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 Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 2:57 pm
The weather on Ganymede was the same in the spring as it was in the winter, and the same in the winter as it was in the fall. It never changed. The temperature rose and fell on Earth, plants sprouted and bloomed, and then wilted, colored, and laid dormant again, but Ganymede remained as lifeless as it had the first time he’d set foot on the moon’s surface almost two years ago. It was neither hotter nor colder, and nothing ever grew.
Ganymede was stagnant.
Much like its corresponding Senshi.
He came to this place only as much as he needed to, and as he rarely ever needed to his visits remained quite rare. Occasionally he would take time out of his busy days to see that his moon was exactly as he’d left it—a demolished town, a crumbling castle, a desolate landscape. But he usually had a purpose in visiting, a question that needed answering or a sudden melancholy that necessitated a brief escape from the troubles on Earth. He never quite found what he was looking for; recently he’d begun to wonder if it might be time to stop searching.
Eternal Sailor Ganymede sat amidst the rubble of one of the more frequently visited halls in the palace, with his legs brought up to his chest, arms circled loosely around them, and his chin perched atop his knees. He didn’t move, but stared tiredly into a cracked and battered mirror.
It should have reflect his image, with the shattered windows behind him and the great face of Jupiter hanging in the sky. Instead he saw the reflection of a hazy, long-forgotten memory, people he did not recognize attending to business he couldn’t fathom, traversing a hall dappled with light, sparkling gold and crystal that had long ago lost its sheen.
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Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 3:31 pm
There were times Valhalla wished he could read Ganymede's mind. To somehow understand the depths of thoughts and memories and regrets that swirled in his blue-green eyes. In all the time he'd known him, there was a certain sadness that always seemed to linger. At times it seemed to vanish, replaced by joy and hope and love, but it would always return. There was a longing Valhalla could see on his partner's face... of what he didn't know, but for Ganymede's sake, he hoped he would find what he was looking for one day.
He'd remained back a ways, letting the quiet of the world overtake them and allowing Ganymede to explore in his own way, to search for whatever it was he was looking for. Valhalla stood for a while, leaning against the edge of a broken window, staring up at the bright red orb in the sky, its storms constantly raging across the planet surface. Jupiter held its own mysteries, but he'd never been drawn to them as strongly as Ganymede had been to his own world. Or maybe it was because he didn't understand. Maybe he was too focused on other things and shut out its call.
"You're doing it again," he said softly, finally moving away from the window when he felt Ganymede's eyes had been glassy a little too long, a little too lost in the memories that weren't his own. He took his place opposite him, sitting down against the wall under the mirror — not in Ganymede's direct view, but near enough to be able to look at his face more clearly.
An arm was placed on his knee as he rested against the wall, a hand unconsciously twisting at the signet ring that always adorned his left hand. Ever since he'd found it, it was the only thing that stayed with him when he powered up and down. He hadn't made much use of it, but it was still a part of him.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked, trying to draw Ganymede's attention back from being lost in a time that had existed so long ago.
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Posted: Tue May 14, 2013 1:57 pm
Ganymede gave a start, blinked twice, and when he looked forward again the memories had gone back to wherever it was they came from. Under their influence he’d almost forgotten that Valhalla was even with him, and he lifted his head off of his knees to stare across at him more fully. His mouth twisted into a small, sheepish smile.
“Sorry,” he said.
On instinct he glanced around them, taking in his surroundings, familiarizing himself with the destruction after focusing so long—how long had it been?—on the past. Everything was as it’d been when they’d first arrived, most of the mirrors shattered, most of the windows broken, the sculptures little more than piles of split stone. More than half of the light fixtures that once lined the hall joined the rubble on the ground, mangled heaps of crystal and golden metal.
There was glass everywhere. Even after he’d cleared a space for himself on the floor, Ganymede would find broken pieces he’d missed in the dim lighting. He shifted once he’d returned to the present and felt a piece scratching against his skin. He reached beneath himself to brush it away, touched his fingers to the tear it’d made in his hose but felt no wound and saw no blood when he pulled them away.
“I just...” he tried to answer Val’s question, but found that he was unable to explain, not because his thoughts were occupied by a difficult subject but because he didn’t even know what he’d been thinking himself. “Nothing, I guess,” he finished. “Everything, maybe, I don’t know. Sorry, I didn’t mean to drag you here so you could watch me zone out. You could have looked around if you wanted. I don’t think I’m much good for company tonight.”
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Posted: Tue May 14, 2013 2:41 pm
Valhalla smiled, trying not to look as sad and helpless as he felt, listening to Ganymede try to explain himself. "It's fine. I don't mind," he promised, thinking Ganymede was much better company at his worst than others were at their best. But he was clearly biased towards the Eternal.
He watched with concern as Ganymede fished for the glass beneath him, and reached up to unhook his cape from around his shoulders. "Here, don't hurt yourself," he requested, offering the cape for his partner to sit on. He was fine, himself. He had chainmail and about five other layers of clothing that kept him from being uncomfortable, even if he'd been sitting on debris, but Ganymede hadn't been so lucky in his outfit chosen by fate.
"Don't worry about it, okay?" he tried reassuring him, not wanting to let him think he was upset with just sitting there and watching him. "Take your time... I can wait." It wasn't as though they had plans aside from this that evening. "Besides... I'd rather keep you company than let you wander around, falling off balconies that don't exist," Valhalla pointed out, clearly making a reference to a previous time they'd visited. He knew the memories could be rather vivid... life-like... and how possible it was for one to become lost in those memories. And on a place like Ganymede, he didn't trust its influence to keep his partner safe.
"What did you see this time?" Curiosity had gotten the best of him, and while he'd wanted to just stay and give his support, he also wanted to understand more about what Ganymede was going through.
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Posted: Tue May 14, 2013 4:08 pm
The addition of Valhalla’s cape was unnecessary given Ganymede’s train, but he appreciated the gesture all the same. Rather than arguing and insisting that Valhalla keep it for himself, Ganymede took it gratefully and shifted aside to spread it out beneath him.
Settled again, he returned to his former position, drawing his legs back up to his chest. This time he refrained from wrapping his arms around them. Instead, he picked at a few more pieces of glass on the ground, unwilling to move but also unable to remain still for long.
“Not much,” he said, thinking back to the images that had passed in the mirror. “People, mostly. Walking around doing business, I guess. I didn’t really recognize anyone. Just a bunch of nameless faces. I didn’t expect to see much anyway, so... I don’t know, maybe this place knows that.”
He was never sure where the memories came from, or what caused them to come about the way they did. Some visits resulted in more vivid visions than others. With company this time, he didn’t expect to see anything in depth when there was every chance that he’d inevitably be interrupted. It was always easier to lose himself to the images and the stories when he came here alone.
“I keep looking for answers even though I know I’ll probably never find them,” Ganymede continued, frowning down at the little pile of glass he’d formed. The pieces clinked together; some caught and refracted beams of red light from the giant planet looming above them. “I can’t decide if that makes me hopeless or stubborn, but I guess I just... want to know more than I do. And then I think, maybe if I keep coming here... maybe I’ll finally see something important.”
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Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 4:05 pm
"I don't think you're either," Valhalla said with a frown. He realized that he may sound like he was just trying to be encouraging, but his voice was sincere. "You've learned things since you've been here, haven't you? Maybe not very significant things... or who knows, maybe they are," he tried, already frustrated with himself for his inability to really voice what he wanted to. He meant every word he said, but how effective he was in relaying his message... he wasn't too confident.
The point of the matter was... they didn't know what could be important from the information they found on their worlds. For him, a couple visits happened to be very important, at least to him. At least when it came to learning about the Valhalla of the past.
"If you were hopeless you wouldn't be here... and, well... you are a bit stubborn, but... I would probably say you're more hopeful than anything." And there was nothing wrong with that, at least not to him.
Fidgeting almost helplessly, the knight reached out to take hold of Ganymede's hand, preventing him from playing with the bits of debris. "What kind of important things are you looking for...? About what happened here? A reason why there's a war going on? Who you were in the past...? What...?" he wondered, keeping his voice lowered to try and encourage Ganymede to talk to him. Anything would help at this point.
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Posted: Mon May 20, 2013 2:42 pm
“Hopeful?” Ganymede wondered and snorted softly in dry amusement.
Was he hopeful? He didn’t think so. He didn’t even know if he wanted to be. It probably wasn’t a very good idea to keep holding on to hope when everything around them kept hitting the shitter. In the end, he’d likely be disappointed. Wasn’t it better then, not to hope? He should be practical, realistic, so as to protect himself against the inevitable sadness that always arose when the outcome was different than what he’d wanted.
The stilling of his hand in Valhalla’s grasp bothered him for all of two seconds, as he no longer had any means of expending the restless energy thrumming through him. Then he twisted his hand around to lace their fingers together and took comfort from the contact.
“That’s the point, I don’t really know,” he admitted, dropping his chin to one knee and staring morosely across at Valhalla.
“Sometimes everything seems important. And then, other times, nothing does,” Ganymede said. “All I really know is that I want to know more. It’s been two years since I awakened and a lot of times I still feel as clueless about everything as I did back then. Now I run into new Senshi and they’re lost and confused, and I don’t know what to say to them to reassure them. I don’t know anything about what happened before I awakened, and since then I...”
He stuttered to a stop and struggled to explain himself, frowning deeper in frustration as he said, “All I can do is tell them what I’ve been through, but that doesn’t seem like a very complete picture of the war, does it? Half of it I don’t even know how to explain.”
How could one explain Elysion and the Surrounding without being able to show someone what it was like?
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Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 6:55 pm
He felt as though he could understand Ganymede’s frustrations, at least when it came to wanting to be able to explain to people what it was like... why they shouldn’t throw their lives so easily and quickly to Chaos. He didn’t understand why there were so many people confused as to who they were or what they were meant to do.
Ganymede's frustrations were apparent, and as he struggled with what he wanted to say, Valhalla took the opportunity to offer him some information he thought might be helpful.
“Did you know that Europa was part of a team before the Jovians?” Valhalla asked Ganymede, not really sure where he was going with this, but he hoped they would be able to help each other out by filling in some holes of the story. “Maia told me once, almost two years ago. She said it was called the Basterds and Maia was a part of it, as was Castor, Polaris, Themis... I think you mentioned knowing a Pomona once... There were others, but I can’t remember... I’ll have to check my notes back home,” he told him, glad now that he’d thought of jotting things down when he’d been given the information.
“All this happened before, although I don’t think it was as great of a scale as it is now... There was a Sailor V back in the 80s. She was in Tokyo and disappeared... There’s been speculation that Chibimoon might know more about it since she’s from Tokyo as well, but who knows...
“I think the precursor to everything going to hell in Destiny City was the arrival of an alien tree that appeared in the park downtown... Remember the giant tree there a few years ago? Apparently its children came looking for energy to help revive it, but the tree was hoping the Moon Princess would help its children, or at least that’s what Maia said... Many senshi showed up, wanting to help it, but didn’t have the power to purify it...
“That’s when the Negaverse arrived with an army to destroy the tree... The tree ended up sacrificing itself and its children to protect the senshi.” Valhalla hesitated then realizing he’d just thrown out a bunch of information without even waiting to see if that was what Ganymede had wanted.
“Uh... sorry,” he mumbled sheepishly, squeezing Ganymede’s hand in apology and sympathy. "Sorry, I just assumed you didn't know about all that..." He was going to feel really silly if he'd been repeating well known information.
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Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2013 3:56 pm
Ganymede became progressively more fidgety as he listened to Valhalla’s little history lesson, pulling his hand out of Valhalla’s grasp to pick through his pile of broken glass again, separating mirror shards from window shards, and pulling out unwanted pieces of other debris. His eyes darted off to the side and his expression took on a look of mild panic—a cross between growing confusion and the sick look of guilt.
It should be obvious that this was his first time hearing anything involving Toyko, or anything about an alien tree in Destiny City. He searched back through his memories to try and find some evidence of its existence, however miniscule, but came up with nothing. None of what Val was saying sounded familiar. Nothing but the names—Europa, Pomona, that Prince he’d once argued with—but he knew close to nothing about their origins or their experiences prior to his own awakening. For a long time it had felt as if they’d all simply popped into existence when he had.
Those delusions were simple to hold onto; they felt safe. The truth took quite a bit more time and courage to process.
“The first strange thing I remember noticing was some alien snow monster... thing,” he admitted quietly, looking down at his piles of glass. “It couldn’t have been a youma, because the Negaverse was there fighting it, too. There were these snowglobes. You could get them around town. They had a figure of a woman inside. I think it was supposed to be the Moon Queen, or at least it looked like her, or I guess it could have been her daughter too, but... I got a few of them... and I started having these weird dreams, and... hearing things... and on Christmas Eve they sort of... I mean, I don’t really get it, but I felt like I had to bring them with me somewhere, so I went down to Town Square, and there were all these other people there with snowglobes... and we put them on the fountain, and then this giant ice woman rose up, and—”
He stopped rambling for a moment to think about it, lost in confusion. “I guess I never really pieced it together before. The snowglobes probably had something to do with it, but... I don’t know why the Moon Queen was inside of them. Maybe to lure the Senshi out, I don’t know. A few weeks after that I was on my way home from a party and I ran into a youma. You can probably guess how that went. Cat came and gave me my pen.
“Directly after that was Elysion,” Ganymede continued. He did his best to control his memories at that point, and blocked out the images of horrific dream battles that threatened to arise. “But you probably know about that already. Who told you all this? Zia?”
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Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 1:46 pm
”Snow globes...?” he wondered, looking to Ganymede curiously. “I remember those... Mom kept saying how she wanted one but when she finally got one, Peter ended up breaking it on accident...” Of course, now that he knew something villainous had been attached to the snow globes, he was glad that it had been broken. Lucky for them, they’d been away in Boston that year during Christmas...
Valhalla frowned and shook his head when Elysion was mentioned. “I only know as much as you’ve told me... maybe a little from what Maia and Zia’s told me, too...” He hesitated, realizing how uncomfortable Ganymede seemed. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to...” he promised, resisting the urge to pull his partner closer to him, to get him to stop fidgeting with the pieces of glass.
“I wish I knew more about this Moon Queen... Why everyone is so obsessed with her for so many different reasons.” Some hated her, some thought of her as the savior... many just wished she wasn’t brought up at all. He hoped talking about the Moon Queen was enough o keep Ganymede distracted, not particularly liking the haunted look that crossed Ganymede’s face.
“I love you,” he said suddenly, or maybe it wasn’t that sudden. It wasn’t just a way to keep Ganymede distracted, but to remind him that he wasn’t alone in this. It wasn’t like it had been when he’d first awakened and had been all alone, or even up until the point of the two of them knowing each other’s identities and Valhalla getting over himself and his biases. He knew he wasn’t the most romantic person in the world, or even close to it, but he did try.
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Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 9:05 am
Distractions. Ganymede was always looking for distractions—distractions from real life in the war, and distractions from the war in real life. For a while it helped; he could focus on other things while the rest of it took its time sinking in. But it never lasted. It never... solved anything. All distractions did was put things off, push them into the back of his mind to dwell until something else came up that made it impossible for him to keep them there.
But Elysion, even these two years on, was beyond his ability to process. If it had been confusing when it was happening to fall asleep and end up in a dream world where everything that happened to him there followed him when he awoke, it was even more confusing now. The horrors he'd faced continued to haunt him. The realization that this was what had become of his life, and the bitterness that realization caused, and the shock of the brutality of the war that faced him only days after his awakening, before he'd even had the chance to get used to the idea of what he was, made Elysion perhaps the most difficult event for him to discuss—with Chris or anyone.
“I love you, too,” he said rather than facing Elysion now.
He stopped fidgeting with the glass to reach out for Valhalla's hand again, but missed his palm and fingers and grasped at Val's wrist instead. Ganymede held to it tightly, squeezed around the leather bracers and metal vambraces, and shut his eyes to all the horrific memories threatening to rise.
When Ganymede opened his eyes to stare across at Valhalla, a different sort of memory fell over him, and he saw not Chris sitting in front of him looking young and sweet and concerned, but a man who bore some similarities to him that were almost lost beneath a neatly trimmed beard, a serious glower, and a determine pair of green eyes.
“I...” Ganymede began, but stopped, not knowing what to say.
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Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:45 am
It was rough for Ganymede. Valhalla could tell just by looking into his eyes that there were things that he kept welled up inside, always threatening to surface, but if he let that happen… how could he be sure that there’d be someone there to keep him from drowning.
Even as Ganymede grasped onto his wrist, Valhalla couldn’t help but wonder if this was some kind of attempt at reaching out for a lifeline. If nothing else, at least Ganymede had him to hold onto, right…?
The look in his eyes were far off, almost as if he was being lost in his thoughts, and Valhalla place his free hand over Ganymede’s, holding it to his wrist. “Are you okay…?” he asked tentatively, feeling guilty for bringing up things that obviously bothered his partner. There was obviously a reason as to why they hadn’t discussed Elysion or other things before… And he wasn’t about to force Ganymede into repeating those experiences.
“Maybe we should head back,” he suggested, still both wary and curious about the lost look in his partner’s eyes. It had turned glassy and far off, as if he was lost to thoughts beyond that room and even who they were. Instinctively, Valhalla grasped tighter to Ganymede’s hand on his wrist, hoping that would be enough of an anchor for him.
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Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 12:35 pm
“Yeah, I...”
He could hear Chris's voice but still saw the image of a much older Valhalla—not old from age, but from time. It was a strange experience, hearing a voice he recognized coming from an area the image of another familiar figure had fallen over, while that image remained silent and stoic and far beyond what Ganymede was used to in his dealings with Valhalla. He stared for a while longer, half-confused half... awed, almost... tempted to reach out to touch and feel and determine whether or not it would be Chris or this older version of Valhalla that met his fingertips. For a moment Ganymede experienced the strange desire to lean forward and kiss him just to see if he could feel the man's beard.
But he resisted. Instead, Ganymede shut his eyes and tried to shake the image from his mind. He stopped to take a breath, to get his bearings in the present again, and opened his eyes to shorter auburn hair, a younger concerned face, and eyes like sunshine.
“Right, we can go,” Ganymede said. He squeezed Val's wrist one last time before releasing it to hoist himself onto his feet.
“There isn't anything to find here anyway,” he continued, somewhat bitterly, busying himself with leaning over to retrieve Valhalla's cape before summoning his phone from subspace.
A part of him felt guilty for leaving, or for blaming this place for not living up to his expectations, but it was easier to feel bitter and mildly resentful than to admit that this was probably just another instance of running away. He didn't know what he was looking for or what sort of answers would suffice, so he pretended like it didn't even matter.
But it did. It always did.
“Come on,” he said anyway, and motioned for Valhalla to join him.
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