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 Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 7:20 am
The weather on Jupiter was, in a way, unpredictable.
There were, of course, things about it that never changed—the storms most notably. Ganymede was sure she'd never been there without a drizzle falling from the skies at the very least, a torrential downpour at its worst. She'd heard it pounding against the heavy stone walls of the fortress, saw it as streams of water streaked down the funny opaque windows (also, surprisingly, made of some sort of stone). Often it was accompanied by thunder, and flashes of light that seemed muted in the safety of the indoors, but looked, from outside, beautifully dangerous.
Then there was the cloud cover. The skies were never anything but cloudy—pale gray on fairer days (if the weather there could ever be called fair), dark gray to black when the weather worsened. She wondered how any light could possibly make its way through, how anyone would have survived and built a society here.
By the parapet on one of the outer walkways, Ganymede stood with her head tipped back, peering up toward the sky as if trying to find a break in the clouds.
“Do you think he ever went back there?” she asked.
Today a cool drizzle fell, only just now beginning to worsen. Ganymede's sodden haired draped sadly over one shoulder, her top hap already blown off and over the battlements by a strong gust of win. Her red train, bustled up earlier with Valhalla's assistance, hung behind her, heavy and damp, and the collar of her fuku sagged down her shoulders, thinner than they used to be when she awakened
But a lot had changed since then. She was thinner, more worn down, but older and wiser, too.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 2:39 pm
Do you think he ever went back there?
Valhalla leaned up against the doorway leading out of the fortress and onto the parapet Ganymede had decided to explore. His helmet and cape had already been shed, left inside, but unlike Ganymede he remained out of the rain as best he could.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly, watching Ganymede’s back instead of up at the sky. Despite everything that has occurred recently, he still loved her more than he thought was safe, especially in their line of work. Then again, had they not been senshi and knight, he didn’t know how long it would have taken for them to discover each other, much less get to know each other.
“There wasn’t much to go back to, was there?” he wondered, feeling only after he’d said it that it could have been taken as an insensitive comment. Why Ganymede would take offense to it he wasn’t entirely sure, but he knew she was rather protective of her “world” and a little too invested in her past life.
He had obviously not seen as much of Ganymede’s world as she had, but of what he had seen, it was all rather dark and in ruin. Broken windows, crumbling buildings — the result of human caused destruction. And if her recollection of inherited memories said anything on the subject, he wasn’t sure his own past self would have allowed it.
“For his sake, I hope he did… but you’ve seen Serge…” he said, hoping his honest opinion would mean more than casual speculation. “I haven’t seen much of them together, but I hope he wasn’t always such a jerk to Liesel. It makes me uncomfortable thinking Serge kept him just as locked away as he had been on Ganymede.”
It definitely didn’t seem to be a very healthy relationship. If that was what it was even called.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 3:04 pm
Indeed, the insinuation that there was nothing on Ganymede worth returning to caused the Senshi of Lust to bristle in offense.
She wasn't entirely sure why she had such a reaction. In a way Valhalla was completely right. There was nothing but destruction. There was no light, no life there anymore. Though she did not yet know what had happened to Liesel after he'd left, or what had happened to their world (and it was theirs, for although she was not Liesel—could never be Liesel—they had Ganymede in common if nothing else), what memories she'd gained did not lead her to believe it would have been advisable for Liesel to show his face there again.
And that was a sad thought. She tried to imagine what it would be like if she were never to set foot on Ganymede again. If the war finally ended and there was no longer any need for her to power up, could she so easily turn her back on it?
She didn't think so.
“I wouldn't know,” she said. She rolled her shoulders in an attempt to loosen the tension, and hoped the tone of her voice didn't make her defensive reaction to Valhalla's previous comment too obvious. “I've never seen anything that happened here.”
She'd never seen anything but what had happened on Ganymede—which meant, of course, that there were very large chunks of Liesel's life missing.
With a sigh, Ganymede turned away from the battlements and headed back for the door. “Come on,” she said. “I think I know where to look.”
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 3:16 pm
He watched Ganymede as she tensed up, and Valhalla let out a small sigh when he realized he’d been right about thinking he would offend her somehow. Despite her trying not to sound defensive, he couldn’t help but think that she was, at least a little.
Then again, he she had always been rather interested in this aspect of her life, so maybe he really was just insensitive on the matter. It was their past lives, so what should it matter now? He didn’t exactly like knowing that his own past self wasn’t even close to being very pleasant to be around, nor did he feel like he wanted to know more about the things that he did.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he wondered, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion as Ganymede turned to head back inside. Valhalla reached down to gather up his cape and helmet, taking a moment to toss the dry fabric around Ganymede’s shoulders so she wouldn’t freeze inside the rather drafty fortress.
Whatever Ganymede thought she was doing or where she was going, she wasn’t going to get far without him. The fortress wouldn’t allow it. So he stayed close to her as they made their way through the halls, heading down what were now familiar passages and hallways, towards a section of the fortress that was still practically untouched.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 3:40 pm
“I'm going to my room,” Ganymede said.
She thought better of the statement only seconds later.
It wasn't entirely accurate (though she didn't think it was completely inaccurate either), and she was sure Valhalla wasn't completely convinced by it. She didn't really blame him, considering not long ago she hadn't felt much different about these aspects of her life (or former life) than he did. Clearly that had changed, though she was still determining how and why, and if the change was a positive one. There was a part of her that still thought the past mattered very little in the grand scheme of things; the more they focused on it, the less attention they had to give to a far more important future.
But she couldn't ignore it. The past intrigued her, and the possibility of having the means to piece all of it together, to finally find the answers to all of her questions about the war and about her origins, compelled her to continue to explore it.
Why her? She'd always wondered that. Why now? Why like this?
“Sorry, I meant Liesel's room,” she amended, but the correction came after a long moment of silence that likely didn't help her case at all.
Despite having only visited the fortress of Valhalla a couple of times thus far, she seemed to know her way to her intended destination. She walked confidently through the halls and up the staircases, seeking warmth beneath the folds of Valhalla's cape as she went. The fortress seemed alive around them, the green veins within the stone walls glowing as they passed. Outside, the storm worsened; she could hear the low rumble of thunder drawing closer.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 4:16 pm
Valhalla didn’t comment on it, but he couldn’t help but feel concerned over her growing interest in Liesel and Ganymende itself. Curiosity was fine, but when she lost herself the way he’d seen her do… he worried about her safety and mental state, even.
“You’ve been going Ganymede a lot recently,” he observed, reaching out to gently run his fingers along the stone wall, following the green glow that seemed to stay with them as they moved down the hallway. The moment his fingers touched the smooth surface, the light intensified, and he quickly moved his hand back down to his side.
He knew things responded strangely to him in his fortress, and maybe he should be more interested in how it worked than he was… But it was… almost frightening. It was as if the place really was alive, and it was because he was there. He didn’t know if he could handle that responsibility and wondered if he just wasn’t as strong as Ganymede in regards to her own world.
Maybe he was just a coward.
It was a shorter time than he remembered it would take to reach the doors specifically designed for Lisele’s room. A large eagle guarding the entrance… It made him internally cringe at Serge’s obsession with the other young man.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 4:31 pm
Ganymede shrugged in response to Valhalla's comment, attempting to make light of the amount of time she'd been spending on her homeworld as of late. Indeed, she'd been making more regular visits than usual, and she'd always made a point of going frequently to begin with. But now the visits felt more pressing. She felt as if she needed to be there, or as if Ganymede needed her to be there.
She had yet to determine which need was strongest.
In any case, she was on Jupiter now and it would be another week before she could travel to Ganymede again.
“There's been a lot to see,” she said by way of explanation.
It wasn't entirely true if only because she saw little more than she had during any of her previous visits. It only felt as if she were seeing more because she was going as often as she could. But the memories were becoming more vivid, and she felt as if she were getting closer to figuring out something important. She just needed a little assistance, and she was well on her way to getting it.
Ganymede stopped in front of the eagle-crested door and took a quick breath to calm her nerves. The sight of it was rather intimidating, and she wished, not for the first time, that she knew what'd happened to Liesel here, too.
Soon, she told herself. Not much longer.
She lifted one of her gloved hands to the crest. At once the eagle's eye glowed green like the veins in the stone around them, spreading throughout the crest until the eagle was outlined. A click sounded through the hall as the doors unlocked, then swung open on old hinges.
“Do you think it was always like that?” she asked, pausing a moment longer to consider the doors.
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Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 2:10 pm
“It’s almost as if it recognizes you,” Valhalla observed dumbly, realizing that it was pretty obvious that the door recognized Ganymede, or at least her starseed. Everything else in the fortress seemed to react to his touch, his foot steps, his voice even. It was almost… frightening. He didn’t know how to feel about it, whether he should be concerned that his presence seemed to bring the fortress to life, or if it was like that in other places as well.
“I don’t know, I always assumed there was some kind of magic that allows you to enter on your own, like it belonged to Ganymede in the past.” Serge was obviously fond of Liesel, no matter how creepy or stockholm syndrome it seemed.
The room hadn’t changed at all since they’d last been in it. He tried not to move things around — didn’t seem right to him. And it was obvious that this room was for Liesel’s personal use. Inside the room, instead of the thick blocks of glass that let light through but didn’t make much for windows, thick, translucent panes kept the storm outside, but also allowed for a view of the outside world.
For just a few moments, Valhalla thought he saw someone with blond hair and a thin figure staring out, as if longingly at the cloud cover above. But before he could really focus on the details, the figure was gone.
“Are you looking for something…?” he asked, sounding more wary now that they had arrived at a place that would only spur Ganymede’s growing obsession with her past life.
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Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 2:33 pm
“I'm looking for a stone,” Ganymede said. “About this big,” she lifted one of her hands and curled her fingers to demonstrate its approximate size, “It's clear and round.”
She didn't spend too much time in the doorway. Once the doors had finished opening and she'd shrugged off the oddity of it, Ganymede crossed into the room and began her determined search. She spared little attention for the features of the room, less interested this time in how it looked than she was in what it might be hiding.
Normally she was careful not to disturb anything. This was especially true on Ganymede, but extended to her dealings with others worlds as well. Particularly on Jupiter, which she'd always felt a connection to even before her memories had led her here, she treated her surroundings with care. She handled things reverently, her touch light and her grasp gentle, wary of damaging objects that had gone so long unused. Many of them were brittle with age; even a light touch would cause them to crumbled.
But this time she was on a mission, and she searched the room in an uncharacteristically careless manner. Indeed, Valhalla's concerns about her “obsession” may in fact be warranted.
“You gave it to me,” she said distractedly. “It has all my memories in it. I know Liesel left Ganymede, and I don't think he would have left it behind. I haven't been able to find it at the castle either way. So it has to be here somewhere. If I can find it, maybe I can remember everything. Finally find something useful.”
She opened draws and rummaged around inside, shoved piles of crumblings books around on tables as if she expected them to be concealing something. She tore open the doors to a large wardrobe, riffled through the old, dusty clothes that hung inside, and when that yielded nothing she turned to one of the bedside tables and repeated her efforts there.
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Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 3:14 pm
Valhalla frowned as Ganymede began tearing up the room in the search for some object that may or may not be there. At first he just watched her in concern, before slowly moving to follow her, gently moving aside pillows and shuffling books in the bookshelves, seeing if something might be hiding behind it.
He still wasn’t too happy about recent events, but he was trying not to let it bother him. However, the more Ganymede searched for this object, the more he thought taking her here might have been a bad idea. It was okay to be interested in the past, but Ganymede was starting to fuse the two together.
The speed at which he looked through things didn’t even compare to how quickly she was searching the room, but this object… this glass orb couldn’t possibly mean so much to her when it wasn’t even hers.
“I didn’t give anything to you,” he corrected, grabbing for her arm as she passed him, trying to stop her from overturning a chair or something in her haste to find this… unknown object. “You’re not Liesel. Why don’t you understand that??”
Yes, it was starting to distress him. He thought he put up with a lot, and he could only handle so much. He loved her but… this was getting out of hand. “Stop, you don’t even know if it’ll work for you. Just because some doors unlock and you’ve had these visions doesn’t mean you’re meant to have this.”
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Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 3:25 pm
The hand on her arm startled Ganymede. She hadn't been expecting it, nor did she think the urgency in Valhalla's voice was entirely deserved. She stared up at him as if she found his concern odd, though she wasn't completely ignorant as to where it came from or what was causing it.
So she'd slipped up and said a few things wrong, no big deal. She wasn't trying to relive the past, she was trying to learn from it. And she was pretty sure this stone was the key to helping her learn more than she was able to on her own. Ganymede didn't expect Valhalla to understand. He hadn't spent nearly as much time on Jupiter as she had on her own homeworld. He hadn't seen as much. He didn't have ghosts whispering to him every time he came here, urging him to find something he wasn't even sure he was looking for.
She didn't blame him, but all the same Ganymede didn't exactly like the insinuation.
“You're overreacting,” she said. “You know what I mean. I know I'm not Liesel. I mean, obviously. I've spent all this time figuring myself out, I'm not about to go back and try to be someone else. Liesel's dead. I get that, okay? He died a long time ago. But I know if I can just find the stone... don't you want to figure all this out? What if I remember something important? If there's even just one memory that can help us, isn't that worth it?”
Gently she pulled her arm out of Valhalla's grasp and made a show of being more sedate with her search, reigning in some of her enthusiasm for his benefit as she leaned over to check under the bed. There was nothing there, of course. But that was alright; it was a large room. Still plenty of places to look.
She stamped down on her anxiety, but already a little voice was whispering in the back of her mind, wondering what she'd do if it turned out not to be here.
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Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 3:46 pm
“Help us do what, exactly? What could stone possibly do to help us? Defeat the Negaverse? Or the Dark Mirror Court?” he wondered, saying it purposefully and knowing it would probably upset her, but as optimistic as he tried to be about ending the war, he doubted there was anything her obsession with Lisele and the past could do.
Valhalla let her pull away, but he looked at her, incredulously. “I’m sorry if I don’t get it. I know you don’t think I do and I probably don’t. I haven’t tried finding out about Valhalla’s past because that’s not who I am now. I just wish you wouldn’t shoot me down when I voice a concern,” he said, stopping as he realized that his voice was raising.
“Do you really want to see memories so you can find out a way to help us now? Or are you more interested in Lisele?”
There was no point in trying to argue with her. She was stubborn and did what she wanted and he both hated and loved that about her. He loved that she was confident and sure about things, but he also hated that she turned a blind eye to everything else in those moments.
Why he was acting like this, he didn’t know. But he was worried about her, he didn’t like seeing her lost in thoughts, almost falling of balconies, disappearing to her moon every week for hours at a time and coming back so dazed or excited or sad. It left him feeling helpless, and while he knew he didn’t control her life, he wished that sometimes she would consider him in her actions.
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Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 4:15 pm
“This doesn't have anything to do with Liesel,” Ganymede insisted. She opened another drawer and rummaged around inside but didn't find anything except a few more books and worthless knick-knacks. “The war started in the past, didn't it? Doesn't it make sense to look back and figure out what went wrong?”
Because she didn't buy that dumb love story about an Earthen prince and a Moon princess. She knew wars could be started for dumb reasons, but nothing could be quite as dumb as that. She refused to accept it as an answer if only because she had no intention of sacrificing herself for something so stupid and juvenile. It wasn't worth the pain they'd all gone through. It wasn't worth Europa's illness or Kallichore's sanity or her health or Valhalla's life. It wasn't worth Oberon's loss of childhood, it wasn't worth Pasiphae's safety or the blood of innocent civilians.
She wanted a different answer. She wanted there to be something more to it all, because if there wasn't the war would only continue to seem as hopeless as it had for the last three years.
“And even if it did have something to do with Liesel,” she amended, because even though Liesel wasn't her main reason that didn't mean he wasn't one of them, “what's so wrong with wanting to see more? He and I might be different people, but I'm Ganymede now. You don't think I could learn a thing or two from him? About what Ganymede was like? About what all this means? About myself?”
She cast aside a few more books (one thing was for sure, Liesel sure did like his books), and wandered back to the wardrobe for a second look incase she hadn't searched carefully enough the first time. Her motions were only a little less erratic, but Valhalla's concern had successfully slowed and tempered them. She explored the room with just as much purpose, yet did so more methodically.
And if Valhalla's dig about the Negaverse and the Dark Mirror Court hurt her, Ganymede did her best not to show it.
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Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 11:37 am
He didn’t know what to say at that point. Ganymede already had her mind made up and she was determined to find whatever it was she was looking for. It stressed him out, not knowing what she was thinking, or exactly why she was so… consumed by her desire to find this stone, or why she was so interested in the past. Yes, he understood trying to figure out if there were any clues that would give them a lead on what had happened and what they could do to stop the war, but…
The image of the young man appeared again, but Valhalla already knew who it was. He stood by the window looking longingly out at the sky — probably up to where his home was, past the clouds. In his hands was a small, round stone, no bigger than a baseball. He held it tightly as if to protect it, or maybe because it gave him comfort. Either way, it was obvious that that was what Ganymede was looking for.
Lisele glanced up suddenly, and Valhalla froze, for he seemed to be looking straight at him. His eyes were red, but there were no tears on his face. He stared for just a moment before he lowered his head once more and took a step away from the window. His movements were slow, almost as if to stall, and he quietly approached the fireplace. There, on a golden pedestal, he placed the orb, his hands lingering for a few more moments, before the whole image faded away.
Well, almost the whole image… the orb was still where it had been placed by Liesel in the past, and had yet to vanish…
Unless…
Valhalla took a step closer towards the fireplace, staring at the stone, as if it would disappear if he looked away. Even though he was close enough, he didn’t reach out to touch it, instead he stared at it mournfully, knowing this might be a very bad decision. But… he trusted Ganymede to know when to stop… So hopefully she would follow through with keeping her promise on being careful.
“Baby…” he said softly to get her attention, although he still stared at the stone, lest it suddenly disappear.
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Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 1:14 pm
“What?” Ganymede asked distractedly.
She finished the question with a sigh, expecting another argument, more unnecessary concern. Though she was of the opinion that Valhalla was merely overreacting, she knew better than to repeat the thought. After recent events, it was best to just let Val fuss and resign herself to some mild bickering. She'd have her way in the end on this. If he didn't want to help her, that was fine; she'd simply continue to search on her own.
Even so, she turned at the sound of his voice so that it seemed as if she were making an effort to pay attention, fully expecting another lecture about the present versus the past and her own life versus Liesel's. Valhalla did not seem ready for it, however; rather, his attention seemed to have been diverted. Ganymede was almost glad for it and nearly turned back to what she'd been doing rifling through Liesel's old, dust-ridden clothes, when she followed the line of Valhalla's sight and saw the stone sitting on the fireplace mantle.
Innocently. Inconspicuously. It hardly seemed substantial, certainly nothing to gain much notice from anyone else. It caught some of the light that flashed through the windows as the storm outside grew stronger, gleaming in the semi-darkness.
“Oh...” she breathed.
Ganymede walked toward it slowly. Suddenly it seemed wrong to disturb it, despite how many weeks she'd spent searching for it. She stopped beside Valhalla to stare at it, considering. This was it. This was the answer to all of her questions. This was what would show her everything. All she had to do was reach out and take it, and the past and everything that had occurred in it would be hers to explore.
Would it be worth it? Would it change anything? Was Valhalla right, that these things were better left to the dust and darkness of ruined worlds?
The indecision lasted only a moment.
Ganymede stepped closer to the mantle and grabbed the stone from its perch.
Then she waited.
And waited.
And wanted...
And nothing happened.
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