselves.”
He leaned up—much easier to manage in heels than when he had to stand flat footed, when his boyfriend had a good eleven inches on him. With an inviting smile Ganymede closed the distance between them to press their lips together, holding the kiss until Valhalla’s stomach decided to grumble again.
He laughed then and pulled away to lower himself back down. “But I guess we can go home if you’re really so starving. Nothing stopping us from enjoying ourselves there, either.”
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:32 pm
He paused to give Ganymede a thoughtful look, half teasing about the offer, but once his stomach growled again, he couldn't help but let out a small laugh. "Maybe it would be better if we went home... I'd offer to make dinner, but all I can do is sandwiches... maybe." And that wasn't saying much...
"We could just get takeout, though," he suggested, pulling away enough to be able to take hold of Ganymede's hand, glancing around the room once more before leading the way out. He could have gone home from there, but he wanted to make sure the door to the bedroom and sitting room were both locked... Sure enough, when he pulled the doors shut behind him, there was a small click.
There was a lot to learn from their past lives, he was sure. But for now they needed to take things slowly. While they should take advantage of the apparently slower work from the Negaverse, they also shouldn't wear themselves out too quickly. Hell, maybe there wasn't anything to learn, anyway... Maybe it was just a bunch of old memories and dusty rooms.
Valhalla reached out to take the pocket watch from his boyfriend, slipping it back in his pouch. "I found it in my... Serge's office... In one of the drawers," he added as an after thought. "It was with the ring and some other weird objects, but in my memory, I saw him looking at it... Maybe you're right about them," he said with a small grin, leaning down to press a kiss against Ganymede's temple, before preparing to focus his energy on heading back to Earth.
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